Facing Reality / Last Call

(The bill for Ohio's - and the nation's - failure to head off prohibition legislation came due in 1919, when breweries were obliged to alter production or shut down, and saloons found themselves unable to satisfy consumer demand for long-cherished social beverages. For some the advent of Prohibition had a devastating effect; this excerpt from Over the Barrel, Volume One shows us how Greater Cincinnati reacted to the new order in its earliest days.)

 Facing Reality

As Prohibition became a reality in Ohio, brewers began to plan for a future without beer. In Cincinnati as elsewhere, foremost among concerns was the potential duration of Prohibition, and the likelihood that a given brewery could survive until the enactment of repeal legislation. Some Cincinnati brewers-including several of the largest-had little stomach for the battle, and quickly decided to cease operations. Others sought a middle ground, in which they would manufacture non-alcoholic malt beverages. A third group of breweries opted to continue manufacturing operations, but with little or no effort to follow the near beer trend. Many former brewers in the area turned to the production of bottled waters and soft drinks, ice, ice cream, denatured and industrial alcohol, cheeses, candy, and a host of other products in an effort to survive Prohibition, in the hope that the dry period would be short and malt liquor production would resume. Regardless of the path chosen by the individual brewer, in each case the unstated goal was to make the best of a bad situation.

As local brewers watched prohibition legislation become reality in Ohio, they were obliged to plan for the future. The most logical choice was to manufacture near beer, a cereal beverage brewed by the same process as regular beer and subsequently reduced to one-half percent or less alcohol content. Early sales figures brought guarded optimism to the industry: the Bruckmann Brewing Company listed sales of $83,389.80 in cereal beverages during 1919, compared with beer sales-curtailed by midyear due to Prohibition-of $45,844.45. By 1921 near beer sales nationwide amounted to 285,825,830 gallons, in contrast to real beer sales of over 1,000,000,000 gallons in 1918. Several Cincinnati brewers followed the near beer trend for a time: Christian Moerlein produced Chrismo until spring 1919; Wiedemann manufactured Quizz; and the Crown Brewing Company came up with alcohol-free Tang, a brew advertised as "The Most Palatable Cereal Beverage on the Market. With a Taste and Flavor That Satisfies." Despite Crown assurances that "It's the Quality That Sells the Goods," few consumers were convinced that the product was a suitable replacement for familiar lager beer, and Tang-not to be confused with the future orange drink of the same name-had no lasting market success. Widely perceived as a weak cousin to its predecessor, and overwhelmed by competition from homebrewers and illicit producers of full-strength beer, near beer sales declined continuously nationwide after 1921, and by 1932 fell to only 85,741,599 gallons. In 1925 only eight Cincinnati brewers continued to manufacture nonalcoholic malt beverages, and of the local concerns only Bruckmann maintained production of near beer until the end of Prohibition in 1933, thus becoming the only area brewery ready to provide beer to customers upon repeal. Brewers everywhere made little secret of their disdain for non-alcoholic malt beverages; nationally as well as locally, many near beers were more noteworthy for their strange names than for their taste. Monikers such as Bravo, Bevo, Becco, Cero, Gozo, Kippo, Laxo, Mulo, and Singo, among many others, failed to excite patrons throughout the nation, and seemingly were candidates for Marx Brothers names more than for refreshments.

The reality of impending Prohibition took a tragic turn for one Cincinnati brewer unable to cope with the sudden downfall of the industry, when on March 17, 1919 William A. Boss, president and treasurer of the Gambrinus Stock Brewing Company, attempted to take his own life in the midst of a St. Patrick's Day celebration. After lunch with coworkers, Boss accompanied several colleagues to the brewery taproom and proceeded to take part in the festivities. The thirty-two-year-old brewery leader had been in a jovial mood during the better part of the celebration, but at one point suddenly excused himself and returned to his office, where he procured a revolver which had been stored away. Shortly thereafter a single shot was heard, and Boss staggered from a nearby lavatory, with a bullet wound in his left breast, before collapsing into the arms of a brewery clerk. The clerk quickly summoned two other office employees, who helped carry Boss to a table and administered first aid. Taken to General Hospital after the shooting, Boss told doctors that he had shot himself accidentally, but there was little question that the attempt was deliberate. Before the arrival of the police, Boss had written a note-subsequently turned over to a police lieutenant, despite requests by Boss to have it destroyed-which read, "I am in the hands of my friends, and I request Undertaker Sullivan to bury me from my mother's home." Further corroboration was offered by Boss's wife, who implied that her husband had not been mentally competent in the act: according to her Boss "worried over Prohibition until he was nearly crazy. He worried night and day."

