Faces Along The Bar

In the book Faces Along The Bar, Madelon Powers talks about the lore and order in the workingman’s saloon between 1870 and 1920. After looking at a picture of a 1890s saloon she decided she wanted to learn more about the “faces along the bar”. She just had to know more about the faces that stared at her through the photograph. That photograph was her inspiration for this study of saloon goers during the nineteenth century. Soon after studying the saloon she soon discovered why they were called “workingman’s club.” In this book Powers intended to demonstrate that working-class saloon goers “represented an extraordinary example of ordinary people developing the potentialities of bar life to the fullest” (7) and she intended to show that saloon club life and lore “constituted a major stepping-stone along the road to cultural integration, self-organization, and cooperative effort within the working class.” (7)
Powers pointed out that the workingman’s ba...