In W.J. Rorabaugh’s book, The Alcoholic Republic, Rorabaugh closely examines how alcohol in early American history greatly shaped American society. In the early America’s, heavy drinking was considered normal, and although a variety of alcohol was consumed by Americans, “the beverages they drank were for the most part distilled liquors, commonly known as spirits” (Rorabaugh, 7). Rorabaugh demonstrated throughout his book how the exceedingly high alcohol consumption in the nineteenth-century greatly affected the economic development in America. Rum, other alcohols, and goods were bartered which helped boost the newly developing American economy (Rorabaugh, 60). Alcohol impacted the early American economy by promoting trade, making agriculture …show more content…
This caused a great rush in westward expansion, for farmers with distillers were desperate to make money off of whiskey (Rorabaugh, 80). But, the physical barrier created by the Appalachian mountains that made it difficult for the West to trade their whiskey (Rorabaugh,77). They were isolated from the East, and land transportation of goods was expensive and impractical (Rorabaugh, 77). This caused the need for the West to become self-sufficient. The Western distilling companies were soon competing with the Eastern distilling companies in whiskey sales. Though the Western whiskey was slightly more expensive due to high shipping costs, the grain quality made for better whiskey so consumers still purchased the product (Rorabaugh, 78). There soon became a surplus of grain, especially in the West, due to the large amounts of farmers trying to cash in on the distillation process to then sell whiskey for profit. The surplus of grain in the West along with later developments for transporting whiskey, such as steamboats and canals, created an abundance of cheap whiskey, ending this economic movement. But, this “period of plentiful spirits can be viewed as an episode in the maturation and development of the American economy” (Rorabaugh, 87). The surplus of grain that created the downfall for the whiskey industry also “show[ed] a lack of economic imagination, a kind of stale and mindless attachment to custom, and the inability of Americans to envision a better use for their agricultural surplus” (Rorabaugh,88). The rise in the grain distillment and whiskey industry shows a huge movement for the American