“No loitering allowed on these premises, by order of the Commissioner of Health.”
Not the friendliest sign to hang over a bar, but in October 1918 it was the law. Spanish flu had engulfed Milwaukee, and these notices represented just part of the city’s response to the pandemic. Thankfully, Milwaukee would fare better than many of its peers around the country during the deadly outbreak, which lasted for nearly 36 months and killed as many as 50 million people across the globe.
The order may be short and to the point, but there’s a lot to unpack in such a small barroom placard. It reveals who was most responsible for protecting citizens during this global crisis: local officials. While military doctors at the nearby Naval Station Great Lakes downplayed deaths and claimed that autumn weather would “practically kill the disease,” Dr. George C. Ruhland—Milwaukee’s Fauci-esque health commissioner—took swift action to assess the city’s outbreak, marshal resources, and eventually shut down public and semi-public gathering places. He undoubtedly saved lives.
It also conjures images of subdued queues instead of tipsy revelry. Indeed, Cream City saloons could remain open during the pandemic only so long as they followed the rules: no crowds, no music (which was “productive of attracting large gatherings”), and no sitting around. Customers could walk in, order a drink, down it promptly, and leave. Such moves were soon mirrored in smaller Wisconsin towns, which restricted saloon hours, limited the number of patrons allowed inside, or even banned on-site consumption in favor of filling jugs and flasks to go.
Of course, the sign also hints at the social role and political power of saloons in Milwaukee (and beyond). Saloons stayed open while schools, parks, churches, and crowd-gathering businesses like theaters shuttered. Some of the nation’s largest breweries called Milwaukee home, and the tied-house system was in full swing in 1918. They cumulatively employed thousands, plus city budgets depended on hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquor license revenue.
In that context, the sign seems a little less imposing: it left saloonkeepers a narrow path forward rather than no path at all. And most importantly, it points to some overlap between these saloons’ experiences and the struggles of nearly every brewery, bar, taproom, and kindred hospitality space in the face of our own ongoing pandemic.
I imagine you’ve now discerned the timely historical comparison I set out to write—but that’s not quite how it went. Breweries and saloons in 1918 didn’t have time to fret about the Spanish flu as much as their progeny are forced to grapple with COVID-19 today. They might have worried more had their plates not already been full with more imminent threats.
Today, COVID-19 is in our lives and on our minds. It’s insidious and paralyzing. Breweries are simultaneously sharing in the human cost, trying to help their communities, and struggling to keep their businesses alive in a socially distanced world. Incorporating this “new normal” into product, conduct, and business plans forces an uncomfortable calculus into beer production and consumption spaces, and asks brewery owners to navigate the fraught intersection of economic obstacle and unfinished trauma.
One hundred years ago, the Spanish flu was like that, too. Around 1,300 Milwaukeeans, 675,000 Americans, and 50 million around the world perished in total, but such convenient, round numbers imply an order to the experience that was never there. The disease struck in waves that spring, fall, and winter. No one at the time could know for sure when the danger might pass, nor the eventual extent of the human and economic cost on society. The federal response to the 1918 pandemic was anemic and clouded by government concerns that, according to historian Christopher McKnight Nichols, fully informing the public might weaken a supposedly larger national imperative—fighting the First World War. Information was suppressed, and state and local public health officials were left to blaze their own trails. Naturally, results varied.
“The disease struck in waves that spring, fall, and winter. No one at the time could know for sure when the danger might pass, nor the eventual extent of the human and economic cost on society.”
Milwaukee’s leaders stepped up in a crisis, and largely handled it well. But, for the city’s brewers and saloonkeepers, this wasn’t the only battle to fight. From a business standpoint, it probably wasn’t the most important battle in the fall of 1918, nor the second, and maybe not even the third. After all, when the President criminalizes your beer supply, a university threatens to shut you down completely, the Senate tries to brand you a traitor, and a pandemic ravages your community—all at the same time—how do you decide what takes priority?
Let’s take this from the top.
