Prohibition Page 6

  The brewers supported wet candidates or wet positions in referenda by funneling money through the German-American Alliance. The Alliance lobbyist in Washington, DC, was Julius Moersch, who was also the lobbyist for the National Liquor Dealers Association. The Alliance then transferred money to wet office seekers or to campaign committees organized to defeat local option or statewide prohibition referenda. Its funds paid for leaflets, rallies, speakers, hall rent, and decorations, as well as hiring beaters to get out the vote on Election Day. Much of the money was spent on newspaper advertising or inserting wet stories into rural or small-town newspapers. Brewers also financed the wet journalist Arthur Brisbane’s purchase of the Washington Times. The usual argument was that prohibition was an extreme response to alcohol abuse. Wets advocated responsible use of a light beverage consumed in moderation and saw each American as a free person who had a right to decide whether or not to drink. Personal liberty had been very effective in destroying prohibition during the 1850s, and it remained the single most potent wet argument until prohibition ended in 1933.

  The United States Brewers’ Association (USBA), the trade group whose meeting minutes were kept in German, controlled the wet campaign. As prohibition became a more serious threat, the USBA, led by the charismatic brewer Adolphus Busch, assessed each member 3 cents a barrel. The Alliance sent this money to the states, counties, and cities where it was needed. Busch was a brilliant businessman with an ambiguous national identity. The family owned a lot of property in Germany, including one large castle, and the company imported the hops it used in St. Louis from Central Europe. After Adolphus Busch died in 1913, his widow, a German immigrant to the United States who had never acquired US citizenship, spent time in Germany. She happened to be at the castle when the war started, and she used her citizenship to save the family’s German property during World War I. Meanwhile, their American-born son, August Busch, who could not be a dual citizen under American law, used his American citizenship to save the family’s property in the United States.

  In 1911, there had been an ugly statewide prohibition battle in the key state of Texas, where beer had been a local staple since German immigrants arrived before the Civil War. When wets narrowly won the statewide vote, the dry forces charged “wholesale fraud.”33 There was widespread vote-buying in Mexican American areas, and wet urban machines allowed double voting; they made sure drunks voted by carrying them to the polls. On the other side, the New York Times reported that dry supporters had visited African American homes in the middle of the night before the election to warn against voting. What most enraged the drys, however, was the tremendous money that backed the wet side, which made powerful and effective use of leaflets, pamphlets, newspaper ads, planted articles, and cash. Drys had only women, who did not yet have the vote in Texas; evangelical preachers; and a handful of prominent politicians, including Morris Sheppard, who went on to the US Senate and would sponsor the Eighteenth Amendment.34

  Texas saloons and brewers denied that they had spent money on the referendum. To do so would have violated Texas election laws, which the dry legislature had engineered to prevent liquor money from buying a victory. The drys forced another statewide referendum in 1914, when Texas voters again narrowly rejected prohibition. This time the Texas attorney general filed an anti-trust lawsuit against several state brewers who owned or controlled many tied-house saloons. When the brewery and saloon records were subpoenaed, they revealed that the industry had been telling a partial truth about wet expenditures in the two elections. In 1915, the public learned that in the 1911 referendum, the St. Louis brewer Adolphus Busch had written a letter offering a personal $100,000 campaign contribution.

  World War I began in Europe in 1914, and although the United States did not enter the war until 1917, tension rose between the United States and Germany from the beginning. Not only did Americans sympathize with Britain and France as democracies, but American trade was tied to London. As the British and French sold foreign assets to buy food and military supplies in the United States, Americans worried that the Germans would engage in sabotage against American industry that aided the Allied side. In 1915, the National Civic Federation, a private investigative service, discovered a plot in a German saloon in Paterson, New Jersey, to blow up munitions plants. German saboteurs destroyed dozens of ships and burned many American munitions plants. The insurance industry was alarmed. Just how and where did the German government recruit its saboteurs? Many Americans suspected saloons and beer gardens where German Americans gathered.

  In 1916, the public learned that wet money spent in the Texas prohibition referenda in 1911 and 1914 as well as in other states had come from the kaiser-funded German-American Alliance. As it turned out, the kaiser had not provided any contributions. Instead, the funds had come from the American brewing industry, especially from the Busch family. The brewers had deceived the public by hiding their role in funding the wet campaign, and they had used as their vehicle the official German government-sponsored Alliance. They had tried to hide the tie between the brewers and the Alliance, and they had also hidden the tie between the Alliance and the expenditures. The German-American Alliance’s wetness was not just about an immigrant community’s love of beer. The Texas brewers were charged with violating the state’s election laws. Seven local brewers and two out-of-state brewers, including Busch, pled nolo contendere and paid a $289,000 fine.

