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. [log in to unmask]