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The "speakeasy" (or "blind pig") was an illegal bar operated during prohibition (1920-33, and even longer in some states). Most taverns stopped serving alcohol. Drinkers found out-of-the-way speakeasies that would serve them,. They owners had to buy illegal beer and liquor from criminal syndicates (the most famous was run by [[Al Capone]] in Chicago), and had to pay off the police to look the other way. The result was an overall decrease in drinking and an enormous increase organized crime, gang warfare and civic corruption, as well as a decline in tax revenue. Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and legitimate places reopened.
The "speakeasy" (or "blind pig") was an illegal bar operated during prohibition (1920-33, and even longer in some states). Most taverns stopped serving alcohol. Drinkers found out-of-the-way speakeasies that would serve them,. They owners had to buy illegal beer and liquor from criminal syndicates (the most famous was run by [[Al Capone]] in Chicago), and had to pay off the police to look the other way. The result was an overall decrease in drinking and an enormous increase organized crime, gang warfare and civic corruption, as well as a decline in tax revenue. Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and legitimate places reopened.
See [[Prohibition in the United States#Crime and Repeal]]
See [[Prohibition in the United States#Crime and Repeal]]
===Ethnic saloons===
In ethnic neighborhoods of cities, mill towns and mining camps, the saloonkeeper was an important man. Groups of 25-50 recent arrivals speaking the same language--and probably also from the same province or village back in Europe--drank together and frequented the same saloon. They trusted the saloonkeeper to translate and write letters for them, help with transatlantic letters and remittances, keep their savings for them, and explain American laws and customs.<ref> Kingsdale (1975); Duis (1975); Rothbart (1993) </ref>
===Ontario===
===Ontario===
Despite efforts by social reformers to regulate taverns in Ontario, Canada, physical violence linked to drinking was common. Indeed, 19th-century masculinity, derived from earlier models of fur traders in the region, was often predicated on feats of strength and stamina and on skill in fighting. Taverns were the most common public gathering place for males of the working class and thus the site of frequent confrontations. Men's honor and men's bodies, socially and historically linked, found public, and often destructive, expression in the tavern setting.<ref> Kevin B. Wamsley, and Robert S. Kossuth, "Fighting it out in Nineteenth-Century Upper Canada/Canada West: Masculinities And Physical Challenges in the Tavern." ''Journal of Sport History'' 2000 27(3): 405-430. 0094-1700 </ref>
Despite efforts by social reformers to regulate taverns in Ontario, Canada, physical violence linked to drinking was common. Indeed, 19th-century masculinity, derived from earlier models of fur traders in the region, was often predicated on feats of strength and stamina and on skill in fighting. Taverns were the most common public gathering place for males of the working class and thus the site of frequent confrontations. Men's honor and men's bodies, socially and historically linked, found public, and often destructive, expression in the tavern setting.<ref> Kevin B. Wamsley, and Robert S. Kossuth, "Fighting it out in Nineteenth-Century Upper Canada/Canada West: Masculinities And Physical Challenges in the Tavern." ''Journal of Sport History'' 2000 27(3): 405-430. 0094-1700 </ref>
* Rice, Kim. ''Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers'' (1983),
* Rice, Kim. ''Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers'' (1983),
* Rorabaugh, William J. ''The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition'' (1979)
* Rorabaugh, William J. ''The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition'' (1979)
* Rothbart, Ron. "The Ethnic Saloon as a Form of Immigrant Enterprise," ''International Migration Review,'' Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 332-358 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2547128 in JSTOR], study of coal towns in 19c Pennsylvania
* Salinger, Sharon V. ''Taverns and Drinking in Early America'' (2002)
* Salinger, Sharon V. ''Taverns and Drinking in Early America'' (2002)
* Thompson, Peter. ''Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia'' (1999)
* Thompson, Peter. ''Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia'' (1999)