My narrative is largely about the struggle between what emerged in the nineteenth century as “respectability” and “unrespectability”—a struggle that focused on the conventional minor vices of my title. But what I shall describe was not a simple clash between the forces representing two cultural standards. In the twentieth century, unrespectability began to take on special attributes. It drew upon transformations in commerce and demography and interacted with many other important social and cultural changes, with the result that by the late twentieth century, unrespectability overwhelmed traditional respectability in American society.

In a social context, the “bad habits” were...

Merchandisers of alcoholic beverages were always the most important element among the American proponents of the minor vices, and they usually took a leadership role as well among the cultural groups with an interest in drinking. But in the early twentieth century, alcoholic-beverage makers and sellers suffered a great defeat when reformers got the business outlawed (but not drinking itself), first in many states and localities and then, by means of federal law and the Eighteenth Amendment, throughout the country. As soon as the court appeals and other hopes of escaping the law had ended, those with a financial stake...

From the time of the first English settlements in America, drinking had been a traditional and accepted custom. Only as critics appeared in the early nineteenth century did it become possible to begin to identify certain groups as proponents of alcoholic-beverage production and consumption. Those working for temperance, rather than against it, have so far attracted almost all the attention. Writing in 1982 on the early history of temperance and prohibition in Massachusetts, Robert L. Hampel noted that “no work has ever examined the enemies of temperance—the anti-prohibitionists, the sellers, and the drunkards.” Although it is true that most...

The history of smoking is substantially different from that of drinking. Yet opponents—and to a remarkable extent proponents—of the two associated alcohol and tobacco together in the traditional constellation of minor vices, an association that continued in the consumer society of the twentieth century. But only relatively late, as tobacco people continued to use the traditional arguments that individual responsibility would take care of all problems, and as they defied a new public-health consensus, did they develop antisocial identities.

Smoking—and the use of tobacco generally—had even before the nineteenth century had what later became the stigma...

Taking “drugs” for pleasure rather than health has been a standard category of behavior for a number of generations. Moreover, American culture provided a special category for this kind of activity, different from the special categories provided for the use of the two other important substances with psychological effects, alcohol and tobacco. Indeed, it was only in the 1960s and 1970s that the highly deviant status of drug taking softened in the United States. Yet drug taking had developed traditional associations with the other elements in the constellation of minor vices—particularly with smoking, as when nineteenth-century drug “fiends” often...

An ancient and very widely practiced human activity, wagering is known in most human cultures. But in America, gambling has traditionally been considered a bad habit. Like drug taking, gambling undermined the work ethic and embodied the danger of addiction. And, also traditionally, betting of one kind or another was connected to games and sports.

By the time the English colonies were founded, the problems of gambling in a commercial society were already well known. The colonists and their descendants therefore had continuously to cope with New World versions of wagering. As in the Old World, Americans found the practice...

Regardless of what they may have done privately, most Americans from colonial days to the late twentieth century believed that sexual activity outside of conventional monogamous marriage constituted misbehavior on some level. At all times, a variety of citizens nevertheless questioned the standards at least implicitly. But anyone who advocated alternative sexual standards operated within a very complicated and constantly shifting social context.

In the nineteenth century, despite local differences in behavior, standards tended to be general and conventional. By the first half of the twentieth century, implicit standards tended to diverge by social class. And by the last half...

Swearing provides a gauge with which to measure the extent to which the influence of the proponents of the minor vices penetrated American life and institutions in general. Yet swearing was different from the other elements in the constellation. The use of offensive language involved no overt behavior outside of verbal communication. “Words can never hurt me” was folk wisdom.¹ Nevertheless, some words, offensive words, evoked powerful effects.

Also, unlike the other bad habits, swearing seldom directly involved large commercial interests. Only entertainers and media executives who increased the size of audiences by using the power of shocking expressions to...

The foregoing chapters show that as economic and demographic changes took place, proponents of each of the commonplace misbehaviors of the nineteenth century turned into a powerful force, by the mid twentieth century influencing American culture as a whole. Each of the bad habits developed momentum independently. But in the end, each one converged with the others. Together they formed the dynamic, evolving minor vice-industrial complex that was based on culture as well as on an inordinate desire for profits. The next two chapters will recontextualize and highlight patterns and trends in the histories of drinking, smoking, drug taking, gambling,...

The successes of the advocates of the minor vices were portentous. But in the secular world of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, it must have seemed silly to take every little aspect of misbehavior seriously. Certainly there ought to have been a place for innocent fun and colorful style. And in a society in which impersonal social change operated, why should one person’s single action have had any significance?

Yet it was precisely the openings created by such commonsense observations that permitted the Victorian underworld to expand so effectively. Through myriad individual actions and the inclinations of whole population groups, the...

The victory of the advocates of the minor vices was not complete, even in the closing years of the twentieth century. Many Americans remained still to be recruited, and the quest for even more profits continued. Moreover, the natural history of the minor vices showed that proponents of the various parts of the constellation still had to contend with two threatening realities of American society. The first was that, in the face of obvious consequences of the various bad habits, spontaneous resistance often appeared, resistance that was not initially moralistic but was instead based on experience. And the second was...