Henry Weiss must have been an enviable saloon proprietor in 1850s Chicago. His location was essentially perfect—downtown near Clark and Randolph streets, across the street from City Hall and adjacent to the renowned Sherman House (a boxy, mid-century analog to the Drake Hotel). His Lager beer hall was so popular among German immigrants—and they started the day so early—that despite daily beer shipments, his taps ran dry by 3 p.m. each afternoon. No matter. Weiss was happy to shutter the place with a note on the door: “No more beer today!”
Most threads in Midwestern beer history trace back to the 1850s, and a regular at Weiss’ saloon would have seen those various strands in action. As the fledgling city sprang up around them, they would’ve watched glass after glass of Lager beer disappear over political discussions, social club meetings, and other pillars of German-American identity. They’d have heard about the local temperance chapters’ latest volleys against granting liquor licenses, Sunday drinking, and would have probably rolled their eyes at the dire rhetoric about whiskey-tippling Irish and beer-swilling Germans.
In 1855, those very tensions sparked Chicago’s Lager Beer Riot right outside Weiss’ door. Our hypothetical regular could have witnessed the violence through the front window without even leaving their perch—though police would likely have hoisted them off it that evening while raiding saloons in search of rioters. Yet, once the dust settled, they’d have spotted more and more non-German Chicagoans slipping up Clark Street each Sunday to visit saloons and beer gardens in the immigrant neighborhoods across the river: local evidence of a national transformation underway.
As they would have watched all this unfold, they’d have been sipping Milwaukee Lager. And back north, Milwaukee brewers Phillip Best and his brother Jacob were figuring out just how much more beer they should send across state lines.
Formally named Best & Weiss, Henry Weiss’ saloon was one of the first examples of a tied house in Chicago’s history, likely opened in the mid-1850s, and complemented by a Best & Co. shipping office down the street. Not to be outdone, the Bests’ local competition followed closely behind. Valentin Blatz quickly established his own tied house next door. Fellow Milwaukee rivals Charles Melms and Joseph Schlitz soon joined the fray, sowing the seeds of a peculiar romance between Milwaukee and Chicago that would blossom throughout the 19th century and beyond.
It’s tempting to look at Milwaukee brewers’ pre-Prohibition relationship with the Chicago market as a case of colonization by beer—some 1850s summers got hot, local supply couldn’t slake Chicago’s thirst, and Milwaukee brewers rushed to fill the void. Later, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 devastated the city, including many breweries. This allowed Milwaukee to tighten its grip on the Windy City, and the rest is history.
That’s certainly one compelling perspective. After all, by the end of the century, Milwaukee brewers controlled hundreds of tied houses and provided over 30% of Chicago’s beer supply. But a closer look—not just at shipments and taps and smacked lips but at the ever-shifting ground beneath these brewers’ feet—reveals an underlying symbiosis between the cities. Chicago needed Milwaukee beer, but Milwaukee beer needed Chicago right back.
“As an Omaha-based reporter put it, ‘The ancient store boxes in the cellar have ‘St. Louis’ stenciled on them; those on the pavement, ‘Chicago.’ Omaha eats Chicago groceries, wears Chicago dry-goods, builds with Chicago lumber, and reads Chicago newspapers.’”
Still, symbiosis rarely meant harmony. Both Chicago and Milwaukee firms competed bitterly for market share, so much so that it was often difficult for anyone to make money selling beer in the city. From the late 1870s, Milwaukee brewers’ profits from Chicago were meager versus other areas, and regular price wars during the next two decades sometimes erased them entirely. It didn’t end there—Pabst Brewing Company’s Chicago branches, for example, operated at significant losses through much of the 1900s and 1910s.
Clearly, the city didn’t represent easy money for brewers, so why did Milwaukee’s largest and most successful brewers covet their Chicago branches year after year? It was because Frederick Pabst, Valentin Blatz, Joseph Schlitz, and their various successors learned that Chicago’s real value to a brewery lay not in its thirst but its gravity. The city pulled many facets of Midwestern life into orbit around it—for these brewers, success hinged on their ability to harness the attention of Chicago’s drinkers, and to use that status to slingshot into the nation beyond. To fully understand that, we have to venture forth from Henry Weiss’ saloon and reap the seeds that the 1850s sowed.
