Originally published in The Journal of Drug Issues
(special issue on the political economy of alcohol),
Winter, 1983 pp. 95-116.

By Harry G. Levine

Abstract: This paper examines the ideas and policy recommendations of an early 20th century, upper-class research organization called the Committee of Fifty. The paper discusses the Committee of Fifty's ideas about prohibition (which it opposed), about the working class (which it sought to control), about social order (which was its primary concern), and about U.S. alcohol control policy (which it was the first to systematically outline)

I. Introduction

The story of the liquor problem in America has almost always been told as the story of "Prohibition." The passage of constitutional Prohibition and the experiences of the 1920's have so affected American consciousness that they have determined the shape and content of virtually all subsequent historical inquiries. Thus the 19th century temperance movement, a broad movement concerned with a range of social issues, has been viewed as the prohibition movement. The still definitive work on the invention or discovery of the liquor question in the early 19th century was written in 1925, in the middle of Prohibition; and the issue which underlay all the rich social history the author, John A. Krout, reported, was reflected in the title: The Origins of Prohibition. For Krout, and most everyone since him, national Prohibition was the lens through which the history of concern and public discussion about drinking, drunkenness and temperance was viewed.

Further, most writing about Prohibition has been done from the perspective of those who were relieved it ended. Prohibition has been presented as an unusual episode and repeal as evidence that common sense prevailed among the American people and its politicians. The general impression given is that a sane, reasonable system for controlling the production and distribution of alcohol replaced Prohibition. What is almost never mentioned, much less discussed, is that the system or systems of control and regulation -- alcohol control it was called -- which replaced national Prohibition in the 1930s, was a political creation. It was formed with conscious design and intention to do particular things and not others, and to meet only certain needs and interests. What the alternatives to Prohibition were, where they came from, who advocated them and why, is part of the largely unknown history of the liquor question.

Once one's gaze moves away from Prohibition to its alternatives, a new and unexplored set of questions appears. Where did the alternatives to Prohibition come from? What were the arguments made on behalf of them? Where did the phrase "alcohol control" come from and what has it meant -- what have people been talking about when they have talked about alcohol control? Who has advocated alcohol control and what has been their class background? What has been the history and fate of various plans for a legalized alcohol beverage industry? How have they changed over time? Have the experiences of other nations been important in formulating American plans? Have ideas or programs spread from country to country? What has been the role of the liquor industry in formulating alternatives? Have they put forth their own plans? What happened at the end of national Prohibition -- where did the plans which were actually adopted come from? What was the character of public discussion around the time of repeal? And so on.

This paper begins to answer some of the above questions about the origins of contemporary alcohol control policy. Most of the main political and economic structures which today govern the sale and distribution of alcohol beverages were fully designed and put into place in the years immediately proceeding and following the repeal of national prohibition in December 1933. Around that time there was probably the greatest public attention and publicity given to the question of the principles which should govern alcohol policy. A great many articles, books, research projects, pamphlets, and speeches criticized and analyzed Prohibition, and discussed alternatives to Prohibition which they called "alcohol control" (Levine and Smith, 1977). However, there was by the 1930s a rich European literature on the question of alcohol control, and it was not the first time such ideas had been proposed in America. Thirty years earlier, at the beginning of the 20th century, many of the key ideas which would be again articulated in the years preceding and following repeal, were first developed and presented.

The question of alcohol control -- that is, the use of government to routinely and systematically regulate, control, supervise, and police the manufacture and especially the distribution of alcoholic beverages -- was not a 19th century concern. "Laissez-faire" is the phrase most used to describe government regulation in the 19th century, especially with regard to alcohol; state action tended to negate, prohibit or abolish; or when positive, it tended to be one-shot: creating or making something possible. However, the emergence of corporate capitalism at the end of the 19th century produced a new vision of the role of the state in society. Now government was to be an active manager, watching over, controlling and regulating everyday production and consumption. It was in the 20th century that Congress and Presidents created a wide variety of governmental boards and commissions to watch over and regulate routine affairs of trade, commerce, business, welfare, sanitation, transportation, housing, health, and so on.

The origins of contemporary alcohol control policy are found in this broad effort -- sometimes identified by the name Progressivism -- that in the early 20th century sought government regulation in many areas of daily life. Those individuals and groups seeking regulation were usually from the new corporate society -- representatives of the corporations and of the new middle-class professionals. The literature on alcohol control was not written by reformers tied to broad social movements. Rather, it was the work of members of the upper class, and of professionals, scientists, academics, journalists, and administrators -- people with a stake in and commitment to the new society. (Perhaps the best overview of the rise of the regulatory ethos is Wiebe, 1967; also see Kolko, 1963, and Hofstader, 1955).

The Committee of Fifty was a private research group organized in 1893; by 1905, it had completed its work and had issued five books on the liquor question. The Committee is known by some individuals working in alcohol studies, especially sociology and history. But except for the dissertation chapter [and later book chapter] by John J. Rumbarger, nothing has been published on it. Sometimes the Committee is mentioned in passing in histories of temperance of Prohibition (e.g., Timberlake, Sinclair), but because it was not prohibitionist, and because it did not have a significant political impact at the time, it is invariably ignored.

This paper briefly discusses the background and explicates the main ideas of the Committee of Fifty, identifying the sometimes hidden targets of its arguments and the social contexts of its analyses. The main theme of this paper is that the Committee of Fifty represents the first substantial articulations of what would be the distinctive 20th century intellectual and political framework for viewing the place of alcohol in society. This involved a) a borrowing and critique of temperance positions on alcohol; b) a political and administrative critique of prohibition, and c) the presentation of alternate policies and guidelines for governmental management of the distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Further, the Committee's position was worked out by active and important members of the American upper class, and skilled professionals that they knew and trusted. The Committee's findings and policy recommendations were in general shaped in response to broad economic and political conditions of the times, and to questions and problems facing the new middle-class professionals, and especially the corporate elite.

Il. Background

The Committee of Fifty made the most comprehensive attempt to study the "liquor problem" that had ever been tried in the United States, and one might argue that it remained so for over seventy years -- until the federal government created the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 1970. The most extensive research into the origins of the Committee, as far as I know, has been by John Rumbarger, and the following background information draws upon his work.

