Temperance Sermons


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Pathways to Prohibition


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Strategies for gradually effecting social change are often dismissed as too accommodating of the status quo. Ann-Marie E. Szymanski challenges this assumption, arguing that moderation is sometimes the most effective way to achieve change. Pathways to Prohibition examines the strategic choices of social movements by focusing on the fates of two temperance campaigns. The prohibitionists of the 1880s gained limited success, while their Progressive Era counterparts achieved a remarkable—albeit temporary—accomplishment in American politics: amending the United States Constitution. Szymanski accounts for these divergent outcomes by asserting that choice of strategy (how a social movement defines and pursues its goals) is a significant element in the success or failure of social movements, underappreciated until now. Her emphasis on strategy represents a sharp departure from approaches that prioritize political opportunity as the most consequential factor in campaigns for social change. Combining historical research with the insights of social movement theory, Pathways to Prohibition shows how a locally based, moderate strategy allowed the early-twentieth-century prohibition crusade both to develop a potent grassroots component and to transcend the limited scope of local politics. Szymanski describes how the prohibition movement’s strategic shift toward moderate goals after 1900 reflected the devolution of state legislatures’ liquor licensing power to localities, the judiciary’s growing acceptance of these local licensing regimes, and a collective belief that local electorates, rather than state legislatures, were best situated to resolve controversial issues like the liquor question. "Local gradualism" is well suited to the porous, federal structure of the American state, Szymanski contends, and it has been effectively used by a number of social movements, including the civil rights movement and the Christian right.




Annual Report


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Bootleggers and Beer Barons of the Prohibition Era


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This work is an accurate, wide-ranging, and entertaining account of the illegal liquor traffic during the Prohibition Era (1920 to 1933). Based on FBI files, legal documents, old newspapers and other sources, it offers a coast-to-coast survey of Volstead crime--outrageous stories of America's most notorious liquor lords, including Al Capone and Dutch Schultz. Readers will find the lesser known Volstead outlaws to be as fascinating as their more famous counterparts. The riveting tales of Max Hassel, Waxy Gordon, Roy Olmstead, the Purple Gang, the Havre Bunch, and the Capitol Hill Bootlegger will be new to most readers. Likewise, the exploits of women bootleggers and flying bootleggers are unknown to most Americans. Books about Prohibition usually note that Canadian liquor exporters abetted the U.S. bootleggers, but they fail to go into detail. Bootleggers and Beer Barons examines the major cross-border routes for smuggling liquor from Canada into the U.S.: Quebec to Vermont and New York, Ontario to Michigan, Saskatchewan to Montana, and British Columbia to Washington.










A Woman of the Century


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The Liquor Problem in All Ages


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"This volume has not been a hot-bed growth, but is the result of twenty-two years of special attention to the various questions comprised within its scope. It was originally undertaken as a relaxation from the regular duties of the Christian ministry, and, though not pursued continuously, but at irregular intervals, sometimes of more than a year, few days have passed without some serious thought and inquiry with reference to the great problem. The plan of discussion of the Liquor Problem is historical. The argument is quietly implied in the general structure of the book, and gathered to a focus in the three closing chapters. The historical portion of the book is brought down to near the end of 1883. While the author has made himself acquainted with what has been written by others upon the topics under consideration, and has fully credited his indebtedness for valuable materials, he has also made extensive original researches, enabling him to bring together much fresh matter not before comprised in volumes of temperance literature. An important feature of this book is eleven colored diagrams, strikingly illustrating the economic aspects of intemperance, and its relative progress to the population in the British Isles and in the United States. It has been the aim to make this volume a thesaurus of facts and principles, so arranged as to show the trend of temperance sentiment, and also to be convenient for use by advocates of the Temperance Reform, now a great multitude -- Nov. 1, 1887. -- This book is now closely revised , and brought down to the year 1888. The developments and movements of the past few years are summed up in a large additional chapter, and valuable material for the use of students and advocates of the temperance cause is added, adapting the book to the present phase of the great reform -- January 1, 1888."--




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