Ohio History Journal

LLOYD SPONHOLTZ

The Politics of Temperance

in Ohio, 1880-1912

The Price of an Ohio License

What's the price of a license? How much did you say?

The price of men's souls in the market today?

A license to sell, to deform, to destroy,

From the gray hairs of age to the innocent boy.

How much did you say?

How much is to pay? How compare with your gold?

A license to poison .. .a crime oft retold-

Fix a price on the years and the manhood of man-

What's the price, did you say¹

In 1913 the Anti-Saloon League of America (ASL) announced its

drive for federal constitutional prohibition. Within seven years the

nation ratified the Eighteenth Amendment. This remarkable record of

political success glosses over the many years of bitter struggle on the

state and local level that contributed to this accomplishment. Fur-

thermore, the speed with which the ASL achieved its goal suggests that

the wets were on the run by the time the ASL made its announcement,

and that they were merely fighting a holding action. An examination of

the political jockeying between Ohio wets and drys in the years im-

mediately preceding 1913, however, suggests that the pendulum there

was swinging in favor of the wets, a development which culminated in

the adoption of a constitutional liquor license in 1912.

Ohio was particularly significant to the dry cause. As the birthplace of

the Anti-Saloon League, Ohio drys could take pride in residing in the

state that spawned the leading temperance organization in the nation by

1910. Not only did the ASL maintain its national headquarters in Wes-

terville, near Columbus, but the Ohio branch of the ASL was the

financial and administrative cornerstone of the national organization.

Dr. Sponholtz is Assistant Professor of History at The University of Kansas, Lawrence.

The author wishes to acknowledge that the research for this study was in part made

possible by a University of Kansas General Research Grant.

1. Peter Odegard, Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League (New York,

1928), 66.

Politics of Temperance                                             5

The Ohio affiliate alone accounted for twenty-two percent of all state

league contributions to the national coffers in 1913, and it served as the

political training ground for many who later assumed leadership roles in

other state leagues as well as in national offices.² Thus the political

course of the liquor issue in Ohio assumes an inordinately large role in

the prohibition movement at large.

For the most part the liquor question in the state was directly trace-

able to the anomalous wording of the Ohio Constitution of 1851. Written

within the background of the pre-Civil War temperance fervor, dele-

gates to the 1851 Ohio constitutional convention reached new heights of

ambiguity when they submitted to the voters separate from the rest of

the constitution the following amendment:

No license to traffic in intoxicating liquors shall hereafter be granted in this state;

but the general assembly may, by law, provide against evils resulting there-

from.³

Voter adoption of both the constitution and the liquor proposal set the

stage for decades of bickering since the amendment left quite unclear to

what extent the legislature was empowered to regulate the liquor trade.⁴

Given this confusion, it is both ironic and understandable that Ohio

should have become the birthplace of the post-Civil War organized

temperance movement. The National Woman's Christian Temperance

Union emerged in Cleveland in 1874, while the Anti-Saloon League

grew out of the temperance fervor at Oberlin College in 1893. Even the

Prohibition Party held its early national conventions in Ohio from 1872

to 1880.⁵ Political interest in the liquor question, as measured by legisla-

tive activity on the subject, peaked in Ohio during the 1880s and again in

the first decade of the twentieth century. In each case the peak occurred

in the decade following the emergence of a national temperance body,

but for the most part the emphasis of each wave differed.

The initial thrust of the 1880s involved legislative attempts to evade

the anti-license provision by imposing an annual tax on retail liquor

dealers. The state supreme court declared the laws unconstitutional;

both the $1,000 bond required in the Pond Law (1882) and the Scott Law

2. Ohio furnished over forty state superintendents to the ASL, Ibid., 9, n. 6. The ASL

financial statement can be found in the League's weekly journal, New Republic, De-

cember 26, 1913.

3. Ohio, Constitution (1851), Article XV, Section 4.

4. Joe Hoover Bindley, "An Analysis of Voting Behavior in Ohio" (unpublished Ph.D.

dissertation, University of Pittsburg, 1959), 66.

