For railway construction workers and pioneer settlers, the western saloon was something of a replacement for the home. In regions short of women, recreation, or of any sort of settled life, the saloon was a centre of drinking, gambling, and of some contact, however brief, with women. After weeks of brutal work, a man's only recreation would be a short spree costing him all of his earnings and often leaving him in debt. It established a pattern of heavy drinking and prostitution that was a feature of western life until World War I.
