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Authors: Edward Behr
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York Herald Tribune , which published it in 1874:
To deny her the use of that most efficient weapon, a vote, and then urge her into contest with the liquor trade is like saying that women cannot use artillery. . . but ought to form the advance in an attack on an army well drilled in their use, sending them forward with broadswords, javelins and other implements of medieval warfare.
Much more averse to publicity than the WCTU, another lobby, established at the start of the Civil War, became increasingly active in the Reconstruction period. Understandably shocked by what they regarded as discriminatory taxes in 1862, the brewers formed the United States Brewers Association to ensure that they would never be taken by surprise again. Their dues (from $25 to $1,000, according to their size) enabled them to use considerable slush funds on cooperative politicians and consumers alike.
The most vocal opponents of Prohibition were the “new Americans.” From 1840 onward, millions of Germans, Irish, and Italians entered the country, bringing their wine-, whiskey-, and beer-drinking culture with them, fueling a brewers’, distillers’, and winemakers’ boom. At the Brewers Association’s first meeting in 1862, many of its members spoke in German — the only language in which they were fluent. In increasingly expensive lobbying and newspaper campaigns, they quickly focused on the issue of women’s suffrage: the brewers and distillers knew that women were the Prohibitionists’ chief allies and saw the WCTU as its most formidable foe. The repeated failures ofmany state legislatures to bring about women’s suffrage must be laid at their door. Wherever state suffrage amendments were introduced, they went into action. In Oregon in 1853, for instance, Arthur Denny, a leading Prohibitionist, introduced legislation to give the vote to (white) women. He failed by one vote. Some thirty years later, the Supreme Court of Washington State, invoking “technicalities,” declared the newly passed women’s suffrage law invalid. Insiders knew that the behind-the-scenes artisan of this decision was Tacoma’s Harry Morgan — gambler, local political boss, and saloon supporter — an early precursor of the “mobster generation” of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Prohibition drive was mixed. Among its advocates were both “liberals” — with a left-wing political agenda that included women’s suffrage, abolitionism, labor law, and other reforms, and trade unionism — and members at the opposite end of the political spectrum. These were the increasingly vocal opponents of unrestricted immigration and railroad and farm support grants; in other words, conservative (at that time) America’s rural or small-town not-so-silent majority.
Because both Democratic and Republican politicians demonstrated their shifty venality, purists in both parties decided salvation lay elsewhere. The Prohibition party, established in 1869, and active in some twenty states, was by no means confined to cranks and religious fanatics. Among its members were distinguished liberals of all types, including partisans of women’s franchise and of prison reform. But despite considerable media interest, and its later role as the Prohibition issue gathered momentum, this “third party” never changed American voting patterns significantly. Its first presidential nominee, James Black — a distinguished former preacher who had in earlier days been a Democrat and then a Republican, running for the presidency against Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 — made an abysmally poor showing in the election: the brewers, distillers, and saloon keepers all brought out the vote for the popular general, who was also a notorious drunkard. And though Grant’s successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, was a Temperance sympathizer with a WCTU activist wife (a wit quipped that at White House state dinners, water flowed like champagne), the brewers’ lobbying power made Prohibition not only unlikely but
To deny her the use of that most efficient weapon, a vote, and then urge her into contest with the liquor trade is like saying that women cannot use artillery. . . but ought to form the advance in an attack on an army well drilled in their use, sending them forward with broadswords, javelins and other implements of medieval warfare.
Much more averse to publicity than the WCTU, another lobby, established at the start of the Civil War, became increasingly active in the Reconstruction period. Understandably shocked by what they regarded as discriminatory taxes in 1862, the brewers formed the United States Brewers Association to ensure that they would never be taken by surprise again. Their dues (from $25 to $1,000, according to their size) enabled them to use considerable slush funds on cooperative politicians and consumers alike.
The most vocal opponents of Prohibition were the “new Americans.” From 1840 onward, millions of Germans, Irish, and Italians entered the country, bringing their wine-, whiskey-, and beer-drinking culture with them, fueling a brewers’, distillers’, and winemakers’ boom. At the Brewers Association’s first meeting in 1862, many of its members spoke in German — the only language in which they were fluent. In increasingly expensive lobbying and newspaper campaigns, they quickly focused on the issue of women’s suffrage: the brewers and distillers knew that women were the Prohibitionists’ chief allies and saw the WCTU as its most formidable foe. The repeated failures ofmany state legislatures to bring about women’s suffrage must be laid at their door. Wherever state suffrage amendments were introduced, they went into action. In Oregon in 1853, for instance, Arthur Denny, a leading Prohibitionist, introduced legislation to give the vote to (white) women. He failed by one vote. Some thirty years later, the Supreme Court of Washington State, invoking “technicalities,” declared the newly passed women’s suffrage law invalid. Insiders knew that the behind-the-scenes artisan of this decision was Tacoma’s Harry Morgan — gambler, local political boss, and saloon supporter — an early precursor of the “mobster generation” of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Prohibition drive was mixed. Among its advocates were both “liberals” — with a left-wing political agenda that included women’s suffrage, abolitionism, labor law, and other reforms, and trade unionism — and members at the opposite end of the political spectrum. These were the increasingly vocal opponents of unrestricted immigration and railroad and farm support grants; in other words, conservative (at that time) America’s rural or small-town not-so-silent majority.
Because both Democratic and Republican politicians demonstrated their shifty venality, purists in both parties decided salvation lay elsewhere. The Prohibition party, established in 1869, and active in some twenty states, was by no means confined to cranks and religious fanatics. Among its members were distinguished liberals of all types, including partisans of women’s franchise and of prison reform. But despite considerable media interest, and its later role as the Prohibition issue gathered momentum, this “third party” never changed American voting patterns significantly. Its first presidential nominee, James Black — a distinguished former preacher who had in earlier days been a Democrat and then a Republican, running for the presidency against Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 — made an abysmally poor showing in the election: the brewers, distillers, and saloon keepers all brought out the vote for the popular general, who was also a notorious drunkard. And though Grant’s successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, was a Temperance sympathizer with a WCTU activist wife (a wit quipped that at White House state dinners, water flowed like champagne), the brewers’ lobbying power made Prohibition not only unlikely but
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