Drug Abuse

1 Social Status and the Temperance Ethic

Our aim in this work is to understand how one issue of moral reform, that of alcohol consumption, has operated in the context of American political and social conflict. Some of the deepest struggles in American politics have emerged over issues which are not directly related to economic divisions in the society. Questions of civil lib-erties and civil rights have moved men and changed political in-stitutions in the past.

These movements are not easily understood by sociological mod-els of economic class conflict. The division of the political spectrum into an economic right and left, middle class and worlcing class, conservative and liberal has little relevance for issues of race re-lations, civil liberties, or moral standards. VVhile studies of voting behavior show a high correlation between economic position and opinion toward economic issues, the same categories of class are not correlated with attitudes or votes on noneconomic questions.' Differences between rich and poor are clearly drawn when prob-lems of the distribution of income are posed. On other issues the distinctions are less clear.

CLASS AND STATUS

The concept of "class" has generally been used among sociologists to refer to the control and allocation of goods and services. Classes are distinguished by different degrees of control over products. Categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat, middle and working class, labor and management, farmer and banker are relevant to the anal-ysis of the division of labor and its relation to the division of eco-nomic power. A class is a sociological group in the sense that its members, by virtue of their common placement in the economic structure, share common interests. They are subject to a similar fate on the market. When people in similar economic positions or-ganize around common symbols and through associations they as-sume a degree of unity and organization.2 A class structure is the system of relationships between the different classes in a society, including their differential power and the extent of organization into politically relevant associations.

Social status refers to the distribution of prestige, sometimes also called social honor. By "prestige" we mean "the approval, respect, admiration, or deference a person or group is able to command by virtue of his or its imputed qualities or performances." 3 A status hierarchy tends to develop among groups which differ in charac-teristic ways of life. It is the essence of a status hierarchy that within it, some groups can successfully claim greater prestige than others. Insofar as such groups are identifiable and owe their unity to other than class elements it is analytically useful to call them "status groups." In American society we are used to designating groups such as Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, native and im-migrant, Negro and white as status groups. We are also familiar with less explicit groupings such as "the old aristocracy," "the nouveau riche," or "the lumpenproletariat," designations by which we refer to the subtle interrelation between dimensions of status and dimensions of class.

It is by no means the case that classes and status groups are equivalent. One is not always the reflection of the other. The lack of fit, and even conflict, between principles of class designation and those of status designation is the source of Max Weber's multi-dimensional approach to social stratification, which is followed in this study. For Weber, although social status might be closely related to economic bases, it was not determined by this exclusively or primarily. Hereditary charisma, political authority, and, above all, distinctive styles of life gave rise to status-bearing groups which claimed and were given a specific place in the distribution of pres-tige. "The class status of an officer, a civil servant, and a student as determined by their income may be widely different while their social status remains the same, because they adhere to the same mode of life in all relevant respects as a result of their common education." 4

The two dimensions of class and status make up two analytically separate orders of social structure. In the class order economic power and products are distributed. Men have their positions on the basis of functions in the division of labor. Prestige, however, is distributed within the status order on the basis of group qualities. In the long run, it may be true that class shapes and limits the ex-istence of status. In the short run the crystallization of class into status is hardly precise. The wealthy lawyer possesses more prestige than the wealthy gangster; the third-generation rich more than the first-generation very rich; the college graduate more than the high school dropout. The classic accounts of the nouveau riche in the novels of Stendhal or of C. P. Snow attest to the lag between chang-ing economic power and changing forms of respect and admiration. Only cardplayers and economists are forced to concentrate on the long run.

Symbols of Status

Since the social status of a group consists in the evaluation and respect which it receives from others, the status structure is neces-sarily "subjective." Approval, respect, and admiration are attitudes rather than actions. They are conveyed through acts, including language, which express prestige by symbolizing an attitudinal state of respect. Sociologists label such prestige-laden acts as instances of deference or, in negative terms, instances of degradation. The employee who holds the door open for the employer is performing an act of deference. He expresses the subordinate nature of his position by acting out the prestige of the employer. The function of the act is only incidentally economic. The saving in energy for the employer is trivial. The entire act is ceremonial, marking the im-puted prestige of the employer vis-a-vis his employee. Many acts of deference and degradation, of course, become institutionalized, serving as signs of status without necessarily connoting the attitudinal respect.

A status system involves at least two persons, one who confers prestige and one who receives it. Insofar as the system is composed of groups rather than persons, the prestige-receiver must be "placed" as a member of the prestigeful group by those who confer prestige. "A sign of position can be a status symbol only if it is used with some regularity as a means of 'placing' socially the person who malces it." 5

Status groups are communal. They share a common culture in the form of standards of behavior, including patterns of consump-tion and work orientations. This culture, or style of life, is normative for members of the group. It constitutes the "canons of decencY' by which group members live. For those outside of the group, who are potential prestige-givers, these items of behavior become sym-bols of the status of members, who are potential prestige-receivers. The styles of home furnishings, for example, in upper middle-class homes are matters of proper taste which appear appealing to those who share this culture. To "outsiders" they are signs of the gxoup membership of the user.

