BREWING BATTLES A HISTORY OF AMERICAN BEER BREWING BATTLES A HISTORY OF AMERICAN BEER AMY MITTELMAN Algora Publishing New York © 2008 by Algora Publishing. All Rights Reserved www.algora.com No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976) may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data — Mittelman, Amy. Brewing battles : a history of American beer / Amy Mittelman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-572-0 (trade paper: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-573-7 (hard cover: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-87586-574-4 (ebook) 1. Beer—United States--History. 2. Beer industry—United States—History. 3. Beer—Taxation—United States—History. I. Title. TP573.U6M58 2007 641.2’309—dc22 2007036283 Front Cover: Top: Bub’s BBQ, Sunderland, MA. by Alan Berman Bottom: Smiling woman with beer glass © Emely/zefa/Corbis Back Cover: Author photo by Andrea Burns. Printed in the United States This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Beatrice and Louis Mittelman TA B LE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CH APTER 1. EVERY MAN HIS OWN BREWER : BREWING IN T H E UNITED STATES DURING T H E COLONIAL , EARLY NATIONAL , AND ANTE B ELLUM PERIODS 5 CH APTER 2. MORALITY FOLLOWS IN T H E WAKE OF MALT LIQUOR : TH E BREWING INDUSTRY AND T H E FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 1862–1898 23 CH APTER 3. DO AS T H E ROMANS DO: DRINKERS , SALOONS , AND BREWERS , 1880–1898 47 CH APTER 4. WH O WILL PAY T H E TAX ? BREWERS AND T H E BATTLE OVER PRO H I B ITION , 1905–1933 71 CH APTER 5. BEER FLOWS : REPEAL OF PRO H I B ITION , 1933–1941 97 CH APTER 6. BEER : TH E MORALE BUILDER , 1942–1952 125 CH APTER 7. MILLER TIME , 1953–1986 149 CH APTER 8. JOE AND JANE SIX PACK , 1970–2006 173 CONCLUSION 201 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 203 WORKS CITED 205 Government Documents 205 Proceedings and Reports 206 Newspapers and Periodicals 207 Articles 213 Pamphlets, Dissertations, and Unpublished Materials 214 INDEX 217 INTRODUCTION Beer is one of humankind’s oldest drinks. There is evidence that humans have been drinking beer since the beginning of civilization. In early modern Europe people considered beer essential for good health. The Mayflower landed at Plym- outh Rock in part because they were running out of beer. Taxes on beer have at times provided over fifty percent of this country’s in- ternal revenue and the industry today has a gross national product of $144 bil- lion. Some 84 million Americans drink beer. This is more people than drink milk, according to some estimates. The marketing and drinking of beer are facts of daily American life. I like to drink beer; I have done so since the age of eleven. In 1965 my father lost his job. My sister was fifteen, my brother eighteen. My mother, an eternal optimist, looked at this as an opportunity for our family to take an extended vacation, while we were all still “home” and able to travel together. The five of us flew to Denver and proceeded to drive across the western part of the United States. Each night at dinner, my father would order a beer, and I would ask for a taste. Researching this book, I discovered that alcohol and tobacco taxes played a large role in supporting the financial activities of the federal government from 1862 to 1913 and that, in self defense, beer brewers formed the United States Brewers Association (USBA). It turns out to have been the country’s oldest trade association, and it lasted 124 years. The relationship between the federal gov- ernment and the liquor industry is an important part of the story, but it is the enjoyment beer provides that led me to focus on beer and brewing in the first 1 Brewing Battles : A History of American Beer place. Thus I highlight the German brewers who founded the USBA to amelio- rate federal taxation. Those brewers were first generation German immigrants who came to America and transformed the brewing industry. The story of beer brewing in America is a classic immigrant story. Steeped in the long brewing traditions of their homeland, Germans came to this country determined to make lager beer the nation’s premier beverage. They labored hard, persevered through a devastating Prohibition, rose again, and achieved their goal. Yet, as happened to so many immigrants and their descendants, at the very moment of their tri- umph a challenge arose. Micro-brewers and craft brewers claimed the German immigrant brewers’ descendants had lost their soul on the way to the top. This morality play of beer, its evolution into a multimillion dollar business with a per- vasive influence throughout American society, and the determination of micro- brewers not to let the craft and traditional aspects of brewing be lost forever are the latest chapters in beer’s long history in America. The German ethnicity of the early brewing entrepreneurs gave a distinctly modern cast to the American industry. The brewers accepted government regu- lation and organized themselves to facilitate their relationship with the federal government. The USBA was formed in 1862. Most American industries did not develop such cohesiveness until the 1930s or later. In our current consumer society where extremely large businesses dominate most industries, it is tempting to see each industry as nothing more than those businesses. Almost all industries began with many small firms competing for their share of the market. All these businesses faced the rules and regulations of the national government as well as local municipalities. The sense that they would fare better if combined occurred to the brewers very early on. Thus the USBA was born. Other industries also saw the need for such unity; by the 1930s, most industries had some form of industry-wide association. For brewers, the association could provide a public face that would present and promote the in- dustry in a favorable light, something that was very important to an industry that was illegal for fourteen years. As the brewing industry grew and consoli- dated, there became fewer and fewer breweries. The need for unity within the in- dustry, however, did not disappear. This book looks at how these needs changed over time as the industry changed. Industry does not operate in a vacuum. The United States brewing industry has been the object of federal taxation since 1862. Further, brewing, along with manufacturers of distilled spirits and wine, is one of only two economic activi- ties which legislation has ever prohibited. The other, slavery, has obviously not returned while the cessation of liquor manufacture was only temporary. 2 Introduction Brewing in America has always proceeded under the watchful eye of the federal government. This book will discuss the relationship between the federal government and the brewing industry, as well as specific breweries. This rela- tionship goes back to the origins of the brewing industry and the origins of this country; milestones include the initiation of federal taxation and the brewers’ response, the growth of the industry under the system of federal taxation, the cessation of taxation with the advent of Prohibition, and the resumption of taxa- tion with Repeal. When liquor manufacture first resumed in 1933, the federal government ex- pected brewers to play their historic role of providing revenue via excise taxes. The country had had an income tax since 1913, and the country’s financial struc- ture further diversified during the Depression and World War II. Although beer, liquor, and wine all helped finance World War II and the Korean War, the coun- try’s revenue no longer depended so heavily on liquor taxes. This, however, did not mean that the government would not play a role in regulating the liquor industry. This book looks at the growth and consolidation of the brewing indus- try in the forty year period of 1951–1991, during which taxes remained stationary. Taxes did not rise, but breweries were required to place a warning label on beer bottles, create returnable cans, and not sell liquor to people under the age of twenty-one. The Federal Minimum Age Act, 1984, set twenty-one as the legal drinking age; brewers, large and small, once again faced the reality that the federal gov- ernment possessed the power to regulate the industry as much or as little as it pleased. The federal presence in the brewing industry originated with the need for revenue. This need has persisted; much of federal intervention correlates with how much revenue the government needs. The book examines the ebb and flow of federal regulation of the brewing industry with Prohibition as its peak. An industry is not just corporate executives or consumers. It is also people whose innovations, decisions, and actions contribute to the development and evolution of the product and the business that purveys the product. Brewers, brewmasters, workers, and drinkers all contributed to the growth of the indus- try. The book looks at these different elements from the early colonial period to the present. In examining society from a historical perspective, one cannot simply take the reality of the present and read it backwards. Anheuser–Busch leads the brewing industry and controls over fifty percent of the United States market. Investigating that one fact can tell us much about society today. Yet one cannot assume Anheuser–Busch’s dominance in the past.