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>> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland.
One of the most popular songs in 19th century America had to
It's a story about a little girl do with temperance and the need for people to stop drinking.
who goes looking for her father at the saloon door in the middle of the night.
It's called "Come Home Father." It's by Henry Clay Work and it sounds like this.
That was Joan Morris with husband William Bolcom at the piano and a verse from Come Home
That song came from 1864 but Father by Henry Clay Work.
the amendment to the US Constitution, that 18th
manufacture, the sale, and the Amendment that banned the
until 1919 which gives you an idea of how long it took the beverages in the United States, that amendment didn't come along
How did that struggle play out temperance forces to have their way with the US Constitution.
nationally and, in specific, in Wisconsin where there was such a well-established beer culture.
And of course other attitudes,
Booth Fowler. He's the author of "Wisconsin cVotes: An Electoral History.". Welcome to University Place
Presents. >> Thank you. Glad to be here.
a contradiction here, doesn't there? >> There does seem to be kind of
That there was this huge temperance movement in at least
parts of the country. Was there one in Wisconsin, too,
going back into the 19th century?
Oh, yes.
There certainly was. There was a vigorous effort in
Part a national movement there the 1840s and '50s.
In the 1880s Wisconsin joined the national movement of the There were other efforts in the 1870s.
local office, and one of the prohibition party and had candidates running in state and
most well-known in Madison was John Olinm of Olin Park and Olin Drive.
He ran for governor on the temperance ticket twice
and lost both times. >> Yes.
They never got up to 10% of the vote in their strongest period
in the 1880s, but the temperance movement was much, much bigger
than the prohibition party and a
lot of it, a lot of the energy of it of course came from women's organizations, and women
who of course couldn't vote for the prohibition party or any
other party. >> Good point.
A lot of the activity came
from them. And then it stepped up really very intensely by about 1900.
There were a lot of different strategies, as you may know.
One strategy was to try and have actual prohibition.
But over time most of these advocates realized that that
So they did other things like charge very high fees to open a tavern, license fees, so try to discourage.
Or they tried to set up, as was done in Madison, areas of prohibition.
example, to keep it away from the students. >> Yes, there were two areas set >> Like State Street, for
One was around the university. up in Madison after 1900.
Of course if you just want to walk farther down State Street you were all right.
And the other area was around the factory district on the east
side which spoke to two of the main concerns.
One being that youth would be corrupted by alcohol, and the other that workers were coming
interferes with economic to work drunk and obviously that
allowing individual places to decide not to serve alcohol. So they more and more moved toward the local option method
And that movement gained considerable strength in
Wisconsin after 1900. Even Madison became dry in 1917.
There were, in the first two decades of the 20th century,
Madison had 10 different votes
in which the prohibitionists and non-prohibitionists fought it out.
And finally by 1917 Madison became fully dry. >> The city itself. >> The city itself.
That's where it gets sort of
complicated, doesn't it, because you have municipal laws and then
or laws and then state and then national. >> Very, very complicated. you might have county ordinances
Madison a number of the what we would now call suburbs remained wet. And of course in the case of
wagons you could go to So if you had a horse or some
Middleton. But still it was, as you realize
involved in Wisconsin, elsewhere there were so many issues
too, that had a lot to do with things quite apart from the actual issue of drinking.
In the case of Wisconsin, there obviously were tremendous ethnic
tensions here where some groups, especially the Germans who were
by far the largest group, but the second largest ethnic group were the Irish Americans, were
populations to be irresponsible and immoral. felt by many of the other
So you had the ethnic tensions playing out, and of course you
had their resentment, these ethnic groups, tremendous resentment of these people
middle-class, "non-ethnic" coming in who were very often
people who were very religiously oriented Protestants. And very frequently there was a
religious issue because many of the people that were seeking
prohibition in Wisconsin and elsewhere were Methodists,
Baptists, and so on.
And the Catholics and the Lutherans were seen as the drinkers.
And so there were religious tensions. And then there were class tensions because many of the
promoters of prohibition were middle and upper middle-class and saw many of the immigrants
immigrants as people who needed to be, you might say, tamed or or the children of the
brought into the American way. And there were feminist issues.
You may know this.
This was sort of a second phase of feminism in the late 19th and early 20th century.
