In this lively and engaging history, Madelon Powers recreates the daily life of the barroom, exploring what it was like to be a "regular" in the old-time saloon of pre-prohibition industrial America. Through an examination of saloongoers across America, her investigation offers a fascinating look at rich lore of the barroom—its many games, stories, songs, free lunch customs, and especially its elaborate system of drinking rituals that have been passed on for decades.
"A free-pouring blend of astonishing facts, folklore and firsthand period observations. . . . It's the rich details that'll inspire the casual reader to drink deep from this tap of knowledge."—Don Waller, USA Today recommended reading
"A surprise on every page."—Publishers Weekly
"Here we get social history that appreciates the bar talk even while dissecting its marvelous rituals."—Library Journal, starred review
"Careful scholarship with an anecdotal flair to please even the most sober of readers."—Nina C. Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education
In this lively, witty, and engaging history, Madelon Powers recreates the daily life of the barroom, exploring what it was like to be a "regular" in the old-time saloon of pre-prohibition industrial America. Powers concentrates on the turbulent years from 1870 to 1920 when the industrial revolution wrenched and reshaped American society and its working-class institutions. During its heyday, the urban barroom was widely acknowledged as the workingman's "club". Yet it had no written rules for membership, no formal hierarchy, and no fixed agenda. What, then, Powers asks, was the exact nature of this so-called club?
Powers examines the lives of saloongoers across America, including those in major cities such as New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco as well as smaller cities such as Sioux City, Shoshone, and Oakland. Her investigation offers a fascinating look at the rich lore of the barroom -- its many games, stories, songs, free lunch customs, and especially its elaborate system of drinking rituals that have been passed on for decades. She shows how urban workers used saloons as places to promote their political, social, and economic objectives; saloons were where union leaders first organized their members, machine politicians cultivated the workingman's vote, and immigrants sought the assistance of their countrymen. She also discusses how gender, ethnicity, and class played significant roles in determining the club's membership.
Powers concludes that an underlying code of reciprocity and peer group honor in saloon life unified the regulars and transformed them into a voluntary association. Thus, amid the fumes of beer and cigars, the regulars were able to cultivate thedual benefits of communal companionship and marketplace clout, making the old-time saloon one of the most versatile, ubiquitous, and controversial institutions in American history.
