My guess is there were laws forbidding the employment of children in
taverns before there were laws insisting everyone do their part in the
effort to keep children from drinking.  In nineteenth-century temperance
fiction the narrator often worries the children behind the bar will get in
the habit of finishing the leftover sweet toddy they just recently spent
five minutes preparing.  And there is no sense that someone should be
_fined_ for the child's presence behind the bar.  There is instead a sense
that the whole system and business of bars should be dismantled
altogether, because the drunken child is just the tip of the iceberg.  I
bet drinking laws were heavily written and revised after Prohibition, when
anti-alcohol legislators were most resigned to the existence of bars.
They seem like a compromise measure, compared to Prohibition.  Also, no
town has drinking laws without a large police department committed to
enforcing the laws, and capable of enforcing the laws.  Maybe Melanie can
get the date of the first law prohibiting the employment of children in
bars, and get half credit.

Jon Miller
Department of English
University of Iowa

On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, K. Austin Kerr wrote:

> Melanie, I am sorry, but I do not know the answer to your question.  My
> guess is that there were lots of local and maybe even state laws in the
> 19th century regulating the drinking of young people.  Generally, until
> recently, one had to reach the age of 21 before being considered an adulty.
>
> At 06:36 PM 11/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
> >I take AP US History at my school and one day in class, while discussing the
> >Temperance Movement of the 1800's, a question about drinking laws came up.
> >The question asked was, in what year was the first law establishing a minimum
> >age for drinking alcohol enacted?  Also, what was the original minimum age
> for
> >drinking alcohol set at?  My teacher didn't know the answer and offered to
> >give extra participation points to anyone who could find the answer.  I
> >searched all over the internet and could not find the answer.  I would
> greatly
> >appreciate it if you could help me find the answer to these questions.
> Thanks
> >for your help.
> >
> >Melanie
> >[log in to unmask]
> >
> K. Austin Kerr
> Professor of History, Ohio State University
> Columbus Ohio 43210
> voice: 614-292-2613
> fax:    614-292-2282
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> http://www.history.ohio-state.edu/people/kerr.htm
>