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32. The Drawing of Ethnic Lines in the Fight Over Alcohol
Generally speaking, the movement to ban alcohol was most widespread and accepted amongst those whose ancestors had been in America for generations. They predominated in rural and small-town America and tended to be traditional and conservative. On the other side, hostility to nascent prohibition was vehement amongst immigrants who began arriving in ever greater numbers from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
Waves of new arrivals from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Eastern Europe, infused America with ever greater numbers of people for whom drinking was not just a social activity, but a traditional part of their culture. Their numbers were greatest in America’s burgeoning cities. From that perspective, the fight over prohibition took on nineteenth and early twentieth-century aspect of Red America vs Blue America.