In the workshops of antebellum America, work went on amidst gambling, socializing, singing, storytelling, debating, and drinking. Men wandered in and out of the workplace. As employers, particularly in the new factories of the Gilded Age, took greater control of work, they, as buyers of their workers’ time, succeeded in banning drinking and limiting socializing.58 Male social life and drinking gravitated to a new, largely working-class institution, the saloon.