There was still an emphasis on
rights, but to a large extent feminism was moving toward public good.
And there were huge problems
with men drinking, as the song illustrates.
late. When they came home they often It wasn't just they were out
beat up their wives. They spent their money on booze.
And we've already referred to the work. >> Yeah, they were unproductive.
So there were actually serious >> They were unproductive.
issues for the society that were part of this very complex mix of
view of the typical German forces that from the point of
complete puzzler because they Awere not about getting drunk.t This wasn't Saturday night on State Street today or oftena
then. It was just beer is something we
the German tradition in Milwaukee. have for lunch. >> There were beer gardens in
>> It's a social event, it isn't a get drunk event.
And so they interpreted it, and in part correctly, as a direct
attack on them and their culture which, in part, it was.
Was there any kind of a drinking age before prohibition came along? >> Well, again that was an
option that could be adopted by individual places.
on 18 because, of course, in the But increasingly in Wisconsin more and more places did insist
earlier days of the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s of course there was no age.
What there was, was a gender
situation. Generally women were not
This was a man's world. >> Well, we're looking at the era of saloons and in saloons traditionally the only women
would be entertainers of some kind. >> So to speak. Yes and that was another
dimension of it is that in some places, and including at times
And one of the more successful in Madison, some saloons were also places for prostitution.
eliminations earlier on in terms of these places was eliminating the prostitution arrangement.
The bars continued on, the
saloons continued on, but it was, there's so many dimensions where work in terms of a
struggle. It's absolutely fascinating and one feature in Wisconsin I could
political significance was, of mention in terms of its
of immigrants and especially course, the democratic party, which largely was, in this era, in the 19th century, was a party
Catholics, was of course opposed to prohibition, period. But the republican party was
divided on the issue and very unhappy when the prohibition
party came around in the 1880s because everybody who voted
prohibition would have been a republican voter. So they wanted to keep the
were successful in doing that. prohibition party weak, and they
divisions. But the republicans, it was a challenge for them, a scary challenge because there were
that's one wing of the And a good example is the La Follettes. The La Follettes view, and
republican party as you realized in the late 19th and early 20th century, prohibition we don't
want anything to do with that.
Let's not get into that issue. That's not an important issue.
questions, democratic questions, An important issue are economic
but don't get us off as republicans on the prohibition issue.
But there were lots of people in
the republican party who wanted to push prohibition. And there was yet another wing
of the republican party in
Milwaukee as well as of course the socialist party in
entirely a German American Milwaukee, which was almost
party. The more urban republicans and
much opposed to prohibition. socialists, of course, were very
There's no neat lines here and that's one of the reasons why it
in prohibition in Wisconsin. took a long time to get anywhere
different from most other states >> Well, Wisconsin is probably, now still but then in particular, considerably
in that it did have this big brewing city. >> Oh, yes.
Yes and let's face it that was
an important factor. They were very, very active of
They had a huge economic course.
interest, and they were prepared to use the money. In fact, the major brewers spent
a good deal of money not only,
of course, opposing prohibition but fighting women suffrage in Wisconsin.
Because they feared,
correctly I think... >> If women were given a
prohibition. vote, they would vote for
>> Vote for prohibition, since it was very much part of the
that era, and so they pumped the women's program, generally, of
money into stopping that too. They were no fools in terms of their economic interests.
Let's back up to the national level for a minute. How many times did it come up,
Constitutional amendment? >> It started, really, before the Civil War there was considerable interest in doing
this. So there were many efforts, but they really weren't very
And I don't think, eventually, serious.
nationally, the growing power of the Anti-Saloon League and the
Union, nationally, simply became, they were well-organized, they were deeply Women's Christian Temperance
middle and upper middle-class. connected with churches and
>> They were certainly focused on what they wanted.
And the pressure but I don't >> Very, very focused.
think without World War I and our coming and then actual participation in it, I don't
think it would have happened
because what happened in the late teens was that, certainly
Wisconsin, is that things German it wouldn't have happened in
began to lose their luster big time and that hurt a lot. But also there was, as the
armament was taking place there was a question of our boys and
our boys will not be home with mother.
