Town Meeting Minute -- A Heady Mix of Booze and Politics

For the most part, electing a board of selectmen is a sleepy affair. Not so when the temperance movement was riding high around the turn of the 20th century. Before Prohibition, towns could choose to allow or ban the sale of alcohol. At town meeting, historian Stuart Wallace says, townspeople might see two slates of selectmen pitted against each other – one wet and one dry. Town meetings could get testy.

WALLACE: They would go forever, all day all night long just trying to elect a selectman. And they couldn’t do it. The issue was that heated.

Towns might swing back and forth from one year to the next. Factory owners tended to favor a ban but some towns had a vested interest in keeping alcohol legal. They could appoint a town liquor agent who collected a percentage on every bottle. With the repeal of prohibition in 1933, the state thought that sounded pretty good and set up its own collection agent; it’s called the New Hampshire liquor commission.

With this town meeting minute, I’m Jon Greenberg.