Two forms of symbolic action are thus involved in our analysis of the relation between groups at different prestige levels. One is the system of values, customs, and habits distinctive to a status group, which we shall call its "style of life." Such behavior serves as a symbol of membership in the gxoup. Veblen's accounts of con-spicuous consumption are illustrative of this symbolism. The other form of symbolic action is that involved in ceremonies of deference when one group interacts with another above or below it in rank. In the United States, a myriad of racial customs serve to dramatize the lower status of the Negro. The use of the back door when enter-ing a white man's home in the South is just one such instance.°

CLASS AND STATUS POLITICS

So far we have used the terms "class" and "status" in a static fashion, as if the degrees of income, power, and prestige were distributed in accordance with the shared expectations and values of rich and poor, controllers and controlled, prestige-givers and prestige-re-ceivers. We can imagine a society in which there is such consensus, where classes and status groups are content with a system. Often this is not the case in complex, industrial societies or in societies undergoing intensive changes. The idea of class conflict and class struggle is well established in the analytical apparatus of political science, history, and sociology. The idea of status struggle is some-what newer and is implicit in the distinction between class politics and status politics.

This distinction between politics of class and of status has been developed by both Richard Hofstadter and Seyrnour Lipset in an effort to analyze the various movements associated with Senator McCarthy and extreme right-wing political organizations in the 1950's.7 They have both argued that there are two different, though interrelated, processes at work in American politics. In class politics ( Hofstadter uses the term "interest politics") we have the conflict between the material goals and aspirations of different social groups such as is found in the traditional right and left. In status politics the conflict arises from status aspirations and discontents. "Status politics refers to political movements whose appeal is to the not unconunon resentments of individuals or groups who desire to main-tain or improve their social status." s Both Lipset and Hofstadter believed that periods of economic recession accentuated conflicts of class politics while periods of relative prosperity brought issues of status discontent to the forefront of political struggle. Both main-tained that status politics was characterized by hostility to out-groups, ultradogmatism, and extremist attacks on democratic pro-cedure. ". . . the political movements which have successfully appealed to status resentments have been irrational in character and have sought scapegoats which conveniently serve to symbolize the status threat." 9

Status discontents are likely to appear when the prestige accorded to persons and groups by prestige-givers is perceived as less than that which the person or group expects. The self-esteem of the group member is belied by the failure of others to grant him the respect, approval, admiration, and deference he feels that he justly deserves. This may occur when a segment of the society is losing status and finds that prestige-givers withhold expected deference. It may occur when a group is making claims to greater prestige than it has made in the past and finds that prestige-givers do not comply with the new claims. The effort of ethnic groups to raise status through political recognition of candidates, of occupational groups to raise their status through changes of names (as "janitor" to "custodian"), or of the nobility to prevent the purchase of titles and use of luxury goods by a rising middle class are all instances of attempts to enhance or defend a level of prestige under conflict.

If status systems depend on the acts of prestige-givers in relation to prestige-receivers, then efforts to redistribute prestige depend upon the ability to control the giving of prestige against the reluc-tance of the prestige-givers to grant it. Only in this sense can social status be a subject of political conflict. In our usage class politics is political conflict over the allocation of material resources. Status politics is political conflict over the allocation of prestige. In specific cases the two processes overlap and effect each other. Resources bring prestige and prestige often leads to material advantages.

The importance of the distinction has more than analytical value, however. Classes and status groups are different collections of people, different ways to slice the cake of societies. Just how we perceive political struggles, as matters of class or of status, has a great bearing on the groups we perceive as parties to a political conflict. The thrust of status politics lies precisely in identifying non-economic segments as crucial in certain social and political conflicts.

When divergent styles of life claim equal or superior prestige, the bearers of these styles are involved in a clash to establish pres-tige dominance and subordination. Status concepts lead us to focus upon just such elements of values, beliefs, consumption habits, and the cultural items differentiating nonclass groups from each other. Thus David Riesman has described many of the social and political struggles in contemporary America not as conflicts between groups defined in economic terms but as a "characterological struggle" between people who are both nominal members of the middle class but whose cultural and characterological commitments are sharply dissimilar.1°

There is another form of politics which has been confusingly represented in the discussion of status resentments. This is the ex-pressive element in political action. Hofstadter's usage of status politics illustrates the confusion between status and expressive ele-ments: "Political life is not simply an arena in which the conflicting interests of various social groups in concrete material gains are fought out; it is also an arena into which status aspirations and frus-trations are, as the psychologist would say, projected . . . status politics [is] the clash of various projective rationalizations arising from status aspirations and other personal motives." 11 In this char-acterization, class politics is an effort to influence material gain, to rectify discontents by directly affecting the distribution of wealth. Status discontents, however, are seen as sources of affect or emo-tion, generating action which, in the use of the psychological con-cepts of "projection" and "rationalization," need not affect the dis-tribution of prestige. In our usage, this latter sense of politics as an arena in which feelings, emotions, and affect are displaced and expressed is what we mean by "expressive politics"—political action for the sake of expression rather than for the sake of influencing or controlling the distribution of valued objects. The goal of the action, the object of hostility or love, is not a "solution" to the problems which have generated the action. Politics, in this usage, is a means to express how the actors feel about their situation. Studies which have attempted to "explain" lynchings of Negroes by whites in America as consequences of the low price of cotton are the classic example. The frustrations of economic setback give rise to aggres-sive feelings which are then displaced against targets with little power to resist.12

Expressive elements may, of course, often be found in conjunction with elements of class or status even when expression is not the primary characteristic of the action. This study emphasizes the analytical distinctiveness of status as a concept in political analysis. The crucial idea is that political action can, and often has, influ-enced the distribution of prestige. Status politics is an effort to control the status of a group by acts which function to raise, lower, or maintain the social status of the acting group vis-a-vis others in the society. Conflicts of status in society are fought out in public arenas as are conflicts of class.

