Grappling with Demon Rum by James E Klein

Grappling with Demon Rum by James E Klein

Social classes collide over morality and social propriety in a brand-new stateWell before the Volstead (or National Prohibition) Act of 1919, Oklahoma was dry. Oklahomans banned liquor at their state's inception in 1907 and maintained the ban even after the repeal of national prohibition. In this book, James E. Klein examines the social and cultural conflicts that led Oklahomans to outlaw liquor and discusses the economic and political consequences of the ban. Grappling with Demon Rum identifies who favored and who opposed prohibition, showing that its proponents were largely middle-class citizens who disdained public drinking establishments and who sought respectability for a young state still considered a frontier society. Klein tells how the Oklahoma Anti-Saloon League orchestrated a dry campaign to raise moral standards, reduce crime, and improve the quality of life, twice convincing voters to support prohibition. Going beyond the usual evangelical-versus-ritualist, rural-versus-urban, and ethnocultural oppositions used by other historians to explain prohibition, Klein shows that Oklahoma's immigrant and Catholic populations were too small to account for those voting against the measure - or for the large customer base that supported bootleggers. He points instead to the large number of working-class Oklahomans who patronized saloons, whether legal or not, and focuses on class conflict in early efforts to control alcohol. He also describes the trials of enforcement officers who worked to plug leaks in statewide and later national prohibition. A cultural and social history of liquor in early Oklahoma, Grappling with Demon Rum provides a fresh look at crusaders against vice at the regional level. In portraying this conflict between middle- and working-class definitions of social propriety, Klein provides new insight into forces at work throughout America during the Progressive Era.

James E. Klein is Assistant Professor of History at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780806139388
ISBN 10	0806139382
Titel	Grappling with Demon Rum
Autor	James E Klein
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	University of Oklahoma Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2008-10-30
Seitenanzahl	248
Preise	Commended for Oklahoma Book Award (Nonfiction) 2009
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar