Beer : its history and its economic value as a national beverage E-Book

Frederick William Salem

• Herausgeber: Edizioni Savine
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

• Early history of beer.
• Modern history of beer.
• How beer is made and what it is.
• The development of ale, porter and lager beer.
• The conditions and prospects of the beer trade.
• Comparative advantages of beer over distilled or spirituous liquors.
• Beer brewing a benefit to farmers.
• Prohibitory laws and their effects.
• What authorities say.

Leseprobe

BEER,

ITS HISTORY AND ITS ECONOMIC VALUE

AS A -

NATIONAL BEVERAGE.

BY

F. W. SALEM.

HARTFORD, CONN.:

F. W. SALEM COMPANY.

1880.

DEDICATION.

TO THE BEER BREWERS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Thinking as I do, that in the Beer Brewers of the United States we must recognize real, though perhaps unconscious, promoters of the great and glorious cause of genuine temperance, and that greater practical results may be attained through their instrumentality than in any other way, it seems fitting that this attempt to expound the true nature and value of beer should be specially dedicated to them as a body, and accompanied with the assurance of the author’s profound respect and esteem.

Frederick William Salem.

Hartford, Conn., January, 1880

PREFACE.

Our object in presenting the following pages to the public, is to call attention to the value of pure beer as a preventive of intemperance. Few persons are aware of the amount of patient investigation this question has received at the hands of eminent social economists and men of science, or of the mass of facts and testimony that has been collected, and lies ready at the hand of any one who is able and willing to work it over into a compact consecutive form, in which it shall be easy of access, and available for use in the further discussion of the subject. This we have attempted to do thoroughly and fairly. Great caution has been used in making statements and no inference has been drawn that could be considered in any way forced or doubtful.

There are doubtless many persons to whom some of the facts and conclusions here presented, may seem strange or even startling, and to such it must be said that the authorities quoted are generally men whose reputation for accuracy and sound judgment stands so high that they cannot afford to make a mistake or a loose assertion.

The work has involved much labor and historical research, and the author Relieves that the information contained in the following pages cannot fail to be of value to those who are interested in any phase of the beer question, whether as brewers, legislators or students of sociology. The end proposed to be served is that of temperance, and the method suggested is one that has been successfully tried in other countries. From the total abstinence party we ask the candid examination of our facts and arguments that is due to a fair statement from all who claim respect for their own opinions, and are honest friends of real temperance.

BEER

ITS HISTORY AND ITS ECONOMIC VALUE

AS A

National Beverage.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE SUBJECT.

As extremes do and must perforce exist, the noblest philosophy of life is compromise.

Temperance then is the truest medium between total abstinence and excess, and in the same manner, beer occupies the medium position between ardent spirits and water. This fact is of the greatest importance, and until the public thoroughly understands the differences, whether from a moral, social, economic, or sanitary point of view, between distilled and fermented liquors, or in other words, beer and whisky there can be no hope of proper legislation as to the traffic in these articles. This legislation is now greatly influenced by the public advocates of total abstinence, among whom, if their own repeated claims be taken into account we might expect to find only disinterested, high-minded philanthropists. But it is notorious that their ranks are largely swelled by ignorant, ambitions or foolish men, whose vanity or pecuniary interest determines their action, and whose persistence and numerical strength will constitute an effective power until legislative bodies and the people at large are more thoroughly informed as to the actual experience of countries in which the problem has been dispassionately studied and brought to a successful solution. In too many of our states the liquor laws represent the triumph of ignorance and prejudice over reason and the welfare of the community. We hold that the solution of the temperance question is to be found through fermented liquors, and “ Beer Against Whisky” is our motto.

Before coming, as we shall do later in this book, to a de- , tailed examination of the facts in regard to the use of beer, it may be well to declare briefly our position, and give some indication of the kind of testimony that will be more fully displayed under a separate heading.

We hold that the production and sale of beer is so far from being subversive of public morals, that experience in all countries where beer is the national beverage, demonstrates precisely the opposite of this position. We hold too, that the use of beer is not merely indifferent, but, within the limits of temperance (i. e. moderation), a good and rational means of developing the mental and bodily powers of man.

