Comment from Alan of the "Good Beer Blog" (and Apologies for Malfunctioning Comments Function)

Alan from the Good Beer Blog (and also co-host of the annual Yule Photo contest) wanted to comment on an earlier post -- and discovered that my "comments" function is still wonky, presumably from the Great Blog Crash of '08. So apologies for that.

And I'll just use this entry to post Alan's comment. He's commenting on an earlier blog entry, which you can read here. And Alan's response to it is:

I don't think I was referring to Lew but I clearly do have those reactions to drinking that I was referring to - especially at pubs or beer fest when it is after my point in the evening, a point that seems to get earlier each year. It is all a continuum and, as you say, there is plenty of good in enjoying the simple organic pleasure of a beer or a leg of lamb or a garden's worth of your own work. But there are other points on the scale, too, and at some of them sit less pleasant things, the basic and on down the way to the base.

First Draft Follies: The "Dry" Assault On American Brewers, 1916. Part 2

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. All of the previous entries are available by clicking on "First Draft Follies" in the index. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. Whenever the excerpt is long, I've broken it down into several "parts."

This edition concerns the early twentieth century prohibition movement, which eventually produced the 18th Amendment and constitutional Prohibition.

______________________________________________________

On February 3, E. Lowry Humes, a United States District Attorney assigned to the Western District of Pennsylvania, issued eight subpoenas to officers of the United States Brewers Association (USBA), the Pennsylvania Brewers’ Association, and the Western Pennsylvania Brewers’ Association. The documents requested the men’s presence at a grand jury that would convene the following Monday to investigate possible violations of corporate tax law and the federal corrupt practices act.

Behind the subpoenas lay revenge. Humes hailed from a long line of Democratic politicians. Before coming to the D. A.’s office, he had served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. There he “brushed up against” and developed a loathing for the “great lobby” operated by the state’s brewers on behalf of the state’s Republicans. (*4) Loathing turned to hatred in 1914, when A. Mitchell Palmer, Pennsylvania Democrats’ party boss and a member of Congress, ran for Senate, a move intended to place him one step closer to the White House.

Palmer marched into the contest dressed in the armor of a corruption-fighting progressive. His opponent, Boies Penrose, limped into the ring burdened with a stinking train of bribes, graft, and election fraud.

Palmer should have won. He did not. Lowry Humes, who hoped to ride Palmer’s coattails to Washington, blamed the defeat on one factor: brewers who had “dumped a large sum of money” into the campaign. (*5)

Now District Attorney Humes (an appointment arranged by Palmer) planned to discredit, demolish, and destroy his enemy, and the public was in for a treat: A courtroom battle between good and evil, with the men in white armed with artillery “of a most sensational nature.” (*6)

Humes himself refused to say much. “I never try cases out of court or in the newspapers,” he sniffed.

So he said. In fact, Humes wanted Pennsylvanians to supply his office with ammunition and his minions leaked several columns worth of newsprint before the jury opened its first session. (*7)

The publicity paid off. Concerned citizens deluged Humes’s office with stacks of letter--some signed, some not--“containing enlightening facts about liquor money in politics.” The D. A. shared a typical example with reporters: a signed missive whose author “offered to prove” that local brewers had spent twenty-five dollars on “every election . . . in the county.” (*8)

Truth be told, the effluence of altruism represented an organized effort on the part of Pennsylvania’s prohibitionists. An unnamed member of the ASL explained that he and his comrades possessed an “‘abundance of interesting information on this subject,’” including evidence that Pennsylvania brewers “‘dominated’” state politics, provided “‘financial support’” to candidates, and in some cases even “‘named’” the winners in many elections. (*9)

Knew in other words, that brewers had been engaged in the same “pressure politics” for which the Anti-Saloon League was famous. (*10)

Ah, but in Pennsylvania, as in Texas, the difference between the brewers and the ASL boiled down to a legal technicality: the brewers, whether as owners of breweries or as members of trade associations, acted through the vehicle of an incorporated body. The ASL had never incorporated at either the national or state level, and was free to engage in as much electioneering and blackmail as it pleased.

___________________________________________

Sources:

*4: “How Keller Aided Liquor Interests,” Indianapolis News, May 24, 1917, p. 1.

*5: “How Keller Aided Liquor Interests,” Indianapolis News, May 24, 1917, p. 20.

*6: “Humes to Call Big Politicians in Liquor Probe,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, February 5, 1916, p. 2.

*7: Ibid.

*8: “Citizens Give Evidence in Brewery Case,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, February 8, 1916, p. 1.

*9: “Brewers Owe U. S. Millions, Is Reported,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, February 7, 1916, p. 7.

*10: Peter H. Odegard, Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928).

First Draft Follies: The "Dry" Assault On American Brewers, 1916. Part One

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. All of the previous entries are available by clicking on "First Draft Follies" in the index. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. Whenever the excerpt is long, I've broken it down into several "parts."

This edition concerns the early twentieth century prohibition movement, which eventually produced the 18th Amendment and constitutional Prohibition.

