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Michael Lewis - The Coming of Southern Prohibition: The Dispensary System and the Battle over Liquor in South Carolina, 1907-1915

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The Coming of Southern Prohibition: The Dispensary System and the Battle over Liquor in South Carolina, 1907-1915
Author:
Michael Lewis
Publisher:
LSU Press
Genre:
Books / Politics
Year:
2016
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In The Coming of Southern Prohibition, Michael Lewis examines the rise and fall of South Carolinas state-run liquor dispensary system from its emergence in the 1890s until statewide prohibition in 1915. The dispensary system, requiring government-owned outlets to bottle and sell all alcohol, began as a way to both avoid prohibition and enrich governmental coffers. In this revealing study, Lewis offers a more complete rendering of South Carolinas path to universal prohibition and thus sharpens our understanding of historical southern attitudes towards race, religion, and alcohol.
By focusing on the Aiken County border town of North Augusta, South Carolina, Lewis details how their lucrative dispensary operation -- which promised to both reduce alcohol consumption and generate funding for the countys cash-strapped government -- delayed statewide prohibition by nearly a decade. Aided by Georgias adoption of dry laws in 1907, Aiken County profited from alcohol sales to Georgians crossing the state line to drink. Lewis shows, in fact, that the Aiken County dispensary at the foot of the bridge connecting South Carolina to Georgia sold more liquor than any other store in the state. Notwithstanding the moral debates surrounding temperance, the money resulting from dispensary sales helped pave roads, build parks and schools, and keep county and municipal taxes the lowest in South Carolina.
The power of this revenue is notable, as Lewis reveals, given the rejection of prohibition laws voiced by the rural, native-born, Protestant population in Aiken County, which diverged from the sentiment of their peers in other parts of the region. Lewiss socio-cultural analysis, which includes the impact of adjacent mill villages and African American communities, employs statistical findings to reveal an interplay of political and economic factors that ultimately overwhelmed any profit margin and ushered in statewide prohibition in 1915.
Original and enlightening, The Coming of Southern Prohibition explores a single community as it wrestled with the ethical and financial stakes of alcohol consumption and sale amid a national discourse that would dominate American life in the early twentieth century.

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THE COMING OF SOUTHERN PROHIBITION

THE COMING OF
SOUTHERN PROHIBITION

THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM AND THE BATTLE OVER LIQUOR IN SOUTH CAROLINA, 19071915

Louisiana State University Press
Baton Rouge

Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright 2016 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing

Designer: Michelle April Neustrom
Typefaces: Sentinel, text; Brothers, display
Printer and binder: Maple Press (Digital)

Frontispiece: North Augusta Dispensary, ca. 1908. Arts and Heritage Center of North Augusta. Photo by Charles Petty. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lewis, Michael, 1965

Title: The coming of Southern prohibition : the dispensary system and the battle over liquor in South Carolina, 19071915 / Michael Lewis.

Description: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015043015| ISBN 978-0-8071-6298-9 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-8071-6299-6 (pdf) | ISBN 978-0-8071-6300-9 (epub) | ISBN 978-0-8071-6301-6 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: ProhibitionSouth CarolinaHistory20th century. | Liquor IndustrySouth CarolinaHistory20th century. | DispensariesSouth CarolinaHistory20th century. | Liquor lawsSouth CarolinaHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC HV5090.S6 L49 2016 | DDC 363.4/10975709041dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043015

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

To Regina, with all my love

CONTENTS

PREFACE

E verybody knows a place like that, a friend remarked when I first told him about the North Augusta liquor dispensary, a shop that, because of its location fifty feet from the state line separating South Carolina and Georgia, sold close to four million dollars of liquor in the year after Georgia adopted prohibition. Sure enough, every time I shared my research listeners would nod their heads knowingly and launch into their own stories about the liquor store located just beyond the county line from where they grew up or went to college or near their grandmothers house. Southerners in particular were fond of such tales. It seemed that everyone who had spent any kind of time below the Mason-Dixon Line had their own favorite oasis. Looking back now, I realize I should not have been surprised by the plethora of similar stories. For decades following the repeal of national prohibition, the South was honeycombed with dry counties and towns; my very unscientific count revealed over one hundred of them still scattered across the region. It only makes sense that folks would create and frequent nearby establishments to shorten the distance to legal liquor.

