Historic Beer Terrorist Birthday: Carrie Nation

November 25, 2024 By Jay Brooks

hatchet
Today is the birthday of Carrie Nation (November 25, 1846–June 9, 1911). Many biographies of her today refer to her as a “famous leader and activist,” a “temperance crusader” or “temperance advocate.” But she was also a terrorist who tried to impose her will by smashing up bars. One simple definition of terrorism is “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” That’s exactly what she was doing, and why she was celebrated by temperance groups, especially the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which she was a member of and went so far as to start a local branch. None of these groups did much to stop her destroying private property and terrorizing people she disagreed with, because even though they wouldn’t come out publicly in favor of such tactics, in private they were just fine with the results. That she’s still revered in some circles today strikes me as quite odd. She was a criminal, and yet has her own page on The State Historical Society of Missouri’s “Historic Missourians,” (which is doubly odd since she was born in Kentucky and only moved to Missouri when she was a young girl). Many biographies refer to her “passionate activism against alcohol” or her “passion for fighting liquor” as positive attributes, which certainly seems like revisionist history and apologists for criminal behavior to me. Certainly, the bar owners and patrons whom she encountered have a considerably different opinion of her “passion.” According to Wikipedia, “She described herself as ‘a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn’t like,’ and claimed a divine ordination to promote temperance by destroying bars.”

Here’s her entry from Wikipedia:

Nation was born in Garrard County, Kentucky, to George and Mary (née Campbell) Moore. Her father was a successful farmer, stock trader, and slaveholder of Irish descent. During much of her early life, her health was poor and her family experienced financial setbacks. The family moved several times in Kentucky and finally settled in Belton, Missouri in 1854. She had poor education and informal learning.
In addition to their financial difficulties, many of her family members suffered from mental illness, her mother at times having delusions. There is speculation that the family did not stay in one place long because of rumors about Nation’s mother’s mental state. Some writers have speculated that Nation’s mother, Mary, believed she was Queen Victoria because of her love of finery and social airs. Mary lived in an insane asylum in Nevada, Missouri, from August 1890 until her death on September 28, 1893. Mary was put in the asylum through legal action by her son, Charles, although there is suspicion that Charles instigated the lawsuit because he owed Mary money.
The family moved to Texas as Missouri became involved in the Civil War in 1862. George did not fare well in Texas, and he moved his family back to Missouri. The family returned to High Grove Farm in Cass County. When the Union Army ordered them to evacuate their farm, they moved to Kansas City. Carrie nursed wounded soldiers after a raid on Independence, Missouri. The family again returned to their farm when the Civil War ended.
In 1865 Carrie met Charles Gloyd, a young physician who had fought for the Union, who was a severe alcoholic. Gloyd taught school near the Moores’ farm while deciding where to establish his medical practice. He eventually settled on Holden, Missouri, and asked Nation to marry him. Nation’s parents objected to the union because they believed he was addicted to alcohol, but the marriage proceeded. They were married on November 21, 1867, and separated shortly before the birth of their daughter, Charlien, on September 27, 1868. Gloyd died in 1869 of alcoholism.
Influenced by the death of her husband, Nation developed a passionate activism against alcohol. With the proceeds from selling her inherited land (as well as that of her husband’s estate), she built a small house in Holden. She moved there with her mother-in-law and Charlien, and attended the Normal Institute in Warrensburg, Missouri, earning her teaching certificate in July 1872. She taught at a school in Holden for four years. She obtained a history degree and studied the influence of Greek philosophers on American politics.
In 1874, Carrie married David A. Nation, an attorney, minister, newspaper journalist, and father, 19 years her senior.
The family purchased a 1,700 acre (690 ha) cotton plantation on the San Bernard River in Brazoria County, Texas. As neither knew much about farming, the venture was ultimately unsuccessful. David Nation moved to Brazoria to practice law. In about 1880, Carrie moved to Columbia to operate the hotel owned by A. R. and Jesse W. Park. Her name is on the Columbia Methodist Church roll. She lived at the hotel with her daughter, Charlien Gloyd, “Mother Gloyd” (Carrie’s first mother-in-law), and David’s daughter, Lola. Her husband also operated a saddle shop just southwest of this site. The family soon moved to Richmond, Texas to operate a hotel.
David Nation became involved in the Jaybird–Woodpecker War. As a result, he was forced to move back north to Medicine Lodge, Kansas in 1889, where he found work preaching at a Christian church and Carrie ran a successful hotel.
She began her temperance work in Medicine Lodge by starting a local branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and campaigning for the enforcement of Kansas’ ban on the sale of liquor. Her methods escalated from simple protests to serenading saloon patrons with hymns accompanied by a hand organ, to greeting bartenders with pointed remarks such as, “Good morning, destroyer of men’s souls.” She also helped her mother and her daughter who had mental health problems.
Dissatisfied with the results of her efforts, Nation began to pray to God for direction. On June 5, 1900, she felt she received her answer in the form of a heavenly vision. As she described it:
The next morning I was awakened by a voice which seemed to me speaking in my heart, these words, “GO TO KIOWA,” and my hands were lifted and thrown down and the words, “I’LL STAND BY YOU.” The words, “Go to Kiowa,” were spoken in a murmuring, musical tone, low and soft, but “I’ll stand by you,” was very clear, positive and emphatic. I was impressed with a great inspiration, the interpretation was very plain, it was this: “Take something in your hands, and throw at these places in Kiowa and smash them.”
Responding to the revelation, Nation gathered several rocks – “smashers”, she called them – and proceeded to Dobson’s Saloon on June 7. Announcing “Men, I have come to save you from a drunkard’s fate”, she began to destroy the saloon’s stock with her cache of rocks. After she similarly destroyed two other saloons in Kiowa, a tornado hit eastern Kansas, which she took as divine approval of her actions.
She even sold hatchet pins.
Nation continued her destructive ways in Kansas, her fame spreading through her growing arrest record. After she led a raid in Wichita, Kansas, her husband joked that she should use a hatchet next time for maximum damage. Nation replied, “That is the most sensible thing you have said since I married you.” The couple divorced in 1901; they had no children. Between 1902-06 she lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, she would march into a bar and sing and pray while smashing bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. Her actions often did not include other people, just herself. Between 1900 and 1910, she was arrested some 30 times for “hatchetations”, as she came to call them. Nation paid her jail fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets. The souvenirs were provided by a Topeka, Kansas pharmacist. Engraved on the handle of the hatchet, the pin reads, “Death to Rum”.
In April 1901, Nation went to Kansas City, Missouri, a city known for its wide opposition to the temperance movement, and smashed liquor in various bars on 12th Street in downtown Kansas City. She was arrested, hauled into court and fined $500 ($13,400 in 2011 dollars), although the judge suspended the fine so long as Nation never returned to Kansas City. She would be arrested over 32 times—one report is that she was placed in the Washington DC poorhouse for three days for refusing to pay a $35 fine.
Nation also conducted women’s rights marches in Topeka, Kansas. She led hundreds of women that were part of the Home Defender’s Army to march in opposition to saloons.
In Amarillo, Texas, Nation received a strong response, as she was sponsored by the noted surveyor W.D. Twichell, an active Methodist layman.
A common sight in bars and taverns at the time.
Nation’s anti-alcohol activities became widely known, with the slogan “All Nations Welcome But Carrie” becoming a bar-room staple. She published The Smasher’s Mail, a biweekly newsletter, and The Hatchet, a newspaper. Later in life she exploited her name by appearing in vaudeville in the United States and music halls in Great Britain. In October 1909, various press outlets reported that Nation claimed to have invented an aeroplane.
Nation, a proud woman more given to sermonizing than entertaining, found these venues uninspiring for her proselytizing. One of the number of pre-World War I acts that “failed to click” with foreign audiences, Nation was struck by an egg thrown by an audience member during one 1909 music hall lecture at the Canterbury Theatre of Varieties. Indignantly, “The Anti-Souse Queen” ripped up her contract and returned to the United States. Seeking profits elsewhere, she sold photographs of herself, collected lecture fees, and marketed miniature souvenir hatchets.
Suspicious that President William McKinley was a secret drinker, Nation applauded his 1901 assassination because drinkers “got what they deserved.”
Near the end of her life, Nation moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas where she founded the home known as “Hatchet Hall”. In poor health, she collapsed during a speech in a Eureka Springs park. She was taken to a hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas, the Evergreen Place Hospital and Sanitarium located on 25 acres at Limit Street and South Maple Avenue just outside the city limits of Leavenworth.
Evergreen Place Hospital was founded and operated by Dr. Charles Goddard, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and a distinguished authority on nervous and mental troubles, liquor and drug habits.
Nation died there on June 9, 1911. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Belton City Cemetery in Belton, Missouri. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union later erected a stone inscribed “Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could” and the name “Carry A. Nation.”

