THE 1855 PROHIBITION CAMPAIGN

Anti-alcohol campaigns were as old as the city and so too were their failures. In early 1849, eighteen men gathered in a small city church to sign the American Temperance Union’s pledge of abstinence, although, according to one report, one of the signatories was so drunk that he barely made it out of the pews to affirm his pledge.[1] A week later, the Washingtonian Temperance Society of San Francisco adopted a constitution and elected officers.[2] A “flourishing union” of the Daughters of Temperance existed by 1850 as did a local chapter of the Sons of Temperance, which by 1851 counted some five hundred members.[3] In late 1852, the Sons of Temperance, which had become the dominant temperance organization in the West, called upon the state legislature to pass a law similar to the “Maine Prohibitory Liquor Law.” In 1851, Maine’s legislature passed “An Act for the Suppression of Drinking Houses and Tippling Shops,” the nation’s first state-wide prohibition law, which provided that “No person shall be allowed at any time, to manufacture or sell, by himself, his clerk, servant or agent, directly or indirectly, any spirituous or intoxicating liquors, or any mixed liquors a part of which is spirituous or intoxicating.”[4] The 1853 and 1854 sessions of the California legislature balked at such a drastic request.

There did seem to be, however, an appetite in California for a liquor law. During the 1855 session of the legislature (lasting from January to May), assembly members introduced no fewer than 40 petitions “praying for the enactment of a Prohibitory Liquor Law.”[5] In the state senate, there were 2,121 petitions for a Prohibitory Liquor Law.”[6] And in late January of 1855, Assembly member W.R. Gober of Santa Clara County introduced “an Act to prohibit the sale and manufacture of Spiritous and Intoxicating Liquors.”[7] An editorial for the Daily Alta California newspaper in San Francisco remarked that the proposed bill was “quite stringent,” and resembled “the far-famed Maine Liquor Law in some of its provisions.” Although the author thought the bill was a good one, they questioned several times whether the “people of the State at this time” would sustain such a law. That such a policy would “inevitably sweep over the land,” they had no doubt. But kept coming back to the question: “Would it be enforced?”[8] Assembly Bill 62 passed 37-16 on March 26, 1855 and send to the state senate the following day where it was referred to the Committee on Public Morals.[9]

Meanwhile, in early March, Senate bill No. 94, “an Act to prohibit the sale”–but not the manufacture–“of Spirituous and Intoxicating Liquors,” was introduced.[11] Rather than wade into what was becoming a contentious issue and facing stiff opposition from San Francisco’s representatives, on April 30, the senate’s Committee on Public Morals and Police reported out a substitute for the assembly and senate versions of the prohibition bills with “An Act to take the sense of the people of this State at the General Election in 1855, on the passage of a Prohibitory Liquor Law,” which the assembly and Governor subsequently approved in early May.[12]

During the campaign that followed, supporters of prohibition argued that as a result of the Maine law there was “very little poverty or vice,” the absence of alcohol virtually eliminated crime, and taxes were “materially diminished” without the need for a police force and judicial system. Supporters felt confident voters would affirm their desire for such a law “by a large majority.”[13] The proposed law, which the 1856 legislature merely had to take under advisement, failed to garner much enthusiasm. Statewide, supporters cast 21,891 votes (44%) and the opponents 27,414 (56%). In San Francisco, the margin of defeat was even larger with 1,592 votes for (25%) and 4,676 against (75%). However, the total votes cast in the entire state for and against the liquor law (49,305) amounted to fewer than those cast for the winner of the Lieutenant Governor (49,385), Controller (49,911), Treasurer (49,947), Surveyor (49,994), Printer (50,660), and all three of the State Prison Director candidates (49,789; 49,644; 50,530). Taking the total votes cast for the State Printer (97,356) as an approximation of turnout (the office that garnered the highest number of total votes), more than 48,000 voters simply abstained from voting on the liquor issue. Even in San Francisco, barely one-half of the voters marked their ballot for or against the proposed law.[14]