And they will be in the army and
when our boys got abroad. theBut that was a lot of it. of coThat was a lot of, we cannott what was going to take place
amount of middle and upper underestimate the tremendous
middle-class women moral pressure and the idea that
would disappear if only we had somehow so many evils of society
prohibition. >> Well, it was a time, too,
century, where there was a big those early years of the 20th
health movement. You get fewer horses, more
instead of the private home care automobiles, more hospitals
and that kind of thing, better sanitation, paved streets, this would, I suppose, gather some
momentum, this prohibition
temperance movement, from all of that. >> It did.
And that was, again, part of the
whole notion of social benefit. One of the social benefits would be the health of society would
improve.
And they had in mind, not just the less cirrhosis of the liver and so on, but the health in the
sense of, as I say, women being beaten up, and of course, often understated but very present, was the idea of rape and sexual
diseases and so on because of alcohol.
>> Well, okay, so let's go forward to 1918 now, 1919.
World War I is over, the
American Doughboys are home, and this movement for a national
steam. prohibition is really gathering
What actually tipped it over? >> Well, I think the war was crucial.
I think the war was a sense that
we can have a new start, a cleaner start, a healthier
passed Congress in 1917 it took several years before enough states adopted it. start, and while the amendment
ratify, that would be three-quarters. How did Wisconsin actually >> So you needed 36 states to
somewhat reluctantly apparently, become, then, the 40th state,
Yes. although a lot of these ratifications came pretty close together.
Well, Wisconsin ratified it. I think we can observe from your
least not first in line nor would we expect it. But I think Wisconsin had, after remarks that we were to say at
legislature so there was a sense all, approved it in the
And so this is what it looks that the dynamic had moved that far along, and so they went along with it.
like when Governor Philip signed the Wisconsin ratification of the 18th Amendment.
Right.
And he was a republican governor and, I might add, a master
through the first world war when politician who took Wisconsin
there were tremendous tensions here, of course, because of the large German American
population. >> Well, the Constitution is
celebrated for what's called its Constitutional vagueness in
delegating anything that it's not specifically claiming as
that prohibits the manufacture, the sale, the transportation, the importation of alcoholic And so you have this amendment
beverages in this country, what is the instrument that actually specifies what is illegal now? beverages or alcohol used for
the act of enforcement that was passed, and so it set up the >> Well, the Volstead Act was
might add, you realize that people often ask, communion wine arrangements. In the case of Wisconsin, I
homebrewing. was allowed and, of course, people were permitted to do
But the Volstead Act was the key act in setting it up. And let me just talk a little
bit about that, if I can, because very soon, what we know today nationally, we don't have data, but more revision of
scholarship suggests that in
Wisconsin, and certainly nationally, the bulk of the population quickly supported
prohibition.
prohibition, in 1933, the Tmajority of the population,h possibly more than prior to prohibition, was still adhering
to the law. So there was widespread and increasing disobedience, but
models of New York City and Milwaukee would imply. perhaps not as much as flapper
Very soon Wisconsin legislature began passing laws which were But iattempts to get aroundegan very, very quickly.
1925, for example, a referendum was held in the state on whether prohibition.
we could have near beer. And 72% of the population said
yes, that would be lovely.
Alcohol in a beverage. Well that, of course, was not Constitutional. Wisconsin cannot decide.
issues. Well then a couple years later So there it is. Wisconsin is already raising
enforce, at the state level, the Wisconsin had another vote, referendum, on whether or not to
Volstead Act to the enforcement act. And the majority said no we
don't want to enforce it here.
prohibition anymore. So by 1927 the state of Wisconsin essentially announced we're not going to enforce
>> Were they alone with that? >> Yeah, and they stopped. And so it was up to federal
agents to do it, and the federal
agents tried to work at it a bit.
breweries started up. I don't mean by that that every corner had a bar, but I just I don't mean by that that the
after the speakeasies. mean that they stopped going
They stopped, it just, the message was clear: Wisconsin
So what exactly were the doesn't want this anymore.
breweries doing during prohibition?
They had a number of strategies, >> Right.
obviously. They faced economic ruin so they
series of alternatives going tried to come up with a whole
Yeah, non-alcoholic. into the soft drink, the health drink business. >> Non-alcoholic beer.
And they did okay. They were able to survive, but
illegal production of alcohol. they did not engage in the
>> But a lot of people did or the illegal importation, illegal transportation of it.
