Iowa's Prohibition Plague
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Annals of Volume 78, Number 1 Iowa Winter 2019 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue GLENN EHRSTINE AND LUCAS GIBBS translate and annotate an account of the effects of Prohibition in nineteenth-century Iowa by the longtime editor of the German-language newspaper Iowa Staats-Zeitung. ELLIS HAWLEY reviews the state of the historiography on Herbert Hoover since the last such historiographical review in the Annals of Iowa in 1988. Front Cover This cartoon, published in the German-language newspaper Iowa Staats- Anzeiger on November 9, 1889, after the election of Democratic candidate Horace Boies, proclaims, in translation, “The end of the Prohibition Party in Iowa.” The patient wears a nightcap labeled “Rep[ublican] Party,” and the flask on the nightstand contains “Temp[erance] Reform.” For a German American’s account of the effects of Prohibition in nineteenth-century Iowa, see the feature article in this issue. Editorial Consultants Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State R. David Edmunds, University of Texas University at Dallas Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of H. Roger Grant, Clemson University Chicago William C. Pratt, University of Nebraska William Cronon, University of Wisconsin– at Omaha Madison Glenda Riley, Ball State University Robert R. Dykstra, State University of Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State New York at Albany University The Annals of Third Series, Vol. 78, No. 1 Winter 2019 Iowa Marvin Bergman, editor Contents 1 Iowa’s Prohibition Plague: Joseph Eiboeck’s Account of the Battle over Prohibition, 1846–1900 Glenn Ehrstine and Lucas Gibbs 75 Herbert Hoover and the Historians— Recent Developments: A Review Essay Ellis Hawley 87 Book Reviews and Notices 117 Announcements A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY FOUNDED IN 1863 Copyright 2019 by the State Historical Society of Iowa ISSN 0003-4827 Book Reviews and Notices 87 MARTIN CASE, The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property, by David A. Nichols 89 RICHARD E. BENNETT, ED., The Journey West: The Mormon Pioneer Journals of Horace K. Whitney with Insights by Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, by Brady G. Winslow 89 MICHAEL BURLINGAME, ED., Sixteenth President-in-Waiting: Abraham Lincoln and the Springfield Dispatches of Henry Villard, 1860–1861, by Bryon Andreasen 90 JUDITH GIESBERG AND RANDALL M. MILLER, EDS., Women and the American Civil War: North-South Counterpoints, by Barbara Cutter 92 KRISTOPHER A. TETERS, Practical Liberators: Union Officers in the Western Theater during the Civil War, by Robert Wooster 94 ROBERT R. DYKSTRA AND JO ANN MANFRA, Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West, by Mark R. Ellis 96 JENNIFER GRABER, The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West, by Michael Knock 97 THOMAS BIOLSI, Power and Progress on the Prairie: Governing People on Rosebud Reservation, by Harvey Markowitz 98 ROBERT B. MITCHELL, Congress and the King of Frauds: Corruption and the Credit Mobilier Scandal at the Dawn of the Gilded Age, by Mark Wahlgren Summers 100 MARIAN WILSON KIMBER, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word, by Paige Lush 102 DON L. HOFSOMMER, The Fort Dodge Line: Iowa’s Feisty Interurban, by Simon Cordery 103 LAUREN KROIZ, Cultivating Citizens: The Regional Work of Art in the New Deal Era, by Breanne Robertson 105 STEVEN M. AVELLA, The Catholic Church in Southwest Iowa, by Michael J. Pfeifer 107 SUSAN BARTLETT FOOTE, The Crusade for Forgotten Souls: Reforming Minnesota’s Mental Institutions, 1946–1954, by Jane Simonsen 109 MATTHEW ROTH, Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America, by Rachel Steely 111 ROBERT ROOT, Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth, by Thomas K. Dean 113 NATHANIEL FRANK, Awakening: How Gays and Lesbians Brought Marriage Equality to America, by Christopher Hommerding 115 DIANNA HUNTER, Wild Mares: My Lesbian Back-to-the-Land Life, by Katrina C. Rose Editor’s Perspective AND NOW for something (a little bit) different. This issue of the Annals of Iowa features an article that is highly unusual for the journal. University of Iowa Professor of German Glenn Ehrstine and his student Lucas Gibbs have translated from German a chapter of a history of German Americans in Iowa originally published in 1900. The chapter, thoroughly annotated to provide essential context, offers a lively account of Prohibi- tion in Iowa in the nineteenth century and of efforts, especially by German Americans, to oppose Prohibition. It’s not always politically correct, but it is always interesting. I urge readers interested in learning more about the expe- rience of German Americans in Iowa to explore the website German Iowa and the Global Midwest (https://germansiniowa .lib.uiowa.edu). It is the product of a “public humanities project at the University of Iowa [that] brings together source