And this is her biography from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Carry Nation, in full Carry A. Nation, née Carrie Amelia Moore, (born November 25, 1846, Garrard county, Kentucky, U.S.—died June 9, 1911, Leavenworth, Kansas), American temperance advocate famous for using a hatchet to demolish barrooms.
Carry Moore as a child experienced poverty, her mother’s mental instability, and frequent bouts of ill health. Although she held a teaching certificate from a state normal school, her education was intermittent. In 1867 she married a young physician, Charles Gloyd, whom she left after a few months because of his alcoholism. In 1877 she married David Nation, a lawyer, journalist, and minister, who divorced her in 1901 on the grounds of desertion.
Carry Nation entered the temperance movement in 1890, when a U.S. Supreme Court decision in favour of the importation and sale of liquor in “original packages” from other states weakened the prohibition laws of Kansas, where she was living. In her view, the illegality of the saloons flourishing in that state meant that anyone could destroy them with impunity. Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, Nation, who was typically dressed in stark black-and-white clothing, would march into a saloon and proceed to sing, pray, hurl biblical-sounding vituperations, and smash the bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. At one point, her fervour led her to invade the governor’s chambers at Topeka. Jailed many times, she paid her fines from lecture tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets, at times earning as much as $300 per week. She herself survived numerous physical assaults.
Nation published a few short-lived newsletters—called variously The Smasher’s Mail, The Hatchet, and the Home Defender—and her autobiography, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, in 1904 (rev. ed., 2006). Her “hatchetation” period was brief but brought her national notoriety. She was for a time much in demand as a temperance lecturer; she also railed against fraternal orders, tobacco, foreign foods, corsets, skirts of improper length, and mildly pornographic art of the sort found in some barrooms of the time. She was an advocate of woman suffrage. Later she appeared in vaudeville, at Coney Island, New York, and briefly in 1903 in Hatchetation, an adaptation of T.S. Arthur’s Ten Nights in a Bar-Room: And What I Saw There (1854). Despite her campaign, the enactment in 1919 of national prohibition was largely the result of the efforts of more conventional reformers, who had been reluctant to support her.

Nation-SF-Call-March-1-1903
This was the front page of the newspaper, the San Francisco Call, on March 1, 1903, when Nation visited the California city.

If you’re curious if her first name is “Carry” or “Carrie,” it’s actually both. “The spelling of her first name varies; both ‘Carrie’ and ‘Carry’ are considered correct. Official records say ‘Carrie,’ which Nation used for most of her life; the name ‘Carry’ was used by her father in the family Bible. Upon beginning her campaign against liquor in the early 20th century, she adopted the name ‘Carry A. Nation,’ saying it meant ‘Carry A Nation for Prohibition.’ After gaining notoriety, Carrie officially registered ‘Carry’ as a trademark.”

