EXCISE IN NEW NETHERLAND.
We will now return to our narrative. At the time of the brewers’
protest against the excise, the number of tapsters in New Amsterdam
and the surrounding country was very large; but, singular as it may
appear, there was but one tavern for the entertainment of strangers,
and this a clumsy stone building which Kieft had caused to be erected
at the Company’s expense in 1642. In that patriarchal spirit which
characterized all his acts, he assumed a close supervision over this
primitive hotel, the patronage of which must have been all the more
profitable because the Governor, to prevent the influx of runaway
servants and culprits, had prohibited the entertainment of strangers
by private families for more than one night without his permission.
This stone tavern was subsequently enlarged and fitted up for use as a
Stadthuis (City Hall). During the remainder of his administration Kieft
gave no further trouble to the brewers; but the tax continued to be
collected.
When Kieft was recalled, and succeeded by Governor Stuyvesant, the
abolition of the excise was asked for, but was peremptorily refused.
The hope that the excise would be abolished had been raised by Kieft
himself, who had promised the Eight Men that upon the arrival of his
successor a change would be effected. Stuyvesant, however, had no such
intentions; on the contrary, he at once imposed new taxes, inaugurated
a system of excises and licenses, and introduced a number of
innovations designed to bring the business under better control. Thus,
he ordered the complete separation of brewing and tapping, forbidding
brewers to retail and tapsters to brew beer. Unlike his predecessor,
he desired an improvement in the accommodations for travellers, and
therefore ordered that tapsters and tavern-keepers should build better
houses for the entertainment of guests. But as the number of tapsters
and spirit venders had already grown too large, he refused to license
new places. Stuyvesant’s own report shows that, in 1651 or thereabouts,
nearly the just fourth of the City of New Amsterdam consisted of
brandy-shops, tobacco or beer-houses. This was certainly an exaggerated
statement; yet from all other evidences it must be inferred that the
consumption of liquors was enormous. We find, at a fair calculation
based on the two essential factors, viz.: amount of excise and
population, that the tax paid for drink amounted to four guilders for
every man, woman and child of the community.
[Sidenote: GOVERNOR STUYVESANT’S REGULATIONS]
It will be readily understood that the law prohibiting brewing by
tapsters yielded additional advantages to the brewers proper, and that
the tapping of beer by brewers in violation of the ordinance, occurred
very rarely. Yet so anxious was Stuyvesant to prevent evasions of his
orders that he even forbade brewers to sell or give beer by the small
measure to anyone—even to their boarders, “who, they pretended, came
at meal times to eat with them.” By way of additional safeguard, he
required the brewers to obtain a permit from the Secretary of the
Colony whenever they wished to remove beer from their brew-houses.
To enforce all these new laws and ordinances, promulgated for the
sole purpose of securing as nearly as possible the full amount of
taxes due the exchequer, Stuyvesant appointed inspectors, gaugers and
revenue supervisors. Nevertheless, either on account of his natural
distrustfulness or because he wished to set a good example to his
officers, he frequently visited and inspected the taverns himself to
make sure that his laws were obeyed. Money still being scarce, he
increased the excise again and again, without permitting the brewers
to raise the price of their product, until the beer-drinkers loudly
complained that with every increase of tax, the brewers made their beer
“thinner and poorer.” These complaints finally induced him to adjust
the prices of beer in accordance with the increased cost of production,
and to prescribe minutely the quality of the article.
It may interest the reader to learn that beer, in those days, was made
either of malted barley, wheat or oats, and that whenever there was a
scarcity of any of these cereals, the lawmakers usually forbade the
malting of it. Here, as in the New England colonies, the law provided
for three grades of beer: the first grade requiring six bushels of malt
for every hogshead; the second, four bushels; the third, two bushels.
Complaints about the quality of beer were sometimes investigated by
a court composed of the schepens and burgomasters. In 1655, when one
of the burgomasters and two of the schepens were brewers, this court,
being engaged in the consideration of such a complaint, adjourned and
personally sampled the beer in dispute; whereupon they gave judgment in
accordance with their own evidence.