The Committee of Fifty had its beginnings in an upper-class, reform oriented organization called the Sociology Group. It was founded in 1889 to study questions relating to major social issues, especially what it termed "labor reform and the government of cities;" over the course of four years it published position papers and analyses of family life, labor, politics, and cities. In 1893, the Sociology Group enlarged its membership and reorganized itself in order to concentrate "on the drink problem in the United States." The group renamed itself "The Committee of Fifty for the Investigation of the Liquor Problem." Its members came mainly from eastern cities and it was funded by private sources in Boston and New York. Like a number of other such organizations at the time, the Committee of Fifty represented a cross section of the more activist members of the eastern corporate and professional establishment. In other words, its members were from what C. Wright Mills would later call the "power elite" (Rumbarger, p. 167; Cherrington, p. 663).

Members of the Committee from the business and financial world included John H. Converse, "owner and president of the Baldwin Locomotive works in Philadelphia; Col. Jacob L. Greene, president of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the `big four insurance companies'," William E. Dodge, Jr., son and heir of the millionaire businessman and temperance leader; and from the New York banking community, Jacob H. Schiff, head of Kuhn-Loeb bankers (Rumbarger, p. 168).

The Committee's professional experts were from top-notch academic and civil service positions and included Charles W. Eliot, the president of Harvard; Caroll D. Wright, the United States Commissioner of Labor, who brought his department's resources to the Committee; John S. Billings, a descendent of Mayflower pilgrims, who established major libraries, "designed Johns Hopkins Hospital," and who directed the vital statistics division of the Tenth Census; and the Rev. Professor Francis A. Peabody, a Unitarian minister and Professor of Ethics at Harvard. From the original Sociological Group there was Columbia history professor William M. Sloane, and the famous economist Richard Ely. A number of members were from politics and law, among them Seth Low, who inherited a fortune, became a prominent municipal reformer, and Mayor of Brooklyn; he also played a major role in a number of similar upper-class sponsored policy and reform organizations. There was also Charles J. Bonapart, "a wealthy member of Baltimore society and active in municipal reform;" James C. Carter, the head of a Wall Street law firm who helped found the National Municipal League; and William Bayard Cutting, the director of a bank, two railroads, and soon to be on the National Civil Service Commission. As Rumbarger observes, "the genealogy of the Committee of Fifty leaves little or no doubt about the seriousness of the Eastern business and commercial community about the matter of the political control of liquor" (p. 168).

The Committee divided itself into four subcommittees, each responsible for a different "aspect" of the liquor problem: physiological, legislative, economic, and social and moral (ethical) problems. Each subcommittee wrote a book reporting its findings, and a fifth volume summarizing the four studies was issued. Members were assigned to the different subcommittees according to their interests and expertise. The physiology subcommittee was headed by Billings, Atwater and Chittenden, all eminent in physical science or medicine; Charles Eliot, James Carter and Seth Low headed the legislative investigation; Frances Peabody, Elgin R. L. Gould, and William Sloan directed the subcommittee concerned with social aspects of drinking and which produced the study "Substitutes for the Saloon." And the subcommittee on economic aspects was directed by Harvard economist Francis A. Walker and then, when he died, by Caroll Wright.

The aim of the Committee of Fifty was "to collate impartially, all accessible facts which bear upon the liquor problem ... and to secure for the evidence thus accumulated a measure of confidence on the part of the community which is not accorded to personal statements." It hoped to form "a consensus of competent opinion, in which physiologists and economists, men of academic life, men of affairs, and members of most diverse religious communions, could unite to provide a starting-point for a rational and trustworthy method of action." As Rumbarger points out, "however much the Committee described itself as a more or less neutral agency devoted only to collecting facts, it remained a political body in its origins, concepts and the execution of its activities" (Rumbarger, p. 167-174; Cherrington, p. 663-664).

The Liquor Problem: A Summary of Investigations Conducted by the Committee of Fifty, 1893-1903, is the best place to begin a review of the distinctive point of view and contribution of the Committee of Fifty. Published after the four major studies, this volume was intended to summarize the main findings and conclusions of the other volumes: Physiological Aspects, Legislative Aspects. Economic Aspects, and Substitutes for the Saloon.

In the Introduction to the volume, Francis Peabody, Secretary of the Committee, went to great lengths to assert the scientific, factual, objective and non-political nature of the reports. The Committee of Fifty was not organized to make reform, he explained, neither was the "prime business of the Committee ... the expression of opinion or the advancing or advocacy of one theory or another." The Committee was limited to "strictly the investigation of facts, without reference to the conclusion, to which they might lead" (Billings et al., 1905, pp. 3-4, hereafter only page numbers given).

"The volumes do not enter the region of exhortation and argument, but restrict themselves to the statement of what appear to be demonstrable facts and to the inferences which these facts appear to dictate.... The problem before such a committee was that of formulating the facts on which thoughtful students of various traditions and tendencies might agree. The series of special investigations are not missionary tracts or moral appeals, but scientific studies of physical and social facts" (pp. 78).

Peabody further observed that "this limitation of purpose" to fact gathering and reporting was not necessarily indifferent "to practical reform" but might "on the contrary suggest new ways of applying the spirit of reform."

If, in the confusion of opinion which prevails concerning the drink-problem, a body of facts can be collected which in any degree represents the truth as it is now understood by students of physical and social life, then while such facts are not likely to satisfy all who are already committed to special methods of reform -- they may provide a foundation for more rational and comprehensive measures.

Although it may not be immediately obvious to a reader not familiar with the politics of debate surrounding the liquor question at the turn of the century, the seemingly neutral and open-minded approach constituted, in fact, a direct attack on the classic temperance and prohibitionist positions. When Peabody referred to "the confusion of opinion" he meant that temperance views were confused; when he said that the Committee's facts may not please those "who are already committed to special methods of reform" he meant that prohibitionists wouldn't like them; and when he called "for more rational and comprehensive measures" he was saying that temperance and prohibitionist ideas were less rational than his own.

"The cause of temperance has been much obstructed by intemperate speech and exaggerated statement, and has suffered much through dissension among those who should have been allies. There is much to fear from excess of drink, but there is also much to fear from excessive statements which experience soon discovers to be unsupported by facts" (pp. 8-9).

