Friday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 84 in series they did from 1915-17 called “Facts Versus Fallacies.” I have no idea how many were done but some of the them are numbered into low triple digits, suggesting there were a lot of them, all in an effort to stop Prohibition from happening and win over support for beer. This ad, marked “84,” is interesting because it shows a problem that’s still with us with modern prohibitionists. As they point out, a majority of people were not originally in favor of removing alcohol from society. For example, the state of Ohio rejected a referendum to restrict it twice, and both times by wide margins. But that didn’t deter the fanatical prohibitionists from continuing to agitate for it and cajole people, even resorting to manipulating the system from behind the scenes. To say the will of the people carries any weight to such people is a joke. All that matters is what they want, as true today as it was in 1916.
