You wrote:
>
>I am looking for information on US alcohol consumption rates
>during the 1820s. Any help with figures or references would be
>much appreciated.
>
>Jose C. Curto
Hi Jose...
The standard reference for this period is W.J. Rorabaugh's _The
Alcoholic Republic_ (1979), which provides a time-series table covering
the Early Republic period (1790-1830). Virtually the same table is
available in Rorabaugh's paper, "Estimated U.S. Alcohol Beverage
Consumption, 1790-1860, _Journal of Studies on Alcohol_ 37:357-364,
1976. Rorabaugh's tables suggest that per capita absolute alcohol
consumption rises from 3.1 gaa ("gallons absolute alcohol") in 1790 to
3.7 gaa in 1810, consumption then plateaus in the 3.6-3.7 gaa range to
1825, and, finally peaks at 3.9 gaa in 1830. There are two chief
components to the curve, distilled spirits and hard cider. Rorabaugh's
timee-series shows spirits consumption climbing from 1.2 gaa in 1790 to
2.1 gaa in 1810, dipping back to 2.0 gaa in 1815, and ten climbing to
2.3 gaa by 1830. Cider's trend line, on the other hand, shows a smooth
decline from 1.8 gaa in 1790 to 1.5 gaa in 1830. Wine makes only a
negligible contribution to absolute alcohol intake, and beer (save for
a single year, 1810) makes none at all in Rorabaugh's figures. Alcohol
consumption, according to Rorabaugh's account, fell off very
dramatically from 1830-1845. Rorabaugh cautioned readers that he
intended his figures to serve merely adjuncts to the social history
analysis he was conducting--and hence approximations only that would
not bear the weight of detailed statistical use.
I have been working on re-estimating U.S. historical per capita alcohol
consumption for some time now. My project in is its final months and
I'm busily pulling together its results. Not surprisingly, I am shy
about reporting conclusions that have not been reported through the
proper scholarly channels and cleared all the hurdles of peer review
and criticism. (At the moment I'm deep in the midst of
the draft paper for the estimates for the national Prohibition period,
1920-1933.) Nevertheless, and if ATHGers will promise to read the
following as a purely informal communication, then it will perhaps do
no harm to offer a quick look at my main conclusion regarding this
period:
Rorabaugh's figures are too low--and perhaps substantially too low--for
the early Early-Republic period (1790-1810); per capita consumption may
have begun declining earlier than 1830 however, so that 1820, the year
you asked about, may fall in the midst of a declining trend already
begun after 1810.
This "too low" conclusion turns on an odd little fact. The official
U.S. production/consumption statistics for this period derive from
primarily from tax receipts for the periods 1791-1801 and 1814-1817 and
from "census of manufacture" data deriving from the 1810 and 1820
censuses. Bill Rorabaugh, as it happens, had little regard or use for
these figures in the construction of his tables. Bill listed a number
of quite sound reasons for giving them little attention in his text.
All these reasons suggested that these data would substantially
underestimate actual consumption.
Ironically--surprisingly even--Rorabaugh's estimates are in
fact remarkably similar to contemporary estimates derived from these
assuredly underestimation-plagued contemporary tax and census data.
That's the odd--and key--fact. The implication, of course, is obvious:
If one believes that Rorabaugh's doubts regarding contemporary tax and
census data are essentially correct (and I think we should), then by
extension Rorabaugh's estimates must also be regarded as
underestimates. By how much becomes the chief estimation puzzle--one
that can be addressed only in the broadest of terms however.
Some numbers: The 1810 census of manufacture data provide the best
example of this unanticipated convergence between Rorabaugh's figures
and contemporary official statistics. Considering spirits (cider, BTW,
is a nightmare!): Rorabaugh estimated spirits consumption in 1810 at
4.6 beverage gallons. Tench Coxe's census marshalls reported a total
of 22,977,167 gallons of distilled spirits produced "from fruit and
grain" and 2,827,625 gallons distilled from molasses (i.e., rum) in the
U.S. in 1810. This combined to yield a total domestic spirits
production of 25,804,792 for the year--the output of some 14,191
enumerated distilleries nationwide. Following Seaman (1892), it is
necessary both to add imported spirits gallonages and to subtract
exported and re-exported gallonages to domestic production in order to
adduce a figure reflecting the total quantiy of alcohol available for
domestic consumption in 1810. Seaman (1852:540) employed a mean annual
import figure for the 10-year period from 1803-1812 to estimate spirtis
imports in 1810--his estimate (broadly consistent with figures I
reported at the Baltimore Social Science History conference in 1993)
was about 7.5 million gallons. Export and re-export gallonages totaled
together about 1.3 million gallons. The resulting estimated total
spritis gallonage available for domestic consumption in 1810 was a
little over 32 million beverage gallons. The 1810 census estimated
total population at 7,239,811, which in turn resultes in a national
mean per capita spirits consumption figure of 4.4 gallons--this, I want
to stress, based entirely on official census and import/export duty
statistics (for a similar 1810 result, see Dorchester, 1884:315).
Bill Rorabaugh's estimate of 4.6 beverage gallons per capita is a
little under 5% greater than this 4.4-gallon figure available in
contemporary census and customs statistics. In other words, either the
coverage of these official monitors was much better than we thought, or
Bill's figures must be too low. The latter inference is considerably
stronger. Major sources of underestimation include (1) census
underenumeration and tax underpayment, per se, (2) home production
(re-raising in regard to alcohol consumption, incidentally, the
longstanding social history question of how self-sufficient the
nation's citizens were in the Early Republic period--high
alcohol-related self-sufficiency obviously drives census/tax
underreporting up equivalently higher), and (3) smuggling.
Asigning orders of magnitude--or the broadest possible estimates--to
these sources of unreported or unrecorded production/consumption is, of
course, a daunting exercise. Nevertheless, it may safely be said, I
think, that they represent sufficiently large sources of additional
beverage supply to justify raising Rorabaugh's spirits estimate by
significant factors...I'll leave the description of the ranges
surrounding those estimates until later!
There is more to be told, of course, but perhaps I'd best leave that to
a later time, too. The years 1820 fall in a kind of dark zone for per
capita consumption estimation because of the still poorer census of
manufacure data for that year. If, as I suspect, per capita
consumption began declining earlier than Bill suggested--thus
stretching the time-span Bill allotted for Ian Tyrrell's (1979) long
period of national "Sobering Up"--then consumption in 1820 will have
fallen-off aomewhat from its 1810's level.
I wish I could be more specific, but I've probably said too much
already--i.e., re unpublished work. I'm not exactly sure where email
communication sits in the framework of informal scholarly/research
communication but I can think of no harm this note creates so long as
readers regard it as informal (don't cite or quote!) and as yet
unvetted by review and publication. Please email me if I can be any
further assistance. Good luck!
Comments on my remarks welcome from ATHGers of course!
Ron Roizen
REFS:
Dorchester, Daniel, _The Liquor Problem in All Ages_, 1888,
Seaman, Ezra C., _Essays on the Progress of Nations..._, New York:
Charles Scribner, 1852.
BTW, for an intriguing contemporary account of American drinking, take
a look at Samuael Morewood's _A philosophical and statistical history
of the inventions and customs...in the manufacture and use of
inebriating liquors..._, Dublin: William Curry et al., 1838.
--
Ron Roizen
voice: 510-848-9123
fax: 510-848-9210
home: 510-848-9098
1818 Hearst Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94703
U.S.A.
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