1880-american-temperance-crusader-carry-nation

A Tale Of Pretty Polly Perkins

March 10, 2023 By Jay Brooks

While looking through the Internet Archive today, I came across this odd bit of temperance literature from England. It’s a six-page story published in 1890 to persuade people from partaking of the demon alcohol and instead suggesting Mason’s Extract of Herbs “for the speedy production of herb or botanic beer, a non-intoxicating beverage.” Unsurprisingly, it was published by Newball & Mason, makers of the apparently non-alcoholic beer. It’s called “A Tale of Pretty Polly Perkins.”

The name, I believe, comes from an earlier song called Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green that was first published in 1864. According to Wikipedia, “it was almost universally known in England until around the mid-1950s, when it began to fade as being too old-fashioned.” So here’s the story in full. It’s worth a read.

The back cover shows a bottle of Mason’s Original Herb or Botanic Beer. What was it exactly? I’m not sure, but the Monterey Bay Herb Company has a history of it on their Facebook page:

Herbal History: Mason’s Botanical Beer
“The little busy bee improves the shining hour and prefers Mason’s Extract of Herbs before the laborious old fashioned method of extracting it itself.”
Newball & Mason’s original Extract of Herbs, also known as “Botanic Beer,” was promoted as a refreshing tonic and non-alcoholic alternative to beer in keeping with the Temperance movement which prevailed at the time. The company was formed in 1859 through a partnership between Thomas Ayres Newball and his apprentice, 15-year old Thomas Mason. In 1875, the younger Thomas opened a factory on Park Row in Nottingham, from which he produced his “extract of herbs.”
Advertisements for Mason’s Extract of Herbs appeared regularly in newspapers and on posters and handbills circulated in street railways throughout London. The ads always contained the familiar tagline,”The little busy bee improves the shining hour and prefers Mason’s Extract of Herbs before the laborious old fashioned method of extracting it itself’ and instructed the reader to “Send 9 stamps for sample bottle, enough to make eight gallons.”
In 1880, Thomas took on an apprentice of his own, Benjamin Deaville, who later became a partner in the company. Over the next several years, the company would move twice more until landing in New Basford where the two men established Maville Works, a merging of their names. Here the company diversified to also produce coffee, flavorings, fruit essences, dried herbs and household chemicals.
Benjamin became the sole proprietor after Thomas died in 1911, and he remained chairman and managing director until his death in 1938. Newball and Mason relocated to Staffordshire in 1957, where it continued to operate until 1970.
Wondering what Mason’s botanical beer was made of? Like most formulas of the period, it was a closely guarded secret. But, because few things stay secret forever (and the label’s illustration provides a clue)…the primary ingredients were yarrow, dandelion, comfrey and horehound.

Ad for Mason’s Extract from around 1900.

So it’s made with “yarrow, dandelion, comfrey and horehound,” ingredients more at home in a gruit. How exactly did that concoction create a beverage that tasted in any way like beer, enough that they felt comfortable calling it beer, botanic beer or otherwise?

Below is some more information from an advertising leaflet produced in the 1890s.

Newball & Mason’s original extract of herbs or ‘botanic beer’ was promoted as a wholesome, refreshing drink, a tonic. Most importantly (in line with the Temperance movement of the time which disapproved of alcohol drinking and campaigned determinedly against it), it was marketed as a non alcoholic (and much cheaper) alternative to beer.
In the advertisement an image of bees buzzing round a bottle and the clump of flowers to the left (dandelion, white dead nettle, burdock and comfrey) suggest the natural and healthy origin of the extract. Another image shows a smiling, young, male scientist holding a glass of the extract, endorsing the product. Newball & Mason were manufacturing chemists & botanic druggists based at the Hyson Green Works, Nottingham.

I love the line “no other extract makes beer like it.” That I believe. And here’s one more account of the extract, from a local history group in Nottingham, England:

The company of Newball and Mason was originally founded by Thomas Ayres Newball and Thomas Mason. In 1850 Thomas Ayres Newball had opened a chemist shop at 36 Derby Road, Nottingham and in 1859, at the age of fifteen, Thomas Mason became his apprentice. After several years, Thomas Mason opened his own shop on Derby Road and it was at this time that he invented the ‘extract of herbs’, a concentrated essence that could be made up into the non-alcoholic beverage, ‘Botanic Beer’. In the 1870’s the two businesses were amalgamated to form Newball and Mason, chemist and druggist, with premises near the Market Place and at 10 Derby Road (Morris’s Trade Directory for 1877). With the growing popularity of botanic beer, in 1875 Thomas Mason opened a factory on Park Row in Nottingham, to produce his ‘extract of herbs’. Benjamin Deaville joined the company as an apprentice in 1880 and after serving a three year apprenticeship, he decided to concentrate on the manufacturing side of the business, later becoming a partner in the company.
In 1890, the company moved into a larger factory on Terrace Street in Hyson Green and in 1902, they moved again to a former lace factory on Beech Avenue, New Basford. This factory was known as the ‘Maville Works’, combining the names of Mason and Deaville. By this time, Newball and Mason had diversified to produce not only the ‘extract of herbs’ but also coffee, fruit essences and flavourings, household chemicals, culinary and medicinal herbs, the latter being grown on the company’s herb and fruit farm in Bunny. In 1911, Thomas Mason died and Benjamin Deaville became the sole proprietor. In 1925 he decided to form a private limited company and held the position of chairman and managing director until his death in 1938.
THE INGREDIENTS : yarrow, dandelion, comfrey and horehound. All grow wild in Ryde Cemetery so if you fancy taking up brewing…!

Based on this ad from the 1890s, it looks it was also sold in the U.S., as well.

Why Do People Drink Beer?

May 3, 2019 By Jay Brooks

That also seems like a silly question, but of course when the temperance movement was in full swing and prohibition might actually happen, it was a question people asked. And the brewers had an answer. This is an ad published in the Cattaraugus Republican on May 3, 1917. The small newspaper served the residents of and around Little Valley, New York, and I suspect the ad appeared in newspapers throughout the state since it was sponsored by the New York State Brewers’ Association.

