19. The Shift From Moral Persuasion to Prohibition
It soon became clear that the problems caused by alcohol were not limited solely to the individual drinker and his or her – although it was most often his – immediate circle of dearest and nearest. Instead, they negatively impacted the community and society as a whole. So a new trend emerged within the ranks of the anti-alcohol reformers: prohibition. In 1851, Maine became the first state to enact prohibition when it criminalized the manufacture and sale of alcohol within its borders and subjected those engaged in such activities to fines and imprisonment.
The anti-drink movement was launched to fight a problem that had plagued America for a long time. However, the arrival of new waves of immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s, particularly Irish and Germans, ended up linking anti-drink and anti-immigrant sentiments. Simply put, the new immigrants’ drinking habits were different from those whose American ancestry stretched back for generations. Saloons and bars – establishments where people congregated primarily to drink – had not been widespread in America before the 1840s, when immigrants first began to arrive in huge numbers from Ireland and Germany.