Peabody chose a few examples of a new approach and, in effect, offered a nutshell summary of the entire four volumes of the Committee of Fifty's positions. He gave three examples from the subcommittees. From the Physiological subcommittee he presented the conclusion that a drink a day is well within "the limit of judicious use" -- in other words, that total abstinence is not necessary. From the Legislative subcommittee he drew the conclusion that prohibition is not necessary: "It cannot be positively affirmed that any kind of liquor legislation has been more successful than another in promoting real temperance" (p. 9). Finally, from the Economic subcommittee he drew the conclusion that 25 percent of poverty and nearly 50 percent of crime is directly or indirectly due to liquor. While two of his scientifically gathered facts directly opposed long-standing temperance and prohibitionist ideas, the notion that alcohol causes poverty and crime supported temperance views. It was on the third point that Peabody and the Committee hoped to form a common front with temperance forces:

"Facts so prodigious as these should silence the sectarian controversies which divide the advocates of temperance, and should summon all intelligent citizens, to the realization of a common peril and a common responsibility. The purpose of the Committee of Fifty will be accomplished if the facts which they have collected and set forth may contribute in any degree to a more rational and comprehensive union of the forces in American life which make for sobriety, self-control, good citizenship, and social responsibility" (p. 11).

The report of the Physiological committee was probably the most controversial at the time because much of it was a direct attack on the temperance position on alcohol as it had been articulated by scientists and physicians for nearly a century. It also constituted a direct attack on temperance teaching in schools as practiced at the time, and as had been fought for by temperance supporters under the leadership of the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction of the WCTU (Sinclair, 1964, pp. 4346, discusses this controversy). The Committee wrote:

"In view of what is known as to the effects of the moderate or occasional use of alcoholic drinks upon man, much of the methods and substance of the so-called scientific temperance instruction in the public schools is unscientific and undesirable" (Billings et al. 1905, p. 35).

They suggested some things to be taught and not taught -- mainly that, contrary to temperance teaching, alcohol is not a poison and total abstinence is not necessary for health. "It should not be taught" they wrote, "that the drinking of one or two glasses of beer or wine by a grown-up person is very dangerous." Thus they presented the beginnings of a new program of teaching about alcohol:

"With the cordial cooperation on the part of all who honestly desire to combat the evils of intemperance and are willing to recognize the fact that many articles on our dietaries (including alcohol) may under certain circumstances have a nutritive value and under other circumstances a poisonous effect, and that the results may be combined in varying proportions, there should be no difficulty in coming to an understanding as to the main features of an educational scheme which might well take as its motto the words of the Chinese proverb, "Intoxication is not the wine's fault, but the man's" (pp. 40-41).

There was little in the Physiology subcommittee's report that the contemporary reader will not recognize. Its "science" and its opinions have become the dominant one's since repeal. Again, it is important to emphasize that at the time they were published, however, they were, among the Protestant middle class, probably a minority view. (See Timberlake, 1963, for a good discussion of the 20th century versions of scientific temperance arguments.)

The Committee of Fifty's report on the Legislative Aspects of the Liquor Problem was authored by John Koren and Frederick Wines, and the summary was prepared by Charles Eliot, Seth Low, and James C. Carter. It was at the time the most developed exposition of the issues involved in the politics of liquor legislation, and critique of temperance and prohibitionist positions, that had yet been made. The authors admitted that "prohibitory legislation has succeeded in abolishing and preventing the manufacture on a large scale of distilled and malt liquors within the areas covered by it." And in areas where public opinion has been strongly in favor of prohibition, such laws removed alcohol "temptation from the young and from persons disposed to alcoholic excesses." But they argued that prohibition can never exclude liquor entirely and that "there have always been counties and municipalities in complete and successful rebellion against the law." Further, there is inevitable corruption of elected officials. Thus the lack of respect for law (an issue which would become important again in the 1920s and early 1930s during national prohibition and part of the push for repeal) was also worrying the Legislative subcommittee in the 1890's:

"The public have seen law defied, a whole generation of habitual law-breakers schooled in evasion and shamelessness, courts ineffective through fluctuations of policy, delays, perjuries, negligencies, and other miscarriages of justice, officers of the law double-faced and mercenary.... All legislation intended to put restrictions on the liquor traffic, except perhaps a simple tax, is more or less liable to these objections; but the prohibitory legislation is the worst of all in these respects, because it stimulates to the utmost the resistance of the liquor dealers and their supporters".

Moreover, with regard to the effects of prohibition on drinking and social problems, the authors had nothing sanguine to report:

"Of course there are disputed effects of efforts at prohibition. Whether it has or has not reduced the consumption of intoxicants and diminished drunkenness is a matter of opinion, and opinions differ widely. No demonstration on either of these points has been reached, or is now attainable, after more than forty years of observation" (p. 53).

After disposing of prohibition, except where the public is overwhelmingly in favor of it, they reviewed local option and licensing procedures and made an explicit list of recommendations on what they frankly called the key question: "The most important question with regard to any form of liquor legislation is this: Is it adapted to secure the enforcement of the restrictions on the sale of intoxicants which experience has shown to be desirable" (p. 81, emphasis added). So that there should be guidelines about what is "desirable," they listed "the restrictions which the experience of many years and many places has proved to be desirable":

"There should be no selling to minors, intoxicated persons, or habitual drunkards.

There should be no selling on Sundays, election days, or legal holidays in general such as Christmas Day, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July. Where, however, such a restriction is openly disregarded, as in St. Louis, it is injurious to have it in the law.

Saloons should not be allowed to become places of entertainment, and to this end they should not be allowed to provide musical instruments, billiard or pool tables, bowling alleys, cards, or dice.

Saloons should not be licensed in theatres or concert halls; and no boxing, wrestling, cock-fighting, or other exhibition should be allowed in saloons.

Every saloon should be wide open to public inspection from the highway, no screens or partitions being permitted. There should be a limit to the hours of selling, and the shorter the hours the better. In the different States saloons close at various hours. Thus, in Maine cities in which saloons are openly maintained, the hour for closing is ten P.M., and in Massachusetts it is eleven P.M.; but the county dispensaries of South Carolina close at six P.M.

It has been found necessary to prevent by police regulation the display of obscene pictures in saloons, and the employment of women as bartenders, waitresses, singers, or actresses.