  In spring 1916, the New York World published documents showing that the German-American Alliance had supported the German war effort since 1914. The New York Times called the revelations “astounding.”35 Given dry charges that the German government was trying to weaken the United States militarily, economically, and morally, the result was devastating. By late 1916, no American office seeker could take campaign funds from either the brewers or the German American community. Suddenly, even before the United States entered the war against Germany in April 1917, the wets were disarmed. In November, Wayne Wheeler warned, “The liquor traffic . . . is the strong financial supporter of the German-American Alliance. The purpose of this alliance is to secure German solidarity . . . and oppose any restriction or prohibition of the liquor traffic.”36 The next year, Congress revoked the charter of the German-American Alliance, which vanished overnight. By then, orchestras had stopped playing German music and sauerkraut had become “liberty cabbage.” George Sutherland, a dry leader in Minnesota, said, “The question for every American citizen to decide now is whether he is for this country or for the Kaiser.”37

  The world war also aided the American dry cause. Early in the war, the Russian government abolished its state distillery system in favor of wartime prohibition. Widely praised at the time, this disastrous policy deprived the government of needed revenue, led to massive illicit distilling, and helped bring down the tsar’s regime. Britain restricted the amount of grain available for brewing and distilling, imposed a liquor ban in a few key industrial areas, shortened the hours that alcohol could be sold, and adopted state-run public houses in the industrial district in Carlisle, England. Canada, which had entered the war in 1914 and was a major food supplier to Britain, adopted wartime prohibition. Alcohol restrictions had global appeal. After the war, prohibition continued for a few years in most Canadian provinces, Finland banned beverages having more than 2 percent alcohol until 1932, and Norway stopped the sale of distilled spirits until 1927.

  Events in the United States moved quickly in 1917. The new Congress, which normally would not have met until December 1917, was called into special session on April 2 after German submarines had attacked American shipping in the Atlantic. Four days later, Congress declared war against Germany. France and especially Britain were running short of food, much of which had to be imported. The progressive magazine the Independent asked, “Shall the many have food, or the few have drink?”38 To save food, Congress in August passed the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act, which provided that no foodstuffs could be distilled. The brewers’ union played a role in getting beer exempte
d. Hard liquor that was in storage could be sold, but new whiskey could not be made. To conserve foodstuffs further, in December President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order, as permitted by the statute, to cut the amount of grain that could be brewed by 30 percent, and he ordered that all beer be only 2.75 percent alcohol, which was one-third to one-half below normal strength. In July 1918, Wilson cut brewers’ coal allotments by 50 percent.

  The Selective Service Act passed in May 1917 called American men for military service. The new law banned alcohol from training camps and adjacent areas. Not every jurisdiction complied, including a defiantly wet St. Paul, Minnesota, which was close to Fort Snelling. The US Army inspector general told the press, “Conditions [are] worse here than anywhere I know of. . . . [I]f I had my way I would withdraw the soldiers, [and] lock the doors on the Snelling barracks.”39 The military restriction greatly expanded the number of places in the country that were dry. Congress also banned soldiers from being served alcohol in uniform. Of course, when the doughboys got to France they found plenty of wine, although it seldom reached the trenches. The military introduced cigarettes to the troops as a substitute for alcohol. Nicotine kept soldiers awake on guard duty, which alcohol did not do. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers became addicted to cigarettes.

  On December 18, 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. The House vote was 282–128; Senate, 47–8. Although the prohibition amendment was closely identified with Senator Morris Sheppard (D-TX), its main sponsor in the Senate, it was largely written by Wayne Wheeler, who had constructed the measure to get the two-thirds vote in each house. It is worth quoting the first and second paragraphs in full:

  Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

  Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

  A third section provided that the states had seven years from the date of submission to ratify the amendment. Ratification was completed on January 16, 1919.

  Brewers and distillers demanded compensation for their property. As a matter of principle, drys were unwilling to pay one cent to the alcohol industry. The one-year delay from ratification to implementation was designed to give the industry time to sell off its stock and enter other businesses. As the press noted at the time, the amendment did not ban drinking, nor did it ban storing pre-prohibition alcohol in one’s home for later use. Neither possession nor purchase was illegal, although selling was. Buying was not banned because prosecutors wanted to use buyers to testify against sellers. Under the home possession provision, the wealthy banker J. P. Morgan laid in one thousand cases of French champagne and prepared to outlast prohibition. The Yale Club in New York City also stored alcohol and did not run out of its pre-prohibition supply until the month that prohibition was repealed. In reality, only the wealthy could take advantage of this storage provision.