5. Ernest Cherrington, ed., Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, 10 vols.

(Westerville, 1929), V, 2050-2052. Also see F. M. Whitaker, "Ohio WCTU and the

Prohibition Amendment Campaign of 1883," Ohio History, LXXXIII (Spring 1974),

84-102.

6                                                        OHIO HISTORY

proviso (1883) making the tax a lien upon the premises constituted a

license law in the view of the judges. In October of 1883 the legislature

made a further attempt to resolve the matter by presenting voters with a

constitutional alternative: either permit the general assembly to regulate

and tax the liquor traffic or enact statewide prohibition. Although pro-

hibition achieved a plurality vote of 323,000 to 241,000, it failed to

receive the constitutionally required majority of all votes cast in that

gubernatorial election, and unlicensed confusion remained.

Three years later the General Assembly passed the omnibus Dow Act

in a further attempt to overcome judicial objections. Little difference

between it and its predecessors is apparent to the casual observer. It

applied a $250 annual tax upon the liquor traffic (defined as "buying,

procuring and selling" but not the manufacture and wholesale distribu-

tion at the manufactory); forbade Sunday and election day selling, as

well as sales to minors; created a "dry zone" around most public

institutions and militia encampments; and gave to municipalities

"power to regulate ale-, beer, and porter-houses and shops."⁶ Court

approval of the Dow law appears to have reflected a change of judicial

attitude as much as successful legislative tinkering.⁷ In any event, by

1912 the annual tax had been raised to $1,000.

Further legislative action on the liquor question awaited the

emergence of the Anti-Saloon League in 1893. By the turn of the century

the temperance movement in Ohio had become inseparably linked with

the League and its undisputed guiding spirit, Wayne B. Wheeler.

Wheeler attended Oberlin College in the 1890s. Both the community and

the college had been in the vanguard of the state temperance movement;

it was a meeting of the Oberlin Temperance Alliance in 1893 under the

leadership of the Reverend Howard H. Russell (Oberlin class of 1888)

that gave birth to the Anti-Saloon League (ASL).⁸ Wheeler joined the

6. Cherrington, ed., Standard Encyclopedia, V, 2045-2046; Bindley, "Analysis of

Voting Behavior in Ohio," 66-67. The provisions of some or all of these acts are available

in a variety of sources: Ohio, Secretary of State, Proceedings and Debates of the Constitu-

tional Convention of the State of Ohio, January 9 to June 7, 1912, 2 vols. (Columbus,

1912), I, 367-68 (hereafter cited as CC Debates); Philip D. Jordan, Ohio Comes of Age,

1873-1900, Vol. V of The History of the State of Ohio, ed. by Carl Wittke (Columbus,

1943), 175-77,294. The Dow Act specifically forbade sales in Cincinnati between midnight

and 6 a.m.

7. According to the state supreme court (Adler v Whitbeck, 44 O.S. 559), "The differ-

ence between the tax upon a business and what might be termed a license, is, that the

former is exacted by reason of the fact that the business is carried on, and the latter is

enacted as a condition precedent to the right to carry it on." Quoted in Augustus R.

Hatton, "The Liquor Situation in Ohio," Proceedings of the Buffalo Conference for Good

City Government and the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the National Municipal League

(1910), 412.

8. Justin Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, Dry Boss (New York, 1928), 15-34, 47-49.

8                                                     OHIO HISTORY

goals in broad, general terms; workers, as well as the iron and steel

industry, need a protective tariff since an expanded industry meant

more jobs. At the same time that bureaucratic heirarchies were forming,

specialization spurred the development of functional associations, in

which people of like interest or specialty (such as physicians) main-

tained national contacts within an egalitarian framework. In the process,

linkages developed between the local community and society at large,

particularly in response to innovation.⁹

In many respects the Anti-Saloon League symbolized these social

reorderings. Utilizing as a base existing Protestant congregations (usu-

ally Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Congregational), the League

superimposed a large staff of full-time paid professionals in which au-

thority was highly centralized. Operationally the League focused upon

the one single issue embraced in its title; it refused to take a stand on

other matters. Eschewing the third-party route the ASL conscientiously

worked in a bipartisan fashion within the two-party system-a tactic

dictated in Ohio by the existence of a strong temperance element within

both major political parties.10

Wheeler personified the League. His somewhat critical biographer

found several characteristics dominant in Wheeler's makeup. For one

thing, no one ever questioned his sincerity or tireless devotion to his

cause. At one point early in his career he campaigned against a state

legislator by peddling a bicycle over the entire legislative district.