Chicago’s hot weather during that decade was a great boon for Best, Melms, and the rest. But it was also pure luck. Most of what came after (excepting, of course, the Great Fire) depended on politics, capitalism, and westward settlement. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Chicago—all considered part of the West at that time—vied for prominence in the growing webs of finance, transportation, and trade that came to define the future.
Waterways presented a time-honored geographic advantage, and indeed Milwaukee’s first shipments of beer floated down the Lake Michigan shoreline on barges or steamships. But the future lay with railroad track, and Chicago boosters successfully transformed the city into a transportation hub for several important industries—Great Lakes lumber, Midwestern grain, even lead from mines along the Mississippi. The Civil War also played a role: violence in Kansas disrupted St. Louis’ economy just in time to divert vital railroad lines northward. Their loss was Chicago’s gain, and soon it made little sense to ship goods along meandering rivers and canals when railroads proved faster, cheaper, and more dependable.
This was a watershed moment—not just for investors’ returns and train schedules, but for the very landscape of the Midwest. Integration with eastern markets hastened Native American displacement, transformed ancestral lands into white hinterlands, and determined the fate of thousands of communities across millions of acres. Trade and finance networks reoriented vast swathes of the countryside, as one historian put it, “into a capitalist orbit” around Chicago. Commodity prices in Chicago exchanges (themselves aligned with eastern cities like New York) dictated which crops farmers planted, where debt payments flowed, and how people moved about the country on a scale never seen before. In Wisconsin, these shifts affected not only Milwaukee brewers but rural farming families, thousands of whom began planting hop bines and other cash crops to take advantage of rising prices.
Chicago’s newfound centrality secured not just its metropolitan future but also an incredible influence over the national economy. As an Omaha-based reporter put it, “The ancient store boxes in the cellar have ‘St. Louis’ stenciled on them; those on the pavement, ‘Chicago.’ Omaha eats Chicago groceries, wears Chicago dry-goods, builds with Chicago lumber, and reads Chicago newspapers.”
But they soon drank Milwaukee beer.
Engulfed in these shifting networks like everyone else, Milwaukee’s prominent brewers leaned in. Taken by itself, their city was a relatively minor brewing center during the 1850s and ’60s, with too small a population (about 45,000 in 1860 vs. Chicago’s 112,000, the gap widening each year) to sustain multiple large-scale operations. They aggressively expanded production anyway, gambling that they could reliably sell their beer in distant markets.
Charles Melms bet on the shipping arm of his business early, building an extensive brewing plant with a steamship dock along the Menomonee River on one side and spurs for two major railroads on the other (both linked to Chicago). When Melms unexpectedly died in 1869, Best & Co. purchased the brewery from his widow. Emil Schandein, Best’s co-owner alongside Frederick Pabst, went so far as to move into Melms’ former home when he took over management of the facility. Nearby, Joseph Schlitz bought another defunct Milwaukee brewery the next year, and built an expansive facility and icehouse on the site.
After the fire in 1871, which consumed nineteen Chicago breweries, Schlitz’s chief Chicago sales manager Edward Uihlein callously wrote that business “literally exploded” and that “orders came in so quickly that it was impossible to fill them all.” Schlitz’s production jumped by tens of thousands of barrels overnight; it needed a second icehouse by 1873. When Joseph Schlitz perished at sea two years later, the Uihlein family would take control of the company and continue their focus on the Chicago market. But while these breweries would produce beer in Milwaukee, Chicago played a vital role in just about every other stage of the process.
“After the fire in 1871, which consumed nineteen Chicago breweries, Schlitz’s chief Chicago sales manager Edward Uihlein callously wrote that business ‘literally exploded’ and that ‘orders came in so quickly that it was impossible to fill them all.’”