By late April 1919 most breweries had made their final deliveries of beer to Cincinnati-area saloons. One local brewer announced that it had maintained a beer stock designed to last until mid-May, but increased demand had exhausted the supply almost a month before the target date. Other Cincinnati breweries likewise were unable to fill orders, and despite increased production of near beer were asked repeatedly about the availability of real beer, distributed for the last time several weeks earlier. Area breweries also began to cancel leases on saloon properties they had maintained; in early May Christian Moerlein filed eleven such lease cancellations with the Hamilton County Recorder, under prohibition clauses written into many of the later agreements with saloonkeepers.

In early May, the end of legal beer sales in sight, other industries affected by prohibition legislation also began to finalize operations. Breweries, wineries, and distilleries were the most obvious victims of Prohibition, but a number of secondary industries similarly were devastated by the legislation. Cincinnati coopers such as J.M. Schott & Sons had gone several months without orders due to the new law; in the case of the Schott firm a weekly payroll of $3,000 dwindled to nothing, as workers were laid off gradually until no one remained. The Boldt Glass Works, a major suppliers of bottles for Cincinnati brewers, shut down local operations completely with the advent of Prohibition, and transferred remaining work to Huntington, West Virginia, in a move to cut costs. The Progress Lithographing Company, a Cincinnati manufacturer of bottle labels for area brewers, like other companies was forced to convert its operation to other uses in response to Prohibition and the subsequent decline in the business of brewing. Throughout the city, equipment and machinery manufacturers saw a noticeable dent in their sales figures, while hop and grain dealers lost their largest clients. Labor interests were also quick to point out the high human cost of Prohibition, when thousands of brewery workers lost jobs. Brewmasters and other, often older specialty brewery workers who had spent a lifetime of study and practice in the trade suddenly were unemployed, forced to enter a crowded labor market in which they possessed few marketable skills. Yet saloonkeepers and bartenders, arguably the most scorned and abandoned of those affected by dry laws, expressed less concern for their future. A spokesman for the Cincinnati-based Bartenders' Alliance maintained that many local dispensers of alcoholic beverages would remain in business, through the sale of near beer and soft drinks, while others who left the saloon trade likely would find employment in area hotels and restaurants.

Many Cincinnati brewers chose a parallel path to that of their colleagues in the related industries, and in the face of an uncertain future opted to close permanently and take with them what remained of their fortunes. In compliance with the Food Administration edict, which forbade the use of grain to brew beer after December 1, 1918, the Bavarian Brewing Company produced its last batch of beer late on November 30, although the company estimated that its 25,000-barrel storage cellars maintained enough product in fermenters and aging tanks to supply demand until May 1919. At the same time the Wiedemann Brewing Company also stopped brewing, and announced that a planned closure of its Newport facility would leave over 300 brewery employees and 200 field agents out of work; a skeleton crew was to be retained-at a cost of $25,000 per year-to care for equipment and property at the plant. Wary of the cost of closure, Wiedemann management slyly opted to keep the brewery open and produce near beer, at least until revenue officers took exception to company use of the word "beer" on its near beer bottle labels. The brewery quickly was closed and all shipments and deliveries were stopped in late August 1919, the first in a string of Wiedemann confrontations with the law during the Prohibition era. On March 29, 1919 the Bellevue Brewing Company became the first Cincinnati brewery to terminate business specifically due to Prohibition. Plant manager George Osterfeld announced that remaining materials would be transferred to the nearby Mohawk Brewing Company-of which Osterfeld was president-but did not speculate on the fate of the thirty-six Bellevue employees. The announcement echoed the sentiments of other brewers that planned to close, namely that the manufacture of near beer would not prove profitable, but with a long-term view of the situation management chose to delay a final resolution on the future of the company. Directors announced that the sale of Bellevue property and equipment, valued at approximately $500,000 for the 50,000-barrel facility, would be placed on hold until after the elections of November 1919, when Prohibition again was slated to be put to a vote.