STATUS MOVEMENTS

Status movements are collective actions which attempt to raise or maintain the prestige of a group. They can be distinguished from class movements and expressive movements by the nature of their goals and by the character of the groups to whose values and wel-fare the movement is oriented.'13

Class movements are oriented toward the "interests" of particular groups in the economic system of production and distribution. The Townsend movement sought to enhance the economic security of the aged; the Labor movement aims at increasing the well-being of the employee in his relations to the employer; the Saskatchewan C.C.F. is representative of the aims of independent wheat farmers. The membership of a class movement may be wide, as in the case of the Labor movement, or relatively narrowed, as in the case of the C.C.F. In all cases, however, class movements encompass aims in the name of groups located in the economic structure.
Class movements are instrumental in their goals. Their goals are statable as alterations in the system of behavior characterizing the society.. The Populists pressed the aims of farmers in demanding greater regulation of banks and railroads. The Labor movement favored the minimum wage act. The Townsendites were after pen-sions. The movement is presented as a solution to the discontents from which it arose. Achievement of objectives will change the situation in ways which remove the sources of frustration, resent-ment, or anger. Even a religious movement can be interpreted as instrumental, as a means to a tangible, material end, as in H. Richard Niebuhr's description of Christian sects in the nineteenth century: "Ethically, as well as psychologically, such religion bears a distinct character. The salvation which it seeks and sets forth is the salvation of the socially disinherited. Intellectual naïveté and practical need combine to create a marked propensity toward mil-lenarianism, with its promise of tangible goods and of the reversal of all present systems of social rank." 14

Status movements are oriented toward the enhancement of the prestige of groups. The carriers of the status movement may be status communities—status groups such as Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, or Negroes and whites. Status communities are sharply delineated segments of the status system, with associations, institu-tions, and a group life akin to a subcommunity within the society. The conflicts between religious and ethnic groups in American politics are good examples of conflicts about relative prestige be-tween status communities. Groups may be less explicit than these. They may consist of status collectivities--status groups which, like status communities, share a common style of life, but lack the ex-plicit definition and the associational unity of status communities." Unlike groups such as religious and ethnic communities they have no church, no political unit, and no associational units which ex-plicitly defend their interests. They possess subcultures without being subcommunities. Examples of these are cultural generations, such as the traditional and the modern; characterological types, such as "inner-directed and other-directed"; and reference orientations, such as "cosmopolitans and locals." " The examples used above are also cases of conflicts between paired opposites. Each subculture in the pair is the contradiction of the other, its carriers denying the claims of the other to prestige.

As status groups vie with each other to change or defend their prestige allocation, they do so through symbolic rather than in-strumental goals. The significant meanings are not given in the intrinsic properties of the action but in what it has come to signify for the participants. It is symbolic behavior in the sense that we speak of the cross as the symbol of Christianity, of pens as phallic symbols, and of clothing styles as symbols of social status. In sym-bolic behavior the action is ritualistic and ceremonial in that the goal is reached in the behavior itself rather than in any state which it brings about.

Two illustrations from recent politics will illustrate symbolic goals in status conflicts. In the election of 1960 Protestant-Catholic con-flict was a major source of candidate loyalties.17 Were Protestants protecting the VVhite House from papal domination? Were Catho-lics trying to enhance Catholic doctrines by a Catholic president? Only the naive and the stupid will accept either of these sugges-tions. At stake, however, was the relative prestige of being Protestant in American life. The ability of a Catholic to break the traditional restriction in American politics does mean that prestige accruing from being Protestant has diminished; the prestige of being Catho-lic is enhanced. This meaning attaches no matter what President Kennedy might do in his official acts. It is a symbolic meaning given to the election of 1960. In a similar fashion the current school desegregation struggle is symbolic rather than instrumental. VVhether or not most Negroes will actually be attending integrated schools in the near future is not the issue. Northern cities have developed little more than token integration. Public acceptance of the principle of integration, expressed in token integration, is an act of deference which raises the prestige of the Negro. Whether better educational conditions for Negroes will result is not the significant issue. It is that of equal rights. It is pointless to criticize token integration in instrumental terms, as not worth the intensive struggle to obtain it. To miss the symbolic goal of the token is to miss the crucial quality of it.

In both of the illustrations we have used status communities—Catholics and Negroes. When we analyze the less explicitly formed status collectivities, we also recognize the existence of symbolic goals of the same order. In his study of reform movements, Richard Hofstadter provides us with an excellent example. Men of the Mug-wump type—old family, college-educated, well-off people--found their status in American society slipping while those whose morali-ties they detested were ascending. ". . . they [the Mugwumps] tended to have positions in which the initiative was not their own, or in which they could not feel themselves acting in harmony with their highest ideals. They no longer called the tune, no longer com-manded their old deference. They were expropriated, not so much economically as morally. " 18 In our interpretation, the acts of this group, which Hofstadter sees as the basis of the Progressive move-ment, were attempts to restore that deference by actions symboliz-ing the lowered prestige of the corporate businessman, the machine politician, and the newly rich. They attempted, in acts such as the merit system, antitrust legislation, and enforcement of municipal anticorruption laws, to "cut down to size" the newly ascending status elements. The fact of political victory against the "enemy" shows where social and political dominance lie. The legislative vic-tory, whatever its factual consequences, confers respect and ap-proval on its supporters. It is at once an act of deference to the victors and of degradation to the losers. It is a symbolic rather than an instrumental act.

