Wisconsin Public Television University Place University Place Presents  Booth Fowler Wisconsin and Prohibition: A Clash of Cultures  August 30, 2011 UP616   cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. One of the most popular songs in 19th century America had to do with temperance and the need for people to stop drinking. It's a story about a little girl 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 Father by Henry Clay Work. That song came from 1864 but the amendment to the US Constitution, that 18th Amendment that banned the manufacture, the sale, and the transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States, that amendment didn't come along until 1919 which gives you an idea of how long it took the temperance forces to have their way with the US Constitution. How did that struggle play out nationally and, in specific, in Wisconsin where there was such a well-established beer culture. And of course other attitudes, too, that would have been counter to temperance thinking. We'll get some answers from Booth Fowler. 

He's the author of "Wisconsin Votes: An Electoral History." Welcome to University Place Presents. >> Thank you. Glad to be here. >> There does seem to be kind of a contradiction here, doesn't there? 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 the 1840s and '50s. Part a national movement there to ban alcohol. There were other efforts in the 1870s. In the 1880s Wisconsin joined the national movement of the prohibition party and had candidates running in state and local office, and one of the 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 wasn't going to be very easy to accomplish. 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. >> Like State Street, for example, to keep it away from the students. >> Yes, there were two areas set up in Madison after 1900. One was around the university. 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 to work drunk and obviously that interferes with economic efficiency. So they more and more moved toward the local option method allowing individual places to decide not to serve alcohol. 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 you might have county ordinances or laws and then state and then national. >> Very, very complicated. And of course in the case of Madison a number of the what we would now call suburbs remained wet. So if you had a horse or some wagons you could go to Middleton. But still it was, as you realize there were so many issues involved in Wisconsin, elsewhere 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 felt by many of the other populations to be irresponsible and immoral. 

So you had the ethnic tensions playing out, and of course you had their resentment, these ethnic groups, tremendous resentment of these people coming in who were very often middle-class, "non-ethnic" 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 or the children of the immigrants as people who needed to be, you might say, tamed or 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. 

It wasn't just they were out late. When they came home they often beat up their wives. They spent their money on booze. And we've already referred to the work. >> Yeah, they were unproductive. >> They were unproductive. So there were actually serious issues for the society that were part of this very complex mix of forces that from the point of view of the typical German American in Wisconsin, and that would be the largest group in Wisconsin, prohibition was a complete puzzler because they were not about getting drunk. This wasn't Saturday night on State Street today or often then. It was just beer is something we have for lunch. >> There were beer gardens in the German tradition in Milwaukee. 

>> 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. But increasingly in Wisconsin more and more places did insist on 18 because, of course, in the 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 expected to be present. 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 in Madison, some saloons were also places for prostitution. 

And one of the more successful 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 mention in terms of its political significance was, of course, the democratic party, which largely was, in this era, in the 19th century, was a party of immigrants and especially 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 prohibition party weak, and they were successful in doing that. But the republicans, it was a challenge for them, a scary challenge because there were divisions. And a good example is the La Follettes. The La Follettes view, and that's one wing of the 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. 

An important issue are economic questions, democratic questions, 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 Milwaukee, which was almost entirely a German American party. The more urban republicans and socialists, of course, were very much opposed to prohibition. There's no neat lines here and that's one of the reasons why it took a long time to get anywhere in prohibition in Wisconsin. >> Well, Wisconsin is probably, now still but then in particular, considerably different from most other states 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 course. They had a huge economic 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 vote, they would vote for prohibition. >> Vote for prohibition, since it was very much part of the women's program, generally, of that era, and so they pumped the 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, this idea of a blanket of a 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 serious. And I don't think, eventually, nationally, the growing power of the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, nationally, simply became, they were well-organized, they were deeply connected with churches and middle and upper middle-class. >> They were certainly focused on what they wanted. 

