Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

  • Home
  • About
  • Editorial
  • Birthdays
  • Art & Beer

Socialize

  • Dribbble
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Powered by Head Quarters Built on WordPress
You are here: Home / Art & Beer / Beer In Ads #623: Budweiser’s 6,000 Men

Beer In Ads #623: Budweiser’s 6,000 Men

June 6, 2012 By Jay Brooks


Wednesday’s ad is also for Budweiser, from 1908. In the first two decades of the last century — the run up to prohibition — there was a lot going on in the beer world. It was period of vast consolidation. Increasingly, breweries finally started worrying that prohibition could really become a reality and began doing pro-beer ads. This one is partly hit-you-over-the-head obvious, and also somewhat subtle. Obviously, the main thrust of the ad copy is that Anheuser-Busch in 1908 employed 6,000 at just one “plant.” That sure sounds like a lot for a single brewery. They go on to say there are 750,000 people employed by all of America’s breweries and not less than 4 million “women and children” who are “directly dependent upon their pay envelopes,” with an additional 400,000 employed on farms that produce the crops necessary to make beer. Perhaps more importantly, all of those employees who work in the beer industry “love their homes,” plus “they are good, honest citizens, temperate, patriotic and true.”

On the more subtle side, the ad is designed to look like it’s burting out of a regular page in the newspaper, in this case the Washington Post. BUt look closer at the headlines. Here are a few of them: “Beer on the Mayflower,” “The Drink of the Great,” “World’s Decisive Battles Won By Beer Drinkers,” “The Grain of the Gods,” “Food Value of Malt Brews,” and “The Temperance Value of Beer.” Great stuff.

bud-pilgrim-full-page-ad-1908-copy

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Budweiser, History



Find Something

Northern California Breweries

Please consider purchasing my latest book, California Breweries North, available from Amazon, or ask for it at your local bookstore.

Beer Bulletin Email

Enter your email address to receive daily digests:

Recent Comments

  • Martyn Cornell on Historic Beer Birthday: Anton Dreher Jr.
  • Martyn Cornell on Historic Beer Birthday: Anton Dreher Jr.
  • Martyn Cornell on Historic Beer Birthday: Anton Dreher Jr.
  • Lucy Corne on Beer Birthday: Lucy Corne-Duthie
  • Kendall Staggs on Beer In Ads #4341: Miss Rheingold 1955 Filling Yuletide Requests

Recent Posts

  • Beer Birthday: Jim Crooks March 24, 2023
  • Beer In Ads #4389: Miss Rheingold 1957 Finalists In The News March 23, 2023
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Michael Brand March 23, 2023
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Maximilian Schaefer March 23, 2023
  • Beer In Ads #4388: Miss Rheingold 1957 Finalists In A Circle March 22, 2023

Tag Cloud

Advertising Anheuser-Busch Announcements Bay Area Belgium Brewers Association Brewing Equipment Budweiser Business California Christmas Europe France Germany Guinness Health & Beer History Holidays Hops Humor Infographics Kegs Law Mainstream Coverage Miller Brewing Northern California Pabst Packaging Patent Pennsylvania Press Release Prohibitionists Rheingold San Francisco Schlitz Science Science of Brewing Sports Statistics The Netherlands UK Uncategorized United States Video Washington

The Sessions

session_logo_all_text_1500

Next Session: Dec. 7, 2018
#142: One More for the Road
Previous Sessions
  • #141: Future of Beer Blogging
  • #140: Pivo
  • #139: Beer & the Good Life
  • #138: The Good in Wood
  • #137: German Wheat
Archive, History & Hosting

Typology Tuesday

Typology-png
Next Typology:
On or Before March 29, 2016
#3: Irish-Style Dry Stout
Previous Typologies
  • #2: Bock Feb. 2016
  • #1: Barley Wine Jan. 2016
Archive & History

This month’s posts

March 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Feb    

BBB Archives

Go to mobile version