David Fahey's question is most interesting; it is one which has puzzled
me for a few years now.  What we have in the colonial era is rational
communal and familial commitments along with high levels of alcohol
consumption.  By the mid 19th century, consumption levels had in fact
dropped, and reform movements organized to give us prohibition in the
twelve states and two Canadian provinces.  There were a few crucial
factors, I believe, in the mid nineteenth century which helped to
transform alcohol into the source of irrationality in society as
understood by certain Anglo Protestants.
 
First, there is an ethnic component here.  The Irish had
emigrated to all of the New England states, New York, and the two
Canadian provinces where alcohol was prohibited.  It was the Irish's
public consumption of alcohol--their comraderie and preference for going
out in groups--that brought the charge of disorderliness or
irrationality.  Alcohol consumption remained a part of English Americans'
lives, but in the private respectable context.  Thus we have the
conflation of the Irish and irresponsible drinking and the beginning, it
seems to me, of a long history of associating drugs with unwanted
foreigners.
 
Second, as cities and villages became new sites for textile and other
types of early industrial labor, a new spatial dynamic was witnessed
near the central parts of cities.  The new entrepreneurial elite lived
in this central area and their firms were located along the rivers and
waterways.  The jobs to which the Irish and many working class English
gravitatedwere there, close to the elite residences, and close to the
emerging central business district.  Any public disruption of these two
preferred sites could be understood as not going along with what city
fathers had chosen for the future of the city.  The workers, of course,
settled where they could near their jobs.  It was family-oriented
immigrants like the Germans in Detroit and French-Canadians in many New
England cities who found some favor among the English for centering
their lives on family and church-- unlike the Irish.
 
Finally, in this early industrial period, we have the beginnings of the
increased regimentation which would later dominate society and,
according to Roger Lane, contribute to the increasing orderliness of
society by 1900, but without much regimentation yet in the nature of
work.  In other words, workers lives were not yet regimented.  They
were still essentially operating in a pre-industrial mode by lifting
logs, hammering railroad ties, and such.  The work was physical and
tedious--factors which supposedly existed on farms and among porters in
colonial society and justified drinking on the job.
 
In this situation of emerging entrepreneurial elites, trying to make
their cities beautiful and wholesome, the continuation of preindustrial
work habits were perhaps unacceptable, particularly when equated
with the loathsome Irish.  These factors, I think--the ethnic, spatial,
and nature-of-work aspects--help us to understand why the rationality of
drinking became redefined for those trying to industrialize
America.  In some ways, of course, the public-private distinction had
been around in colonial society as well, and there was continuity in what
constituted proper drinking.  But these underlying social factors are
very important.
 
Thanks for the question.
 
Mike Martin
Temple University, History