Unbiased minds will appreciate Oglethorpe’s profound regret at his failure to carry out his plans, all the more so, if the present condition of things in Georgia be considered.
In the “dead towns” of that State a tombstone may here or there testify to the mundane existence of the Salzburgers; more rarely, perhaps, a German patronymic, corrupted or Anglicized, may remind one of these people; but that is practically all that is left of them. In Prussia, however, their brethren flourished, forming a most useful, prosperous and happy part of the population, who, as Carlyle puts it, had all reason on their annual thanksgiving days “piously to admit that Heaven’s blessing had been upon that King and upon them.”
From a general point of view, considering the South as a whole, it may be said that brewing had gained no firm foothold there during the Colonial period in spite of the fact that, besides the Salzburgers, there were several considerable German and Swiss settlements on the Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers in North Carolina, on the Edisto River in South Carolina, and in many parts of Virginia.
In the middle of the last century, and in a few isolated cases somewhat earlier, brewing received a strong impetus through the influx of German immigrants, but the climate and other countervailing influences retarded its progress, as we shall presently see, until at a much later period improvements in the art itself and the perfecting of artificial refrigeration enabled the Southern brewer to carry on a profitable business adapted to the peculiar conditions of his environment.
In the chapter entitled “The Rise of Lager Beer,” it will be shown what disasters have befallen Southern brewing under the operation of recent laws.
CHAPTER VI.
DECLINE OF BREWING.
Up to the Revolution the decline of brewing in the Colonies continued until scarcely a vague recollection of its former flourishing condition lingered in the minds of the people. Here and there, widely scattered over an immense extent of territory, a few brew-houses whose product had acquired an uncommon reputation—like the porters and ales of Philadelphia—remained in operation; but their output was infinitesimal as compared with the quantities of other inebriating liquors produced and consumed in the country. True, the lawmakers improved every available opportunity to hold out inducements to brewers and never failed on such occasions to lament the total decay of the industry; but however alluring the exemption from duties and excises, premiums on domestic hops, and the protection of malt and beer may have been, they were insufficient to counterbalance other economic factors—such, for example, as the cheapness and popularity of rum, which the legislator could not neutralize.
Hence, with the exceptions already adverted to, brewing relapsed into the primitive state in which we found it at the beginning of its Colonial career, again becoming a domestic industry wherever a lingering taste for malt beverages induced the people to set up the discarded kettles, and to brew their own beer, from time to time. In like manner, tavern-keepers recommenced brewing in order to supply those of their customers who still preserved a taste for beer; and the quantities thus brewed for home consumption, in the narrowest sense of the term, may not have been inconsiderable; but we have no way of determining, even approximately, how large this production was. Such beers were not, of course, of a very good quality; and this explains the well-authenticated fact that the few regular brewers who still continued to brew were overrun with orders from the tapsters. Of a certain Quaker brewer it is reported that, toward the end of the eighteenth century, he used to hold receptions in the old Rainbow Inn, in Beekman Street, New York, whither came his customers, with hat in hand, to pay their respects and solicit a supply of ale!