I suppose those are the most
notorious kind of image we see here which I think is probably a
It's somebody having some fun with what became quickly a put up image here.
as we know, another country, cliche of rum running here. >> Obviously Wisconsin borders,
Canada. So there was plenty of action in that regard in terms of bringing
in hard liquor and so on. Again, what the typical person
in Wisconsin wanted was not hard liquor but a beer.
That's then as now, I don't know. But yes, northern Wisconsin became a place where there was
an importation and where hard liquor was available and where
people came, not just in Wisconsin, but from the Chicago
area and elsewhere, gangsters,
famously, where they could have, without any worry to speak of,
If the geography says, as you've implied, Booth, Wisconsin drink all they wanted.
is between Chicago and the Canadian border things are going
to happen.
This is a place called Little Bohemia which was in the north woods of Wisconsin.
I gather it was quite popular for illicit beer and who knows
I'm sure there were many of those places. Hurley, Wisconsin, was another >> I'm sure.
Right on the Michigan border. >> Yeah. one that was very well known.
would be going to any speakeasy with Chicago mobsters. So there was a lot of action up there but I don't know if I
That wasn't the typical... >> The typical scene would be
more like this. And what this looks like is one of the old saloons, the decor very much matches it, but the
difference here is that the women are customers along with
the men. >> Well that, of course, was one
of the huge changes that
prohibition brought to the drinking business, which is that
fit with the whole 1920s once you got into, in a sense it
liberation of women, a different style of feminism.
on in public. >> Right and go to the >> Smoke, drink, put your makeup
speakeasy. And, of course, that eventually
evolved to the small town bar situation of Wisconsin today
the mere drinking of alcohol, importing it, smuggling it, and shuffling it around, how did >> In terms of crime other than
Wisconsin? prohibition affect crime in
>> Well, of course, there were some very famous shootouts among
Wisconsin. mobsters and so on in northern
I think that question is one that is a very good one.
domestic abuse and so on just didn't happen. They hoped for collapse of
Some accounts of prohibition nationally argue that crime
actually went up because of this, but most of the crime they're referring to are people drinking illegally or getting
the alcohol or serving the
alcohol and all of that. But there's no evidence that I
particular change in crime know of that there was any
non-related to the actual drinking phenomenon. >> Was there already at this
point, I'm kind of intuiting
that there was a steady push then to repeal prohibition
enacted. almost as soon as it was
>> Very soon. Very soon. Tremendous pressure was brought
to bear on, of course, in the 1920s the second largest party
in Wisconsin, as you may know, was the socialist party.
They, of course, were very much against prohibition because, as I say, it was a German American party.
It was the most ethnic party in Wisconsin.
after all, Wisconsin with its German American population The democratic party hardly existed at this time because,
against Germany and it was the didn't forget who was president when we went into World War I
democrats. So the republicans ruled and
the republican leadership to do all these things. That's why these referenda were there was treheld.us pressure on
On the other hand, these same supporters of prohibition were
faced a lot of pressure. also republicans. So the republican governors
And, as I say, some, like the La Follette family, just I don't want to deal with it.
Others said we'll go ahead and
have some of these referenda. Everybody knew that by, say, 1927 that prohibition was dead
in Wisconsin, but this is a federal Constitutional
amendment. >> So how much really could
Wisconsin do with this federal
amendment in place? >> Well, all it could do is what it did do which was by 1927
we're not putting any enforcement.
And, I mean, that's a lot in terms of specific enforcement in
where are you going to spend
your police dollars. But symbolically it's a major statement that this needs to be
rethought, and by this time many
people agreed. However, the president of the time in 1927 was Coolidge, then
succeeded by Herbert Hoover.
Herbert Hoover was a deeply committed prohibitionist, and no way is that going to be changed
as far as he was concerned. So, really, it took the arrival of the Depression which basically said, kind of like the
La Follettes were trying to do
earlier, I think we have a little bit more important issue here.
Plus, of course, the
and much more open to drinking. admAnd Roosevelt, of course,tic pointed out that sure he was an wupper class protestant, but hey
was of the one branch of that,
the Episcopalians, that had nothing whatsoever against drinking.
Yeah, he was known pretty well for his cocktail hours in
the White House. >> Very much so.
Yes.
>> This is now 1932 and Roosevelt actually has this as a plank in his platform.
