The American labor movement started to gains rights for industrial workers, including safer working conditions, better wages, and shorter hours. As American workers habitually visited bars at the end of a hard day’s work to relax and socialize, these places became the center of many conversations and planning for labor activities and organization. Bars encouraged this by providing free private meeting rooms as long as attendees were drinking. Some of these establishments could accommodate thousands of patrons at one time.
Some historians have speculated that Rockefeller and other notable industrialists promoted temperance organizations and helped to push Prohibition into law in order to disrupt these conclaves of union supporters who were using bars as frequent meeting places.
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