Most notable among the Cincinnati breweries to fall victim to Prohibition was the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company. Well before the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment, aware of brewery sales losses where dry laws had been implemented as well as the possibility of national prohibition legislation, Moerlein management took an early step to enter the non-alcoholic malt beverage market with the development of a new product, Moer-lo, registering it with federal authorities on July 6, 1909. But a decade later, with Moer-lo a distant memory and faced with a lackluster response to Chrismo in the near beer market, company management quietly began to sell off stock, malt, and remaining grain. Shortly afterward Moerlein management decided to close the business and liquidate assets, and on June 1, 1919 brewery secretary J. George Jung formally announced the decision to suspend operations. Machinery, equipment, and real estate soon were offered for sale, and by 1921 much of the famed Moerlein complex had been dispersed. One part of the plant was sold to the A. Nash Company, a tailoring concern, for $500,000. The Moerlein corporation maintained an office on Elm Street until 1924, when what remained of the business was moved to the Provident Bank Building and, for all intents and purposes, disassociated from its famed brewing past.

By the end of 1919 it was clear that the end of legal beer production had transformed the significance of Cincinnati breweries to the industrial base of the city. Despite a late rush for beer before the implementation of dry laws, brewery product value in Cincinnati declined by 24.8 percent, or almost 2.6 million dollars, from levels exhibited just five years earlier-despite the fact that the city still supplied thirty-one percent of all beer made in Ohio-and stood in sharp contrast with percentage gains exhibited during the same period in traditional and future-minded industries such as meat packing (168.6), foundry and machine shop products (231.1), and motorized vehicle production and repair (314.9). Among major industrial activity conducted in Cincinnati, malt liquor production was the only category which failed to exhibit growth compared with a decade earlier; a decline in brewery product value from $8,873,507 in 1909 to $7,789,700 in 1919 reduced brewing from the fifth most important industrial enterprise in the city to twelfth. Local brewery owners took some measure of solace in the fact that the majority of citizens in and around the city stood firmly in favor of continued production. But as both wet and dry advocates soon found out, the demise of area brewing operations would transform the nature of social activity as it had taken place for decades, and force countless patrons unsympathetic to the new dry laws to seek alternative sources for their beer.

Last Call

By no means was the effect of Prohibition limited to the interests of beer producers. The saloon trade, once among the most thriving of area businesses, likewise was marked for an early death by anti-alcohol legislation. Long the biggest target of prohibition activists, the saloon disappeared virtually overnight after the city went dry, never to return in its previous form. A number of former saloonkeepers tried to survive Prohibition in Cincinnati through the sale of near beer, but quickly saw revenue dissipate when interest in the product waned. Others converted to ice cream and soft drink parlors, only to encounter a similar lukewarm reception. Many more area saloonkeepers saw the writing on the wall, and sold their businesses and property-often at bargain-basement prices-to those entrepreneurs who would have them. The fall from grace of the Cincinnati saloon was complete, yet not without a certain sympathy from the many who never endorsed their closure in the first place.

As the May 27 deadline for legal beer sales in Ohio drew nearer, the landscape of local entertainment began to change. Although surveys showed that approximately 560 of the roughly 800 local saloons would remain in business after the beginning of Prohibition, the number that served alcoholic beverages until the deadline was considerably smaller. According to license arrangements most saloons were obliged to close at midnight Saturday May 24, due to Sunday closing laws and the need to purchase a special-and expensive, at $305-one-day license to open on Monday, the last day before Prohibition. Thus in many Cincinnati drinking establishments the twenty-fourth became a day of sad revelry, on which thousands of consumers jammed downtown streets and saloons, and shattered all previous records. Although a small amount of beer remained available through the morning and early afternoon hours, by evening much of the beer supply had been exhausted, leaving consumers to purchase whatever alcoholic beverages remained when they managed to find space at the overcrowded bars.