The Spanish flu emerged in Milwaukee in late September, and by then a few other crises were already starting to bubble over. The U.S. had entered World War I the previous year, creating a fervor of nationalism and a dearth of essential goods. The Prohibition amendment to the Constitution, a product of decades of political warfare finally coming to a head, had passed Congress and was meandering its way through state legislatures. Nebraska, the 36th and final state needed to ratify the amendment, would do so on January 16, 1919. But neither the “wets” nor the “drys” had our benefit of hindsight—they couldn’t know what was going to happen, and neither would consider the battle for Prohibition over until it was over.
That’s why William Austin, attorney for the Wisconsin Brewers’ Association, called the idea of Wisconsin ratifying Prohibition “unthinkable” in November, even though the Badger State would fall in line—on paper, at least—the day after Nebraska. More importantly, that’s why the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) and its state-level satellites, which led the Prohibition movement, would continue to press every single advantage they could until the nation ran bone-dry. Several fronts in this battle opened up alongside the flu in Milwaukee.
First, wartime scarcity threatened the flow of beer from Milwaukee’s massive breweries. The federal government had tightly regulated raw grains and other materials since entering the war, all while the ASL threw around its immense beltway influence to wield a war abroad against its enemies at home.
Beginning with the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act in summer 1917, the federal government banned the use of grain for distilling new liquor, leaving only existing supplies available. The brewers’ union managed to get beer exempted temporarily, but that winter President Wilson expanded the law to cut brewers’ grain supply by a third and restrict all beer to 2.75% ABV. In July 1918, he cut brewers’ coal supply in half, and then in early September—just as Milwaukee was seeing its first influenza symptoms—Wilson dropped an even bigger bomb.
By executive order, no new grain could be malted for brewing purposes after October 1. Brewers could continue to operate using any remaining malt supply, but only until December 1. After that, it would be illegal to brew beer altogether “until further orders.” Milwaukee’s nine brewers now had less than a month to prepare themselves and hope the measure was temporary.
The breweries and saloons alike were floored. Wisconsin ranked third in brewing volume nationally and second in malt production, and now one of its biggest economic interests was about to go dark by government fiat. The Milwaukee Sentinel called the move “one of the most severe shocks delivered to the wet interests since the war started.”
“When a pandemic ravages your community, the President criminalizes your beer supply, a university threatens to shut you down completely, and the Senate tries to brand you a traitor—all at the same time—how do you decide what takes priority?”
The Sentinel laid out the stakes: 6,000 "men, women, and girls” would be laid off from the breweries, alongside an estimated 5,000 more working in other sectors of the industry. The city’s 1,800 saloons promised to remain open, but an official from the Retail Liquor Dealers’ Protective Association lamented that “no saloonkeeper … can make a living selling only whiskey and cigars.” Every journalist, brewer, and bartender was doing the math on how long the beer supply could hold out after a ban—Mr. Austin estimated around three months.
Spokespeople for Milwaukee’s brewers and distillers meekly promised to follow the law and support the war, but there was no mistaking their anxiety. A massive disruption to their livelihoods was unfolding, and it wasn’t the only one.
For decades, the reformist crusade against alcohol called for restrictions on alcohol sales near places like churches, schools, and military installations, and U.S. entry into WWI gave the tactic new life. After Congress instituted the draft in spring 1917, the Wisconsin Legislature passed a three-mile dry zone around army camps in the state. New camps opening, new edicts issued by Washington, or even zealous local authorities could expand such rules, meaning more dry zones and more closures.
Local control was not guaranteed. Even if a town voted itself wet, a dry zone in a neighboring jurisdiction could force prohibition on its residents. When Lawrence College (now Lawrence University) in Appleton, Wisconsin elected to convert into a military college in September 1918, many in the town wondered whether their homes were about to dry up. The creep of dry zones stoked immense uncertainty, not only about where the next one might appear but also about what industry or institution might next be declared a protectorate of dry politics.
