Administering the Pledge: Episodes in San Francisco's Management of Drunken Public Employees, 1858–1920

Abstract

In the 1860s, during the heyday of moral suasion in San Francisco, administering the abstinence pledge was established as a means to control the drunkenness of police and firemen. Almost sixty years later, on the threshold of national Prohibition, San Francisco's Board of Health continued to employ the pledge to discipline employees found drunk on the job. Similarly, San Francisco's Progressive-era judges used the pledge, sometimes in combination with formal probation, to test the necessity of divorce or state hospital commitment. Long after the pledge was in disrepute in the temperance movement and among those who favored the medically supervised incarceration of drunkards, it continued to be a useful probationary and diagnostic tool for public administrators seeking a compromise between toleration and severity.