Intemperate Men: Alcohol and Autonomy within the Lumber Camps of Michigan’s

Abstract

In industrial settings of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, capital often instilled discipline through control of social behaviors. Among those, alcohol consumption was most often targeted due to its effects on worker productivity. Although many industrial settings of this time enforced sobriety policies, the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company (CCI) never enforced sobriety within their lumber camps. CCI took a hands-off approach to managing their lumber camps, which allotted their workers a great deal of autonomy. These lumber camps provide the opportunity to explore how workers used alcohol within an industrial setting when given autonomy. Looking at bottle remains and the context of feature areas they were recovered from, I examined how alcohol consumption related to variables such as ethnicity, class, and residency amongst workers. From this, I explore how these variables influenced workers use of alcohol in a setting where they had the autonomy to do so freely.