Most of the above restrictions can be executed in any place where there is a reasonably good police force, provided that public opinion accepts such restrictions as desirable. If public sentiment does not support them they will be disregarded or evaded, as they are in St. Louis, although the Missouri law is a good one in respect to restrictions on licensees. The prohibition of Sunday selling is an old restriction in the United States (Indiana, 1816), and the more Sunday is converted into a public holiday the more important this restriction becomes, if public sentiment will sustain it.

All restrictions on the licensed saloons have a tendency to develop illicit selling; but much experience has proved that illicit selling cannot get a large development by the side of licensed selling, if the police administration be at all effective. It is only in regions where prohibition prevails that illicit selling assumes large proportions. In license cities, where the regulations forbid sales after ten or eleven o'clock on Saturday evening and sales on Sundays, the illicit traffic is most developed after hours on Saturday and on Sunday" (pp. 62-64, emphasis added).

In general, the Legislative subcommittee pushed a flexible approach to liquor legislation. They strongly urged that there be a few basic regulations aimed at making saloons more open to the public, less interesting places for men to spend time, and open fewer hours for business. And they felt it was very important that laws and regulations be tailored to local conditions so that they can be enforced. They also recommended, as others would do, "removing the motive for private profit" from the liquor business, but they did not forward a specific plan for doing that.

Koren and Wines also offered various comments on interpreting the relationship between legislation and general sobriety, and in general argued that it is tricky and difficult to find causality. They were sometimes fairly sophisticated about interpreting statistics:

"Thus in South Carolina, diminution of the number of arrests was an undoubted effect of the Dispensary Law; but it is not sure whether the diminution of public drunkenness was due to the early hour of closing (six P.M.), or to the fact that no drinking on the premises was allowed in the state dispensaries, or to the great reduction in the total number of liquor shops in the State.... In Philadelphia, the percentage of arrests for intoxication and vagrancy to all arrests declined after the enactment of the so-called "High-License Law;" but the probable explanation was that the keepers of both licensed saloons and of illicit shops protected drunken people. Another possible explanation was the inadequacy of the police force of Philadelphia. In St. Louis, where the saloons are numerous and unrestrained, public order is excellent, and arrests for drunkenness are relatively few; but this good condition is perhaps due as much to the quality of the population as to the wisdom of the liquor legislation. The fact suggests the doubt whether the amount of drunkenness is anywhere proportionate to the number of saloons" (p. 71).

A significant thrust out of the committee's suggestions, though it was not really stated explicitly in the report, was separating legislative issues from questions of reducing alcohol problems. The key characteristic of the various systematic critiques of prohibition as they developed in the 20th century was the more or less straight forwardly stated wish to separate legislative, regulatory or control policy issues from moral, health, welfare, or what was usually called "temperance" concerns. Alcohol control or alcohol regulation became, therefore, more than anything a question of maintaining order and respect for law. The Committee stated this most clearly under a section called "Promotion of Temperance by Law."

"It cannot be positively affirmed that any kind of liquor legislation has been more successful than another in promoting real temperance. Legislation as a cause of improvement can rarely be separated from other possible causes. The influences of race or nationality are apparently more important than legislation. That law is best which is best administered. Even when external improvements have undoubtedly been affected by new legislation, it often remains doubtful, or at least not demonstrable, whether or not the visible improvements have been accompanied by a diminution in the amount of drinking. Thus a reduction in the number of saloons in proportion to the population undoubtedly promotes order, quiet, and outward decency; but it is not certain that the surviving saloons sell less liquor in total than the previously more numerous saloons. Again, it is often said that restrictions on drinking at public bars tend to increase drinking at home or in private, and there is probably truth in this allegation .... The wise course for the community at large is to strive after all external, visible improvement even if it be impossible to prove that internal, fundamental improvement accompanies them" (p. 75, emphasis added).

In short, the problem is that of public order.

The third subcommittee report, on Economic Aspects, illustrates the fact that a concern with alcohol control does not necessarily assume or require any distinct position on the relation of alcohol to major social problems. Almost any position, from the far end of the problem-maximizer (alcohol causes major social problem) to that of the problem-minimizer (alcohol is not the primary cause of major social problems) is potentially compatible with, and has historically been linked with, an alcohol control line. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, alcohol control was planned, organized, and debated with hardly any discussion whatsoever about alcohol problems. The Committee of Fifty, on the other hand, as represented by the Economic Aspects report, was fairly high on the maximizing scale.

From the early 19th century, the temperance movement's supporters had argued that a major portion of America's social problems -- poverty, crime, violence, broken homes, slums -- were caused by alcohol. Elsewhere (1978a) I have suggested that temperance ideology be understood as the attempt to formulate an explanation for social problems which did not contradict the image of America as the land of unlimited economic opportunities, the place where anyone can achieve economic success with hard work and discipline. During the 19th century temperance writers and advocates argued that as much as three-fourths of all poverty was caused by alcohol.

The turn of the century was a time of massive economic upheaval and strife for most working-class people. Urban slums and company towns were homes for millions, while corporations sought to destroy unions and provide subsistence wages. For a large minority of the American people poverty was endemic and inevitable. In the face of this, the members of the Committee of Fifty, like other wealthy and powerful men, and indeed like much of the middle class as well, were comforted by the idea that poverty was caused by alcohol and by individual shortcomings.

In the course of reporting their findings, the Economic subcommittee noted that there was controversy on the question of the cause of poverty, and that some had suggested the distribution of wealth as a major issue. Further, the Committee noted that distinguishing among the causes of poverty was important because different political programs followed from different diagnoses of the causes of the problem:

"It was, for instance, on account of the result of a statistical inquiry that Mr. Charles Booth, although strongly impressed with the importance of liquor as a cause of poverty, became the advocate of old-age pensions in England. His study of the almshouses, as well as of the condition of the population of the east end of London, led him to the belief that a large percentage of pauperism was due to old age and sickness, and a small percentage to vice or bad habits. Intemperance figured as a cause of pauperism to a very small amount in his statistics" (P. 91, emphasis added).

The Committee of Fifty, however, found otherwise and did not recommend Booth's proposal or similar ones. In America, they found, much of the poverty was caused by individual faults, not systemic ones.