Initially, brewers were not worried about prohibition because before the U.S. government imposed personal income taxes on all its citizens, a lot of its operating income came from excise taxes and the brewing industry contributed a sizable percentage of the U.S. budget. But once the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, and everybody began paying income tax, they understandably grew worried. Without their contributions to the government as a bulwark to prohibition, they felt it was much more likely that the prohibitionists could be successful and jumped into action with ads defending their industry and beer itself. It was too little, too late, and as we all know, the 18th Amendment was passed in 1919, just six years after the imposition of income taxes.

But I have to give them points for trying. This particular ad is Talk No. 10 and the bottom of it references that Talk No. 11 will appear the following week, suggesting a series and concerted effort to get their message out. You can find more like this one, both by the New York association and by other state guilds and they all share the theme of trying to persuade consumers not to support temperance efforts and portray beer as a wholesome drink for everyone. Some of their arguments, naturally are better than others, with a few almost laughably thin. But this one I especially like as it just sings the praises of everyday beer drinking. Who could argue with that?

Why Do People Drink Beer?
The reason most people drink beer is because it tastes good. The reason they go on drinking beer is because it continues to do them good.
Beer is an ideal beverage. It quenches the thirst, gives nutriment to the body, and cheers up the spirits.
It is a wholesome food. The term “food” includes anything, either solid or liquid, that restores the waste tissues of the body or supplies heat and energy. The food contents of beer are all wholesome and nutritious. Besides being a food it is a beverage; that is, it not only sustains the body, but it satisfies thirst.
It contains just enough alcohol to refresh the system, sharpen the appetite and produce a general feeling of well being.
Beer is pleasing to all the senses. It is good to look at, its aroma is attractive, its taste is snappy and it is ideally adapted to gratify the cravings of the human body.
Centuries of use have established beer as the ideal drink, giving the maximum of pleasure.

Prohibitionist Poetry

November 5, 2017 By Jay Brooks

poetry
Today is the birthday of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who “was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion. Her most enduring work was ‘Solitude,’ which contains the lines ‘Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.’ Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.” She was also a confirmed prohibitionist and wrote many temperance poems that are absolutely rife with ridiculous propaganda, along the order of “Reefer Madness” in their misinformation, and are similarly unintentionally funny … almost. But she started writing such works as a young woman, having never once consumed a drop of alcohol herself so her ignorance, while understandable, is no less dangerous and uninformed. Also, her poetry wasn’t very good, but it was popular. For example, her poetry’s described on her Wikipedia page:

A popular poet rather than a literary poet, in her poems she expresses sentiments of cheer and optimism in plainly written, rhyming verse. Her world view is expressed in the title of her poem “Whatever Is—Is Best”, suggesting an echo of Alexander Pope’s “Whatever is, is right,” a concept formally articulated by Gottfried Leibniz and parodied by Voltaire’s character Doctor Pangloss in Candide.
None of Wilcox’s works were included by F. O. Matthiessen in The Oxford Book of American Verse, but Hazel Felleman chose no fewer than fourteen of her poems for Best Loved Poems of the American People, while Martin Gardner selected “The Way Of The World” and “The Winds of Fate” for Best Remembered Poems.
She is frequently cited in anthologies of bad poetry, such as The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse and Very Bad Poetry.

Ella_Wheeler_Wilcox_circa_1919

Here’s a representative example, written around 1872, and entitled “Ph. Best & Co.’s Lager-Beer.” In the poem, he really sticks it to Philip Best for making and selling beer, all but calling him a murderer. Needless to say, she must have been a hoot at parties.

Ph. Best & Co.’s Lager-Beer

“In every part of the thrifty town,
Whether my course be up or down,
In lane, and alley, and avenue,
Painted in yellow, and red, and blue,
This side and that, east and west,
Was this flaunting sign-board of ‘Ph. Best.’
’Twas hung high up, and swung in the air
With a swaggering, bold-faced, ‘devil-may-care-
It-is-none-of-your-business’ sort of way;
Or, as if dreading the light o’ the day,
It hung low, over a basement-stair,
And seemed ashamed when you saw it there.
Or it shone like a wicked and evil eye
From a ‘restaurant’ door on passers-by,
And seemed with a twinkling wink to say:
‘Are you bound for hell? Then step this way;
This is the ticket-office of sin;
If you think of purchasing, pray, walk in.’
Or it glared from a window where the light
Of the lamps within shone full and bright,
And seemed to be saying, ‘Come out of the storm!
Come into my haven snug and warm;
I will give you warmth from the flowing bowl,
And all I ask is your purse and soul.’
But whether on window, door, or stair,
Wherever I went, it was always there;
Painted in yellow, and red, and blue,
It stared from alley and avenue:
It was north and south, and east, and west,
The lager-beer of this Philip Best.
And who was Philip Best, you ask?
Oh! he was a man, whose noble task
Was the brewing of beer — good beer, first class —
That should sparkle, and bubble, and boil in the glass:
Should sparkle and flow till drank, and then
Feast like a vampire on brains of men.
Ah! Philip Best, you have passed from view,
But your name and your works love after you.
Come, brothers, raise him a monument,
Inscribed, ‘Here lies the man who sent
A million of souls to the depths of hell;
Turned genius and worth to the prison-cell;
Stole bread from the mouth of the hungry child:
Made the father a brute, and the mother wild;
Filled happy homes with dread unrest:
Oh! a very great man was Philip Best.
O Ph. Best! you have passed from view,
But your name and your deeds live after you.’”

ella-wheeler-wilcox-7

She was nicknamed “the poet laureate of the Temperance Movement,” and indeed her very first book of poetry, “Drops of Water: Poems,” was published by The National Temperance Movement and Publication House. It’s quite startling to see how they viewed drinking people and especially the people making and selling alcoholic beverages as less than human, something you still see today in the propaganda of modern prohibitionist groups. But some of her poems are just crazy.

Here are some more excerpts from some of her other temperance poems:

From “What I Have Seen, Number III”

“I saw two men: one was fair to behold;
The other, a drunken sot, bloated and bold.
One stood on the mountain and drank of God’s fountain,
The other drank beer in the street.
Yet both started alike; but one made a ’stroke,’
Which ended, you see, in defeat.”

