Rush/Work the Growler (1883, 1884) on Ancestry.com--(Some questions)

[Gerald Cohen]

   I'm particularly interested in one sentence below: "It is called
the growler because it provokes so much trouble in the scramble after
beer."

    Does this sound plausible?  Would there really be a scramble for
beer? Was there not enough beer to go around? And why would the can
be the growler, i.e., "that which growls"? It might be the
"growl-provoker," but any growling would be done by the customers.

    And if the Sunday-serving of liquor was outlawed, why does the
1883 Trenton Times article describe the growler (beer can) as "the
legitimate outgrowth of the enforcement of the Sunday liquor law"?
Why "legitimate"?

    Would anyone have any ideas on all this?

Gerald Cohen


At 2:06 AM -0400 7/28/03, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>    From the Ancestry.com newspapers.
>
>    20 June 1883, TRENTON TIMES (Trenton, NJ), pg.2, col. 2:
>    The growler is the latest New York institution.  It is a beer can, the
>legitimate outgrowth of the enforcement of the Sunday liquor law.  Young men
>stand on the sidewalk and drink their beer out of a can, which, as fast as
>emptied, is sent to be refilled where-ever its bearer can find
>admittance.  It is called the growler because it provokes so much
>trouble in the scramble after beer.
>
>
>    14 November 1884, ATCHISON GLOBE (Atchison, Kansas), pg.3?, col. 4:
>    "I have heard that in New York people of the working-class, who live in
>tenement-houses, send out a pitcher for beer in the evening.  They call it
>'working the growler.'  Here in Chicago the best people indulge in
>the degrading
>practice, I regret to say."
>
>(From the CHICAGO TRIBUNE--ed.)