"Such figures as we have collected cannot fail to throw light on such proposals as his. If the figures from the United States should confirm the English figures, there might be the same reason for advocating universal pensions. Yet when we find that on an average the poverty which comes under the notice of the charity organizations can be traced to liquor in some 25 per cent of all the cases, and that in almshouses the percentage is 37, we are inevitably led to the belief that, while much poverty may be due to the faults of society, more than a quarter of it in our country is due very directly and obviously to a very prominent fault of the individual" (p. 92, emphasis added).

Thus the Committee did not recommend pensions or any other social welfare measures.

Having settled for their purposes the question of poverty, the Committee discussed alcohol as a cause of crime, which they suggested was a bit more knotty a problem:

"The study of crime offers peculiar difficulties. Crime being an intentional act, the causes must be facts which influence the motives of men. And as the motives of men are often mixed, it is evident that several motives may combine to cause a crime. Crime, cannot, therefore be attributed to single cause as easily as poverty."

With some qualifications, therefore, the Committee reported that about half of crime was caused by alcohol:

"The difference between the importance of liquor as a cause of crimes against property and of crimes against the person is surprisingly small. It is, as would be expected, somewhat more prominent in crimes against the person, 51 percent of such crimes being attributed to liquor, either on the part of the criminal or of others; but even in the case of crimes against property, the percentage is 49" (p. 123).

The Economic subcommittee concluded with a note on the "Economic Forces Working For and Against the Consumption of Liquor." Working for consumption was the liquor business, and against it was the weight and organization of all modern industry. They encouraged unions to police the drinking of workers, and encouraged business to require extreme moderation or abstinence on the part of the employees. This program, the regulation and restriction of workers' drinking by corporations, was picked up in the first two decades by large businesses and corporations and became quite successful. (See Timberlake, 1963, Levine, 1978b)

The last major subcommittee summary was of the study on Substitutes for the Saloon. By the end of the 19th century, and indeed until well after the repeal of Prohibition, the "saloon" was the ultimate dirty word in all discussions about alcohol problems and policy. The Committee of Fifty was as concerned with abolishing saloons as any group, and the Legislative subcommittee first pointed out the corrupting influences of the saloon on political life. The Substitutes for the Saloon committee was primarily or solely concerned with the impact of the saloon on the working class.

"It goes without saying that the liquor dealers are not the proper persons to have charge of the social life of our American working people, and that the liquor saloon is not the proper place for the social instinct to find its satisfaction. The liquor dealer is not disinterested in the provision he makes for the comfort and pleasure of his patrons; he expects to make good for any such expenditures by his additional receipts, and his expectations are rarely disappointed. Intemperate drinking results, and the squandering of the week's wage. Gambling and the social evil are closely allied with the perils of drunkenness. The seriousness of the situation is evident when it is understood that the saloon stands at the same time for the source of the city's crime and the centre of much of its social life" (p. 150).

In order to deal with the problem of the saloon the Committee recommended two approaches, which they called the "negative" and the "positive."

"The negative approach to the problem is by the legislative repression of the social side of the saloon life. Can a system of liquor legislation be devised which shall extirpate the social functions of the saloons? This question may safely be answered in the affirmative. Experimentation in liquor legislation has developed a system under which liquor selling may be as prosaic as any retail grocery business, and a saloon as devoid of social attractions as a dry goods store. It would be possible to place upon the statute books of all our cities without delay a liquor law which would effectively annihilate the social features of the saloon."

Like many others would argue until the time of repeal, they saw the key to this transformation in removing the profit motive:

"The cardinal principle in such legislation is the removal of the element of profit from the sale of liquor. Here we may say the root of the whole matter rests. Once we permit men to sell liquor for the money they can make out of it, the attractiveness and social features of saloon life are bound to follow. With an eye to larger profits the dealer will seek by every imaginable method to stimulate his sales. It will not be possible for the State by subsequent legislation appreciably to diminish the social attractiveness of the saloons when once the fatal error has been made of delivering over to men the liquor monopoly for money-making purposes" (p. 151).

Having diagnosed profit making as the key issue, they discussed remedies beginning with the South Carolina liquor dispensary plan which they saw as inadequate and flawed because it only "substitutes public profit for private profit."

"The amount of liquor sold and the consequent accruing revenue are still a matter of vital concern to the State at large, for, according to this system, the profits of the liquor traffic are applied to the tax rate. If the amount of liquor sold be reduced, the tax rate will be raised. In the South Carolina system to-day the salaries of certain government officials are regulated by the amount of liquor sold. This system, therefore, though it may be a step in advance, is defective, for the element of profit still remains" (p. 153).

The model for a proper system is the "Norwegian or Company system, which may be said to contain the essence of scientific modern liquor legislation." While admitting that even this system was "by no means perfect, the results are by no means all that could be desired," it is still, they said, "without doubt the best existing system of liquor legislation."

"The saloons are no longer attractive places of resort. The barkeeper has no personal interest in his sales; on the contrary, his salary is dependent on his observance of the conditions under which liquor shall be sold" (p. 154).

Again, it is important to note the concern with public order in this plan. The bartender was made an agent of the State concerned with keeping order and enforcing rules which maintain order.

The system they recommended began with local option: it would not be obligatory for any town or community to have a dispensary: "the dispensary will exist by vote of the separate communities themselves." Secondly, there would be "absolutely no private profit" and there would be no inducement "to any liquor dealer or bar-keeper to retail more liquor rather than less." "All profits will go to the State, but no profits will be applied to the tax rate." Finally, all profits "would be "redistributed to communities for the purpose of public betterment," and profits would be distributed to all communities "whether or not they have dispensaries."

The first part of the subcommittee's program, then, was a State-run system of liquor selling which would have, hopefully, weakened the saloon as a center for working-class social life. Like the recommendations of the Legislative subcommittee, these were aimed to make the drinking places regulated, visible, and relatively unattractive.