To the relief of Cincinnati police officials everywhere the occasion for the most part remained orderly. Despite the huge number of participants, arrests for intoxication were fewer than for a regular Saturday night, as thousands of patrons partook of the last legal beer with a decided air of resignation. From six o'clock p.m. Saturday until seven o'clock a.m. Sunday area police registered forty arrests for drunkenness, while another thirteen persons were taken to General Hospital for treatment for excessive alcohol consumption. Other consumers alleviated their frustration at the end of alcohol sales by purchasing small stockpiles to take home. Local spirit and malt liquor dealers reported that several million dollars in carryout sales were registered before the midnight deadline, as Cincinnati drinkers spent an estimated average of ten dollars per buyer to establish private liquor cellars around town. But despite the orderly nature of the farewell to the saloon, it became clear the next day that the celebration had taken its toll. Cincinnati drugstores logged record sales of bromos, aromatic spirits of ammonia, and other restorers designed to combat the effects of overconsuming alcohol, while others noted that an old favorite remedy, "a little hair off the hide of the dog," made a brief but welcome return.

After the Sunday off-day due to closing laws in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky-notwithstanding the discreet activities of a select few Ohio establishments, whose "tilted lids" generated substantial clandestine business-fourteen Cincinnati saloons and hotel bars anted up the $305 necessary for a long last day of business. Despite the large number of retailers who believed the business for the day not to be worth the cost of the license, those who did open their doors reaped substantial profits before the midnight hour. Many of the proprietors estimated sales totals of up to $150,000 for the day; at the lower end of the scale, two downtown establishments reported probable sales of $20,000 and three others sales of $15,000.

Drinking establishments without cherished beer and liquor proved unable to sustain the revelry of the moment. Numerous Cincinnati saloonkeepers found that near beer and soft drinks were a poor substitute for real beer, and in a telling display found that patrons would seek out alcoholic beverages where they could be had:

In one famous place over the canal forced gayety was the order of the hour, and the popular old drinking chanty was edited and sung with fine fervor until the "merry" singers broke down completely on the chorus and wept at the changed order of affairs, and hastened in the direction of one of "the fourteen real ones" to drown their sorrow.

The party continued unabated into the evening, as crowds grew to say a final goodbye to the legendary saloon trade of Cincinnati. Bartenders were found to be in short supply, as temporary bars served the thirsty at the fourteen drinkeries, and hundreds of patrons waited patiently outside for their chance to enter the crowded facilities and place their foot on the rail of the bar for the last time. Chester Park hosted its own unique celebration of the last day before Prohibition, a wild party that featured a large assortment of loud noise-making devices and a boisterous ceremonial funeral service held over a keg of beer.

The final curtain came down on the wet era at midnight sharp, when church bells sounded the hour around Over-the-Rhine and downtown. While Chester Park revelers slowly sipped their last beverages ordered before the midnight hour, others were not so lucky. After hours of festivities at the Wheel Cafe, manager Fisher Bacharach mounted a table and, waving a left hand stuffed with currency of various denominations, shouted the dreaded final cry that the town had gone dry for good. As other establishments quickly followed suit, Prohibition finally descended upon the city: as one observer noted, "at 12:01 o'clock, Cincinnati, famous as a 'wet town,' passed into the shadow of the valley of ice cream and gingerale." Even as the local saloon trade came to a boisterous close, some observers opined that without beer and liquor to liven up the facility, area drinkeries would be hard-pressed to match the success of their predecessors:

Cincinnati had its first taste of the new "dry saloon," a thing of pop and lemonade and ice cream cones and all that sort of thing. Judging from appearances the change from the old order of things was more drastic than pleasing, if wry faces were any criterion.

To see men line up at one of these thirst emporiums and try to grow madly gay on a round of sarsaparilla was a pathetic sight, such as has not been seen in this immediate vicinity [for many years].

