Comment on Remember, kids! Unregulated capitalism is not your friend!

PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This lead me down a rabbit hole an introduced me to “Mother’s Ruin” of the cheap gin sold at the time:

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  It gets even more wild the more you read of that article. One guy pawning his wife for a quart of gin…then the government crackdown when things started getting even worse!

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  • TranslateErr0rs@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That was a nice read. Thanks for sharing!

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  • IndiBrony@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    14 gallons per year? Rookie numbers! I drank more than that on a single 7-day binge!

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That 14 gallons number raised all kinds of questions for me:

      • What potency was this gin that could be consumed in this quantity but without killing so many more of its consumers?
      • How can they possibly produce gin this cheap? Slave labor from the Caribbean?
      • What would the logistics look like to move this much gin to a population consuming this much? This is the days before motor vehicles so everything would have had to be moved by human or horse/donkey/mule/cow pulled cart. Steam engines wouldn’t arrive for another 100 years. So it was likely animal cart the number of barrels of gin must have been a river of full carts moving into the city and a river of empty ones headed out all the time.
      • Public sanitation didn’t really exist. Public sewer systems wouldn’t arrive for another 100 years or so so the entire city must have smelled like urine all the time.
      • With the sheer number of gin containers needed for this volume, did they have a “deposit” on bottles like we have sometimes today? Did they have an underground economy of people collecting empties to trade back in?

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      • The_v@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Well your going to wish you weren’t so curious with this one. Source of this information: several museum visits around 30 years ago after a pint or three, so the info might be warped.

        Gin is a double-distilled 40% or higher spirit flavored with juniper + other flavors.

        The source of the alcohol was any carbohydrate or starch source. Whatever was cheapest. It was mostly wheat and barley at the time but just about anything else cheap could be used like rye, turnips, etc. For the cheapest rotgut the ingredients was stuff considered unfit for animal feed (rodent feces, insect damage, molds, water damage, etc).

        Since their ingredients were highly questionable, their input cost was minimal. Heating was from coal. They also started making larger batches which further reduced down the cost.

        Logistics - Canals at this time period was the most important logistic. One donkey pulling a barge could move as much as 50 wagons. Tons of goods were transported cheaply and efficiently on the barges. The gin was shipped in casks/barrels like beer/ale. Bottles were very expensive and reserved for the elite.

        Public sanitation consisted of a gutter on the side of the road. The entire city smelled like the open sewer it was.

        The gin was not served in bottles. It was served like beer or ale into cups/mugs/communal tankards etc … mostly earthenware, leather or wood.

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      • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Slave labor from the Caribbean?

        You’re thinking of rum on that one.

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