The second part of the program was the development of "the right kind of social centre" for workers. In brief, the saloon substitutes they offered were a sort of shopping list of turn of the century, urban middle-class programs for the poor and immigrant: clubs for boys and men, especially the YMCA; the active development and use of public space including school buildings, public playgrounds, parks and yards; the development of public halls, which would not sell drink, for dancing and other activities; the creation of municipal or philanthropically sponsored theatres with "wholesome dramatic entertainment at the rates within reach of wage-earners" to compete with the melodrama and "vaudeville performances which are by no means so wholesome in their effect." In addition, the subcommittee also encouraged the development of temperance saloons with a reading room, billiards and other services but serving only nonalcoholic drinks. They even allowed for carefully controlled wine and beer saloons, along the lines created in England by "the Bishop of Chester and other influential persons" and called "the People's Restaurant House Association, the aim of which is to establish canteens and refreshment houses at large public works where liquor shall be distributed under right conditions" -- right conditions meaning mainly no-profit and a concern with order. They also suggested the development of cheap restaurants encouraging churches, temperance organizations, and private philanthropies to establish low-cost eating places for working people, and also companies themselves to create lunch rooms for employees.

Finally they suggested two other "methods of rivaling the influence of the saloon" which they labeled "the most fundamental of all." "The first is the method of improving the outer conditions and inner life of the home. The second is the education and moral enlightenment of the individual." To make home-life more attractive they suggested especially that slums be made more sanitary. To develop the individual they suggested public education courses, night schools, and free public libraries.

A word of caution about interpreting the relationship of the "Substitutes" program to the rest of the Committee proposals: it may have been that the Substitutes for the Saloon study, or at least some of it, was a bit deviant in terms of the whole Committee of Fifty. The "negative" program, the creation of government run dispensaries, fit well with the generally conservative program of the Committee. However, the "positive" suggestions for the Substitute subcommittee involved at least some investment of public and private funds in social services for the urban poor. Like today, at that time much of the middle class and the wealthy believed strongly in uplift programs for the poor, but were little interested in paying for improved services for poor people. The complex of programs urged as saloon substitutes would probably have cost more money than many or even most Progressive era reformers would have been willing to commit to help the poor and working class.

A second question regarding the place of the Substitutes study within the larger work appears when the budgets of the different studies are compared. Whereas the Physiological committee spent $7,100, the Legislative committee $6,945, the Economic committee $4,550, the Substitutes for the Saloon committee had a total budget of $404.36 -- considerably (10 to 15 times) less than the others.

Finally, in 1920 a second edition of the Substitutes study was released with a new preface by Peabody disowning much of the book. Peabody, and presumably others on the Committee, had become prohibitionists convinced that there could be no substitutes until the saloon was outlawed. With the saloon gone there would be no problem with substitutes -- they would arise naturally and spontaneously out of the workings of the market.

IV. Toward Placing the Committee of Fifty in Historical Context

A full understanding of the place of the Committee of Fifty in the development of the politics of the liquor question in America requires locating the Committee and its efforts in terms of larger social, economic and political developments. A few broad areas of investigation suggest themselves. The Committee's ideas and proposals should be compared with and placed in the context of those of the 19th century temperance movement and the 20th century prohibition movement: how different were its positions and ideas from things which had been said before? How were they like and different from those of the Anti-saloon league's prohibition campaign? The Committee should also be understood in terms of other upper-class or corporate-sponsored attempts to organize and guide social and political reform: how did the Committee's efforts dovetail with other power elite bodies investigating important political questions and making recommendations for change? Finally, the Committee's work requires understanding in terms of the subsequent history of alcohol policy and regulation: were its ideas followed up? Did they lead to changes? What were the subsequent activities of various Committee and staff members in alcohol politics?

One person who has tried to answer at least some of the above questions about the place of the Committee in history is John J. Rumbarger. Indeed, his study (The Social Origins and Functions of the Political Temperance Movement in the Reconstruction of American Society 1825-1917) was an ambitious attempt to reinterpret much of the history of the temperance and prohibition movements in terms of the needs and self-conscious activities of large mercantile and industrial capitalists. Unlike most anyone else studying temperance, Rumbarger was not primarily interested in the temperance movement per se, but rather with the ways large capitalists have participated in the temperance cause and manipulated it to serve their changing needs and interests. He traced the actions of some rich and powerful businessmen in the temperance campaign from the early 19th century to national Prohibition.

Following a line of analysis suggested by Gabriel Kolko, Rumbarger argued that corporate capitalists in the early 20th century were especially concerned with minimizing competition among themselves, with maintaining social, political, and economic order, and with stabilizing, disciplining, and rationalizing the labor force. Kolko (1963) argued that much of the Progressive era reform was instigated, lead, directed, or manipulated, by the corporations to serve this end. Rumbarger developed this analysis and, in what is in some ways a stunning piece of intellectual history, he grounded the Committee of Fifty's work in that of its predecessor, The Sociological Group, which published articles on family life, labor and the economy in the late 1880's. The ideological and intellectual terrain of the Committee was essentially mapped out by the Sociology Group. The thrust of the analysis of both the Sociology Group and the Committee of Fifty was with creating as stable a life condition for urban workers as possible -- home life, recreation, moral environment -- so that political democracy would work for the good of corporate growth. Rumbarger interpreted the Committee of Fifty's suggestions in this light and saw them as a program aimed as insuring social order and work discipline for the benefit of the corporations. Despite the Committee's upper-class base, its program failed to gather public support. In the nineteen-teens the corporations turned to support prohibition.

Rumbarger's analysis and research was bold and original: he convincingly showed the concern of members of the capitalist class and their advisors with alcohol politics, and he documented their attempts to design and direct policy in their interests. While he probably overstated his case, he began the important work of tracing the role of the corporate elite in the formation of 20th century alcohol policy.

In fact, the Committee of Fifty probably did not have quite the sense of unity and self-consciousness that Rumbarger attributed to them. From the beginning they wanted to find a consensus, and no one wished to go too far out on any particular limb of controversy, but some Committee members and subcommittees were more willing than others. The Substitutes for the Saloon subcommittee was apparently staffed by sociologists and social investigators trained or influenced by the naturalism of the Chicago school of sociology. Evincing some sympathy and respect for the situation and life-style of the urban working class, the subcommittee produced a relatively sympathetic and positive view of saloons as working-class clubs. They also recommended a fairly impressive list of public services for the poor. The Economic Aspects report and especially its summary, on the other hand, looked in the opposite direction and tended to blame the characters of the poor and their drunkenness for poverty and crime. The Committee of Fifty never produced a consistent program or argument or even a set of conclusions signed by all the Fifty. In a sense, the Committee of Fifty never fully materialized; it broke down into subcommittees which never rejoined.

