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

[Dave Wilton]

There is an older sense of "growler," dating to the 1840s and cited in HDAS
meaning a complainer or complaint. Perhaps the beer can sense grew out of
this. Could the carry-out customers be more likely to grumble and complain
(about prices, the fact that their husband drank, whatever) than the
ordinary bar customers? Could this tendency have transferred from the person
to the can they were carrying? Just speculation without evidence, but it
seems a less tortured explanation than some of the explanations that have
been bandied about.