From “What I Have Seen, Number V”

“I saw his candidate sipping his beer,
Wiping his mustache and lapping his jaws;
And I said to myself, ‘ It’s decidedly queer,
If this is the man that should help make our laws,’
But may be he is — may be he is!
I won’t say it outright, but may be he is!”

From “Don’t Drink”

“Don’t drink, boys, don’t!
There is nothing of happiness, pleasure, or cheer,
In brandy, in whiskey, in rum, or beer.
If they cheer you when when drunk, you are certain to pay
In headaches and crossness the following day.
Don’t drink, boys, don’t!”

From “Where are the Temperance People?”

“Where are the temperance people?
Well, scattered here and there:
Some gathering in their produce
To show at the autumn fair:
Some threshing wheat for market,
And others threshing rye,
That will go to the fat distiller
For whiskey by-and-by.
And some are selling their hop crops
At a first-rate price, this year,
And the seller pockets the money,
While the drunkard swallows the beer.
And some ’staunch temperance workers’(?)
Who’d do anything for the cause,
Save too give it a dime or a moment,
Or work for temperance laws,
May be seen from now to election,
Near any tavern stand
Where liquor flows in plenty,
With a voter on either hand.
And these temperance office-seekers
That we hear of far and near
Are the ones who furnish the money
That buys the lager-beer.”

From “Give Us a Call”

“Give us a call! We keep good beer,
Wine, and brandy, and whiskey here;
Our doors are open to boys and men,
And even to women, now and then.
We lighten their purses, we taint their breaths,
We swell up the column of awful deaths;
      All kinds of crimes
      We sell for dimes
In our sugared poisons, so sweet to taste!
If you’ve money, position, or name to waste,
      Give us a call!
Give us a call! In a pint of our gin,
We sell more wickedness, shame, and sin
Than a score of clergymen, preaching all day
From dawn till darkness, could preach away,
And in our beer (though it may take longer
To get a man drunk than drinks that are stronger)
We sell out poverty, sorrow, and woe —
Who wants purchase? Our prices are low.
      Give us a call!”

From “Origin of the Liquor Dealer”

“Turn it in, to a lake of gin,
      Where the devil bathes, to cool.
Then lift it up, and turn to a cup
      Of wine they dip from a pool.
Then they dip it in ale, till it turneth pale,
      In beer, till it growth red.
It? nay, HE! for the thing they see
      Is a man, from heel to head.”

And here’s one more full poem:

From “The Brewer’s Dog”

“The brewer’s dog is abroad boys,
      Be careful where you stray,
His teeth are coated with poison,
      And he’s on the watch for prey.
The brewery is his kennel,
      But he lurks on every hand,
And he seeks for easy victims
      The children of the land.
His eyes gleam through the windows
      Of the gay saloon at night,
And in many a first-class ‘drug store’
      He is hiding out of sight.
Be careful where you enter,
      And, if you smell his breath,
Flee as you would from a viper,
      For its fumes are the fumes of death.
O boys! would you kill the bloodhound?
      Would you slay the snarling whelp?
I know that you can do it
      If every one will help.
You must make a solemn promise
      To drink no ale or beer,
And soon the feeble death-wail
      Of the brewer’s dog we’ll hear.
For, if all keep the promise,
      You can starve him out, I know;
But, if boys and men keep drinking,
      The dog will thrive and grow.”

Prohibition Party 2016

May 12, 2016 By Jay Brooks

prohibition-party
My friend Paul Marshall sent me this delightful little story about the state of the Prohibition Party in 2016. And yes, that Prohibition Party. Believe it or not it’s the oldest independent third-party still active, and they field a presidential candidate every four years. The party was founded in 1869, and its single defining platform was that they were, and still are, “opposed [to] the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages.” I knew they were still around, hoping to convince people that Prohibition was really a good idea, and we should try it again, despite all evidence to the contrary. But what I didn’t know was just how small they’ve become.

prohibition-party-poster

In their heyday, before the 18th Amendment passed, they were active in American politics and contributed to the discussion, and even after Prohibition was enacted, continued to agitate for even stricter controls until they faded into obscurity. How obscure? In the 2012 national election for President of the United States, the Prohibition Party candidate, Jack Fellure of West Virginia, received 518 votes. But that’s not even the low point. One of their 2004 candidates, Earl Dodge of Colorado (there were two that election due to a split in the party), got 140 votes. At their peak, in 1892, John Bidwell of California received 270,770, which represented only a little bit less than half a percent of the roughly 63 million people then in the U.S. Seven times they cracked the 200,000 vote line, though not since 1916. The last time they hit over 100,000 votes was 1948, and 1976 was the last time they garnered more than 10,000. In the last three elections, less then 1,000 people voted for the party candidate.

2008 Prohibition Party presidential candidate Gene Amondson of Washington state, the last year for which they’re selling buttons on the party’s website store. When I say store, it’s actually a Cafe Press store, and the party website itself was created for free using Wix.com. The party coffers are apparently not very full.

According to the Guardian article by Adam Gabbatt, A sobering alternative? Prohibition party back on the ticket this election, revealed that this year’s candidate is Jim Hedges of Pennsylvania, and his running mate is Bill Bayes of Mississippi. Hedges is actually the only known member of the Prohibition Party to have held any elected office — local, state or national — in the 21st Century, when he was the Tax Assessor for Thompson Township, Pennsylvania between 2002 and 2007.

Gabbatt went to Pennsylvania to interview the candidates, and it’s a fascinating read. It’s interesting to hear him talk so matter-of-factly about such an anachronistic idea that most people have moved past, with the obvious exception of the anti-alcohol groups that still exist. But even they seemed to have abandoned trying to get Prohibition going again (even though they’d certainly be in favor of it). Instead, they’ve been slinging mud and trying to disrupt the manufacture and sale (though especially access and advertising) of alcohol pretty much since before the ink was dry on the 21st Amendment.

