33. Prohibition as an Expression of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
The anti-drink movement was launched to fight the alcohol abuse that had been a constant in 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 with American ancestry stretching back for generations.
Saloons and bars – establishments where people congregated primarily to drink – had not been widespread in America before the 1840s. Nor, for that matter, had beer drinking been that big: until then, Americans primarily drank cider or hard liquor. However, the Irish, and especially the Germans, were beer drinkers, and immigrants from those countries brought with them the pub and beer garden culture, which morphed in America into saloons and bars. Those who disliked immigrants soon came to dislike those establishments.