If I am elected president of the
United States, I will urge the repeal of prohibition.
hurt him in Wisconsin, that's for sure. But obviously the main issue was >> And that certainly didn't
Depression. >> What did the law enforcement community, I'll call it, say in Wisconsin by now, by the time of
this 1932 election? Are they saying we would vote for Roosevelt?
said we'll vote for Roosevelt but they certainly realized that >> Well, I'm not sure if they
Prohibition has not worked. The issue is, what do you do it's time to move on. Let's put it that way.
not going to follow the law and an increasing proportion is not whegoing to follow the law?nt part of the population is simply
effects in terms of the crime that surrounds the illegality of And there are some very negative
wanted to spend any more time doing it. And certainly Wisconsin law Soenforcement wasn't involvedent
anymore.
>> And what were the Wisconsin politics then?
the gubernatorial power? Was 1932 an election year for
>> Yes it was. And it was the first time that a
governor since 1892. democrat had been elected
And that shows you how republican a state it was.
the name suggests... And Governor Schmedeman was, as
>> Of German heritage. >> Yes, of German heritage. >> He was eager to repeal,
apparently, prohibition.
>> And the mayor of Madison, I might add, and very eager to get
And of course they also had a democratic legislature. Wisconsin was an enormous landslide for Roosevelt because
of the Depression, but also Wisconsin at this time was still
desperate. in many ways a farm state and the agriculture situation was
And so you've got a tremendous vote for him. >> You mentioned agriculture,
Booth, but in terms of helping
to lift Wisconsin out of the Depression, what were the economic arguments?
Other than if you're a tavern owner or a brewer.
Why would this help us to get out of this three-year >> You mean in terms of 1932? >> Yeah, 1932.
terms, not psychological terms? >> You mean getting rid of depression? I mean in terms of economic
prohibition, how would it help us?
Yeah, economically. >> Well, I think those
give, of course there's a certain amount of grain involved, but Wisconsin's not really a grain state, I think
the argument that would have
come out of the German American community would be, well, a beer or two a day will lift your
spirits in the Depression.
So it was the psychological act of it. >> And what was, back on the
national scale, what was FDR's
Well, he was coming out of take on it? What was his rationale of lifting prohibition?
the urban east, and he could see it failed.
Well, yes and he was not >> So why fight it again?
interested in fighting it. That's simply not a moral issue as far as he's concerned.
Of course, no one's talking about alcohol abuse here, you understand. >> And in terms of the
pervasiveness of repealing
prohibition, you said that Madison went dry in 1917 anyway,
Madison is suddenly going to so this doesn't mean that
become wet, does it, if prohibition is repealed? >> Of course.
Madison can stay dry, right?
>> It could stay dry but that's not what happened. These places went ahead and
there are very few places in
Wisconsin that stayed dry. So, no, yes, these places,
of speakeasies and it simply Madison by this time had plenty
wasn't working here either. >> So how long did it take for that first drop of beer to hit
the market after the repeal?
enormous celebration, and 100,000 people came out, which And in fact the repeal, when it became law Milwaukee had an
is a lot of folks. >> In 1933.
Yes, to celebrate the end.
And a good portion of those 100,000 had probably not had a drop since prohibition.
But a good many others had and
in any case now they had a legal drop. And it's more than that.
The tavern was a social, and is a social, place for so many people in Wisconsin, and it was even more so, of course, now
because women could come in.
>> And what you saw just a second ago was that first delivery by Schlitz via train
after the end of prohibition. This is April 7, 1933.
I don't exactly when the amendment was lifted, but it
couldn't have been much before
that. >> No. And you notice that there you
see it's not only men that are
celebrating. >> Yeah, there seems to be
around. And pictures of that kind are legion, not just from Wisconsin, plenty of celebrating all
I gather Wisconsin and national celebrations were not nearly so flamboyant when prohibition was instituted back in 1919.
Well, when it was about to
become law there was a tremendous amount of activity because, of course, it was
perfectly legal to drink
anything that you had acquired prior to prohibition. So there was an unbelievable,
what these places did was they
stocked up tremendously, and then there was a huge rush to get, but of course that wasn't
as easy to do.
