To rush the growler (sometimes to roll the growler and other forms) was to take a container to the local bar to buy beer. The growler was the container, usually a tin can. Brander Matthews wrote about it in Harper’s Magazine in July 1893: “In New York a can brought in filled with beer at a bar-room is called a growler, and the act of sending this can from the private house to the public-house and back is called working the growler”. The job of rushing the growler was often given to children.
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