However, a broad consensus can be found in all the Committee reports and the summary volume. It could be summed up as follows:

a) Against the classic temperance position on the medical and physiological effects of alcohol and the consequences of drinking. Alcohol is not a poison; moderate quantities used with discretion are not dangerous and addicting for most people; and temperance education as pushed by the WCTU is misleading and wrong. Accepting the classic temperance position that routine consumption of intoxicating quantities of alcohol causes disease and leads to negative social consequences. Inebriety or alcoholism is a serious medical and social problem, but one which most alcohol law cannot prevent.

b) Against prohibition in most cases; except where there is overwhelming support for it, prohibition does not prohibit, it produces corruption, and it undermines respect for all law.

c) For shaping laws and regulations according to local conditions and sentiments so they will be obeyed, and can be enforced. The open disregard for all sorts of alcohol laws is bad because it undermines respect for law in general. In most cases, issues of health, morality and temperance will have to be separated from legal and policy concerns. Administration of the law and the police is very important and must be handled well.

d) The control and regulation of the working-class saloon should be one important aim of alcohol control policy. Alcohol causes major social problems for the working class, especially crime and poverty. It also causes social disorder, unsightliness, and general rowdiness. Prohibition cannot prevent the working class from drinking, but the saloon should and can be diminished as an important part of working-class life. A number of means are open, from banning them to offering alternative attractions. All things being equal, no saloons is the best policy, and State run drinking places are preferable to private ones.

Thus, taken as a whole, the Committee of Fifty did offer a new and authoritative approach to the handling of the liquor problem. And in the long run most of its general ideas and recommendations have triumphed. Present-day alcohol policy does work: law is respected and obeyed, the saloon is not thought of as a corrupt institution, and public order is maintained.

In the short-run, however, the Committee of Fifty was not successful. After a brief flurry, its work seems to have been almost totally ignored. It does not appear to have influenced legislation or action in the years following the publication of its reports. In the prohibition wave from 1900 to 1920 -- the era of the Anti-Saloon League -- the Committee of Fifty was forgotten in most discussions of liquor politics. Further, some members of the Committee, notably Peabody, joined the turn toward prohibition. In the early 20th century alcohol control policy was not an idea whose time had come. Thus despite the power and influence of the members of the Committee, and the groups they represented, mass support for its program could not be garnered.

It could be gathered thirty years later, however, once Prohibition was in effect. The Committee's work and line was first systematically followed up in the late 1920s and early 1930s. At that time, two other organizations supported by members of the corporate elite -- the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (headed by Pierre DuPont and supported by major industrialists, bankers, and corporate businessmen), and the Liquor Study Commission established by John D. Rockefeller Jr. -- made detailed suggestions regarding alcohol control policies. Faced with widespread violation of national Prohibition, which they felt was seriously undermining respect for all law, those groups echoed the conclusions made thirty years earlier.

One enduring characteristic of the work begun by the Committee of Fifty has been the presentation of ideas and policy recommendations as neutral, scientific, and non-partisan. Like much present-day writing about alcohol, the Committee claimed that its "volumes do not enter the region of exhortation and argument, but restrict themselves to the statement of what appear to be demonstrable facts and to the inferences which these facts appear to dictate." In truth, the Committee and its successors argued for a system of regulation concerned less with the control of drinking per se, than with the control of the working class for the greater efficiency and orderliness of corporate capitalist society. The Committee of Fifty sought the destruction or at least the tight control of the working-class saloon, the development of working-class respect for law and police, and the reconstruction of working-class life along the model of middle-class ideals.

A final question this discussion raises is the nature of the working-class response to the Committee of Fifty and its successors in the early 1930s. Briefly, and only suggestively, the answer it two-sided. On the one hand, organizationally, the working class in general, and the labor movement specifically, did very little in response to the ideas and efforts of the alcohol controlists. Some unions did support prohibition, especially in the early years of the 20th century, but most unions and the vast majority of union members were staunchly against prohibition. However, the American Federation of Labor, following Samuel Gompers's leadership, tried to avoid political issues, especially those not directly connected with the work place. Even by the time national Prohibition passed in 1919, the labor movement had not actively participated in efforts to fight ratification. Similarly, the labor movement was not very important in the movement to repeal Prohibition which developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the 20th century the labor movement, as represented by the AFL, did not play an active part in opposing prohibition or in debating or designing alcohol control policies.

On the other hand, working-class people had a significant impact on the shaping of control policies because they were a major concern of both prohibitionists and of those advocating alcohol control systems. What working-class men and women did as a matter of course in their daily lives -- whether they frequented saloons, their willingness to disregard prohibition, how much they engaged in other forms of disorder including strikes, demonstrations, and riots -- was extremely important in determining the recommendations and policies of those advocating alcohol control.

Because order and legitimacy of the law -- and not the reduction of drinking -- were of chief concern to the controlists, they did not want to design regulations which would be widely violated or ignored. From the controlists point of view, the problem with prohibition was that it was an attempt to impose upon the working class a system of regulation which they would never obey.

For the Committee of Fifty and its successors, therefore, the aim was to construct the tightest system possible within the limits that the masses of people would be willing to accept. Some prohibitionists after repeal in the 1930s called this tailoring the law to the violators. In a sense, that is exactly what it was. The Committee stated this explicitly when suggesting model laws. "Most of the above restrictions can be executed in any place where there is a reasonably good police force," they wrote, "provided that public opinion accepts such restrictions as desirable. If public sentiment does not support them, they will be disregarded or evaded" (p. 63). In short, by choosing to obey same laws and not others, the working class had a significant impact on the shaping of alcohol control. Ultimately control policy had to be fitted around them.

NOTES

1. The term "alcohol control," is recent. The phrases "alcohol control" or "liquor control" were rarely used in the United States before the 1920. The Committee of Fifty did not use the term, and neither did John Koren in his book in 1916. Arthur Shadwell, the English author of one of the earliest full expositions of an anti-prohibitionist perspective did not use the phrase in his book, Drink, Temperance and Legislation (1903). However, Shadwell put it in the subtitle of his 1922 book (Drink in 1914-1922: A Lesson in Control) drawing upon Henry Carter's The Control of the Drink Trade (1918). Shadwell and Carter's use was typical of the English who had apparently begun talking about "Drink Control" sometime in the first decade or so of the century. During the World War the English created "The Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic)" which was the topic of Carter's book.