>> Very, very focused. And the pressure but I don't 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 it wouldn't have happened in Wisconsin, is that things German 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 they will be vulnerable, and of course it was unrealistic about what was going to take place when our boys got abroad. But that was a lot of it. That was a lot of, we cannot underestimate the tremendous amount of middle and upper middle-class women moral pressure and the idea that somehow so many evils of society would disappear if only we had prohibition. >> Well, it was a time, too, those early years of the 20th century, where there was a big health movement. You get fewer horses, more automobiles, more hospitals instead of the private home care 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 prohibition is really gathering steam. 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 start, and while the amendment passed Congress in 1917 it took several years before enough states adopted it. >> So you needed 36 states to ratify, that would be three-quarters. How did Wisconsin actually become, then, the 40th state, somewhat reluctantly apparently, although a lot of these ratifications came pretty close together. >> Yes. Well, Wisconsin ratified it. 

I think we can observe from your remarks that we were to say at least not first in line nor would we expect it. But I think Wisconsin had, after all, approved it in the legislature so there was a sense that the dynamic had moved that far along, and so they went along with it. >> And so this is what it looks 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 politician who took Wisconsin through the first world war when 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 powers to the states. And so you have this amendment that prohibits the manufacture, the sale, the transportation, the importation of alcoholic beverages or alcohol used for beverages in this country, what is the instrument that actually specifies what is illegal now? >> Well, the Volstead Act was the act of enforcement that was passed, and so it set up the arrangements. In the case of Wisconsin, I might add, you realize that people often ask, communion wine was allowed and, of course, people were permitted to do homebrewing. 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. 

That is, they went along with it. And probably at the end of prohibition, in 1933, the majority of the population, possibly more than prior to prohibition, was still adhering to the law. So there was widespread and increasing disobedience, but perhaps not as much as flapper models of New York City and Milwaukee would imply. But in Wisconsin problems began very, very quickly. Very soon Wisconsin legislature began passing laws which were attempts to get around prohibition. 1925, for example, a referendum was held in the state on whether we could have near beer. And 72% of the population said yes, that would be lovely. Well that, of course, was not Constitutional. Wisconsin cannot decide. >> Alcohol in a beverage. 

>> Right. So there it is. Wisconsin is already raising issues. Well then a couple years later Wisconsin had another vote, referendum, on whether or not to enforce, at the state level, the Volstead Act to the enforcement act. And the majority said no we don't want to enforce it here. So by 1927 the state of Wisconsin essentially announced we're not going to enforce prohibition anymore. >> 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. I don't mean by that that the breweries started up. I don't mean by that that every corner had a bar, but I just mean that they stopped going after the speakeasies. 

They stopped, it just, the message was clear: Wisconsin doesn't want this anymore. >> So what exactly were the breweries doing during prohibition? >> Right. They had a number of strategies, obviously. They faced economic ruin so they tried to come up with a whole series of alternatives going into the soft drink, the health drink business. >> Non-alcoholic beer. >> Yeah, non-alcoholic. And they did okay. They were able to survive, but they did not engage in the illegal production of alcohol. >> 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 put up image here. 

It's somebody having some fun with what became quickly a cliche of rum running here. >> Obviously Wisconsin borders, as we know, another country, 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, drink all they wanted. >> If the geography says, as you've implied, Booth, Wisconsin 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 what other beverages. >> I'm sure. 

I'm sure there were many of those places. Hurley, Wisconsin, was another one that was very well known. >> Right on the Michigan border. >> Yeah. So there was a lot of action up there but I don't know if I would be going to any speakeasy with Chicago mobsters. 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 once you got into, in a sense it fit with the whole 1920s liberation of women, a different style of feminism. >> Smoke, drink, put your makeup on in public. 