Wheeler was an unquestioned opportunist. A candidate need not be a

temperance man in his personal life in order to receive League endorse-

ment; he only had to vote dry. When asked why he supported a man who

owned two saloons Wheeler explained that "his owning a saloon doesn't

have anything to do with his official actions." He rarely attacked per-

sonally a wet who had political influence-a restraint that presumably

swayed some to his cause.11

This opportunism extended into the political sphere. "The League

stands for prohibition in those states which have or are ready for such

laws. Elsewhere it favors local option."¹² "The League believes in

self-government," and "has secured and used local option whenever it

9. Kenneth Boulding, The Organizational Revolution (New York, 1952), 202; Samuel

P. Hays' introductory essay in Jerry Israel, ed., Building the Organizational Society:

Essays on Associational Activities in Modern America (New York, 1972), 1-15.

10. Odegard, Pressure Politics, 2-18, 79; Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 15-34, 47.

11. Odegard, Pressure Politics, 87; Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 12, 62-64. Yet Steuart also

noted Wheeler's preference for threats rather than persuasion, and his penchant for

stringent penalties and relentless prosecution, 12-14.

12. Odegard, Pressure Politics, 117, quoted from William H. Anderson, The Church in

Action Against the Saloon (n.p., n.d.), 30ff.

Politics of Temperance                                           9

has been possible to make an advance along temperance lines thereby. It

has also, however, consistently opposed the adoption and use of local

option where such adoption and use has meant a backward step in

temperance reform."¹³

Wheeler and the League redirected the thrust of the Ohio temperance

movement from that of the 1880s. There was a renewed emphasis upon

the enforcement of existing liquor laws. As League attorney, Wheeler

averaged better than a case a day in his support of liquor law prosecu-

tions, totaling an estimated three thousand cases over the span of his

career. Exposure of judicial efforts to thwart enforcement also occupied

his time.¹⁴ More significantly, the League embarked upon a series of

local option laws designed eventually to dry up all but the metropolitan

areas of the state. In fact, early in its existence the ASL was known as

the "Local Option League." Actually the strategy built upon an 1888

amendment to the Dow Act, which provided for a referendum on the

question of liquor sales in any township outside of a municipal corpora-

tion whenever twenty-five percent of the qualified voters so petitioned.

Its impact, of course, was to drive liquor sales inside corporate limits.

The Beal Law (1902) provided the same option for those inside town or

village limits, but raised the petition requirements to forty percent. Two

years later the League-sponsored Brannock Act further invaded munic-

ipal boundaries by permitting inhabitants to establish residence districts

and then to hold an election upon a forty percent petition. This, in turn,

was shortly amended to make the petition itself sufficient to close

saloons; the election was eliminated. The culmination of this local

option drive came in the 1908 Rose law, extending the local option

election to counties if thirty-five percent of the electors so desired. All of

the local option elections allowed for periodic electoral reviews of the

initial decision, ranging from two years for the Beal and Brannock acts

to three years for the Rose law.15

The Rose law proved to be so popular that, by April 1909, elections

had been held in sixty-seven counties, fifty-eight of which had voted

dry. Five additional counties had previously chosen prohibition under

the Beal law, so that by mid-1909 sixty-three of Ohio's eighty-eight

counties had elected to outlaw the sale of intoxicants.

13. The Anti-Saloon League Yearbook: 1909, 168. Hereafter cited as ASL, Yearbook.

14. Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 49, 62.

15. Charles E. Zartman, "Prohibition Question in Licking County, 1908-1912" (M.A.

thesis, Ohio State University, 1938), 3-4; Odegard, Pressure Politics, 116; Cherrington,

ed., Standard Encyclopedia, V, 2046-2047. The residence district law as amended estab-

lished many criteria, including the maximum dimensions of contiguous territory, the

maximum population embraced, the proportion of residence versus commercial property

permissable on a block, etc. See William H. Page, ed., The General Code of Ohio, 4 vols.