We cannot join in the gratulations of those who now—as they say—so enthusiastically enjoy the blessings of total abstinence. .During the last thirty years we have seen something of the operation of this enthusiasm, not only in Great Britain, but in the native state of the originator of the movement in this country, and we find it impossible to assent to the famous proposition that a pledged abstainer is a drunkard saved. We have been convinced that a pledged abstainer is too often a man who drinks in secret and thus adds hypocrisy to his other sins.

Notice this passage from evidence given before a state committee appointed to inquire into the action of the restrictive laws. The Hon. James H. Duncan of Haverhill, says :

“ My observation and convictions are, that temperance has not been promoted by the prohibitory law; that the temperance of our people is not so good now as before the passage of the law; it has no efficacy in checking intemperance and the evils that result from it; it has been productive of more mischief than good, and I think it an unwise act. It is impossible to make that a crime which is not made a crime by the divine law, and the use of beer, wine and cider cannot by any effort be made a crime per se, yet the prohibitory statute makes it a crime to sell either, and worse, it is a crime for a carrier to carry them. No wonder that such a law demoralizes the community, for a vast amount of lying and fraud have been called into existence through its agency.”

The Rev. George Putnam, D.D., said; “I believe and know that the prohibitory law produces demoralization, and disrespect for a law that cannot be enforced. It demoralizes jurors and witnesses. It demoralizes the buyers and sellers of liquors, inducing them to resort to all manner of frauds, tricks and evasions to do that unlawfully which they cannot do lawfully. It is injurious to the conscience of the people to be always violating this law; and so far as liquor selling is concerned the law has done no good.”

These extracts and many others to be given later, go to prove that it is most unwise to interfere with the social habits of a people, that it is dangerous for a state to do so, and that, as a matter of fact, temperance is not promoted by a prohibitory law. Public testimony that such laws are a blunder, or worse, has been given by such men as John Quincy Adams, Professor Agassiz of Cambridge, Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D., of Connecticut, Professor Bigelow of Boston, Professor Edward Clark of Boston, ex-Governor Clifford, the late Right Rev. M. Eastburn, D. D., the late Governor Andrews, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, all of Boston, ex-Governor Washburn of Massachusetts, Professor Bowen of Cambridge, General Burrell of Roxbury, Hon. Joel Parker of Cambridge, Judge Patch of Lowell, Hon. James II. Duncan of Haverhill, Mass., Rev. George Putnam, D. D., of Mass., Dr. Garcelon, Governor of Maine, Dr. Willard Parker of the Inebriate Asylum at Binghamton, N. Y., A. Schwartz, Esq., the distinguished editor and publisher of the Americanischer Bierbrauert and many others, comprising eminent statesmen, judges, and divines of all the states of the Union.

Our legislators should consider it their solemn duty to protect and foster the manufacture and sale of pure beer, and should frame such laws as will protect the people against imposition and secure the manufacture of an article that shall not only be made from good materials, but be thoroughly well brewed and wholesome, and sold at a moderate price.

Such a course will prove a blessing to mankind, and we do not hesitate to say, that notwithstanding what fools or fanatics may say, preach or write, Americans, and particularly those of the Eastern States, who are probably the most practical people on the face of the globe, will before long adopt beer as their national beverage. In doing so they will but follow the example of the most civilized countries of Europe ; and it will soon be recognized that every brewery and every beer saloon helps to loosen the grasp which alcohol has on any country where distilled liquors are habitually used. Thomas Jefferson, writing Dec. 13, 1818, to M. de Neuville in reference to intemperance and the use of light wines as a substitute for spirits, says, “No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.” Beer is yet less alcoholic than wine of any sort and has advantages of its own which will be discussed in due place. Experience shows that sound, wholesome beer at a moderate cost is the best catholicon yet discovered for intemperance. It weans a people gradually but surely from strong drink and brings happiness, content and morality in the place of dissipation and suffering. But it must be good, cheap and accessible, and the responsibility of making it so rests with our lawgivers. The poorer classes are those who need it most and cause most injury and loss to the state when for lack of it they consume ardent spirits—and these cheap and adulterated.

