Amalgamation or Trust: Anglo-Scottish and American Comparative Legal Institutions and How they Shaped the Nations' Whiskey Industries, 1870-1900

whiskey • manufacture, an unchecked flowering of linked agricultural nd distilling growth displaying small holdings, small pots and minuscule government interference. The Scottish experience ran from around 1600 to 1784, the American from 1802 to 1862. In each case, one household in six possessed rudiments for disfilling; annual per capita spirits consumption exceeded three proof gallons [Caldwell, 1994, p. 132; Downard, 1980, p. 225]. The Scots-Irish became the common denominator, bringing to America three hundred years' distilling knowledge as the remunerative back end to farming. 2 Bad roads along with the desire to remit labor dues in cash gave "whiskey farming" an overwhelming potency: a single Scottish or Irish pony, or American mule, transported either four bushels of gram or sixteen gallons of spirits; a relative price of four gave whiskey a total value multiplier of sixteen 0Dabney, 1974, p. 51]. Whiskey constituted concentrated wealth. Perfectly fungible, it made an ideal exchange medium; easily hidden, it preserved family assets in lawless periods, which usually ruled. In both Scotland and Ireland, intensive agriculture carried on without chemical fertilizers meant that manure constituted the binding constraint. Distillation worked like alchemy, transforming ram into high value spirits while still leaving the dregs for catfie feed. Done off season, distilling increased cattle wintered over, boosting year round manure production and helping