(Cincinnati, 1921), II, Sections 6140-6161.

Politics of Temperance                                              11

tion. Even among those counties which did vote dry, towns were fre-

quently outvoted by the numerically dominant rural drys. In an exami-

nation of election results brewers noted that the towns of Newark,

TABLE 1

Rose Law County Option Election Results

By County, 1908-1909, As Classified

Along A Rural-Urban Continuum

Rural              Town              Urban

No.               %                                  No.              %               No.       %

Dry                                             43*                     83                      15                       58                        0

Wet                                             4                          8                         5                          19                        0

No Vote                                     5                          9                         66                       23                        5       100

*Five additional counties voted dry under the Beal Law

Zanesville, and Steubenville all fell into this situation, although in other

instances (Scioto and Columbiana counties) there was a distinct division

of opinion within or among incorporated areas.¹⁶

Local option laws, of course, did not always eliminate sale of intox-

icants. Where law enforcement was lax, such as in Newark, former

saloons became speakeasies or "blind tigers," or saloonowners con-

tinued to dispense alcoholic beverages by operating "soft drink" estab-

lishments. In other areas such as Columbiana County, a "dress-suit case

trade" emerged, where bootleggers rode the interurban train to nearby

West Virginia and returned with a valise full of half-pint bottles. Drug-

gists retained the right to dispense alcohol upon the prescription of a

physician, and although the laws sought their particular cooperation,

there remained ample opportunity for abuse.17

In order to solidify their victories the Anti-Saloon League

supplemented their local option campaigns by sponsoring other laws to

harass the liquor trade. For example, private clubs could not dispense

liquors if located within dry territory. Another law forbade the shipment

of liquor C.O.D. into dry areas. Saloons could be abated as a public

16. United States Brewers' Association Yearbook: 1910, 24-43 (hereafter cited as

USBA, Yearbook); Ohio, Secretary of State, Abstract of Votes Cast in Ohio under the

Rose Local Option Law (Columbus, 1909), 3-4. For purposes of analysis here, Ohio

counties were classified according to the size of the largest community within their

boundaries in 1910. Counties whose largest municipality was less than 10,000 population

were classified as rural. "Town" counties embraced a community with a population

between 10,000 and 100,000. The five Urban counties were Hamilton (Cincinnati),

Montgomery (Dayton), Franklin (Columbus), Cuyahoga (Cleveland), and Lucas (Toledo).

17. USBA, Yearbook: 1910, 24-43.

12                                                OHIO HISTORY

nuisance upon the second conviction for a liquor law violation. Most

serious, however, was the "Search and Seizure" Law enacted in 1906,

which instructed the appropriate judicial officer to issue a search war-

rant upon the sworn complaint of any individual who "has reason to

believe and does believe that liquor laws were being violated at a given

location." Further, any law officer having personal knowledge of such

violations "shall search such place without a warrant or an affidavit

being filed." Private residences were immune to search by warrant

except that portion used commercially. Finally, a 1909 amendment to

the act authorized the prosecuting attorney (or, if he failed to do so, the

probate judge) to hire private detectives at a maximum cost of $125 per

month to aid in uncovering evidence of infractions.¹⁸ In this way the

League hoped to counteract lax law enforcement with legislation com-

pelling local officers to take action.