_________________________

On January 1, 1916, seven more states went dry, bringing the total to nineteen. Three weeks later, Texas Attorney General B. F. Looney and his staff marched into a Sulphur Springs courtroom. On trial were the seven members of the Texas Brewers’ Association, each charged with violating anti-trust laws and with “attempting to influence, affect and control” the state’s legislature and elections. (*1)

Prosecutors and defendants squeezed past the hulking mass that covered the floor in front of the bench: five hundred pounds of evidence in the form of twenty-five thousand pages of letters and reports. Prohibitionists filled the galley, hoping that the mound of paper would provide “interesting campaign reading and prove spicy for stump purposes.” (*2)

The circus never got off the ground. Looney announced that six of the seven defendants had surrendered their charters; accepted an injunction preventing them from engaging in “the acts complained of”--election fraud and anti-trust activities--; and agreed to pay court costs, the Attorney General’s expenses, and a $276,000 fine ($4.6 million today). (*3)

In short, and in the eyes of the public, a solid “guilty” verdict and therefore more evidence of the brewers’ evil ways. Looney entered all twenty-five thousand pages of evidence into the public record. (A few months later, an anonymous citizen--a member of the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) --footed the bill for printing the entire record: two fat volumes that ran to sixteen hundred pages.)

Things were about to get worse

. ______________________

Sources:

*1: The Brewers and Texas Politics (San Antonio, TX: Passing Show Print Co., 1916), p. 15.

*2 “Record in Brewers’ Suit Leaves Austin,” Dallas Morning News, January 23, 1916, p. 4.

*3: “Six Breweries Agree to Penalties of $276,000,” Dallas Morning News, January 25, 1916, p. 1.

Fall-Outta-My-Chair-Laughing Howler Of The Day

Those Google boys, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have once again, and inadvertently, demonstrated the virtues of a good liberal arts education, which they obviously missed out because they were busy learning to be computer engineering geniuses. (And I say that will all due respect.)

Backstory (brief version): I use and admire google. It's an incredibly useful tool. I also appreciate that Brin and Page want to scan the world’s books so that the information in them will be accessible to everyone. (This is a controversial project that prompted a lawsuit by the Authors Guild, which was recently settled, and, in my opinion, well-settled.)

Anyway, my complaint about the scanning project was the motivation behind it: The idea that scanning the world’s books would somehow capture the world's "information."

It won't. Archives, for example, contain millions of pages of unpublished manuscript material: letters and diaries, for example, are the mainstay of many historians’ work. So, too, old magazines and newspapers, whether published in 1790, 1890, or 1990.

Many of those are available on microfilm, and many are being digitized. But the number of digitized pages, whether of manuscripts or newspapers, is minute relative to the total.

Anyway, the point is that the world’s “knowledge” isn’t now and never will be confined to books.

But apparently the notion that “books” might be, ya know, useful, is still a novel (no pun intended) concept for our googleaders. Consider this quote from Sergey in a report in today’s New York Times.

There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site.

Damn! Ya think? Wow. I had no idea. Must ponder this insight from Sergey -- in between working on my next book, which, like the previous one, will take five years of my life because it will require me to conduct substantive primary research using material that can’t be found in books. And the finished product will itself be a book that will contain "fantastic information" that is "miles ahead" of something found on the internet.

More Of The "Now How Green Is This?" Puzzle

As I've noted here before, like many people, I do my bit for the environment, but like many people, I often wonder: What's "right"? You know: The plastic v. paper puzzle.

Anyway, on that subject, two puzzlers for you to ponder.

First from The Green Lantern at Big Money on the rent-film-by-mail v. drive-to-video-store.

Second, cogent reflections from the always-cogent Patrick Emerson at the Oregon Economics Blog, in which he ponders a worthy question: whose cleaning products should he buy? Ones from the politically correct company, or from the non-PC company with bigger clout? (Patrick, by the way, violates my no-black-background rule, but I love what he does, so -- he gets a pass.)

Tip O' The Mug To Astute Reader Dexter

Big thanks to Astute Reader Dexter for alerting me to yesterday's problem with the blog. MUCH appreciated. (And what I wish for in 2009 is, ya know, no more hackers.

Fat chance. Near as I can tell, hackers live to hack. Any server is their Mt. Everest: It's there, and they will hack.) Anyway, the company that functions as my host is working its way through the fallout from the hack of two weeks ago. They believe (and I hope...) that they've now resolved the major issues.

For what it's worth, much of the trouble these past two weeks stemmed from Movable Type, the "platform" on which this blog is built. As a tool for blogging, MT has many fine qualities. Unfortunately, the people at MT have zero interest in internet security. In that respect, I guess they're sorta like Gates and Microsoft: "We will run the world, but we don't give a damn if that world is full of holes through which hackers can move unimpeded."

I can sort of understand why: Gates wanted to build a tool for using PCs. The folks at Movable Type wanted to create a "publishing" tool. Security wasn't (and isn't) their main interest. And no, for those who are about to email me: The folks at Wordpress aren't any better. About the only "safe" blogging options are the freebies like blogspot, and the "free" system available from Wordpress.

The downside is that those freebies don't provide much flexibility for people like me who also have websites. Anyway, thanks again to Dexter for letting me know things had gone awry, and to the rest of you for being so patient during all this crap. (And crap it is....) Dexter, I gather from your email address that you're in Hawaii. So HEY! How's about sending a little sun, salt air, and warmth my way, eh??????