Temperance crusades enforced Protestant middle-class cultural dominance over Catholic immigrant working classes

Evidence

Joseph Gusfield has argued that the crusade against liquor was a “symbolic crusade.” Of course, the “drys” wanted to stamp out the saloon culture and end the reign of alcoholic liquor. But it was also important to make temperance official policy and to uphold temperance as the official standard of morality. This meant that the norms and habits of old-​line, middle-​class, Protestant America, would rule the land, not the norms and habits of Catholics and immigrants from southern and eastern Europe; the norms and habits of the countryside, not that of city folk and the working class, all of whom drank without shame. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3346

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Gusfield’s ‘symbolic crusade’ thesis — moral law as status politics between cultural groups.
• XREF: Parallels the moral-panic reading in this polyad: regulation of vice as class/ethnic/status signaling rather than pure harm prevention. — connects to: Religious justifications for subordination were recycled across successive immigrant groups; Organized counter-proselytizing institutions built the nationalist middle class — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 106; Social whiteness for immigrant groups was conditional on Protestant assimilation (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Social whiteness for immigrant groups was conditional on Protestant assimilation #expands (0.80)
• Cultivated middle classes drove vernacular nationalist movements across Europe #corroborates (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 480
• Religious justifications for subordination were recycled across successive immigrant groups #complicates (0.75)
• Organized counter-proselytizing institutions built the nationalist middle class #corroborates (0.75) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 106