That's fine with hard liquor but that, of course, was not so easy
And beer was what the average person wanted. to do with beer.
the way it did on the east >> Did prohibition make any particular Wisconsinites rich
coast? There are notorious cases, they say that, of Joseph Kennedy, for
example.
It certainly lined his pockets. Are there any Wisconsin notables that we know of?
There may be. I'm sorry I'm not familiar with who in the mob got rich.
people probably did. But I have no doubt that some
And, of course, it did provide support for those who ran and owned and ran and staffed
illegal places, which there were
You may know the Bush down by Park Street and Regent and you Down here in Madison we had our own special areas.
could, it was conveniently located to the university and
other places. You could get down there and
prohibition, there was a little bit of a loophole, wasn't there, business was brisk. >> Now, as far as the extent of
in terms of medicinal alcohol? >> Yeah.
There were loopholes but... >> The law was really intended to go after sort of a
Yeah and it was successful at such, I think. large scale.
The brewers stopped. Sure there was medicinal alcohol
and there were all sorts of how close can we skate to the legal and sure there were games,
Were there conclusions drawn plenty of games.
at the end of prohibition? How was Wisconsin, how was the
it had been in 1919? country different in 1933 than
>> Well, I think the number one conclusion which was drawn and remains very quickly, very
firmly, perhaps a little too
clearly was that prohibition of these kind of personal behaviors won't be effective in terms of
eliminating them, especially if you have a large proportion of
the population, and increasingly large because generationally the
problem got worse and worse,
youth became less and less interested, that prohibition
Well, we know today that it did work in the sense that a lot of people followed it. But it didn't work over time.
Let's put it that way.
But I think the key thing is you've got to have, prohibition often does work as long as you
understand that some people will
not follow it. But when it gets to be a lot of people, then it doesn't work.
If I can make that kind of
distinction. In other words, you can eliminate certain things but it
won't stop some people. But when it gets to be a lot of people it's not stopping then it's time for a rethink.
And I'm sure there were plenty of warnings going in that
drinking is just too big, too popular a thing. people are just going to ignore this however they can, that
movement. >> Well, they should have been But those warnings were somehow not heeded by the temperance
But I think there was a feeling of we can do moral education. And prohibition, as you know, had many sides.
We've talked about some of them.
But one of them clearly is the moralist, and so we can morally educate these immigrants and
their children, these low lifes,
these boozers, but I think it turned out that there are more than one morality out there.
And that's what wasn't
understood that what a Methodist prohibition middle-class couple thought was moral was absolutely
immoral from the point of view
of a German American in Wisconsin for whom drinking beer is part of their moral life.
So there's a public/private dichotomy in a way because some people thought it was only okay in private and others, again get
back to the beer garden where it's a very public expression of
culture. >> The big lesson I guess beside
this does prohibition work and
when, is that, here I'm moralizing, is that there's more than one morality out there.
And we certainly know that today
in our society, but it was very true, certainly, in the United States then and in Wisconsin.
And so you want to think a while
before you decide you want to impose your morality on somebody else.
Wisconsin maybe was, again, different from many other states
pockets. in that it had fairly clearly defined era, cultural or ethnic
Some states are more homogeneous than others, but in Wisconsin you had these well-defined areas
of Germans, of people who came
from beer drinking culture, whether they were Catholics or Lutherans, Germans or other
ethnic groups.
>> Yes, absolutely. And because it was still largely a small town or rural society,
their ancestors had come in a group and they lived in the group and it was still that way.
strength, as you may know, in Wisconsin for prohibition wasn't And it varied, a major area of
on but many Scandinavians were just the sort of mainstream protestant middle-class and so
very much committed to prohibition, especially Swedish Americans.
There was a strong Pietistic
element for whom drinking was immoral. >> There were those others who
needed their Akvavit. >> That's true. That's true.
Yeah. One of the things that's so fascinating about studying >> To this day.
it opens the door to all of the different kinds of ethnicities prohibition in Wisconsin is that
and class dimensions and moral dimensions that are out there.
It's fun. It's fascinating, I think.
>> Well, thanks for spending some time with us.
Booth Fowler, it's been quite the fascinating look at Wisconsin going into and coming out of prohibition.
My pleasure.
>> Booth Fowler is the author of "Wisconsin Votes: An Electoral History."
I'm Norman Gilliland. Thanks for
joining me for University Place Presents.