In spite of all difficulties considerable progress has been made, as is shown by a consumption last year of more than nine million (9,473,361) barrels of beer, which is the best evidence of a step in the right direction towards national temperance.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY HISTORY OF BEER.

It is impossible to say where and when the brewing of beer began, for the earliest historical records show its general use.

It is mentioned by Manathos, High Priest of Heliopolis, an Egyptian of Greek education, who lived about 800 B. C. and by command of Ptolemaus Philadelphia translated the old Egyptian history into Greek. He says that the Egyptians, thousands of years before, had beer, and that its invention was attributed to Osiris, a divinity representing all the beneficent principles, also that celebrated breweries existed at that time at El Kahirch, the Cairo of Europeans, and at Pelusinum on the river Nile.

The Greeks had their zythos (beer) as also their wine of barley, ek krithon methu, and the oinos krithinos as mentioned by Sophocles, AEschylus, 470 B. C., Diodorus of Sicily and Pliny. Xenephon in his account of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, written 400 B. C., mentions that the inhabitants of Armenia used fermented drinks made from barley.

The Romans had their cerevisia (beer) but with them it was a special luxury. Julius Caesar was a noted admirer of it, and Plutarch, 50 A. D., and Suetonius, each of whom wrote of Caesar, tell us that after he had crossed the Rubicon, 49 B. C., he gave a great feast to his leaders at which the principal beverage used was cerevisia, and the biographers of Lucullus tell us that at his magnificent entertainments

VIEW OF AN OLD EGYPTIAN BREWERY,

As described by Manathos (third century B. C.), High Priest in Heliopolis

beer was served to his guests in golden goblets of the most costly device. And at that time also the Romans were already accustomed to sing Cerevisiam bibunt homines, ecetera animalia fontes.

In Germany beer was known about the same time, and Tacitus (54 A. D.,) says, that the Roman general Yarius, who was sent by Augustus to conquer the country and subdue the inhabitants, but was defeated by Arminius the leader of the Teutons, attributed the desperate valor of the enemy and their complete success, in great measure to their free use of bior (beer).

The Allemanni, a large German tribe who were first mentioned by Dion Cassius, 213 A. D., and who occupied the country between the river Main and the Danube, were formidable enemies both to the Romans and the Gauls. They attached great importance to their beer which was brewed under the supervision of the priests, and before use was blessed with many solemn rites. In an old code of theirs we find that every member of a church (Gotteshaus) had to contribute for its maintenance fifteen seidel of beer or some equivalent. The -Emperor Julian who defeated them in the year 357 A. D., near Strasburg, where all their forces were assembled under seven chiefs, found on the field of battle numerous utensils designed to be employed in brewing.

The old Saxons in the seventh and eighth centuries when sitting in council to consider questions of high importance would only deliberate after drinking beer, which they took in common out of large Humpen (stone mugs).

Charlemagne (742-814 A. D.,) himself gave directions how to brew the beer for his court, and was as careful in selecting his brew-masters as in choosing his councilors and leaders. A single circumstance, attendant on his defeat of the Saxons at Paderborn, 777 A. D., illustrates the high respect in which brewing was then held, and in this particular, is suggestive of its semi-sacred character among the Allemanni as mentioned above. On that occasion it is related that the Emperor, surrounded by his chief leaders and councilors and by the ambassadors of distant nations, received the homage of the heathen Saxon warriors, caused many thousands of them to be baptized and then celebrated the double triumph of his arms and the Christian faith at a great feast, at which there were seated with him Eginhard, Paul Warnefried and Alcuin, the Emperor's friends and advisers, and all drank of beer brewed by Charlemagne himself, while they discussed the great events that had just occurred. The drinking vessels were large mugs of a peculiar form which are still to be seen among a collection of relics presented to the Emperor by eastern potentates and now kept in a tower at the west end of the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, and exposed to public view once in every seven years. Within a few years numerous relics have been found in the vicinity of Paderborn which indicate that beer brewing must have been as common and necessary in both parties as the cooking of food.