Milwaukeeans hadn’t even heard a verdict on Lawrence College when, on October 1, the very same problem arrived on their doorstep. Marquette University—located near Downtown, and barely a half mile from the ornate Pabst Mansion (though the family no longer lived there)—was selected to house a Student Army Training Corps, a progenitor of the ROTC. Since college military units were an ongoing gray area, the Justice Department needed to rule on whether a half-mile dry zone around the barracks would be established—and if over 150 downtown saloons would then close in the blink of an eye.
The prospect of a dry zone in the heart of Milwaukee accelerated some of the same concerns as the grain ban. Newspapers estimated that another 750 men would lose their jobs instantly, and the city would have to refund $16,000 (roughly $267,000 today) in liquor license fees. Local officials called for the barracks to be moved and warned of a tax hike to recoup the lost revenue. The Wisconsin Brewers’ Association sent Mr. Austin to Washington to lobby against the proposal. But no definitive news came back. Hundreds of saloon owners waited with bated breath. The clouds got darker.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ruhland was assessing the threat of the flu in Milwaukee. After he instituted the city’s closing order on October 12, saloons waited in silence—no music, no clinking glasses, no conversational din—unsure whether the Feds would allow them to reopen. And while the saloons hoped to hear something from Washington, the city’s largest breweries were hearing too much … and none of it good.
Aside from the flu, aside from the pending brewing ban, and aside from the dry zone, Milwaukee’s chief breweries faced a whole other crisis: the Brisbane scandal. In a nutshell, Gustave Pabst, Joseph Uihlein, and several members of the Miller family were accused of bankrolling a Washington, D.C. newspaper in order to push pro-German propaganda on the public. This charge was grounded in a (mostly) legitimate business deal, and fed by years of nativism and wartime paranoia.
These breweries, like most in the industry, were German-American through and through. For decades that had been, on balance, an asset—German ethnic identity had played a key role in the creation of the nation’s modern beer culture. But a declaration of war against Germany poisoned that well. During WWI the brewing industry, and everything associated with it, came under intense scrutiny. The ASL stoked the fire whenever possible.
“Aside from the flu, aside from the pending brewing ban, and aside from the dry zone, Milwaukee’s chief breweries faced a whole other crisis: the Brisbane scandal.”
The Badger State—where nearly a third of the population was of German or Austrian descent—became the “traitor state.” Milwaukee became the home of “Kaiser Brew.” The Wisconsin Loyalty League published a map of the state which shaded in the regions “most infected with Pro-Germanism”; Milwaukee featured prominently. In early 1918 the prohibitionist John Strange, a former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, specifically called Milwaukee’s chief brewers “the worst of all our German enemies […] No Germans in the war are conspiring against the peace and happiness of the United States more than Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, Miller and others of their kind.”
Enter A. Mitchell Palmer, the federal government’s custodian of alien property and unofficial attack dog. According to historian Maureen Ogle, Palmer spent much of 1917 and 1918 investigating (and at times harassing) German-American brewers and their families. Fresh from hounding Lilly Busch (August Busch’s elderly mother) as a suspected German spy that spring, Palmer learned that several prominent brewers had pooled money to help an editor, Arthur Brisbane, purchase the Washington Times newspaper. Their alleged purpose was to undermine national security via pro-German propaganda, but no one mistook this scandal for anything other than it was: a proxy for the Prohibition debate.
Palmer announced his case in late September. The story broke in the Sentinel alongside a lengthy article about the Prohibition amendment and recent grain ban announcement, titled “Fears Beer Will Receive Death Blow.” The next day a member of the Miller family confirmed their involvement in Brisbane’s purchase of the Times, but called the propaganda accusation nonsense. “We invested the money in the paper for the sole purpose of protecting our interests,” he said, “and to oppose the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of beer.”
