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Robert Goodrich
temperance advocates, who portrayed alcohol abuse as a product of the social
misery imposed on the working classes by capitalism, the KAB judged a decent
standard of living insufficient in and of itself to combat alcohol abuse. Indeed,
prosperity was part of the problem since alcohol was a “luxury article.” For the
KAB, individual morality and self-discipline dictated alcohol consumption, not
social conditions. A 1906 flyer entitled “The Struggle Against Alcohol Abuse”
declared, “The simple economic improvement of one’s position does not suffice
since this allows for greater expenditures and therewith offers opportunity to
extensive consumption of alcohol . . . Instead, a greater steadfastness of character,
a greater sense of responsibility must accompany an economic improvement of
one’s position.” 27 Reiterating an anti-materialist understanding of alcohol abuse,
the KAB argued elsewhere, “The alcohol question will not be resolved through
the destruction of the capitalist economic order.” 28 Instead, alcohol fell into the
moral-religious categories of the KAB’s cultural edification program.
The economic analysis related directly to the KAB’s understanding of the
financial consequences of alcohol consumption on the family. Otto Müller, KAB
secretary-general, cited the extra costs and male exclusivity of alcohol consumption
as the reason for its removal from People’s Educational Nights. “Many
a visitor,” he argued, “will be pleased to be able to save the costs of alcoholic
beverages, especially if he would like to let his family members also participate
in the evening’s events.” 29 Without the added costs of alcohol, the working-class
father could afford to bring his family, turning the events into family excursions.
“With regards to the family,” the clubs claimed, “a completely alcohol-free life is
a duty,” and the ideal father considered his family’s well-being rather than his
carnal appetites and exercised “manly self-control and strength of character by
abstaining from alcohol.” 30 To emphasize the point, Die Arbeiterfamilie, the
KAB’s family supplement, portrayed the worker who squandered his money on
drink as “a horse or a child.” 31
The domestic temperance rhetoric proved a double-edged sword, however. On
the one hand, temperance shifted concerns for material improvement onto family
life and lifestyle choices. On the other, temperance provided women, generally
seen as the objects rather than subjects of KAB policies, with a legitimized
discourse to criticize male drinking and by extension the KAB and patriarchy. The
extra costs of club life related to drinking stretched the thin household budget, and
Catholic working-class women used temperance to complain about alcohol
consumption within the clubs. They already went to the factory gate on payday to
prevent the disappearance of their husbands’ wages in a round of drinking. Many
autobiographies remarked on this practice as necessary to ensure the family’s
survival, as Peter Fröhlich attested: “On pay day the wives always stood by the
factory gate and construction sites and waited for their husbands. For their
colleagues, such men were henpecked and were not taken seriously. Other wives
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