Chicago’s gravity only grew with time. Railroads carried lumber, grain, cattle, debt payments, people, and expertise in from the countryside, then carried commodities, manufactures, and credit out. Before they could send their beer south, many Milwaukee brewers first had to ship Chicago-produced malt, wagons, barrels, and copper kettles north. As production expanded, Best (renamed Pabst Brewing Company in 1889), Schlitz, and Blatz would all rely on Chicago-based architects to design new, state-of-the-art breweries for them. And though they certainly didn’t need to travel for Lake Michigan ice, the first artificial ice machines in the U.S. were sold by Chicago-based firms.
Chicago became the largest market west of the Appalachians, and Milwaukee brewers already had an in. In 1857 they sold between 25,000 and 30,000 BBLs of beer in Chicago—now shipped by rail, of course—but nationwide recession made it impossible to sustain those numbers. By 1885, however, they reliably sold over 200,000 BBLs. In Pabst’s case, Chicago branches offered not only massive sales volume—enough to lower production costs across the board—but also covered substantial overhead costs. By 1883, the brewery’s Chicago sales staff was nearly as large as at the home office, and the main Chicago branch manager’s salary rivaled the brewmaster’s.
For all its size, however, the Chicago market proved singularly treacherous. Pabst, Blatz, and Schlitz competed against other shipping breweries like Anheuser-Busch, large local brewers like Conrad Seipp (which survived the Chicago fire unscathed) and eventually Peter Hand, as well as dozens of small operations. Inevitable price wars and overcompetition kept the price of beer around $4 per barrel, less than half of what it had been during the 1870s. In the 1890s, English-owned syndicates began buying up Chicago breweries, leveraging economies of scale and rival tied house networks to further suppress prices. In addition, they had to contend with saloon owners who were only too happy to pit sales agents against each other whenever they could. Pabst and Schlitz, like the rest, cultivated their own tied houses wherever possible—but even if ensnaring a saloon’s business proved profitable in the long run, it meant substantial upfront expenses like license fees, glassware, displays, novelties, and exterior signs (progenitors of the iconic Old Style sign). The alternative was building the saloon from scratch.
A thin veneer of cooperation generated the Chicago and Milwaukee Brewers Association in the 1880s, through which brewers in both cities colluded on keg prices, discounts, and other business practices. But that quickly crumbled under the weight of competition. Milwaukee brewers were forced to sell at a loss on more than one occasion. At one point, Chicago-based firms even pushed for a tax on out-of-town beer, hoping to hobble their competition. To Milwaukee’s relief, the state supreme court struck it down.
“It is hell on earth as usual,” a Chicago branch manager reported to Frederick Pabst in 1879. For all their trouble, Chicago sales turned a relatively dismal profit: about 36 cents per barrel for Pabst in 1884 compared to the company average of $1.05. Sheer volume justified this rate to some extent, of course, but there’s more to the story. Chicago was a liaison to the nation beyond, and that was as important as any return or service.
Chicago’s endorsement of Milwaukee brands earned them the credibility of the West’s largest metropolis, and a reputation that couldn’t be bought anywhere else. The brewers did everything they could to feed this image, from flashy tied houses to exposed sidewall advertisements to lavish displays at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Frederick Pabst bought both the Union Hotel and the Great Northern Theater (along with analogs in Milwaukee and several other cities), understanding that creating an association with prestigious locales would make the beer prestigious, too. These resorts and destinations were so lavish that they could become tourist destinations in themselves. Local margins weren’t necessarily the point—sales in Chicago led to sales in other, more profitable markets.
Like Peru, Indiana. Or Wausau, Wisconsin. Or Houghton, Michigan. These smaller branches, located in a countryside increasingly governed by train schedules and the Chicago Board of Trade, netted Pabst between $1.50 and $2 per barrel. Add in carefully chosen wholesale agents and traveling salesman to proselytize the brand, buy rounds in small-town saloons, and deliver beer by the wagonload, and these lucrative hinterland sales could amount to 40-50% of the company’s total in a given year. Of course, urban centers from New York to Pittsburgh to Milwaukee itself could exert their own gravitational forces, but Chicago’s dominance of the growing western economy kept it in a privileged position for Milwaukee’s shipping breweries.