[Sidenote: CONFLICT WITH THE PATROON]
Before the administration of Stuyvesant, the Patroons regulated the
liquor traffic in their own way. In Rensselaerwyck, the condition of
affairs now became somewhat muddled, as will presently be shown, in
consequence of the conflict of authority between the Patroon and the
representatives of the Director of the Colony. The manner in which the
Patroon first regulated the traffic was simple enough.
As we have already stated, he established a brewery with the exclusive
privilege of supplying all licensed retailers with beer; but he
permitted private individuals to brew whatever beer they needed
for their own families. Subsequently, however, other brewers were
licensed. In the dorp (village) of Beverwyck—the present Albany—which
had sprung up in the immediate neighborhood of Fort Orange, and, in
fact, throughout the colony, permission to build houses, establish
stores, factories, shops, beer-houses, etc., had to be obtained from
the Commissaries to whom the government was entrusted. This permission
had to be paid for in some instances, while in others it was given
gratuitously.
As a rule, the license to brew beer for sale did not belong to the
latter category; on the other hand, the fee for such license seems
to have been very high. In 1647, Jean Labadie, formerly an assistant
commissary, applied for permission to build a brewery, which was
granted on his paying a yearly duty in the shape of beaver, amounting
in value to about eighty dollars. Many other licenses had been granted
since then, and the number of tapsters seems to have been very large;
good reasons why the Court at Fort Orange, representing the Stuyvesant
Government, should insist upon the payment of the tax.
The Patroon, however, frustrated the first attempt to collect the
excise and issued a proclamation expressly forbidding the brewers
and tapsters to pay any duties. The tapsters, of course, readily
obeyed this order. Finally, Stuyvesant ordered the Court at Orange to
arrest one of the refractory tapsters, named Ariensen, and send him
to Manhattan. The clerk of this court, Johann De Decker, successfully
carried out this order by a ruse. He invited the unsuspecting
Ariensen to his house and detained him, in spite of the protests of
Van Rensselaer and the “schout” of the colony, and notwithstanding
the offer of the former to vouch for the appearance of the prisoner.
Ariensen, although compelled for security’s sake, to sleep in De
Decker’s bed and to be watched over by a servant, managed to escape
and took refuge in the house of Van Rensselaer. De Decker pursued the
fugitive with the intention of re-apprehending him, but was met by a
body of armed men who appeared determined to use force of arms, if
necessary, to prevent the officer from fulfilling his duty. Bloodshed
would inevitably have followed an attempt to recapture Ariensen, and,
to avoid this, the officer retired, reporting the failure of his
mission to the Director and asking that more soldiers be sent with him,
having “among them one or two who are not nice about taking hold of a
man.”
As was to be expected, Stuyvesant resorted to measures which soon
rendered the Patroon amenable to law and order, and the revenues
derived from tapsters alone rose, within one year, from an
insignificant sum to 4,200 guilders, in 1657. Nothing noteworthy
occurred thereafter during Dutch dominion.
Nicolls, the first English Governor of New Netherland, paid some
attention to brewing. Among the laws which he submitted to the Assembly
convened at Hempstead, and which are known as the Duke of York’s Laws,
was one providing that no person should be allowed to brew beer for
sale without having “sufficient skill and knowledge in the art and
mystery of brewing,”[3] and otherwise regulating the trade with a view
to securing wholesome beverages. He also introduced the fee-feature
into the license-system governing retailers. In his endeavor to
conciliate the conquered Dutch burghers, he, however, refrained for a
time from strictly enforcing this rule and other excise-regulations
contemplated by his principal. It was not until 1670 that he gave
peremptory orders for the collection of the excise.
[3] The first regular brew-master (in the modern sense of the
word) was probably R.H. Vansoest, who came to Albany in 1635 to
take charge of the Patroon’s brewery.
From the date of the recovery of the Colony by the Dutch up to the
second surrender to the English (1674), the liquor traffic received
but casual attention in New York; and for many years after the
re-establishment of English supremacy, the annals of the Colony contain
no indications of great progress in brewing.
In the succeeding chapters the further development of brewing in New
York receives sufficient attention to justify our closing this chapter
at this point so as to avoid useless repetitions, and to prevent the
overtaxing of the reader’s patience.