Person:

Dolan, Melissa

The Committee of Fifty for the Investigation of the Liquor Problem formed in 1893 to address the growing issue of alcohol in American life. Comprised of prominent businessmen, university leaders, and religious figures, the Committee hoped to provide guidance to American citizens through the results of a ten-year long scientific investigation of alcohol in its relation to economics, physiology, law, and ethics. Because academic leaders such as Charles W. Eliot, Daniel Coit Gilman, Seth Low, William H. Welch, and Henry P. Bowditch were consumed with the process of transforming their institutions into research universities and distinguishing themselves from the crowd of denominational liberal arts colleges, what would have motivated them to commit themselves to an extensive, time-consuming exploration of temperance issues? The work that follows will demonstrate that the university leaders on the Committee dominated its agenda and actions. The Committee of Fifty for the Investigation of the Liquor Problem was not about liquor; it was a vehicle to advance the goals of the university leaders in their efforts to become reputable research universities.

The story of the Committee of Fifty is rarely told in historical scholarship because the Committee’s publications failed to influence the public debate on temperance. Any histories that do exist analyze the Committee’s completed publications or its public battle against the Scientific Temperance Instruction provided in the nation’s primary and secondary schools. The chapters that follow tell a different story. This is an administrative history of the Committee’s internal workings, told by examining its meeting minutes and other behind-the-scenes communications. By analyzing the group from this perspective, a pattern of actions emerges that demonstrates university leaders’ use of the Committee as a new type of fundraising tool to support scientific research, as a platform to demonstrate the value of a medical education, and as an authority to influence secondary school reform. The university leaders’ actions demonstrate that they anticipated the changes that would transform the American research university in the coming decades.