The decisive defeat of even the mere suggestion of prohibition has a number of possible explanations. In the early 1850s, there were still very few middle-class women in the city, generally the most energetic constituents of the anti-liquor and anti-vice reforming class.[15] Further, a sizable number of residents either enjoyed patronizing or were employed by liquor-related establishments and thus resisted an idea to outlaw their means of income or leisure.[16] Observers then and now also like to suggest a “wild-western morality” that signified a toleration for personal liberty.[17] As Philip Ethington points out, that tolerance reflected a distaste for government regulation and the “overwhelming sentiment for low taxes and low expenditures,” that prevented state interference.[18]There was also a widely-held belief in the late nineteenth century that “compulsory temperance” was doomed to failure. After a brief experiment with a local prohibition law in Los Angeles, one newspaper concluded that “we cannot legislate men’s appetite out of them nor morality into them…Moral suasion and education are the only effective temperance advocates.”[19] Perhaps most important were the ethnic roots of many of the city’s residents. The Democratic party in California drew much of its support from Irish and German immigrants in San Francisco and all three opposed the temperance movement, which was often composed of anti-immigrant Protestants and supporters of the Know-Nothing Party.[20] In fact, Know-Nothing candidates won every statewide race that year but in each case in San Francisco, they received several thousand fewer votes than their Democratic rival.[21]

The decisive defeat of the prohibition question and the approaching sectional crisis that thrust the nation into a devastating civil war kept temperance agitation dormant for almost twenty years, a period one historian has referred to as “the doldrums.” The two notable organizations of the era, the Sons of Temperance–which became the Sons and Daughters of Temperance in 1866 in a bid to boost membership and acknowledge the crucial work of women–and the Order of Good Templars never had more than 10,000 members combined statewide until they eventually ceased operation and handed the reigns of reform over to several new organizations years later.[22]

In a post-election editorial, a writer for the Daily Alta California doubted whether the result would have differed “had every man been obliged to mark Yes or No on the ballot which he cast for State officers.” The popular will for a “sumptuary law” was lacking and, indeed, without the support of the people, such a prohibition “would be worse than no law at all, for it would breed a contempt for such laws.” The writer advised that not until “a majority, and a strong majority” existed should such a law be considered.[23] It would be almost sixty years before prohibition appeared again on the state ballot (although, spoiler alert, with similar results).

[1] Gilman Marston Ostrander, The Prohibition Movement in California, 1848-1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 8.

[2] “Temperance Society,” Weekly Alta California, January 25, 1849.

[3] Ostrander, Prohibition in California, 9; Frank Soulé, John H. Gihon, and James Nisbet, Annals of San Francisco (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1855), 714.

[4] Maine State Legislature, “Laws for the Suppression of Drinking Houses and Tippling Shops” (Augusta: William T. Johnson, 1853), 8; “Maine Law: First State Prohibition in U.S.,” Alcohol Problems and Solutions, accessed 13 November 2017, https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/maine-law-first-state-prohibition-in-u-s/.

[5] California, Journal of the Sixth Session of the Legislature, 1855, passim.

[6] California, Journal of the Legislature, 1855, 784. I derived the assembly number by simply counting the number of times the Journal recorded the presentation of a petition. The Senate number was an official response to a resolution passed in the senate.

[7] California, Journal of the Sixth Session of the Assembly, 1855, 170.

[8] “The Liquor Law,” Daily Alta California, February 8, 1855.

[9] California, Journal of the Assembly, 1855, 542; California, Journal of the Legislature, 490.

[11] California, Journal of the Legislature, 1855, 385.

[12] California, Journal of the Legislature, 1855, 784-5, 810. Ostrander, Prohibition in California, 12-14; “California Legislature,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 3, 1855. Assembly member Thomas Wells of Butte County had also introduced a bill in late February proposing a public advisory vote. Journal of the Assembly, 1855, 359.

[13] “Temperance,” Daily Alta California, March 30, 1855.

[14] “Official Vote of the State of California, for State Officers,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 3, 1855. Given the success of the Know-Nothing party in the election, and their disdain for immigrants and their supposed penchant for imbibing, it comes as a surprise that a statewide anti-liquor proposal fared so poorly.

[15] Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998); Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Priscilla Murolo, The Common Ground of Womanhood: Class, Gender, and Working Girls' Clubs, 1884-1928 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

[16] The scale of the liquor industry will be examined in a future entry.

[17] Ostrander, Prohibition in California, 3.

[18] Ethington, The Public City, 165, 296-8, 332. See also Lotchin, From Hamlet to City, 136.

[19] “Compulsory Temperance a Failure,” Los Angeles Herald, September 17, 1874.

[20] Ostrander, Prohibition in California, 17.

[21] For example, the vote in San Francisco for the winning candidates included for Governor, K.N.: 5,213, Dem. 7,188; Supreme Court Justice, K.N.: 4,531, Dem. 7,388; Attorney General, K.N. 5,102, Dem. 7,160. “Official Vote of the State of California, for State Officers – September 5, 1855,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 3, 1855.

[22] Ostrander, Prohibition in California, 23-25.

[23] “Temperance,” Daily Alta California, September 25, 1855.