Expressive movements are marked by goalless behavior or by pursuit of goals which are unrelated to the discontents from which the movement had its source. The dancing mania of the Middle Ages, one result of the Black Death, is a classic instance of an ex-pressive movement without any defined goal beyond release of tension, anxiety, and unrest. Men and women danced in the streets until they dropped. Expressive movements in their "pure" forrn are divorced from any goal in terms of changes demanded in the social system. Interpretations of movements as expressive are likely to utilize psychological mechanisms of displacement, projection, or rationalization to explain the actions in which they are interested. Thus Mannheim explains the rise of German Fascism as the erup-tion of irrationalities which had not been integrated into the social structure and which were now forcing their way into political life. When original instrumental expectations fail, a movement often succeeds in developing symbols which are substitute goals for the "real" aims. "In the first stage men flee to symbols and cling to them mainly because they want to avoid that anxiety which, ac-cording to Freud, overwhelms us whenever the libidinous energy remains for long without an object." 19

These distinctions between types of movements should not hide the interconnections between types which empirical reality gives us. The Temperance movement has contained class elements and expressive elements which have been significant in its history. Nevertheless the dominant motif has been that of status enhancement or defense. Because abstinence has been symbolic of a style of life, conflicts about drinlcing and nondrinlcing have assumed symbolic properties and hence affected the distribution of prestige in American society. Our analysis of the Temperance movement must accordingly begin with a discussion of the significance of drinking and nondrinking in the conferral of respect, approval, ad-miration, and deference.

THE STATUS SIGNIFICANCE OF ALCOHOL AND ABSTINENCE

Any item of consumption can assume properties as an indication of the social position of its consumers.2° Veblen's analysis of "conspicu-ous consumption" is a classic description of the functions of such commodities as furniture, dress, house type, and food as symbols of status. The consumption or nonconsumption of akoholic bev-erages have often delineated group affiliation and status identity in American society. We cannot understand the history of the Tem-perance movement without placing liquor, beer, and wine in the context of social classes, ethnic cultures, and differential styles of life.

Consumption of intoxicating beverages is a cultural variable as are other items such as food, clothing, and shelter. There is no uni-versal pattern of alcohol use. In some primitive tribes, such as the Zuni and the Hopi, drinking is tabooed. In many other tribes it is an integral part of religious and social ceremony, sometimes ac-companied by intensive drinking bouts. There are great differences in the drinlcing behavior of various cultures. Studies of modern cul-tures and subcultures in the United States and elsewhere have found considerable difference among ethnic groups in the frequency and function of drinking.21 The Mormons in the United States have a much higher rate of abstinence than have the Italian-Americans or the American Jews, although rates of chronic alcoholism are not any higher.

The evidence of cross-cultural and subcultural studies clearly indicates that the act of drinking is socially controlled for most people in most societies. A proper and improper use of alcohol is socially defined and transmitted in almost every society. The con-cern of social scientists vvith drinking has largely been with what, in American society, is defined as improper and deviant behavior. Our analysis of alcohol use is not concerned with deviant behavior but with customary usage—usage that is sanctioned, accepted, and expected in cultures and social groups.

While we recognize that drinking ( or nondrinlcing) is socially organized behavior, we cannot ignore the physiological attributes of alcohol, although their consequences, appearance, and degree of effect may be influenced by cultural and social prescriptions. The depressant effects of alcohol on the human nervous system are uni-versal properties of alcohol consumption. These anti-inhibiting properties set the stage within which the meaning and symbolism of drinking occur. We must, however, separate the physiological effects of alcohol from the meaning and significance attached to those effects.

Personal Functions of Alcohol Use

Functional interpretations of alcohol use have often maintained that drinking is a means to reduce personal tensions. The depres-sant effects, it is argued, permit relaxation of internalized social controls and, as a consequence, reduce the anxiety of internal con-trol and permit the satisfaction of frustrated impulses. In his cross-cultural study of primitive societies, Donald Horton found that the customary degree and frequency of drunkenness varied directly with the anxiety level of the society. He concluded that "the primary function of alcoholic beverages in all societies is the reduction of anxiety." 22

Even in Horton's study drinking is not a direct result of anxiety. Where the anxiety level of the culture was high but drinking was prohibited, it did not occur. Drinking was, in most cultures, performed in a group setting and controlled by the social norms of the society. Our analysis suggests a series of social functions which Horton did not investigate. VVhatever may be the primary functions of alcohol use, we are oriented to the functions which it serves as a differentiator of social and cultural groups, over and above its possible function in the dynamics of personailty.