Perhaps the reason I was surprised by the prevalence of these alcohol oases lying just beyond dry county borders is that this aspect of the regions alcohol policy is largely absent in scholarly discussions. We know a great deal about Southern Baptists, Methodists, and the like and their historical and contemporary antipathy to alcohol. We know, too, of the contribution the regions tortured race relations made to its drive toward prohibition in the early twentieth century. Finally, we know quite a bit about how class and gender played into the onset of prohibition, not only in the South but nationwide. Yet in all that scholarship scant attention is paid to the shops that continued to dispense liquor. Nor have we reckoned with the motives of county and municipal governments that, starved for extra dollars, sought to take advantage of their neighbors moral zealousness. This book seeks in part to remedy that oversight.

The story I will tell is about how one town, little more than a dot on the map, first resisted the introduction of liquor sales into its community and then, upon seeing how much money could be made from liquor, quickly reversed course and used these funds to support all sorts of civic improvements while at the same time completely canceling its local taxes. The importance of the liquor dispensary to North Augustas history was indeed so great that it is still considered one of the towns most important historic institutions, even though it has been gone for almost a century. The little shop in the hollow, as my friend pointed out, was not the only shop of its kind, but few had as big an impact or are as fondly remembered.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T hroughout my work on this project I have been fortunate to receive the support of many people. Taken together, their consistent willingness to give their best on my behalf has left me humbled and truly grateful.

This project began with a memo by Richard Hamm entitled Five Easy Pieces on the South Carolina Dispensary, in which he pointed to vast resources that had gone largely untapped and promised to share what he knew with any willing researcher. Staying true to his word, Dr. Hamm greeted my inquiry with abundant generosity, sending along advice and a rather large box of research materials he had already gathered.

Armed with little more than that boxful of materials and a vague sense of where they would lead, I asked for and received a research sabbatical. I thank my colleagues and the administration at Christopher Newport University for their willingness to take a leap of faith in support of this project; the time I subsequently spent in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History gave me the jump-start I desperately needed. I would especially like to thank Bob Colvin, Marion Manton, Linda Waldron, and Mai Lan Gustafsson, whose kindness throughout this time consistently reminds me of the true meaning of that word.

The staff at the South Carolina state archives, despite working under increasingly dire budgetary constraints, gave generously of their time and vast knowledge. In Augusta I benefited from several visits to the Reese Library Special Collections at Augusta State University. I owe a special thanks to the local museum directors and historians. In North Augusta, Andree Wallgren and Milledge Murray have given both their time and expertise in securing pictures of the dispensary and sharing local lore about its infamous past. At the Aiken County Historical Museum, Brenda Baratto has become a fellow sleuth, searching for local dispensary items, as well as a constant cheerleader and a friend.

As I began to put form to my ideas, I received an invitation to share them at the 2013 Southern Historical Association meetings. My thanks go to Joseph Locke for reaching out and inviting me to join the panel and to Lee Willis and Paul Harvey for giving thoughtful feedback. At the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, Andy Andrews and Charles Seguin have offered consistent encouragement and many enjoyable hours debating the real causes for the success and failure of the prohibition movement, in South Carolina and beyond. These discussions have sharpened my thinking and made this book far better than it otherwise might have been.

At Louisiana State University Press my editor, Rand Dotson, has shown great patience with the slow evolution of this project. I would also like to thank the presss anonymous reviewers for their comments, which helped push the manuscript forward in several key ways, as well as the many others at the press who helped guide it through to publication.

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