CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

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"tlollr riots," but, interestingly, at UH .: . l'-d)J L1al"Y I K.n ()ulhllJ"st 1I10.'i[
closely tied to Locofoco speech-making, of fi fty-tlnee lioiels '" I,"slt·"
none was a party member .1 07
Despite the narrow chances for the ultimate success of IH30s uplisillgs,
it is impossible to deny the existence of deep and bitter class feelings, III
the notion that the promise of equalily contained in the Declaration of
Independencewas mocked by realily. Serious disturbances continued: the
J 838 "Buckshot War," in which Harrisburg was seized by an irate, armell
crowd in a Pennsylvania senatorial election dispute, for example; the
"Anti-rent" riots by New York tenants of the Van Rensselaer family ill
1839; the "Dorr War" of 1842 (somewhat reminiscent of the independenl
"Indian Stream Republic" of 1832-35 in Ncw Hampshire) in whicl,
thousands in Rhode Island approached civil war in a fight over rival state
constitutions; and the sporadic anti-railroad riots in the Kensington
section of Philadelphia from 1840 to 1842, were among major hostilities.
But ethnic, racial and religious disputes began fairly early in the decade
to begin to superscde class-conscious struggles, though often disparate
elements co-existed in the same occasions. This decline in consciousness
was manifested in anti-Irish, anti-abolitionist, and anti-Catholic riots
largely, and must be seen in thc context of the earlier, principal defeat
of working people by the factory system, in the 1820s. Cut off from the
only terrain on which challenge could gain basic victories, could change
life, the upheaval in the 1830s was destined to sour. Characteristically,
the end of the J 830s saw both the professionalization of urban police
forccs and organized gang violence in place as permanent fixtures.
If by 1830 virtually every aspect of American life had undergone major
alteration, the startling changes in drinking habits shed particular light
on the industrialism behind this transformation. The "great alcoholic
binge of the early nineteenth eentury," 108 and its precipitous decline in
the early 1830s, have much to say ahout how the culture of the new
technology took shape.
Drinking, on the one hand, was a part of the pre-industrial blurring of
the distinction between work and leisurc. On up into the early decades
of the cemury, small amounts of alcohol were commonly consumed
throughout the day, at work and at home (sometimes the same place);
reference has been made above to the frequent, spontaneous holidays of
all kinds, and the wide-spread observance of "Blue Mondays" or three­
day weekends, "which run pretty well into the week," aceo - rding to one
complaining New York employer.' Cl9 Drinking was the universal accompa­
niment to these parties, celebrations, and extended weekends, as it was
to the normal work-day.
1·.l l rv !l·N J .... 4 )1 I":I I II',:\J
liB" lavI'1 JJ III ",lUg shop. with its " u llsl ructured, lcislIrt.:iy. and wholly
1 111 1 111 IdlWI iv(". eV('11 allti-proliudive, character,'> ! \0 was a social center well­
.llIlnt 1(1 ;1 11(111 mechanized age, and in fact became more than ever the
\\., ,1 kllll.',111;(Il'S duh as modernization cut him off from other emotional
, ,"llds. 111
\lui drunkenness-binge-drinking and solitary drinking, most
""I "" lal1tly -was increasing by 1820; significantly, alcoholic delirium, or
II I' 's, first appeared in the U.S. during the 1820s.112 Alcoholism is an
"Iovi(1"S registcr of strains and alienation, of the inability of people to
• " 1 ''' with the burden of daily life which a society places on them.
I "'"dy, there is little healthy or resistant about the resort to such
til irlking practices.
temperance reform was a part of the larger syndrome of social
'ILsciplining expressed in industrialization, as irregular drinking habits
w