Local malt and distilled beverage consumers took solace in the fact that the saloon trade continued in northern Kentucky, albeit for only another month. In the initial days after Prohibition began in Ohio, a steady stream of customers crossed the Ohio River to drink. But in anticipation of hordes of Ohio drinkers descending upon northern Kentucky, local judges and police officials sternly admonished that they would show no leniency toward those who would violate laws. Expressing a sentiment which echoed the thoughts of many citizens-and a front-page Kentucky Post editorial-Newport safety commissioner Dan Riedel threatened that city police would "fill up the local jail with Cincinnatians if they come here and attempt to put over any rough stuff," and mayor Andrew J. Livingston advised that he was not prepared to accept "converting Newport into a dumping ground for Cincinnati. ... The midnight and Sunday closing laws will be enforced in Newport. There will be no foolishness tolerated." Under the direct orders of Kentucky governor James D. Black, Campbell and Kenton County law enforcement officials gave special attention to Sunday closing laws designed to help keep crowds down. Thousands of Cincinnati visitors arrived to find that the legislation indeed was well enforced: on May 25-the last Sunday before the onset of Prohibition in Ohio-no violations were recorded among 125 saloons in Campbell County, despite extensive spot checks by dry agents, or anywhere else in the region. The enforcement action met with strong approval in the local media, particularly the Kentucky Post, which in another editorial expressed admiration for efforts that stood in sharp contrast to previous lackluster work:

For the first time in months, northern Kentucky experienced a "dry" and peaceful Sunday. The experience, citizens report, was most pleasing.

Girls, who on Sundays in the past, have been afraid to take Sunday afternoon strolls, felt perfectly safe. There were no "drunks" on the streets. There were no tough crowds hanging about the saloons. The attendance at the ball games and in the parks, however, was greater. ...

Northern Kentucky officials demonstrated that, once they make up their minds to act, they can obtain results. We can forget, if they continue to keep the Sunday lid well screwed down, that they also demonstrated on the Sundays that have passed that they apparently never made up their minds to act.

Yet on other occasions just before Kentucky went dry, thousands made their way south, to enjoy a last festive moment with alcoholic beverages. To the surprise of no one, on June 28-the last Saturday of legal alcohol sales-saloons reported "enormous" business. Covington police noted that arrests for drunkenness surpassed all previous records but fights and other disorderly conduct were relatively isolated. Newport fared even better, with reports that although city streets were "jammed with crowds of merry-makers," officers found themselves with little to do. After a day of quiet due to the Sunday closing laws, on the night of June 30 Cincinnatians joined with northern Kentucky residents long before midnight to fill the streets of Covington and Newport, and pack saloons and cafes which continued to sell the desired product. As had been the case in Cincinnati one month earlier, all records for attendance, consumption, and sales-in some cases over $20,000 on the last night alone-were shattered during the final wet evening, with every saloon "filled to its utmost capacity with the sons and daughters of thirst." Some were naturally downcast at the arrival of Prohibition, most notably the patrons of the Old Kaintuck Castle drinkery, who at midnight participated in a mock funeral procession. But many participants elsewhere were in good humor; as the midnight hour approached countless drinkers joined together in song, in a boisterous rendition of "Tonight Is the End Of the World." Although extreme in tone, the song fit the mood of many of those directly impacted by Prohibition: on July 1 some 380 saloons in Kenton and Campbell counties were forced to close, with approximately 1,500 employees on the verge of unemployment. Among prominent cities Covington estimated a revenue loss of $75,000 per year from the closing of its saloons, while Newport expected a shortfall of $40,000 per annum.

The end of legal drinking in northern Kentucky marked the beginning of the battle to enforce prohibition laws. While many were content to drink until the last area watering hole was dry, others began to stockpile beverages to take back to Ohio. Few were prepared for a contingent of Cincinnati policemen and federal officers, on guard at the Ohio end of each of the four bridges across the Ohio River and empowered to search all vehicles for contraband. Some twenty-five arrests were made for violations of the Reed Amendment, which forbade the transport of intoxicants from wet states into those which had been declared dry, before word of the searches got back to northern Kentucky and deterred most subsequent attempts to circumvent the law. Enterprising Cincinnati-area residents showed an early taste of what was to come during the next fourteen years, and made arrangements to store acquired beverages until a later date, or to ship cases of beer and whiskey across the river by boat. Still others, entrepreneurs with an eye toward fast money, loaded up trucks with whatever alcoholic beverages could be had and acted as makeshift distributors. One such truck was rumored to have carried beverages through Cincinnati the day before, on a run to Toledo to stock up for the upcoming Willard-Dempsey title fight.