Group Solidarity Functions of Alcohol

A Sliammon Indian drinking song illustrates the use of drink in establishing a sense of equality and solidarity in the group:

Come closer to me, come closer to me, my slave.
We are drinking now, we feel pretty good.
Now you feel just like me.23

Precisely because alcohol may produce physiological and neu-rological effects which diminish inhibitions of ego and superego, it may serve to reduce the reserve and distance with which conven-tional social norms and personal structure often prevent a sense of group affiliation and a mood of intimacy. American hosts and host-esses often spealc of liquor as a social "icebreaker." It provides the social director with the means to manipulate a mood of relaxation in which personal reserve and shyness are reduced among guests or committee members. The resultant convivality promotes what Edwin Lemert has termed the process of "intimitization"—the ap-pearance of close and friendly relations among participants in a social situation.24 Social statuses and roles, being prescriptive rules, prevent the intense cohesion and sociability which intimacy pro-duces.

While physiological elements are important in the development, group solidarity is often promoted by the symbolic attributes of alcohol. According to Lemert, among the Northwest Coast Indians the drinlcing party was a symbol of political rebellion and cultural loyalty among the Indians. Since white authorities had banned the use and sale of liquor or beer to Indians, those who sought to pre-serve independence and a native culture demonstrated their loyal-ties through drinking. In the United States this significance has often been found in the differentiation of groups who demonstrate their attachment to traditional or modern norms by nondrinking or drinking. The act of drinking serves to bind the group together by being a sign of membership.

Two other aspects of alcohol as a symbol of solidarity are espe-cially significant in American society. As a reflection of Temperance doctrine, in some segments of the society, drinking and drunkenness carry a connotation of tabooed action. Participation in a common "crime" promotes the solidarity of the "criminals." Failure to join a drinlcing group is often a more reprehensible "snub" than other acts of social deviance. Guests who refuse alcohol often "explain away" their refusal by some statements which remove the onus of possible "moral superiority." Failure to "join the crowd" in drinking is too fraught with possible overtones of moral rejection to be forgiven easily.

The Status Functions of Alcohol Use

Any element of behavior is capable of symbolizing the social status and group identity of the actor. What is essential is that it actually does differentiate between social levels and that it is so perceived. 'While people may, and often do, use types of alcoholic beverages and amount as ways of displaying income and training in consumer-ship, the most significant distinction has been between drinking and abstinence and between moderate drinking and the acceptance of occasional drunkenness.

The idea of a contrast conception is useful in understanding the role of alcohol as a symbol of social status. The term is taken from usage in racial and cultural relations. It describes the ways in which groups impute significance to differences between their behavior and that of other social groups: "Wherever the groups and classes are set in sharp juxtaposition, the values and mores of each are juxtaposed. Out of group opposition there arises an intense opposi-tion of values, which comes to be projected through the social order and serves to solidify social stratification." 25

Each status group operates with an image of correct behavior which it prizes and with a contrast conception in the behavior of despised groups whose status is beneath theirs. Studies of consump-tion habits have given much attention to the pacesetters who oc-cupy positions of high status and honor and who are emulated by those below them in the social structure. It is often overlooked that persons and groups of low social status are also sources of behavior for those above them, although in negative terms. They are negative reference groups, models of what not to do.26 We look in two direc-tions in gaining cues to status-producing behavior. We look upward or across at those above or on a par with us and downward at those whose social levels are lower. We emulate but we also avoid. Although much consumer behavior may be "keeping up with the Joneses," much is also "getting away from the Smiths."

Both age and sex have been utilized as sources of differentiation in drinking. By law and by informal norms, the use of alcohol is reserved for persons of maturity. This is often one element in the explanation of juvenile drinking. It is an attempt to signify adult-hood. Sexual distinctions are found in many societies. Veblen pointed out that the taboo against female drinking was one way in which American men symbolized their higher status." (It is a sore point in the Temperance movement that the Feminist move-ment, which was so closely allied to Temperance, has led to an increase in feminine drinking rather than a decrease among men. )

Drinking, and nondrinking, appear as crucial signs of the con-trasts and similarities with which the differentiations of group mem-bership are made into the substance of a social class system. In their brealc with established churches, new sects often react against the customs and morals of their opposition, as well as against their theology. The Lollardists of sixteenth-century England prohibited drinldng, gambling, and sports—the prized leisure-time pursuits of the upper-class Catholics against whom they rebelled.28 The Pente-costalists of Gastonia, North Carolina, expressed their revolt against the organized churches of the 1920's by a stringent set of restTictions on dancing, drinking, and movies." Gregory Stone and William

Form have shown that drinking and nondrinking have become salient demarcators of the leisure-time styles of "old" and "new" middle classes in one American city. The "drinking crowd" and the "temperance people" were clear and significant criteria for differ-entiating social groups in Vansburg.3°

The place of alcohol consumption as an indicator of social status and group identity is borne out by a series of surveys of national and state populations and by several studies of specific American populations." The highest frequency of abstainers is found among the Protestant lower middle classes. Here both sentiment and be-havior are most favorable to abstention from alcohol. While the status levels associated with alcohol use have changed during the past 100 years, the use of alcohol as a means of identifying social class membership has been persistent, as we will show in later chapters. The relations between cultural membership and drinlcing are still existent. The rural and small-town Protestant is more likely to follow the prescriptions of abstinence than is the urban Catholic or Jew.