Not surprisingly, the makeup of the membership skews to an older demographic, and according to Hedges “the current members are over 50, many in their 70s and 80s, and many are ultra-conservative.” But one of the most surprising reveals in the article is just how small the Prohibition Party of today really is. Hedges said that there are “currently about three dozen fee-paying members, who each contribute $10 a year.” So that’s $360 the party receives in dues for the year, plus there was a trust set up in the 1930s that provides additional funds. In most elections recently, that’s allowed them to be on the ballot in just one state, though this year Hedges is hoping to make it onto the ballot in six states, with an ultimate goal of getting 1,000 votes in each. But he’s realistic about his changes of becoming president, which he states are simply. “Zero. None whatsoever.” Still, despite the great divide between his party’s platform, and my own politics, I still think he’d make a better president than Donald Trump. If only there were a button available.

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Jim Hedges and Adam Gabbatt in McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania, taken by Guardian author Adam Gabbatt.

Prohibitionists Pissed Over Deadpool Alcopops

February 12, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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I don’t really like malternatives, alcopops, malt-based beverages, or whatever you want to call them. I find them too sweet, the latest overly sweet concoction to take the wine cooler segment of the market. But the one thing I hate more than alcopops in prohibitionists telling me only kids like comic book characters and that if anything appeals to kids in any way, shape or form, then it must be stopped, even if adults happen to like that thing, too. Honestly, it’s a fucked up way to view the world.

It would be pretty hard to miss the news that the latest Marvel Comics film adaptation opens today, and it’s the antihero Deadpool. I just learned, from the sheriff of not-having-fun, Alcohol Justice, that Marvel’s done a collaboration with Mike’s Hard Lemonade and created several flavors with Deadpool on the cans and packaging. Deadpool, the character, has been around since 1991, and while he started out as a villain, he’s become more of a wise-cracking antihero, and as such appeals to young adults and, undoubtedly, precocious teens.

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As a result, the cross-promotion has Alcohol Justice (AJ) screaming bloody murder, accusing everyone involved of actively “threatening” kids. Why? Because “comic books,” of course. If there are comic books, then anything to do with them is about the kids. As the sheriff of AJ claims, “Kids are inherently targeted, PR damage to the brands is substantial, and shareholders should scream for heads to roll.”

For that reason, he’s placing both companies in the “Alcohol Justice Doghouse.” Oh, the humanity! How will they survive their banishment? Here’s a taste of just how out of touch AJ is about this.

A superhero’s mission is to champion good over evil and stand-up for those who can’t defend themselves. Superheroes appeal to many young boys and girls who dream of being one. It’s often reflected in how kids act and dress. But those dreams come crashing down fast when Big Alcohol capitalizes on the popular cartoon imagery of the latest superhero to sell booze.

Obviously, AJ has never before encountered Deadpool. He’s about as much a role model superhero as I am, which is to say not at all. Those values AJ espouses have nothing to do with this film, the character or, frankly, reality. Superman he’s not. He’s not even Spiderman. But what it really comes down to is their unshakeable belief that comic books are only for children. To which I can only say, grow up. Maybe that was true in the beginning or possibly after the Comic Code was instituted insuring family-friendly fare. But it hasn’t been the case since independent comic stores starting popping up in the late 1970s and 80s, creating a market for non-code comics, allowing for a much richer range of stories aimed at all ages. And that’s meant that for several decades there has been sequential art aimed squarely at older kids and even adults. They used to be called “underground comics,” but these are in the mainstream now, and have been for a long time.

I read comics as a kid, of course, but then stopped when I reached my teen years, because in the 1970s there wasn’t much that appealed to me. Most of the comic books were pretty sanitized, with only a few notable exceptions daring to include real current issues and societal problems in their books. But all that changed again in the 1980s when a flurry of creativity created an amazingly mature and complex body of work that was aimed squarely at an older, more mature audience. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore’s The Watchmen and V for Vendetta, or Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, are good examples, to name just a few.

The point that seems lost on AJ is that there are comics that are for children, but there also comics for adults, and everyone in between. Just because something is drawn or animated, doesn’t automatically make it “inherently targeted” at kids. Try Art Spiegelman’s Maus, John Lewis’ March or Joe Sacco’s Palestine and see if you still think comics are only for children.

But here’s where they go off the rails again, where they just make shit up, and create their own reality.

“Though the alcohol industry claims ‘Millennials’ are their target alcopop audience, their promotions and campaigns effectively target youth who are years younger than the minimum legal drinking age,” said [Bruce Lee] Livingston. “As a result of the low prices, wide availability, and marketing tactics like this one by 21st Century Fox & Mike’s Harder Lemonade, alcopops are very popular among underage youth and responsible for a disproportionate share of underage alcohol-related harm.”

So the industry just “claims” they’re marketing to legal adults. Of course, if that weren’t the case they’d be breaking the law, not to mention they’d have an incredibly stupid business model. Don’t you think that if Alcohol Justice could prove actual targeting of underage people, that they’d have tried to put them out of business years ago? This is just propaganda and hyperbole, and not exactly the high moral kind that they so often pretend to be following, usually from atop their very tall horses.

But even if, for the sake of argument, Mike’s was breaking the law, hoping underage teenagers were loitering around their neighborhood convenience store, trying to entice the homeless man living in the alley to buy them some booze, that would not change the fact that kids under 18, and adults under 21, are not allowed to buy alcohol. This is in reality two problems. The first is that AJ believes alcohol companies are actively trying to illegally sell to minors. Given how illegal that is, if they could prove it, they would have by now. The second problem is that even though it’s illegal for minors to buy alcohol, they sometimes still manage to get their hands on it, and they blame the alcohol companies for creating the desire for them. But so what? Seriously, so what?

