We Are What We Drink is both more and less than a study of the temperance movement in Minnesota between 1819 and 1919. Meyer's approach is a resoundingly successful corrective to scholars who “read the movement through one isolated category of identity and have neglected to integrate various analytical perspectives into a truly holistic approach toward temperance” (3). Focussing on Minnesota's capital city, St. Paul, Meyer interprets the movement as the product of the interplay between continuously evolving identities of geographic space, ethnicity, and gender. The book is well grounded in the major theoretical works in each of these fields, and argues that liquor use and attitudes towards it were an important “marker of identity” during the years of this study. It contains five chronological chapters, each with five “subchapters,” representing five separate parallel narratives. The subchapters analyze, in order, the Minnesota temperance movement per se, the civic development of St. Paul as it related to liquor, Irish and German involvement with temperance, and women's involvement with the movement.
Minnesota's temperance story largely parallels that of the larger US. In the 1850s it went dry by plebiscite, only to be overturned in a few months by Minnesota's Supreme Court. Following the Civil War, it experienced a flurry of mostly failed temperance activity, culminating in a “high license consensus” on liquor regulation. Beginning in the late 1890s, led by the new Anti-Saloon League, temperance reformers transitioned to a Progressive Era approach to reform, resulting in the passage of the 1915 County Option Bill. As the nation grew closer to entering the Great War, anti-temperance forces weakened and prohibitionists were emboldened. Reformers came a few hundred votes short of establishing state prohibition by referendum in November 1917, just two months before the legislature approved the 18th Amendment.
The city of St. Paul was founded as a settlement of merchants, especially whiskey sellers, just beyond the Fort Snelling reserve. Although northeasterners comprised the next group of migrants, German and Irish settlers soon outnumbered them and established a proud civic identity tied to alcohol, saloons, and nonenforcement of liquor regulations. Following the Civil War, anti-temperance forces organized to legally defend liquor sellers and to remove law-enforcing city officials from office.
German and Irish American ethnic group identities evolved in a dynamic process with St. Paul's temperance movement. Meyer shows how their identities were formed through processes of negotiation and contestation, within each group, between each group, and between each group and Anglos. As German opposition to the Maine Law coalesced, so did an inchoate German ethnicity. Over time, however, alcohol proved to be a weak basis for German American ethnicity, as Roman Catholic leaders openly supported temperance goals as part of their Americanization campaign, pietistic Germans sided with temperance, and finally the Great War produced an overwhelming flood of anti-German and antialcohol prejudices and policies. On the other hand, the Irish, primarily under the leadership of Bishop John Ireland, developed a viable Irish Catholic temperance movement designed to “facilitate social uplift and integration into middle-class Anglo-American society.” Meyer argues that because second-generation Irish Americans began to experience some upward social mobility, the movement declined after 1900.
Finally, Meyer traces the rise of female temperance activism, and argues that in Minnesota it was one factor “alongside other reform movements and historical circumstances” that “greatly contributed to the construction of a female public identity.” By the 1890s the sentiments of Minnesota's WCTU women turned strongly in favor of woman's suffrage and equal rights, and Meyer pays particular attention to how key leaders spoke and acted to erode the ideology of two spheres, and to redefine gender roles. By the early twentieth century, the WCTU cooperated effectively with other temperance groups to mold public opinion and pass legislation, and successfully reached out to immigrants, especially Scandinavians.
This is a deeply researched, tightly argued, and well-cited book, and Meyer is largely correct that such multivalent approaches to the American temperance movement are rare. She has done the field a great service. Most criticisms are more about style than about substance. The unique structure almost makes it seem like one is reading five different books, but it was a reasonable way to organize all of the topics. Given the emphasis on St. Paul, the name should have been included in the book's title. Irish American responses to temperance bore some similarities to African American responses that could have been briefly explored. Also, at select moments, Meyer could have briefly telescoped out to the broader national temperance movement to place St. Paul's experience in the national context. Regardless, this is a valuable book, particularly for those interested in the relationship between temperance and evolving ethnic identities.