Drinking, however, is more than a convenient sign of group custom. It has a moral connotation associated with a style of life-- a patterned system of behavior regulating a wide range of actions and distinguishing one group from another. Alcohol, we are argu-ing, has had a special function as a symbol of a general style of life associated vvith levels of social status. It has been a symbol of group membership because it has communicated to observers the set of commitments of the drinker or abstainer to ways of moral conduct in realms of work, play, and familial association. It is in this rela-tionship that Temperance has drawn on a deep source of affect in its doctrine and activities.

The relation between drinking and types of life styles in America is best portrayed through a discussion of the moral basis of absti-nence doctrine and the ethical basis of Temperance.

LIFE STYLES AND THE ETHIC OF TEMPERANCE

Life styles function in two ways to support a given system of social status. On one level they are signs to others that the actor does indeed occupy the social position attributed to him. In fashions, for example, the décolletage of the upper-class lady would be "out of place" among a group of lower middle-class housewives. The lower middle-class pattern of activities and roles is built around the tasks and expectations of family roles in housekeeping and motherhood rather than the romantic and sexual roles of female glamour.32 In-deed, signs of status membership are most stable and communica-tive when they indicate the moral commitments of persons. It is precisely in this fashion that drinlcing and abstinence have been able to function as marks of participation or rejection. Temperance has been an ethical position and, consequently, a sign of life style commitment and status group membership.

The Cult of Character

The recent attitude of psychologists, social workers, and medical authorities is that chronic alcoholism is a disease rather than a moral failing. This is a radical change from the attitude of the nine-teenth century toward drinking and alcoholism. From the ethical precepts of Temperance adherents the use of alcohol in all forms and in all degrees was a moral problem. The drinker or the drunk-ard was neither sick nor foolish. He was sinful. An anonymous Temperance pamphlet of the early 1830's expresses the wickedness of the drinker: "The Holy Spirit will not visit, much less will He dwell with him who is under the polluting, debasing, effects of intoxicating drink. The state of heart and mind which this occasions is to Him loathsome and an utter abomination." 33

The moral intensity of Temperance belief has reflected the pre-mium placed on ascetic character and the condemnation of the pursuit of pleasure. The title of a serrnon by a popular mid-nine-teenth-century minister states the dualism of the elect and the damned in typical fashion: "Christian Recreation and Uncliristian Amusements." In the sermon, Rev. Theodore Cuyler attacks a num-ber of "sinful enjoyments," with special reference to the theater. He argues that there is a difference between recreation, which is purposeful and utilitarian, and amusement, which is pleasure for its own sake. Recreation strengthens us for the work of the world. 'The pleasure-loving "want stimulant and excitement" rather than refreshment.34 Amusement, implies Cuyler, has no relationship to man's function as a member of society or as a spiritual being; it does not improve him in his capacities or responsibilities.

The concept of Temperance has rested on similar approaches to a specific vision of man's character in which self-mastery, industry, and moral consistency are prized virtues. Impulsive action is at the opposite pole from virtue. The good man is able, through his char-acter, to win the victory of Will over Impulse. Ralph Barton Perry has coined an apt description for this ascetic quality. He calls it "moral athleticism." 35 Through acts of denial, restriction, and self-control the moral athlete both trains himself and displays to others that he possesses the stern virtues of character which enable him to conquer his impulsive demands. The decline in inhibition and reserve and the relaxation of moral censoriousness through artifi-cial, uncontrolled means is thus anathema to a viewpoint in which man must prove himself through his own efforts. Not the efface-ment of self, but the continuous and systematic triumph of Reason over Desire is the desideratum of character. In the dictum of Sig-mund Freud, whose own steadfast devotion to work might well have qualified him for honors on this score, "Where Id is, there shall Ego be."

The argument of the moderate drinker or the occasional drunk-ard is often that men need some release from their inhibitions. Such viewpoints are foreign to the ethic of Temperance. If the con-trol of desire and spontaneity is the key to moral conduct, then drinlcing is a profound threat because it may engulf the drinker in demands which he cannot control. Anything less than perfect regulation of behavior, anything less than command is a concession to Nature and a sin of great magnitude. "Everything that rests my body or mind; improves my health and elevates my soul is com-mendable. Everything that stimulates the nervous system until I become a walking maniac; everything that debauches my body, weakens my conscience, excites impure thoughts, and makes my soul a terrible house of imagery; and everything that malces me forget God and eternity is dangerous and in the last damnable." 36 VVhatever is unrelated or antagonistic to the development or func-tioning of the moral character is wasteful and immoral. Play, lei-sure, fun, and gaiety are, in themselves, without utility and hence to be avoided. They are acceptable only as adjuncts needed for better work. Sobriety is a cornerstone of this ethic because it in-sures the cardinal quality of self-command.

Temperance fiction of the nineteenth century supported this ethic in its depiction of the drinker as a man of weak character. The fact that a man drank was a sign of moral defect even before he suffered the always excruciating ravages of chronic drunkenness. Such a figure of weakness is Joe Morgan in the most famous of Temper-ance novels, Ten Nights in a Barroom.37 We see him at the open-ing of the novel described as a friendly, easygoing person, inclined toward a certain irresponsibility in his work and not as successful in business as he might be. Morgan is an easy prey to alcohol ad-diction as a solution to his problems. The author of this classic implies that although Joe Morgan's self-indulgence led him to lose ownership of his mill, he wasn't much of a businessman anyway. His character was already spotted and drinking was as much a sign of this as a contributor to further decline.