material on German immigration to Iowa from the State Historical So- ciety of Iowa, the Iowa Women’s Archives, Special Collections at the University of Iowa, the Davenport German American Heri- tage Center, and additional collections throughout the state.” Many of the sources on the site are translated from German, including the rest of Joseph Eiboeck’s history of Germans in Iowa in the nineteenth century, thus making more broadly accessible sources that have previously been accessible only to those who are able to read German. Also in this issue is a review essay by University of Iowa Emeritus Professor of History Ellis Hawley assessing books pub- lished in the past three decades about Herbert Hoover, the only native-born Iowan to become president of the United States. It is a pleasure and an honor to share Hawley’s nuanced under- standing of the period in U.S. history during which Hoover was active politically. Hawley is, in fact, one of the nation’s leading interpreters of the politics and political economy of the so- called New Era. His contributions to revising historians’ under- standing of that era (and the surrounding eras) have been so significant that the Organization of American Historians estab- lished an annual book prize named in his honor “for the best historical study of the political economy, politics, or institutions of the United States, in its domestic or international affairs, from the American Civil War to the present.” He was also intimately involved with many projects associated with the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, where his wisdom and knowledge were highly valued. That wisdom and knowledge are also reflected in his review essay. —Marvin Bergman, editor Iowa’s Prohibition Plague: Joseph Eiboeck’s Account of the Battle over Prohibition, 1846–1900 GLENN EHRSTINE AND LUCAS GIBBS IN 1908 Trumbull White, editor of Appleton’s Magazine, “a high- class monthly” on American culture,1 reviewed the convoluted history of nineteenth-century liquor legislation in Iowa for a three-part series titled “Does Prohibition Pay?” White had no difficulty identifying the leading figure in the state’s anti- Prohibition camp: “Colonel Joseph Eiboeck, militant old Hun- garian warrior, with his Staats-Anzeiger, who had begun in youth as a Good Templar and ended by being the most consistent, in- telligent, and vigorous fighter in the liquor cause.”2 White had good reason to mention the Iowa Staats-Anzeiger as well: edited by the Austro-Hungarian Eiboeck from 1874 until his death in 1913, the weekly “State Advertiser” reached more than 6,000 households throughout the state and kept German Iowans in touch with events in Des Moines.3 Eiboeck made no secret of his publication’s anti-temperance stance, choosing as the paper’s ini- 1. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 5:30. 2. Trumbull White, “Does Prohibition Pay? III. The Test of a State that Recanted,” Appleton’s Magazine 12 (1908), 348. 3. In 1880, six years after Eiboeck assumed control of the paper, its circulation stood at 3,400. By 1895, circulation had risen to 6,400 and remained at that level through 1910. See Karl J. R. Arndt and May E. Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals, 1732–1955: History and Bibliography (Heidelberg, 1961), 138. THE ANNALS OF IOWA 78 (Winter 2019). © State Historical Society of Iowa, 2019. 1 2 THE ANNALS OF IOWA Fig. 1. Masthead of Iowa Staats-Anzeiger, May 2, 1879. Motto: “Ein Organ der persönlichen Freiheit” (A Publication of Personal Liberty). tial motto “personal liberty,” the rallying cry of those who cher- ished their freedom to partake of alcoholic beverages (figs. 1, 2).4 The Staats-Anzeiger was hardly unique in its opposition to the temperance movement: it was only one in a network of more than 30 German-language papers in Iowa prior to World War I, stretching from the Sioux City Volksfreund in the west to Clinton’s Iowa Volkszeitung in the east.5 With German Americans united in their opposition to Prohibition, these papers openly agitated against temperance, promoting the tendentious view that or- ganizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union were hotbeds of female fanaticism.6 4. From January 1875 to October 1882, the motto “Ein Organ der persönlichen Freiheit” appeared on the masthead of each issue. During roughly the same time frame, the equivalent motto “Personal Liberty Organ” appeared at the top of Eiboeck’s weekly English editorial column. 5. See the interactive map of German-language newspapers in Iowa at http://germansiniowa.lib.uiowa.edu/neatline/show/newspaper-map. With the exception of the Davenport Demokrat, Iowa’s premier German newspaper, the German-language press in Iowa has received scant scholarly attention. See Carl Wittke, The German-Language Press in America (Lexington, KY, 1957); William Roba, “Dr. August Richter (1844–1926) and the German-Iowan Press,” chap. 7 of German-Iowan Studies: Selected Essays, New German-American Studies 28 (New York, 2004), 93–107.