Wednesday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 93 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 “93,” is about the prohibitionist claims that drunkenness is ruining marriages and the leading cause of divorce. Like almost everything they sue to promote their cause, it’s exaggerated to suit their aims, much like today’s anti-alcohol organizations. In the ad, statistics available for 1914 from the city of Chicago clearly show that while there are relationships ruined by one of the parties’ overindulging, it’s in far less numbers than the prohibitionists argue. In fact, for Chicago, of the four leading causes of divorce, drunkenness is last and is just 1.5% of the total.

Tuesday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 92 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 “92,” is about who was for and against prohibition. According to the ad, it was the working man, and labor organizations, who were steadfastly against taking away their after-work beer. Samuel Gompers, the president of the AFL at the time, is quoted. “I have see more Real Drunkenness in “DRY” States than any other place in the world.” He recounts that traveling the country for work it was evident everywhere he looked that prohibition was a bad idea and would not work.

Sunday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 90 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 “90,” is about King George, the king of England, who apparently had a riding accident. He recovered, but it took some time, and one of the things that he was prescribed to help him get better was a daily amount of alcohol, which they referred to as “a little stimulant daily during convalescence.” This story is told to drive home the point that drinking isn’t the problem, over-drinking is what’s leading people to agitate for a prohibition. As a sign on the ad declares: “Moderate Drinkers Are The TRUE Disciples of Temperance.” I’m not sure why that slogan didn’t catch on.

Saturday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 89 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 “89,” is about hoping that the new year — 1916 — will be “a year of Temperance — of Moderation!” Sadly, it wasn’t, and prohibition happened a few years later anyway. As they see it. “Temperance does not mean Prohibition — for Temperance is a self-exercise virtue whose keynote is commonsense; and Prohibition is an imposed, obligatory condition that interferes with one’s personal liberty, and whose keynote is bigotry.”

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.

Thursday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 83 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 “83,” is interesting because it’s such a specious argument that it addressed, that alcohol, and especially the tavern or saloon where people buy it, is the cause of poverty and therefore shutting them down will erase poverty in America. As you can probably guess, that’s not entirely accurate. According to the ad, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average worker spends four cents per day on alcohol. The ad argues that the luxury of a drink is no more pernicious than many other luxury goods, and suggests jewelry, diamonds, perfumes, laces, candy, silks and satins are equally unnecessary items that people spend money that they don’t have on, rather than on the necessities that they absolutely need to live. The root cause of poverty they claim are “poor wages and lack of employment,” which is probably the same today. If those same people saved the $15 per year they spend on drinking, it would take them thirty years to by a Ford automobile, but even then they’d only have enough money from not drinking for an entire year to buy gasoline to operate it for just one month.

Wednesday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 81 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 “81,” is a fairly innocuous one, detailing the history of taverns and inns from biblical times to the present, basically just making the argument that they’ve been around so long, making people happier, that they can’t be bad.

Tuesday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 75 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 “75,” is another odd one talking about one of the tactics of prohibitionists at the time, where they wanted to make it illegal to sell beer and other alcohol, while leaving the right to consume it and purchase it perfectly legal. Which seems weird, but from what i can glean from the ad, it was apparently a strategy that prohibitionists believed would allow them to achieve their ends through “roundabout” means. But there is a modern version still, as many prohibitionists continue to attack anyone in the alcohol industry, accusing us of all manner of moral failings and being terrible people. They’ve come out and said we’d do absolutely anything to make a sale, even to minors, and that we even target kids, hate women and lie about everything. Even if we do something good, like ship canned water to Haiti after their earthquake, they criticized the gesture because the brewery in question told people they did it and included information on the can about where the water came from. No matter what we do, we’re bad people. So this ad doesn’t seem at all far-fetched to me. But in 1915 they didn’t think they had the votes to get the national prohibition they wanted, so then, just as today, they’d do or say anything to further the agenda of prohibition.

Monday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 74 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 “74,” is about a problem that, sadly, is till going on today, prohibitionists lying to advance their agenda. In many cases, according to the ad, it’s evangelists going from town to town and slinging mud at the people who make alcohol, much as is still done today, by modern prohibitionist groups. I’ve even had some flung my way. But in at least one such instance, the slandered people struck back, suing a winning a $2700 judgment against the lying prohibitionist. The judge, in his ruling, stated that “there is no special privilege attached to a clergyman, much less an evangelist.” And that would be even more true for prohibitionist propaganda today, if only someone would sue them. But I especially like the ad’s conclusion. “That men who preach Prohibition should be quite the reverse of temperate is in itself no new story — for Prohibition is not Temperance. Temperance means moderation — in all things. Which applies to speech as pertinently as it does to drink.”