In the ethical system of Temperance, drink is sinful. Its appear-ance is a sign of defective character. The ascetic qualities of nine-teenth-century American ideals had no room for behavior which failed to improve and perfect man's ability to improve and perfect himself as a producer of goods and a performer of roles.

Institutional Constraints

Any style of life may be supported or rejected by the institutions of the society as well as by the status groups which adhere to the style. The style of life which Temperance values have manifested has been supported, in the past, by the constraints of institutional regulation, especially in economic and religious areas of society.

Such constraints, as we shall see, have diminished in scope and intensity during the past 25 years.

The value system of Temperance has been linked to institutional constraints through the cult of character and its empirical conse-quences for behavior. Beginning with Max Weber, a large body of writings has made clear the affinity between economic individ-ualism and the Protestant doctrines of the virtue of ascetic quali-ties of industry, thrift, discipline, punctuality, and sobriety. VVhile Temperance, as a movement, appears much later than Puritanism or the other ascetic sects, its ethical foundations are deep in this stream of Protestant thought and its resonance in the economic institutions of nineteenth-century America is profound.

There are two types of relationship between institutions and values which are exemplified in the Temperance cult of character. In one type the institution is a manifestation and developer of the form of character prized in Temperance doctrine. In the other, the institution provides sanctions which enforce the behavior enun-ciated in the value system.

The first relationship is discoverable in the assertions that Tem-perance aided economic success because the economic institutions were tests of moral character. The logic of this argument is found in an early form in the classic statement of economic individualism—Thomas Malthus' Essay on Population.88 Malthus argued that population imbalance was an inevitable result of defeaNn. the struggle between Will and Desire. The sexual impulse was re-sponsible for the fact that population outran the capacity of the economy to sustain the reproduced population. Malthus was a minister and he sought to reconcile his gloomy prediction with the image of a good and charitable Deity. His solution was one of moral character: if men would master their sexual appetites, marry late, and live in accordance with economic logic, then population would exist in balance with economic capacities. In other words, economic distress is a result of moral defect. Abstinence is the clue to economic welfare and indulgence the clue to depressions.

As the character traits of the Temperance ethic were useful to economic success, the values of character were also values in the economy. Institutions were but the proving grounds within which persons revealed character traits that brought about success or failure." Abstinence from intoxicating beverages was a sign that the person possessed the requisite character. They were positive aids to economic triumph, because the economy demanded the character which prized sobriety.

The economic and social ruin of the drunkard is a ubiquitous story, repeated over and over in the pages of Temperance fiction. The drunkard yields to impulse, loses his savings, his job, or his credit. He squanders his salary and loses the love of wife and child. Drink causes him to be late to work, to disobey orders, to endanger his health, and to xriiss business opportunities. Economic and social failure are inevitable results of intemperance from Lucius Sargent's Temperance Tales (1830's) to Upton Sinclair's Cup of Fury (1956). Sobriety is valuable, both as a moral virtue and as a necessary adjunct to economic capability.

The second form of relationship between institution and value system was manifest when sobriety was demanded as a trait of the would-be successful man. It was a necessary form of role behavior. To the employer, the sober worker was a promise of industry and reliability. Abstinence was a sign of economic worth. To the employee, a hint of insobriety might spell ruin to the pros-pects of a bright career. For the creditor abstinence was a sign that the debtor merited trust.

In this manner institutional constraints bolstered the moral train-ing of church, school, and family. Pulpit, press, and business saw eye to eye. Theodore Cuyler was most explicit about the way in which the moral code was supported by economic rewards: "Would a sensible merchant take a young man into his counting house, make him his bookkeeper, confidant or cashier on the strength of his knowledge that that young man regularly attended the theatre?" 40

In the period of the last half of the nineteenth century the Tem-perance ethic was in the heyday of its institutional resonance. The abstinence doctrine of the Temperance advocate was embedded in a style of life in which ascetic character was prized both institu-tionally and culturally. As we shall see, this style of life represented a contrast to the life style of groups below him in honor and prestige. 'Threats to the cultural and institutional dominance of the ethic of Temperance emerged in the twentieth centuiy. As they did so, the status commanded by the life style of the Protestant middle classes, the primary carriers of the Temperance movement, possessed less and less resonance in American society.

The position of a style of life in the status structure is an im-portant clue to the significance of attempts to persuade, influence, or force others to emulate it. In understanding the American Tem-perance movement in the different periods of its history, we shall observe how it has functioned to preserve, maintain, or defend the social status of its adherents.

 

1.'Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfeld, and William McPhee, Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), Ch. 9; Samuel Stouffer, Communism, Con,- formity and Civil Liberties (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1955); Seymour Lipset, Political Man (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1980), pp. 97-130, 298-301.

2 'This meaning of "class" is in keeping with both traditional sociological and Marxist literature, as in Max Weber, Theory of Social and Eccmomic Organiza-tion, tr. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), and Nikolai Bukharin, Historical Materialism (New York: Inter-national Publishers, 1925), Ch. 8.

