Liquor and the Liberal State

Drink and Order before Prohibition

By Dan Malleck
Categories: Political Science, History, Canadian History, Public & Social Policy
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774867160, 416 pages, May 2022
Paperback : 9780774867177, 416 pages, December 2022
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774867184, 416 pages, May 2022
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774867191, 416 pages, May 2022

Table of contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Arguing over Liquor and Liberalism

Part 1: Managing the Province’s Liquor Problem

1 The Place of the Government in the Drinks of the People

2 Centralization, I: The Crooks Act

3 Power and Influence in the New System

4 Politics, Law, and the License Branch

Part 2: The Complications of Liquor in a Federal Liberal State

5 How Drinking Affects the Constitution, 1864–83

6 McCarthy and Crooks Enter a Tavern, 1883–85

7 Attempting to Water Down the Scott Act, 1884–92

8 Plebiscites as Tools for Change? 1883–94

9 Talking and Blocking National Prohibition, 1891–99

10 Dodging Decisions at the End of the Liberals’ Era, 1894–1905

11 Drinking in Whitney’s Conservative Liberal State, 1905–07

12 Centralization, II: Beyond the Crooks Act, 1907–16

Conclusion: Liquor, Liberalism, and the Legacy of the Crooks Act

Appendix 1: Questions Sent by the Select Committee

Appendix 2: Liquor-Related Laws in Force in Ontario

Notes; Index

Description

Cultural pastime, profitable industry, or harmful influence on the nation? Liquor was a tricky issue for municipal, provincial, and federal governments after Confederation. Liquor and the Liberal State traces the Ontario provincial government’s takeover of liquor regulation by in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores how notions of individual freedom, equality, and property rights were debated, challenged, and modified in response to an active prohibitionist movement and equally active liquor industry. The drink question became as political as it was moral – a key issue in the establishment of judicial definitions of provincial and federal rights and, ultimately, in the crafting of the modern state.