BREWERS ASSAULT DISTILLERS TO HIDE THEIR OWN CRIMES
A nation-wide campaign has been set in motion by the brewers to
beguile the public by assaulting the distillers.
Distillers rarely sell direct to saloons as the brewers do.
Distillers do not own or back saloons.
Distillers are therefore not responsible for the lawless conditions
of which the public complains--nor were they ever accused of stuffing
the ballot box.
Whiskey leaves the distillery in an unadulterated condition, while
beer is drugged at the brewery.
The average beer drinker consumes more alcohol than the average
whiskey drinker.
The National Advocate (New York) maintains that "beer is a greater
peril to manhood, home and society than whiskey ever has been or
can be."
Are the attacks upon the distillers merely a ruse to conceal the
fact that officers, directors and thousands of stockholders of the
largest brewing companies in all parts of the country are either
wholesale or retail whiskey dealers, or saloon keepers, or both?
If the brewers are sincere in their promise to divorce beer from
whiskey, why have they not closed their own whiskey stores?
Why have they not placed a ban upon the sale of whiskey in all the
saloons which they own and operate themselves?
Why have they not forbidden the sale of whiskey in all saloons?
What is there to prevent it?
Is it not a fact that, with few exceptions, the so-called owners
of saloons, not operated by brewers themselves, are merely slaves
of the brewers, the latter owning either the property or the lease,
the license and a chattel mortgage upon the fixtures in the place?
The truth is that a saloon keeper can not exist if his business
should be restricted to the sale of beer--and the closing of a
saloon means a loss to the brewer.
I quote here again from an editorial written by Mr. J. Frank Hanly,
former Governor of Indiana, which appeared in the National Enquirer
(Indianapolis), of which he is the editor, as follows:
"When the writer of this editorial was a candidate for the nomination
for Governor of the State of Indiana it was not the distilling
interests of the State, but the brewers, that sought to wring from
him a promise that in consideration for his nomination he should, if
elected, permit no temperance legislation during his term. It was
the brewing interests of Indiana, not the distillers, that sought
on the eve of election, after his nomination in spite of their
opposition, to extort a like promise as the price of his election.
"It was the president of the Indiana Brewers' Association, and not
a representative of the distillery interests of the State, that
walked into the Governor's office in Indianapolis, and with the
arrogance of a Hun announced that he had come to say to the Governor
that a township and ward remonstrance law which the governor had
recommended to the General Assembly for enactment could not be
passed by the legislature. . . . .
"In all the history of the political and civil life of the American
people there has been no combination or organization of power so
brutal, so domineering, so corrupt, or so dead to every sense of
civic interest or concern as the brewers of America. They have been
and are the chief criminals, and no camouflage to which they may
resort will save them. The people will see beneath the false
pretense the bare, naked facts. The legislatures of the States
will be organized into firing squads, and the beer trade will be
compelled to meet its fate."