By 1910, then, the Anti-Saloon League was riding a wave of nearly

uninterrupted successes. It had proved its lobbying prowess in a series

of laws designed to isolate wet areas and eventually to choke them

out of existence. Wheeler, in fact, candidly shared his formula for

successful lobbying upon which such legislative victories were

based.¹⁹ The ASL had achieved its success by a strategic policy of

bipartisanship, seen in the nearly equal partisan support given the Rose

law in both Ohio houses; eighty Republicans and seventy-five Demo-

crats voted for the measure.²⁰ In politics, the League's policy of reward-

ing its friends and punishing its enemies had born fruit. Over seventy

Ohio legislators with whom the League had been at odds between 1895

and 1903 failed to be reelected. Even governors were not immune; when

Governor Myron T. Herrick's attitude on the Brannock bill incurred

League hostility in 1905, Wheeler successfully persuaded his followers

to elect Democrat John Pattison. Strong moral and financial support by

rural Protestants permitted the League to maintain a ten-thousand-

square-foot printing plant in Westerville, Ohio that printed weekly edi-

tions of its newspaper, The American Issue, for each state league in the

nation. By 1910 it was turning out 350,000 issues per month, although its

capacity was four times larger. With such political pressure, and

18. Ibid., 1909, 30; Zartman, "Prohibition in Licking County," 3-4; Page, ed., The

General Code of Ohio, II, sections 6169-6186. Italics added.

19. Odegard, Pressure Politics, 115-116, quoted from American Issue, Anniversary

Number, May, 1909.

20. Ibid., 82.

Politics of Temperance                                            13

propaganda potential, the League seemed poised to make its ultimate

push for prohibition.²¹

League hostility was directed primarily against the brewers, perhaps

because their association with saloons was always closer than that of the

distiller. Brewers therefore assumed leadership of the fight against the

ASL, chiefly through their trade organization, the United States Brew-

ers' Association (USBA). Organized in 1862 as a result of federal gov-

ernment efforts to tax the brewing industry, the USBA claimed credit

for establishing the excise tax system which eventually resulted. From

taxation the USBA turned its attentions to the technical side of product

improvement, which extended to such areas as interest in upgrading the

raw agricultural products that went into beer production. Labor condi-

tions also attracted USBA interest. Brewers were somewhat unique in

being a highly unionized industry by 1900, and in dealing with one of the

few early industrially-organized unions, the Brewery Workers of

America. Brewers were proud of their generally peaceful and advanced

relations with their workers, including a form of workmen's compensa-

tion in advance of state regulation on the subject.²²

Technology revolutionized the industry in the late nineteenth cen-

tury, particularly the development of refrigeration and the pasteuriza-

tion process for beer. Taken together, they permitted beer to invade

areas far removed from breweries-rural areas in general and the South

in particular. Beer could not only be preserved for longer periods of

time, but with the development of the modern glass bottle, it permitted

more widespread consumption at home rather than at the saloon. Re-

frigeration more than doubled brewing capacity, creating a potential for

over production, and sharpened competition among brewers that even

the heightened waves of immigration of the late nineteenth century

failed to blunt. One manifestation of this overcompetitive situation was

brewer financing of large numbers of saloons-their primary retail out-

let. Brewers later acknowledged ASL charges that they financed

saloonkeepers' costs of procuring equipment, fixtures, and even the

annual license fee; they denied, however, that this gave them control

21. Ibid., 89-90, 97; Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 66-69; ASL, Yearbook: 1910, 243,1911,

30. According to the League, "it is not only worthless but absolutely harmful to enact

prohibition in any state before public sentiment on the liquor question in that state is strong

enough to maintain such a system. . ." (Ibid., 1912, 143).

22. U.S., Congress, Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee of the Judiciary, Reports

and Hearings, Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda,

66th Cong., 1st Sess., 1919, I, 82-83 (hereafter cited as Brewing and Liquor Hearings);

USBA, Yearbook: 1909, 11; Nuala Drescher, "The Workman's Compensation and Pen-

sion Proposal in the Brewing Industry, 1910-1912: A Case Study in Conflicting Self-

Interest," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 24 (October 1970), 32-46.

14                                               OHIO HISTORY

over the saloons. "All that the brewer got out of his bargain was the

furnishing of his particular brand of beer," complained an industry

spokesman to a United States Senate investigating committee in 1919.

Saloonkeepers were free to dispense whiskey and other goods and

services as they saw fit. Reformist efforts to eliminate saloons by an

exorbitant annual tax were actually counterproductive. They not only

made the saloon owner more dependent upon the brewer for financing,

but frequently prompted the bartender to offer such services as gam-

bling and prostitution in order to make a living.²³

Around the turn of the century the campaigns of the Anti-Saloon

League prompted the USBA to devote an increasing amount of its

attention to combating the movement directed against the saloon. Prior

to that time brewers had experienced success in thwarting statewide

prohibition. Such proposals had been defeated in ten states; "in all these

instances," a USBA publicist boasted, "the arguments used by the

opponents of Prohibition were derived directly from our publications."