3 Harry M. Johnson, Sociology: A Systematic Introduction (New York: Har-court, Brace and Co., 1960), p. 469.

4 Weber, op. cit., p. 428.

5 Erving Coffman, "Symbols of Class Status," British Journal of Sociology, 2 (December, 1951), 294-304, at 295.

6 Negro-white interaction as symbolic of status difference is analyzed in Bertram Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South (Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 1937), passim, and Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper and Bros., 1944), Chs. 28-30.

7Richard Hofstadter, "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt," in Daniel Bell (ed.), The New American Right (New York: Criterion Books, 1955), pp. 33-55; Seymour Lipset, "The Sources of the Radical Right," in ibid., pp. 166-234.

8 Ibid., p. 168.

9 Ibid.

10 David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1950), pp. 31-36.

11 Hofstadter, op. cit., p. 43.

12 Neal Miller, John Dollard, et al., Frustration and Aggression (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1939), Chs. 2-3, esp. pp. 30-31.

13 The adherents of a movement need not be a constituency which directly gains rewards from achievement of the goals of the movement. The movement to outlaw child labor is neither led by nor composed of children nor is the humane society the work of animals.

14 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Meridian Boolcs, 1937; orig. pub., 1929), pp. 30-31.

15 this distinction I am helped by the work of Gregory Stone and William Form. Their report of a study of status levels in an American community has been influential throughout this section as well as elsewhere in this book. See their "Instabilities in Status," American Sociological Review, 18 (April, 1953), 149-162,

16 For analyses utilizing these distinctions see David Riesman, op. cit.; Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations," in his Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. 276-320; C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), Ch. 2.

17 Philip E. Converse, "The Currents of Religion in the 1961 Presidential Election," Institute for Socictl Research Newsletter (June, 1961), pp. 1-2.

18 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1925), p. 140.

19 Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1940), p. 133.

20 For descriptions by various authors of drinking practices in ancient, modem, and primitive societies see Raymond McCarthy ( ed. ), Drinking and Intoxication (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, and New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, 1959).

21 Studies of class, religion, sex, and ethnicity as significant variables in American drinking behavior are reported in John W. Riley, Jr., and Charles F. Marden, "The Social Pattern of Mcoholic Drinking," Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 8 (September, 1947 ), 265-273; John Dollard, "Drinldng Mores of Social Classes," in Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, Alcohol, Science and Society (New Haven, Conn.: Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1945), pp. 95-104; Robert Straus and Selden Bacon, Drinking in College ( New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953); Charles Snyder, Alcohol and the Jews (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, and New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, 1958).

22 Donald Horton, "The Functions of Alcohol in Primitive Societies: A Cross Cultural Study," Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 4 (September, 1943), 199-320, at 223.

23 Edwin Lemert, Alcohol and the Northwest Coast Indians, University of California Publications in Culture and Society, 2, No. 6 (1954), 303-406, at 330.

24 Ibid., p. 332.

25 Lewis Copeland, "The Negro as a Contrast Conception," in Edgar Thomp-son (ed.), Race Relations and the Race Problem (Durham, N.C.: Duke Uni-versity Press, 1939), pp. 152-179, at 161.

26 The concept of negative reference is discussed in Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957), pp. 300-302. ". . . the negative type involves motivated rejection, i.e., not merely non-acceptance of norms but the formation of counter-norms" (p. 300).

27 Veblen felt that the norm against female drinldng was likely to be most intense wherever the patriarchal tradition persisted in which women were one fomi of chattel. Since drinlc was costly, its use was honorific and those of lowly status could not prestune to use it. Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Modem Library, 1934), pp. 70-72.

28 Thomas Hall, The Religious Background of American Culture (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1940), pp. 27-39.

29 Liston Pope, Millhands and Preachers (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-sity Press, 1943), pp. 84-91; Walter Goldschmidt, "Class Denominationalism in Rural California Churches," American Journal of Sociology, 9 (January, 1944), 348-355.

30 Stone and Form, op. cit., p. 155. 

31 See footnote 21.

32 Bernard Barber and Lyle Lobel have made this point in their study of fashions, " 'Fashion' in Women's Clothes ,and the American Social System," in Seymour Lipset and Reinhard Bendix (eds.), Class, Status and Power (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1953), pp. 323-332.

33 Temperance Manual (no publisher listed, 1836), p. 46.

34 A sermon preached at Cooper Institute, New York, on October 24, 1858. Reprint contained in the Fahnstock Collection of pre-Civil War pamphlets, Vol. 6, University of Illinois Library, Urbana.

35 Ralph Barton Perry, Puritrmism and Democracy (New York: Vanguard Press, 1944), p. 245.

36 Cuyler, op. cit., pp. 12-13. This ascetic strain in Protestantism has, of course, received a classic statement in Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Takott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956). For a specific study of the relation of ascetic Protestantism to amuse-ments and consumption see Isidor Thorner, "Christian Science and Ascetic Protestantism" ( unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1950).

37 Timothy Shay Arthur, Ten Nights in a Barroom (Chicago: Union School Furnishing Co., 1854 ).

38 Thomas Malthus, Essay on Population ( New York: E. P. Dutton, 1914 ).

39 Irvin Wyllie has shown that this view of institutions was implicit in much of the self-help literature of the nineteenth century. See his The Self-Macle Man in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954), Ch. 3.

40 Cuyler, op. cit., p. 15.

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