Beer : Health and Nutrition

Beer Through History 47
– customers bought 15 gallons plus a gill, drank the latter and then returned the balance.
Maine introduced total prohibition in 1851, causing Lyman Beecher to exclaim: ‘The
glorious Maine law is a square and grand blow right between the horns of the Devil.’
Soon thirteen more states had joined Maine, but nine soon repealed the laws or declared
them unconstitutional. Only Maine, Kansas and North Dakota held rm – and in each
there were bootleggers and illicit taverns (‘blind pigs’).
By 1872 a political body, the Prohibition Party, had come into being and nominated
James Black to run for President. He lost – and so have many other prohibition candidates
since. Their best performance in the polls was 271,000 votes in 1892. The Party
is still in existence (see http://www.prohibition.org/), and they observe that they are
‘the oldest “third party” in the United States’. We might note their other stated ‘values’
include being anti-commercial gambling, against the homosexual agenda, preservation
of US sovereignty and concerns about the United Nations and about international trade
agreements.
Back to the late nineteenth century. Women soon led the charge against alcohol.
One slogan was:
We do not think we’ll ever drink
Whiskey or gin, brandy or rum
Or anything that’ll make drunk come.
Not classic verse – but at least no mention of beer.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union had prominent members, including the
First Lady, Mrs Rutherford B. Hayes (‘Lemonade Lucy’). And they warmly embraced
the redoubtable Carry Nation, who declared ‘hatchetation’ in smashing up illicit taverns
in her home state of Kansas and beyond, and set off on an enthusiastically received
lecture tour in which hatchets could be bought as souvenirs. They do say that no publicity
is bad publicity and soon liquor producers were marketing Carry Nation cocktails
and bars were decorated with hatchets and signs that declared ‘All Nations welcome
but Carry.’
Carry Nation was probably emotionally disturbed for much of her life (Fleming 1975)
and the most successful pro-prohibition lobby, the Anti-Saloon League originating in a
Congregational Church in Ohio, ignored her. The tactics of this body were more subtle
and low key, progressively persuading towns and counties to embrace prohibition. Soon
they were successful at the state level: Georgia, Oklahoma and then half a dozen more
fell into line. In 1913, after 20 years of existence, the Anti-Saloon League marched on
Washington DC with a slogan ‘A Saloonless Nation in 1920’. Several supporters were
elected to Congress.
The 65th Congress, convening in March 1917, soon declared war on Germany following
the sinking of the Lusitania. This demanded laws that would ensure that the