“The people's will”: Canadians and the 1898 referendum on alcohol prohibition

Support for Repealing Prohibition: An Analysis of State‐Wide Referenda on Ratifying the 21st Amendment

“…Second, although there is near universal agreement that Catholic areas were more likely to oppose prohibition, there is disagreement about which religious denominations were associated with support for prohibition. Previous studies conclude that evangelical Protestants were associated with greater support for prohibition (Wasserman, , ; Dinan and Heckelman, ; Dostie and Dupre, ). Furthermore, Dinan and Heckelman () show significant differences not only between evangelicals and nonevangelicals, but also among evangelical denominations.…”

“…In explaining variation in support for prohibition repeal, we first consider the effect of urban residence. Our expectation is that urban areas, because they are more heterogeneous and home to more saloons (Dostie and Dupre, :508; Lewis, :377), were more supportive of repeal. The percentage of urban residents in each state is taken from the 1930 census, which generally defined urban areas as cities and incorporated areas with a population above 2,500 as well as townships with a population above 10,000 and a minimum population density level.…”

“…Third, work remains to be done to determine the direction and significance of the correlation between income level and support for prohibition repeal. Some scholars have hypothesized that higher‐income earners were particularly supportive of enacting prohibition in the 1910s, due to the “upper class imposing its values and control onto the lower classes” (Dostie and Dupre, :512). However, scholars examining prohibition repeal in the 1930s have noted that upper‐income individuals were quite active in the repeal movement, in part because they perceived a connection between prohibition repeal and reduction or elimination of federal income taxes that primarily affected upper‐income earners (Okrent, :332).…”

Contributions to Canadian economic history: The last 30 years

“…They document the political interests involved in the efforts to control and in some cases ban the sale of such products as margarine, cigarettes and alcohol (Dupré , Alston et al. and Dostie and Dupré ).…”

“…Ruth Dupré and her co-authors have used similar political economy models of vote determination in their studies of product regulation in Canada. They document the political interests involved in the efforts to control and in some cases ban the sale of such products as margarine, cigarettes and alcohol(Dupré 1999, Alston et al 2002and Dostie and Dupré 2012. 18 This is not to discount the pioneering statistical work ofMcDiarmid (1946),Fowke (1952) andBarnett (1966).…”