The ghosts of the pre-Prohibition saloon proved slow to fade from the sight of Cincinnati beer lovers, and provided a sad reminder of bygone days. For some time after enactment of the dry laws beer signs remained up, and assorted images from the heyday of the saloon stayed in place for those not quite ready to let go of the past. Other former saloons, which opted to close instead of offer soft drinks and near beer, began to sell furnishings and prized possessions. One prominent downtown Cincinnati saloon placed advertisements around town to sell at auction many of the elegant fixtures, mirrors, bronze figurines, murals, and cash registers that gave the establishment its unique character. In addition the drinkery placed for sale two paintings known to countless patrons, one a marine image valued at $2,000 and the other, entitled "Ballet Girl," estimated to be worth $1,000.

The question remained as to what should be done with the former saloons when it became evident that no end to Prohibition was in sight. As was the case with some breweries, many drinking establishments tried to ride out the storm through the sale of nonalcoholic beverages, albeit often for lack of a better alternative to pursue. A spokesman for the Hamilton County Liquor Dealers' Association, which represented saloonkeepers who sought to remain in business, emphasized that the saloon served as a community institution beyond dispensing alcoholic beverages:

The saloon is something more than a place where alcoholic liquors are sold. It is a place of resort for thousands, and constitutes a large part of the social life of the people. It is the people's club house, the meeting house of the masses. The saloon in [that] respect has a momentum, so that it will be projected as a place of resort beyond the date when it would cease to sell alcoholic liquors. Cincinnati saloon keepers, realizing this and confident that the people want saloons to continue and will vote to have it sell liquors, intend to keep their places going as soft drink dispensaries.

Nevertheless, on some occasions saloon property was turned over to others with new plans. In northern Kentucky the popular Crescent Cafe was transformed into a shoe store, as was also the case with the Holtrup building, previously home to a cafe. To the gall of longtime lager beer customers, the River View Cafe in the northern Kentucky town of Dayton was shut down and promptly converted into a place of worship, its original mahogany bar soon displaced by a pulpit. But sometimes saloonkeepers refused to go quietly. In one instance a Boston shoe and leather company attempted to occupy a Cincinnati saloon site at 518 Vine Street, but was fought vigorously by the tenant, William G. Brown. Brown, who recently had contracted with the Massachusetts company for $9,996 per year for ten years, maintained that the lease agreement allowed him the option to continue business at the site for two more years. Other saloons, particularly those which had lost their lease, made arrangements to vacate the premises in favor of new, altogether unrelated business enterprises. A later reminiscence by a noted Cincinnati writer spoke for the dismay that many felt with the replacement of a favored corner beer dispensary:

I strolled over to that strip of Vine Street which in the incardined days of old was famed wherever English and German were spoken, as Over-the-Rhine. As I traipsed along that familiar way memories came zooming from every nook and cranny of the towering buildings to keep me company on my nocturnal hike. In those surroundings I subconsciously began to acquire a thirst-a well-remembered, panting, palpitating desire for a couple of hods of suds. The old pantry fairly shrieked for beer! But alas and alack, there was no beer where once it had ebbed and flowed as do the wavelets that lave the shores of our dry republic. I glanced across the street at a building which once sheltered the wettest spot on earth, barring the seven seas and the Great Lakes. On the grimy window was a sign of white enameled letters reading "Oompdedah's Dry Cleaning Parlors. Pants Prest while you WATE. We make you look Knobby even if you have only one set of Pants."

As contemporary observers made clear, the passing of the Cincinnati saloon trade marked the end of an era in the social history of the city, and the beginning of a period of uncertainty for those who had inhabited the popular drinking establishments. The once-lively saloon had been forced out of existence, but never strayed far from memory among the many who had experienced the unique mix of people and personalities which had given it a lasting charm. For decades tales have resounded of the saloon as an integral part of Cincinnati social life, and to date retain a universal charm and affection which scarcely is matched by any other piece of the fabled past of the city.

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