By the later 1920s the phrase "alcohol control" was beginning to be used regularly in America to distinguish alternatives to prohibition. Rheta Child Dorr's critique of prohibition and review of liquor legislation in a number of nations was called Drink: Coercion or Control (1929); Reginal Hose's argument on behalf of the Canadian system was called Prohibition or Control; Professor George Catlin published Liquor Control in 1931; and probably the most famous work was the Rockefeller Commission report by Fosdick and Scott, Toward Liquor Control (1933). By that time the phrase "alcohol control" or "liquor control" was a common one, adopted as the name of bureaucratic agencies in charge of regulating key aspects of the alcohol industry and also governmentally administered package stores. The phrase probably came into use in England and perhaps Canada in the 19 teens, and in the United States only in the mid-1920s as the generic name for all planned alternatives to prohibition.

2. The five studies are listed below along with summary contents of the volumes focusing on social, political and economic aspects.

The Liquor Problem In Its Legislative Aspects by Frederic H. Wines and John Koren. An Investigation made under the direction of Charles W. Eliot, Seth Low, and James C. Carter, Sub Committee of The Committee of Fifty to Investigate the Liquor Problem. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1897. Contents: Prohibition in Maine and its results; The history of prohibition in Iowa; The South Carolina dispensary system; The Restrictive System in Massachusetts; The liquor laws of Pennsylvania; The Ohio liquor tax; Liquor laws in Indiana since 1851; The Missouri local option law; The operation of the New York liquor tax law.

Economic Aspects Of The Liquor Problem by John Koren. An Investigation made under the direction of Professors W. O. Atwater, Henry W. Farnam, J. F. Jones, Doctors Z. R. Brockway, John Graham Brooks, E. R. L. Gould, and Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Sub Committee of The Committee of Fifty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1899. Contents: The liquor problem in its relation to poverty and pauperism; The liquor problem in its relation to the destitution and neglect of children; The liquor problem in its relation to crime; The relations to the liquor problem of tire Negroes and the North American Indians; Social aspects of the saloon in large cities.

Substitutes For The Saloon by Raymond Calkins. An Investigation made for The Committee Of Fifty under the direction of Elgin R. S. Gould, Francis G. Peabody, and William M. Sloane, Sub-Committee. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2nd edition 1919, a revision of 1901 edition. Contents: Introduction by Francis G. Peabody; Preface to the new edition; The saloon as a social centre; Legislation and substitution; The clubs of the people; Clubs for the people; Popular education; The church, the mission, the settlement, and the Young Men's Christian Association; Indoor amusements; Outdoor amusements; Lunch-rooms and coffee-houses; English temperance houses; The housing of the working people; Appendices.

The Physiological Aspects Of The Liquor Problem edited by John S. Billings, M.D. An investigation made for The Committee Of Fifty under the direction of John S. Billings, W. O. Atwater, H. P. Gowditch, R. H. Chittenden, and W. H. Welch, Sub Committee. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903.

The Liquor Problem: A Summary of Investigations Conducted by The Committee of Fifty, 1893-1903 by John S. Billings, Charles W. Eliot, Henry W. Furnace, Jacob L. Greens, and Francis G. Peabody. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1905. Contents: Introduction by Francis G. Peabody; A summary of investigations conning the physiological aspects of the liquor problem, by John S. Billings; A summary of investigations concerning the legislative aspects, by Charles W. Eliot; A summary of investigations concerning the economic aspects, by Henry W. Farnam; A summary of investigations concerning the ethical aspects, by Jacob L. Greene; A summary of Investigations concerning substitutes for the saloon, by Raymond Calkins.

3. Seth Low was a member of a variety of corporate-sponsored Progressive era organizations, and at the head of several, notably the National Civic Federation, discussed at length by James Weinstein (1968), and also by Kolko (1963). William Doorbell (1970) calls Low "a very important man... Big business man, university president, reform mayor of New York, Episcopal leader, Republican, this son of an old New York family was one of the best-known and most respected members of the upper class in that era ... his role during the Progressive Era would be hard to overestimate" (pp. 162, 164). Other members of the Committee of Fifty who also served on other such organizations and committees included Caroll Wright, Richard Ely, Frances Walker, and Henry Farnam (see Domhoff, 1970). Incidently, none of the historical work on the Progressive era organizations mentions the Committee of Fifty, although many of its members were active and important in other groups.

4. The emphasis on the incompatibility of the profit motive with liquor selling would appear to be contradictory to the big business background of the Committee. However, many businessmen and corporate leaders found that the contradiction not a difficult one to bridge. None other than John D. Rockefeller Jr. urged the government monopoly in the book he sponsored in 1933, Toward Liquor Control. In the preface to the volume Rockefeller made the case against the profit motive: "only as the profit motive is eliminated" he wrote, "is there any hope of controlling the liquor traffic in the interest of a decent society. To approach the problem from any ether angle is only to tinker with it and to insure failure. The point cannot be too heavily stressed." The Committee of Fifty's endorsement of a state-run distribution system, and critique of the profit motive, like Rockefeller's, needs to be understood as responses to temperance and prohibitionist conceptions about the inevitable disorderliness of the saloon and the liquor business. Many of those ideas were widely shared by the middle class because saloons and the liquor business had often been corrupt and disorderly. Saloons had also been havens for the working class, and meeting places for unions and political groups. In brief, government run places appeared to offer solutions to a number of problems, and also made close supervision and regulation of drinking much easier.

5. I have discussed some of the interests and concerns of John D. Rockefeller Jr., and of the wealthy men associated with the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment in a recent paper: "Prohibition, Repeal and the Corporate Rich." Presented at the American Sociological Association meetings, Toronto, August 1981. I have followed up the further history of alcohol control in "Regulating Daily Life: Prohibition, Alcohol Control, and the Legitimacy of Law." Presented at SSSP Meetings, Sept. 1982.

REFERENCES

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