  The amendment did not define intoxicating liquors. By using this phrase, Wheeler hinted to brewers, vintners, and their customers that hard liquor was the target. A few wets naively believed that the amendment banned only distilled spirits. What percentage of alcohol made a drink intoxicating? In 1917 no general agreement existed on this issue, but the amendment’s second clause gave Congress the power to legislate the answer. Even “intoxicating liquors” might be produced if they were not for “beverage purposes.” Both industrial and medicinal alcohol were acceptable. Many old-fashioned physicians and pharmacists prescribed whiskey, which had been used in dry cities, counties, or states for decades. Again, Congress (or the states) would set the limits. Moreover, Catholics, Episcopalians, Jews, and a few other practitioners used wine in religious ceremonies. As a practical matter, Wheeler knew that sacramental wine could not be banned. Congress would have to provide detailed rules about that matter, too.

  Finally, the amendment’s second section created a confusing dual federal and state jurisdiction over alcohol. Drys included this provision because they were nervous about the future. Without joint control, a future wet Congress might repeal dry federal enforcement, and without dual jurisdiction, dry states might be left with no enforcement power. Drys were even more worried about wet states that might decline to provide state enforcement. Concurrent jurisdiction allowed the federal government to enforce the amendment if the state refused to do so. This became a real issue in the 1920s. Nowhere else does the Constitution provide dual federal and state enforcement of a constitutional provision. During the 1920s, dual jurisdiction caused constant trouble, and the Twenty-First Amendment repealing prohibition would ultimately give the states control of alcohol policy.

  Drys were confident that the amendment would be ratified by the necessary thirty-six of the forty-eight states within seven years. Most temperance leaders expected ratification within several years. At the moment the amendment passed Congress, twenty-seven states were dry. To the surprise of everyone, the amendment proved to be wildly popular. Ratification took little more than one year. In forty-six legislatures that voted approval, 80 percent of legislators voted yes. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island rejected the amendment. There were several reasons for this rapid approval. The amendment was caught up in Progressive Era enthusiasm for reform. Dry reformers had talked about a national constitutional amendment for decades, so the idea was not new. Then, too, legislatures had rural majorities. “Urbanization,” wrote the dry Elizabeth Tilton in her diary, “had not yet laid its material, beer-soaked class on the vote in America.”40 Drys also exploited the concept of wartime sacrifice. If young Americans could be sent to die in the war in France, then those who were fortunate enough to be at home should at least sacrifice the comfort of alcohol. Moral fervor ran high. The publisher William Randolph Hearst wrote, “The suppression of the drink traffic is an expression of the higher morality upon which we are now embarking.”41

  Distillers and brewers were paralyzed. Both industries were associated with irresponsible public behavior, that is, drunkenness, and neither fitted the wartime call for hard work. In addition, the brewers were suspected of sympathy for Germany. The ASL denounced “the un-American, pro-German . . . treasonable liquor traffic.”42 Wartime patriotism stressed conformity, and it was hard to call lager beer American. The war challenged the old order, and the saloon became an embarrassment. Given the large margins by which legislatures voted for ratification during 1918 and early 1919, it is clear that the amendment, at least temporarily, enjoyed robust support. There are no polls for 1918, but during World War II, Gallup found a rising support for prohibition that subsided when the war ended. Without World War I, it is doubtful that prohibition would ever have passed Congress or been ratified.

  Faced with food shortages, President Wilson used his wartime powers to ban brewing after December 1, 1918. Although the war ended on November 11, Congress passed wartime prohibition a week later. This law banned production of beer or wine after May 1, 1919, and the sale of alcohol after July 1, 1919, except for half-a-percent near-beer. Both provisions were to remain in effect until the troops were demobilized. On June 30, 1919, St. Paul had a rowdy drinking celebration on the last evening before wartime prohibition took effect. In many saloons, patrons threw out the clocks. The law went into effect in 1919 because the war had ended with an armistice rather than German surrender; a peace treaty was needed to end the war. When the Treaty of Versailles failed in the Senate in 1919, the United States and Germany technically remained at war. As a result, wartime prohibition continued until the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect in January 1920.

  The new Republican Congress elected in 1918 contained even more drys than the previous Democratic Congress. To ensure that prohibition did not become a partisan issue, Wayne Wheeler always wanted dry
majorities in both parties. The change in party control shifted leadership on the liquor issue from Senator Morris Sheppard to Representative Andrew Volstead (R-MN). In September 1919, Volstead, along with the ASL, drafted the Volstead Act, which defined the terms and provided the details left out of the Eighteenth Amendment. Wilson vetoed the bill, but Congress passed the bill over his veto in October. The measure superseded wartime prohibition when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect in January 1920. To the disappointment of many moderates, Volstead rejected Wilson’s early wartime 2.75 percent beer. Instead, the legal limit for intoxicating liquor was set at 0.5 percent. This particular limit was picked because it was the lowest amount of alcohol that could be detected; it had nothing to do with intoxication. Today, such products are sold as non-alcoholic beer.

  During World War I, dry forces used patriotic, especially anti-German, arguments to push wartime prohibition. Indiana Historical Society