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.”

Sunday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 72 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 “72,” is another nod to history, rebutting the (apparent) prohibitionists position that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington would have been in favor of prohibition. For their evidence, Lincoln once co-owned a liquor store, and for Washington, oddly, they didn’t bring up his beer recipe or the letters professing his love of porter. They end by claiming both presidents “found the use of liquors necessary in both civil and military life.”

Saturday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 70 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 “70,” is another interesting one that tackles the prohibitionists’ argument that all alcohol consumption is bad, while the truth is that its excessive drinking that can cause problems, and in fact it’s the position of at least one research doctor that excesses in food, and even water, can be “harmful.” His position is that “Excess of any kind is the is the direct opposite of temperance.” The ad goes on to look at how Europe reacted during World War I, and how the nations at war sent alcohol to the troops fighting. Why? “The beverages are not given as medicine, but as nourishment.”

Friday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 69 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 “69,” is another interesting one that tackles the prohibitionists’ argument that men are driven to drink, and most just can’t help themselves, so the only way to “cure” them is take away their alcohol. But the science of the day said no, that instead drunkards were the result of a mental defect or weakness, and in 99% of cases this was the cause. “Normal men do not desire alcohol in excess. It is only the abnormal who are driven to drink.”

Thursday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1916, No. 68 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 “64,” is another interesting one because it talks about drinking causing poverty, and how prohibitionists were arguing that in states that were dry, there were less people in poorhouses, or almshouses, than in “wet” states where alcohol was still permitted. It’s weird to think that there were such places all over the country, and in fact one of my favorite author’s first novels — John Updike — was “The Poorhouse Fair,” is set in the fictional “Diamond County Home for the Aged.” But the statistics offered by the ad contradicted the prohibitionists’ arguments, showing that in at least four dry states, per capita residency in poorhouses was higher than in four comparable wet states. They go on to cite another series of studies that further contradict the prohibitionists, and showing that sickness is the most common cause of poverty in America, and not drinking, which is in fact a vert small percentage of the total.