Finally, Chicago’s rail connections proved indispensable as Milwaukee shippers pursued national markets. Pabst’s Chicago branches coordinated shipments to Pittsburgh, Kansas City, New Orleans, throughout Michigan, and the myriad stops in between. Naturally, northwestern rail lines facilitated direct shipments to cities like Minneapolis, but freight rates, ice, and factors like traffic density meant that shipping beer from Milwaukee to nearby Stevens Point, Wisconsin (155 miles) cost four times as much as sending it to Pittsburgh (560 miles).
To these brewers, then, the pathways of an industrializing national economy made Chicago a means as much as an end. However the balance sheet looked, this was one market they couldn’t afford to lose. Even in the early 1900s, when Chicago’s branches posted official losses in the five- and six-digit range year over year, they carried so many overhead costs that Pabst kept them open.
One stubborn question remains in all this: if Chicago played such a role in Milwaukee brewers’ success, why didn’t the large Chicago brewers preempt them, or at least join in? Historians have offered many explanations for Milwaukee’s success, ranging from tedious analyses of ice and cooperage costs; to judgments of “extreme shortsightedness” and complacency on the part of Chicago’s brewers; to lofty claims that Pabst, the Uihleins, and the rest were geniuses whose foresight and business acumen elevated them to nearly divine status.
The best answer—if I may torture this metaphor one last time—lies with gravity. As Chicago’s massive early growth pulled these brewers in, they gathered speed. With some wise maneuvering, they harnessed that momentum to expand into the nation beyond. Sound judgment, effective management, and a measure of resolve were absolutely required, but not in any superhuman capacity.
Chicago brewers were savvy, after all. Despite competition from shippers amassing tied houses and English syndicates amassing ownership stakes, Chicagoans continued to drink plenty of homegrown beer throughout this era. Gravity still held them in place. Some beer did occasionally leave the city—newspaper records show shipments going as far away as Hawaii, and even the occasional Milwaukee saloon would serve exclusively Chicago beer—but Chicago’s largest brewers apparently never experienced the same pull to seek out new markets. A large, nearby market kept them busy at home, and many of them found immense success there all the same.
“Chicago’s endorsement of Milwaukee brands earned them the credibility of the West’s largest metropolis, and a reputation that couldn’t be bought anywhere else.”
New York, Philadelphia, and other large metropolitan areas exhibited similar trends during the late 1800s, yielding fabulously wealthy beer barons who never pushed beyond their city limits. Business historian Martin Stack has investigated how different starting positions in the marketplace led to different business models for breweries, and further demonstrated that each model could thrive within its own context. Regional shippers (such as George Wiedemann in Cincinnati, or Theodore Hamm in St. Paul) and thousands of local breweries could focus on nearby or even just neighborhood markets, carving profit from reduced overhead costs, local loyalty, or any number of other factors that didn’t fit easily into a national strategy.
This doesn’t necessarily let Chicago brewers off the hook. Those who dabbled in distribution never achieved the reach that Milwaukee’s beer barons did, and in 1880 the Chicago Tribune diplomatically conceded that “Milwaukee brewers…have made a specialty of that branch of the business.”
What this does tell us, however, is that success within the brewing industry (then and now) is a moving target. It’s an interpretive product of a brewery’s goals and circumstances, rather than a set of objective criteria. It answers to the brewer first and the historian second. In terms of their goals, Pabst, Schlitz, and Blatz were wildly successful. They duplicated Henry Weiss’ saloon thousands of times over, from New Orleans to Houghton, and backed the largest brewing and distribution operations of the pre-Prohibition era.
In terms of their circumstances, they thrived by adapting to forces larger than themselves and finding a delicate balance between the two cities. Milwaukee defined their product and their drive, while Chicago’s resources, infrastructure, and insatiable thirst defined their reach.
Surely no one in little Best & Weiss saw this dichotomy coming. The hints around them suggesting a sea change in American beer and economic life would have seemed obscure, the notion far-fetched, and the scale unimaginable. But they were there all the same—at least until 3 p.m. each day.
Words, Brian AlbertsIllustrations, Araña Schulke
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