Practically, brewing had ceased to exist as an industry before the New England colonies had reached Statehood; it was revived for a short space of time when Alexander Hamilton introduced his revenue system, and many members of Congress, prompted by moral and hygienic considerations, supported his efforts to encourage the manufacture. The spirit of the times as to this question is clearly reflected in the speeches of eminent statesmen and the writings of philosophers, all of whom agreed, to quote the words of the “Digest of Manufactures” and of Gallatin, that “the moralizing tendency and salubrious nature of fermented liquors recommend them to serious consideration.” But neither such sentiments nor the positive labors of Dr. Benjamin Rush, who aimed at the popularization of beer through the total exclusion of ardent spirits, could prevail against the firmly rooted predilection for spirits, made universal by the general practice of rural distilling in all grain-producing States as well as in those States in which the trade with the West Indies made molasses a common article of barter. In the entire country, excepting New York and Pennsylvania, the total production of malt liquors in 1809-10 amounted to barely forty-five thousand barrels, of which about twenty-three thousand barrels (31½ gallons) were brewed in Massachusetts, while New York and Pennsylvania produced 139,000 barrels.
During the brief era of the first internal revenue system, with its Whiskey Revolution and other open violations of the law, brewing did indeed regain some of its lost ground, only to relapse again into its former somnolent condition, however, as soon as the “free-whiskey” policy was reintroduced.
When, four decades after Hamilton’s régime, the temperance movement began to make itself felt in New England, the brewing industry, the very agency which all our great statesmen had sought to employ against the whiskey habit, had to atone for the sins of the rural distillers, to whose unlimited operations is due all the misery and degradation that lent a justifying aspect to the demands of the reformers. Under prohibitory rule in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and other eastern States, the general use of ardent spirits, manufactured outside of, but freely sold within the borders of these States, tended to confirm the rum habit, and this was all the more inevitable, because for reasons well known to every one familiar with the question, malt liquors cannot be sold surreptitiously without great expense and imminent risk of detection.
This explains why before the introduction of the internal revenue system of 1861, which imparted a powerful impetus to brewing throughout the country, the industry lagged behind in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and was never able to gain a permanent foothold in Maine.
In 1863 the total production of malt liquors in all the New England States, excepting Massachusetts, amounted to 49,607 barrels, a little more than double the quantity produced in 1809-10 in Massachusetts alone. Of these 49,607 barrels Connecticut produced 13,055; Maine, 2,207; New Hampshire, 25,945; Rhode Island, 7,029 and Vermont 1,371 barrels. In the same year (1863) the total production of malt liquors in Massachusetts amounted to 112,000 barrels.
THE
COUNTER
REFORMATION
At about this time a very strong current of public opinion, set in motion by official reports as to the manifest healthfulness of malt liquors as shown by sanitary inspections of the Union camps, began to weaken the indiscriminate crusades of ultra-reformers against all kinds of stimulants; and Massachusetts, then burdened by an absurd prohibitory law, again, as so often before, took the lead in this counter-reformation. Several years elapsed before the movement culminated in the now celebrated report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, in which Dr. Bowditch, under the title of “Intemperance in the Light of Cosmic Laws,” summarized the experiences, convictions and opinions of eminent scientists, philosophers, public officials and philanthropists from all parts of the globe, and reached the conclusion, based on this vast mass of testimony, that “light beer and ale can be used even freely without any very apparent injury to the individual or without causing intoxication, and that some writers even think they do no harm, but real good, if used moderately.”
The direct result of this agitation and of a comprehensive legislative inquiry into the different phases of this question, under Governor John A. Andrews in 1867, was the repeal of prohibition in Massachusetts in 1868. Connecticut, after essentially modifying the prohibitory law, totally repealed it in 1867, substituting a license law. In New Hampshire the manufacture and sale of beer, cider and native wine had not been forbidden by the so-called Prohibition Act of 1855. Rhode Island also repealed her prohibitory law in 1863. Vermont was the only New England State, excepting Maine, of course, in which the Maine law of 1852 remained then in force.
From the almost instantaneous effect of these measures, superadded to the operation of the Federal tax-law, the brewing industry, and, it is needless to say, the health and morality of the commonwealth, derived inestimable advantages. Within three years, i.e., at the end of the fiscal year 1866-67, the annual production of malt liquors in the New England States had increased from 161,607 to 406,154 barrels. Massachusetts, unfortunately, re-enacted prohibition in 1869, permitting, however, the manufacture of liquors for exportation. In the following year this law was so amended as to permit the sale of malt liquors; and in 1871 cities and towns were authorized to decide annually by popular vote whether the sale of malt liquors should be permitted. Repealed in 1873, this act and a number of others were replaced by a license law, enacted in 1874 and supplemented in 1881 by local option. Constant changes subsequently tended to deprive the trade of stability and particularly of that complete security which lies at the bottom of every industrial success.
Although a prohibitory amendment to the Constitution was defeated in Massachusetts by a popular majority of forty-six thousand votes, in 1888, thus clearly demonstrating the will of the people, professional reformers continued their unwise opposition not only in this direction but also against any discrimination in favor of fermented drinks; and as a result every year brought forth additional restraints designed to harass a trade which Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and many other eminent Americans, including Dr. B. Rush, the real father of the temperance movement, regarded as the most efficient temperance agency—an opinion which the scientific inquiry conducted by Dr. Bowditch proved to be almost universal. With slight differences as to time and mode, the trade labored and still labors under similar disadvantages in the other States. To this incessant legislative intermeddling, which frequently produced the most incongruous propositions copied from monarchical institutions or borrowed from small and insignificant cities totally unlike the great metropolis of New England in every respect, must be attributed the fact that these States are not now in the front rank of the brewing centres of this country. Even so, the progress of brewing there is not inconsiderable.