The old Danes as far back as 860 A. D. under Gorm the Old, 936 A. D. under Harold Bluetooth, and 985 A. D. under Swend Twybeard, were acquainted with the art of brewing, and their old codes mention it as a most honorable occupation.

In Bohemia, breweries were built at Budweis in the year 1256 A. D. by direction of Ottokar II., King of Bohemia, and few cities in the world can point to an establishment of such antiquity. Budweis beer is now almost universally known and approved, though it is needless to say that it differs materially from that made six hundred years ago.

In the "thirteenth century we see by an old law of France, in the reign of Louis IX., of the year 1268, how highly beer was esteemed and that laws were already made to secure the purity of beer as well as to protect the brewers in their avocation, and for curiosity’s sake we give our readers an extract of those laws as mentioned above:

1. No one shall brew beer or remove it in drays or otherwise, on Sundays or on the solemn feasts of the Holy Virgin.

2. No one shall set up in the brewery who has not served a five years’ apprenticeship, and been three years a partner with a regular brewer.

3. Nothing shall enter into the composition of beer, but good malt and hops, well gathered, picked, and cured, without any mixture of buckwheat, darnel, etc., and the hops shall be inspected by juries, to see that they are not used after being heated, moldy, damp, or otherwise damaged.

4. No beer yeast shall be hawked about the streets, but shall be all sold in the brew-houses to bakers and pastrycooks, and to no others.

5. Beer yeast brought by foreigners shall be inspected by a jury before it is exposed to sale.

6. No brewer shall keep in, or about, his brew-house any cows, oxen, hogs, geese, ducks, or poultry, as being inconsistent with cleanliness.

7. There shall not be made in any brew-house more than

one brewing of fifteen septiers at the most, of ground malt in a day.

8. Casks, barrels, and other vessels made to hold beer, shall be marked with the brewer’s mark, in the presence of a jury.

9. No brewer shall take away from a house he serves with beer any vessels which do not belong to him.

10. Those who sell beer by retail shall be subject to the inspection of juries.

11. No one shall be a partner but with a master brewer.

12. No master brewer shall have more than one apprentice at a time, which apprentice shall not be turned over without the consent of a jury.

13. No one shall take a partner who has quitted his master without the consent of such master.

14. A widow may employ servants in brewing, but may not take an apprentice.

15. Master brewers shall not entice away one another’s apprentices nor servants.

16. There shall be three masters elected for jurymen, two of which shall be changed every two years.

17. Such jurymen shall have the power to inspect in the city and suburbs.

In addition every brewer had to pay duty, so that the king might not be defrauded, was obliged to give notice of every brewing to a commissioner, stating the day and hour he intended to kindle the fire of his boiler, under a penalty of fine and confiscation. As brewing necessitates the employment of a large quantity of grain, it was customary, in times of scarcity, for the king to put a stop to the manufacture of beer for a certain number of weeks. These

rules and regulations, made more than six hundred years since, are interesting and curious to the brewers of to-day.

In the fourteenth century the monks were the ordinary brewers, and one brewery founded by them at Dobraw near Pilsen, Bohemia, and endowed by Charles IV. shortly before his death with a prescriptive right to brew beer, is still in existence and is probably the oldest in the world. Its five hundredth anniversary was lately celebrated with great pomp, by all classes of society in that ancient city. Bohemian beer is to be ranked with the very best known, and an idea of the annual product for home and foreign consumption may be formed from the fact that there are now no less than eight hundred and eighty-seven breweries in actual operation.

In Austria, the first brewery built at Vienna was on the Weidenstrasse and dates back as far as 1384. The oldest standing brewery in the same place is the St. Marx Brew-house, founded in 1706.

In the Provinces of Flanders and Brabant a beer brewed of malt and hops was the national beverage as early as the fourteenth century, and brewers occupied an important position and were held in high esteem. History tells us that one of them, Jacob Van Artevelde the Brewer of Ghent, a nobleman by birth, became a celebrated popular leader who drove Louis I., Count of Flanders, into France, held the government of the province and supported Edward III of England until his death, July 17, 1345.

His son Philip, who at one time was chosen ruler of the provinces and who died 1382, was as well known as a celebrated brewer as his father.