>> Right and go to the speakeasy. And, of course, that eventually evolved to the small town bar situation of Wisconsin today where couples go. >> In terms of crime other than the mere drinking of alcohol, importing it, smuggling it, and shuffling it around, how did prohibition affect crime in Wisconsin? >> Well, of course, there were some very famous shootouts among mobsters and so on in northern Wisconsin. I think that question is one that is a very good one. They hoped for collapse of domestic abuse and so on just didn't happen. 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 know of that there was any particular change in crime 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 almost as soon as it was enacted. >> 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. The democratic party hardly existed at this time because, after all, Wisconsin with its German American population didn't forget who was president when we went into World War I against Germany and it was the democrats. So the republicans ruled and there was tremendous pressure on the republican leadership to do all these things. That's why these referenda were held. On the other hand, these same supporters of prohibition were also republicans. So the republican governors faced a lot of pressure. 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 administration was a democratic one, and the democratic party was much more of an ethnic party and much more open to drinking. And Roosevelt, of course, pointed out that sure he was an upper class protestant, but he 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. >> And that certainly didn't hurt him in Wisconsin, that's for sure. But obviously the main issue was not prohibition but the 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? >> Well, I'm not sure if they said we'll vote for Roosevelt but they certainly realized that it's time to move on. Let's put it that way. Prohibition has not worked. The issue is, what do you do when a very, very significant part of the population is simply not going to follow the law and an increasing proportion is not going to follow the law? And there are some very negative effects in terms of the crime that surrounds the illegality of it. 

So I don't think law enforcement wanted to spend any more time doing it. And certainly Wisconsin law enforcement wasn't involved anymore. >> And what were the Wisconsin politics then? Was 1932 an election year for the gubernatorial power? >> Yes it was. And it was the first time that a democrat had been elected governor since 1892. And that shows you how republican a state it was. And Governor Schmedeman was, as the name suggests... >> 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 moving and get on with it. 

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 in many ways a farm state and the agriculture situation was desperate. 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. >> You mean in terms of 1932? >> Yeah, 1932. Why would this help us to get out of this three-year depression? I mean in terms of economic terms, not psychological terms? >> You mean getting rid of prohibition, how would it help us? >> Yeah, economically. >> Well, I think those advocating getting rid of it, the only argument they could 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 take on it? What was his rationale of lifting prohibition? >> Well, he was coming out of the urban east, and he could see it failed. >> So why fight it again? >> Well, yes and he was not 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, so this doesn't mean that Madison is suddenly going to 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, Madison by this time had plenty of speakeasies and it simply wasn't working here either. >> So how long did it take for that first drop of beer to hit the market after the repeal? >> It didn't take long. And in fact the repeal, when it became law Milwaukee had an enormous celebration, and 100,000 people came out, which 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 plenty of celebrating all around. 

And pictures of that kind are legion, not just from Wisconsin, but around the country. 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 to do with beer. And beer was what the average person wanted. >> Did prohibition make any particular Wisconsinites rich the way it did on the east 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. 

But I have no doubt that some people probably did. And, of course, it did provide support for those who ran and owned and ran and staffed illegal places, which there were plenty. Down here in Madison we had our own special areas. You may know the Bush down by Park Street and Regent and you could, it was conveniently located to the university and other places. You could get down there and business was brisk. >> Now, as far as the extent of prohibition, there was a little bit of a loophole, wasn't there, in terms of medicinal alcohol? >> Yeah. There were loopholes but. .. >> The law was really intended to go after sort of a large scale. >> Yeah and it was successful at such, I think. 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, plenty of games. >> Were there conclusions drawn at the end of prohibition? How was Wisconsin, how was the country different in 1933 than it had been in 1919? >> 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 "doesn't work". 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 people are just going to ignore this however they can, that drinking is just too big, too popular a thing. But those warnings were somehow not heeded by the temperance movement. >> Well, they should have been in Wisconsin. Certainly. 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 in that it had fairly clearly defined era, cultural or ethnic pockets. 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. And it varied, a major area of strength, as you may know, in Wisconsin for prohibition wasn't just the sort of mainstream protestant middle-class and so on but many Scandinavians were 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. >> To this day. >> Yeah. One of the things that's so fascinating about studying prohibition in Wisconsin is that it opens the door to all of the different kinds of ethnicities 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.