Miller’s story seems closer to reality. The brewers apparently invested in the Times in order to circulate anti-Prohibition rhetoric—a deceptive plan, to be sure—but hardly to provide aid and comfort to enemies of the United States. Palmer’s case was flimsy and circumstantial, but in a nation where sauerkraut could become liberty cabbage—and given that many in Congress were in the ASL’s pocket—it was enough to launch a Senate investigation. Hearings began on September 27, mere days before the grain ban took effect, the downtown dry zone was proposed, and the rate of Milwaukee’s influenza cases spiked.
Dr. Ruhland’s orders kept Milwaukee closed throughout October, but then flu cases began to recede. Seeing light at the end of the tunnel, business owners and others pressured a reluctant Ruhland to lift the restrictions on November 4—earlier than he preferred. This proved premature, and he was forced to reinstate the closing orders in early December when the flu resurged. Milwaukee wouldn’t open again until Christmas Eve.
The other crises hounding Milwaukee’s brewing industry proved just as volatile, sometimes for the better and sometimes for worse. The Justice Department never actually weighed in on the downtown dry zone question, leaving dozens of saloons in limbo. But with Armistice signed and the flu returning in late November, the army elected to disband Marquette’s budding SATC barracks rather than keep hundreds of recruits in contagious quarters. After two uncertain months, downtown saloon owners could breathe slightly easier through their cloth face masks.
“John Strange, a former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, specifically called Milwaukee’s chief brewers ‘the worst of all our German enemies […] No Germans in the war are conspiring against the peace and happiness of the United States more than Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, Miller and others of their kind.’”
Meanwhile, Palmer and the Senate generated immense scandal but no real evidence of wrongdoing. The hearings dragged out over months, grilling Brisbane and others about public statements, newspaper coverage, finances, loyalties, potential socialist leanings, and anything else they could think of. But they never found a verifiable connection between the brewery owners, in Milwaukee or elsewhere, and the German war effort. “The only brewers I know,” Brisbane testified, “are men who were born in America.”
The scandal quietly disappeared from headlines in early December. Not that the hearings’ conclusions really mattered—the investigations forced Milwaukee brewers and their peers nationwide on the back foot during a critical time, and that was enough for the Anti-Saloon League.
The grain ban accomplished the same goal, ending malting operations in October and brewing itself in December. The malting ban lifted around December 30, but the brewing ban remained. Even if it, too, had been rescinded, any victory would have been too short to enjoy. During the ban and the investigation, Congress passed a wartime Prohibition bill (Armistice without a treaty meant that the U.S. technically remained at war with Germany) that would ban brewing again the following May, and the sale of all alcohol in July. Combined with the ratification of the 18th Amendment, Prohibition in the U.S. was now guaranteed.
“A beerless Milwaukee is like a beanless Boston—it can’t be done,” proclaimed the nearby Burlington Standard Democrat when wartime Prohibition took effect. Not for lack of trying. For a while in 1918, it seemed like the entire world was descending on Milwaukee beer and its purveyors. There is, if nothing else, a certain comfort in knowing how these stories end, and how they fit into the larger saga of Prohibition.
Today, it seems like confusion has replaced malicious politics as the pandemic’s chief ally against brewers. Governments local and national aren’t attacking breweries, but their scramble to cope with this crisis can still lead to lasting damage for the weakened industry. No one can yet say how this story will end.
It’d be nice to end with some levity. I could start right here with upbeat tales of the Spanish flu receding; of Wisconsinites resisting Prohibition with secret stills, homebrewed beer, and winking cops; then finish with something saccharine like that FDR quote about America needing a drink. But no one living in the time period had that benefit of hindsight. That stuff was all in front of them, and they had to figure out how to get there. We’ll have to do the same.
So let’s focus on something else. Milwaukee’s saloons didn’t close until someone made them. Milwaukee’s breweries kept their malthouses running until the authorities said no more, then they did it again with the brewhouses, then the delivery wagons. Brewers moved forward imperfectly, safely, and (mostly) above board, and when they hit a wall they chipped away until it came down.
Brewers and bar owners today share that quality. If there’s a way through this, they’ll find it.
Words, Brian AlbertsIllustrations, Araña Schulke