Before I was sixteen, I definitely wanted to drive a car. I even drove my stepfather’s Corvette around the block when I was 14 or 15. But I still knew I had to wait until I was sixteen before I could get a driver’s license and legally drive. But boy those car ads sure made driving look sexy, and made me want the hot new cars even before I could drive. Maybe we should ban all automobile advertising because it might appeal to kids who don’t have a driver’s license. But, no, we let car companies keep targeting our youth, causing teens to steal cars, go for joyrides and break the law. Obviously, the car advertising is causing the harm, because it appeals to children. Oh, sure, the car manufacturers “claim” that licensed drivers “are their target audience,” but we know better. Just watch how much fun it looks to drive their cars.

So I’m taking my son Porter to see Deadpool tonight, over his Mom’s objection. Not because of the alcopops, of course, but her concerns are because it looks really violent. But Porter loves what he’s seen of the dark humor that’s been shown in the various trailers, and I think he’s old enough. Of course, the film is Rated R, which given that he’s fourteen “requires [an] accompanying parent.” And that’s another reason it’s easy to see that the Deadpool Mike’s are marketing to young adults, 21 and over, since the rating further limits it being seen by minors looking to get buzzed on alcopops. But I’m old and still read comic books. AJ would do well to remember that there are a lot of us, and we drink, too.

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Pizza Hut To Offer Beer Selection

February 10, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Last month, The Street reported that the Pizza Hut chain has remodeled several of their 6,000+ restaurants, and “plans to remodel roughly 700 of its U.S. stores a year through 2022 in the new format.” The newly refurbished Pizza Huts will continue to have the company’s ” trademark red and black colors, albeit with deeper hues” and will also “feature wraparound windows, outdoor seating and yes, a drive-thru.”

All well and good, so far, but so what, you may be asking. Pizza Hut has also added beer and wine service at the remodeled locations, and plans to add alcohol to each refurbished restaurant. Frankly, I didn’t realize they didn’t serve beer already. Pizza and beer are pretty much a perfect pairing, as iconic as peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese and tomato soup. The more I think about it, almost every pizza place I can name also serves beer, both chains and the small mom and pop pizza joints. How many brewpubs serve pizza? Lots of them, with many even specializing in it.

Why I bring this up is because the wackos at Alcohol Justice tweeted their displeasure at this idea, with this. “Now Pizza Hut wants to sell booze too bit.ly/1PkIwe1 What’s next…wine tastings at Toys-R-Us?” That’s what’s known as a false equivalence, one does not follow from the other. It is, in effect, a bullshit argument. One is a restaurant, and a type of restaurant that typically does carry beer and wine. The other is a toy store. There’s no link whatsoever, nothing that would make this in any way logical. It’s AJ making a mountain out a molehill, as they so often try to do. It’s just absurd.

They idea that a pizza restaurant serving beer and wine is cause for alarm is absolutely laughable. It’s harder to think of one that doesn’t already serve beer then come up with all of those who do. Several times I’ve gone with Porter’s basketball team and his little league baseball team to a Mountain Mike’s or Straw Hat Pizza after a game with the whole team and their parents. Many pizzas are ordered for everyone, with pitchers of beer for the parents. That’s the very definition of family-friendly, with something for everyone. Not once has there been a problem. But in AJ’s worldview, beer at a pizza joint with beer is the same as booze being served at a toy store. But now I’m feeling hungry. I’ve got plenty of beer. I wonder if it’s too late to order from Pizza Hut? They just opened one in our town, and I definitely want to support their decision to upset Alcohol Justice.

Alcohol Advertising And Reality

January 25, 2016 By Jay Brooks

underage-drinking
Recently the prohibitionist group MADD published a blog post entitled Alcohol Advertisements And Our Kids that’s rife with propaganda, inaccuracies and unfounded statements. Surprised? No, not really. It’s about as self-serving as you’d expect.

It begins by touting proposed “new alcohol advertising guidelines, based on findings by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.” Of course one of the “study’s” authors, David Jernigan, is the Director of the notoriously anti-alcohol Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY), funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Jerigan was also the author of this travesty: Bud Blamed In Absurd E.R. Visit Study. So this is a perfect example of the tactics of modern prohibitionist propaganda. One group does a dodgy “study” and another — in this case MADD — takes it and passes it along as unbiased scientific proof of their agenda. This tactic is leading to a crisis of confidence in journals, which I wrote about previously in The Credibility Crisis Of Science Journals.

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This so-called report, which is actually called The Potential Impact of a “No-Buy” List on Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising on Cable Television. MADD and the propagandist’s claim that they “could dramatically reduce the number of alcohol ads viewed by children – if advertisers follow them,” which is another way of stamping their feet and saying do it our way. This “study” found that “[y]outh were exposed to 15.1 billion noncompliant advertising impressions from 2005 to 2012, mostly on cable television.” But so what? What does that even mean? Fifteen billion is a big number, so it sounds scary. But that’s a total number over eight years, or 2,922 days. Which is about 5.2 million ads each day. Still sounds like a lot. But there are almost 1,800 commercial television stations in the U.S. alone, as of 2014. That’s roughly 2,871 ads per station per day.

But how does that number compare to reality? Over a twenty-four hour period, using an average of 15 minutes of advertising per hour (it varies, though cable tends to be higher than broadcast television) that would be 360 minutes of ads (or 6 hours). Assuming an average of 30 seconds per ad, that would be 720 ads per day, per station. So for all 1800 stations that would be 1.3 million ads per day. TOTAL! Yet this “study” is claiming almost 2,900 “noncompliant advertising impressions” — meaning alcohol ads they don’t like — per station per day and 5.2 million each day. There’s some pretty fuzzy math.

Even if my averages, which seem reasonable from the data I found — from generally reputable online sources — were off by a lot (and I rounded up in the so-called study’s favor in every instance) their numbers seem impossible. And don’t forget my numbers, which are orders of magnitude less than their numbers are for ALL advertising while for the study’s numbers — which they’re claiming are not even all alcohol ads — but all alcohol ads that they consider don’t comply with current advertising guidelines for alcohol. And that those “noncompliant” beer and alcohol ads consist of roughly four times the total of all television advertising. Hmm. So that seems reasonable. Here’s how they claim to come about their numbers.