To Flanders also belongs the celebrated Gambrinus, who under bis real name of Jan Primus, Duke of Flanders, ruled Flanders and Brabant wisely, and became the protector of the beer-brewing fraternity. Under the popular cognomen, however, (to which many mythical attributes have -been attached) he is universally known, and perhaps held in higher esteem by a greater number of adherents than all the saints, even including Saint Patrick, who have been canonized up to the present day.

In England beer was introduced by the Romans. The Saxons found it there and improved wonderfully upon the discovery. For centuries it received, in the modern literature of England, the constant attention and consideration of churchmen, historians, poets and political economists. The churchmen especially were active in the improvement of malt liquors. William of Malmsbury says that the best brewers in England at the time of Henry II. were to be found in the monasteries, and every reader of early English literature remembers frequent allusions not only to beer in general but to that of the holy fathers in particular. The monks were the first to discover the peculiar fitness of the waters of Burton on Trent for brewing purposes, and may thus be said to have paved the way for the development of the enormous establishments that now scatter their product over all the world.

According to “ Tennant’s Guide to London,” published at the beginning of the present century, there were in the reigns of the Tudors great breweries at London, situated on the river side below St. Katherine’s. In 1492 King Henry VII. licensed a Flemish brewer, John Merchant, to export a large quantity of the so-called “ berre,” and that the beer had to be of good quality and was under the surveillance of the authorities, is proved by the fact that Geffrey Gate, an officer of the king, twice destroyed the brewhouses on account of the weakness of the beer.

In the reign of Elizabeth the demand for ale increased very largely, and we find mention of an export of five hundred tuns of the precious liquor at one time. This was sent to Amsterdam for the use of the thirsty army in the Netherlands. Mary Queen of Scots in the midst of her troubles seems not to have been altogether insensible to the attractions of English beer, for when she was confined in Tutbury Castle, Walsingham, her secretary asked “ At what place near Tutbury beer may be provided for her majestie’s use ?” To which Sir Ralph Sadler, governor of the castle made reply, “ Beer may be had at Burton, three miles off.” This Burton on Trent began to be famous,for its water in the thirteenth century. There is a document still extant, dated 1295, in which it is stated that Matilda, daughter of Nicholas Shoben had released to the abbot and convent of Burton on Trent certain tenements, for which release they granted her daily for life two white loaves from the monastery, two gallons of conventual beer and one penny, besides seven gallons of beer for the men.

In the fifteenth century the monks in Germany brewed two kinds of beer in the convents, one kind for the Patres, and an inferior beer for the convents.

In the sixteenth century the breweries in Germany were already celebrated for their malt beer.

Cities not having good cellars, on account of which good beer could not be produced, were provided with the beverage through their city fathers from other places, stored and sold in the cellars of the city hall, hence the origin of the name Raths-keller. The most celebrated beer at that time, was the Braunschweiger Mumme, and the beer of Eimbeck, Merseburg and Bamberg. Beer before it could be sold had to pass a strict examination by a committee consisting of brewers of the greatest reputation, appointed by the burgomaster under and by advice of the city fathers ; and a “ Brauherr,” (proprietor and brew-master of a brewery) was a man of importance. In the principality of Brandenburg—afterwards the kingdom of Prussia—it was thought as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that beer was the most wholesome of all beverages, and the electors of Brandenburg, later the kings of Prussia, fostered breweries by the concession of numerous privileges which were increased from time to time. Grants of this character and of no small advantage were held by brewers in Cottbus.1 Province of Brandenburg, and were considerably enlarged by Frederick the Great in favor of Huguenots who had at his invitation settled in the kingdom after being forced by the revocation of the edict of Nantes to leave Fiance. These privileges, enjoyed by the Toussaints, Salems and others for many years, were abolished by the declaration of the freedom of trade in 1838.

After the year 1721 coffee began to be extensively used, and at last Frederick the Great in order to check its introduction erected large coffee roasting establishments which had a monopoly of the business, and where the coffee was sold at an enormous price, only the nobility, having the right of roasting their coffee beans. “ Coffee smellers ” or spies were appointed to look out for evaders of the law, just as