Instead, in the late nineteenth century, party alignments were largely tribal—vast patronage networks competing for spoils. Reinforcing regional economic divisions were ethnic divisions and a cultural and urban-rural cleavage not entirely unlike the cultural and urban-rural cleavage today. Prohibition (and undergirding that, religious conservatism) was a major dividing line in American politics from the 1890s until the 1930s, when it was effectively removed from the national agenda by repeal.