Data source
Television advertising data for the years 2005–2012 were licensed from Nielsen (The Nielsen Company, New York, NY) for all alcoholic beverage types in Nielsen’s alcohol category (beer, distilled spirits, alcopops or sweetened alcoholic beverages that taste like soda pop and contain malt-based alcohol, and wine). The details of our methods for processing and analyzing Nielsen data have been reported previously (Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, 2010). Briefly, occurrence and audience data were downloaded from Nielsen Monitor-Plus; coded to classify advertisements as product, “responsibility,” or other types of advertisements; standardized regarding brand names and alcohol types according to Impact Databank, a leading alcohol industry marketing research firm; and organized into a Microsoft SQL*SERVER database (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA). This study used data on 2,461,999 alcohol product advertisements on network, cable, and local television from 2005 through 2012, with a particular focus on 1,452,661 (59% of the total) cable television advertisements.

But they also claim that “one in eight alcohol commercials were seen by children. No, make that absorbed by children. Not to mention these occurrences were already not in compliance with the alcohol industry’s previous self-regulatory advertising guidelines.” But let’s break that down. Even if their fantastic numbers were true, how exactly can they claim that the kids actually saw the ads. Kids don’t watch every channel, all the time (nobody does) so unless I’m missing something they seem to be saying all the ads shown are actually seen by these kids, which of course is utter nonsense. But they don’t say just that, they go even farther, saying these kids “absorbed” them. That makes these the most impressive children in the history of mankind, paying such close attention to these commercials, riveted to their televisions, soaking it all up.

Of course, that’s just, at best, opportunities for a kid to see an ad. No child is seeing anywhere near as many ads as their numbers suggest. The window of times when kids watch is probably not twenty-four hours, and they don’t appear to have even taken that into account. No cable company or satellite provider includes all 1800 American commercial stations, more like 500 or so, further greatly reducing the opportunity for so many ads to be actually seen, let alone absorbed.

But we’re not done yet. They defined “underage audience” as “ages 2–20 years as a percentage of the total.” But how many two years old have a clue about what they’re seeing on television apart from purple dinosaurs and Mickey’s Playhouse? At what age do kids even pay attention to ads not for toys or (maybe) fast food? It’s certainly not two, which further erodes the numbers they’re relying on and reporting. No matter where you turn, it doesn’t add up.

Also, in the data source they state that they “used data on 2,461,999 alcohol product advertisements on network, cable, and local television from 2005 through 2012,” adding that they had “a particular focus on 1,452,661 (59% of the total) cable television advertisements.” So why then do they seem surprised and feel the need to point out that their “study” found that the ads kids saw were “mostly on cable television?” If they had “a particular focus” on cable, that would be expected, wouldn’t it?

But MADD’s not done with the spin. They also claim that all of these noncompliant ads (or maybe all the ads) “painted a picture of alcohol as fun and frivolous that children couldn’t help but take in, sending a dangerous and deadly message to our kids. Have no doubt, these ads played a role in shaping attitudes toward drinking and contributed to the number of underage drinkers and underage drunk drivers.”

Horseshit. First of all, beer most definitely can be “fun and frivolous.” Do you really think people would keep drinking if they’re weren’t having a good time? People are not automatically addicted with the first sip of alcohol that touches their lips, despite some prohibitionists actually seeming to believe just that. Undoubtedly, a small minority of people will develop some problem with their own control, no matter the cause. But here’s the thing. Automobile ads show new cars as fun and frivolous, too. But kids aren’t ignoring the fact that they can’t drive until they’re sixteen and going for joyrides or stealing cars as soon as their parents aren’t looking. There’s no epidemic of roving middle school gangs of car thieves taken in by how much fun it looks to drive a car, as shown in the countless television ads for all the shiny new cars. Context matters. The so-called study also ignores parents watching these ads with their parents, who in many cases are probably providing context. My kids are constantly bombarded with beer, and yet there is no confusion in our household that they’re not allowed to drink until they turn 21. We reinforce that, and they understand it.

But looking again at the so-called study as a whole, it’s clear that it’s less a scientific paper and more proselytizing propaganda, with over two-thirds of the text devoted to analysis, discussion and, primarily, their recommendations, meaning their excuse to tell the alcohol industry how they think they should advertise. This is the tactic that prohibitionists used to starting attacking alcohol companies the very minute that prohibition was repealed in 1933. They didn’t go away, they licked their wounds, and then changed their approach. And one of their main objectives was to restrict advertising in order to attack alcohol sales using advertising codes and other laws, usually citing their concern for “the children” to conceal their true purpose. Because we’ve all been watching alcohol advertising since we were kids, too, since almost no one alive today was born (only about 1.5% of today’s population) before prohibition ended. And a majority of us grew into responsible adults, and in fact actual consumption of alcohol has been dropping for decades, meaning at least the advertising hasn’t been turning us all into alcoholic monsters. There are, of course, many other factors, but just in terms of their general argument it makes little sense. And frankly, before prohibition there was no television advertising whatsoever, for the obvious reason there was no commercial television, and yet per capita alcohol consumption before and after prohibition is roughly the same, although it has declined to below pre-prohibition levels ever since 1980. So with or without advertising, overall per capita consumption has been roughly constant.

But as you may have noticed, MADD used the headline “Alcohol Advertisements And Our Kids,” invoking the “it’s for the children” strategy. This is such a textbook case of propaganda it’s quite amazing how much of it is twisted and misleading. After all of that, MADD concludes by selling their own program, the “Power of Parents®, which humorously enough they’ve even trademarked. They want to “help” parents by telling them what propaganda to brainwash their children with, even offering a “parent handbook.” It’s free, if you consider signing up for an endless stream of e-mails filled with more propaganda and pleas for donations exacting no cost to you. Just say know.