Only Kansas and Iowa had enacted prohibition over brewer opposi-

tion.²⁴

Yet the ASL posed a much stronger challenge than anything previ-

ously encountered by the brewers, and it required them to adopt different

tactics. The new approach embraced efforts to win public sympathy, if

not support. For instance, the USBA tried to separate beer and light

wines from more potent distilled beverages in a public mind made

sensitive to alcoholism by ASL propaganda. More importantly, brewers

began to compete directly with the ASL for public support, particularly

that of opinion leaders. The USBA began reprinting articles favorable to

its cause in pamphlet form, which it turned over to its state and local

affiliates for distribution. Another manifestation of this public aware-

ness program was the new look given the annual USBA Yearbook

beginning in 1909. Whereas formerly the Yearbook was intended solely

for industry consumption, the new Yearbook "is designed both for the

convenience of our members and for the information of the public." The

contents reviewed recent liquor laws and included articles concerning

the brewing industry. "We have aimed to make it a valuable reference

book," the editors declared-one intended for public use. Hopefully the

deliberate absence of any copyright would contribute to that end.²⁵

In an additional attempt to counter the ASL, the USBA adopted, at

23. Brewing and Liquor Hearings, I, 83, 91; USBA, Yearbook: 1911, 9, 164; Hatton,

"Liquor Situation in Ohio," 418-419. For the impact of a high annual saloon tax, see

Frederic C. Howe, The Confessions of a Reformer (Chicago, 1967), 51-55.

24. USBA, Yearbook: 1909, 13-16, 17.

25. Ibid., Preface; Brewing and Liquor Hearings, I, 82-84.

Politics of Temperance                                    15

their annual convention at Milwaukee in 1908, a Declaration of Princi-

ples that admitted the existence of faults within the industry, such as an

excessive number of saloons. "THE EXISTING EVILS, HOWEVER,

CAN BE ERADICATED BY ACTION ON THE PART OF INDI-

VIDUALS IN THE TRADE ONLY IF THEY ARE AIDED AND

SUPPORTED BY PUBLIC SENTIMENT AND SUITABLE

LAWS.... Not only were the brewers "READY AND ANXIOUS TO

DO THEIR SHARE," but they expressed a willingness to cooperate

with any movement "looking to THE PROMOTION OF HABITS OF

TEMPERANCE IN THE USE OF FERMENTED BEVERAGES."²⁶

At least one USBA affiliate backed up this rhetoric with action. In a

daring move to win public confidence and to blunt ASL barbs, the Ohio

Brewers' Association established a Vigilance Bureau in 1907 to police

saloons within the state. The brewers sent a letter to every Ohio saloon-

keeper, calling attention to state liquor laws and urging compliance. The

letter warned that the Vigilance Bureau would investigate complaints of

improper activities, and would turn over to local authorities any evi-

dence of misconduct. When necessary, in fact, the Bureau hired detec-

tives to gather evidence and cooperated with local prosecuting attorneys

in securing convictions. It may well be that the Bureau prompted drys to

retaliate by securing legislation in 1909 permitting local authorities to

secure private detective assistance.

The Vigilance Bureau activities extended to towns and cities all over

Ohio, including Canton, Dayton, Cleveland, Chillicothe, and Cincin-

nati. In the last-named city, brewers claimed credit for closing over one

hundred saloons despite lack of local police cooperation. Henry T.

Hunt, the vigorous prosecuting attorney in Cincinnati, acknowledged

the "effective and valuable assistance from your [Vigilance] Bureau

toward securing evidence against saloon keepers who permit gambling

on their premises and harbor disreputable women."²⁷

Ohio brewers followed up this movement to upgrade saloons by

sponsoring the Dean Character law in 1909. The act required retail liquor

vendors to respond annually to a number of questions, ascertaining

whether anyone connected with the business was an alien or un-

naturalized citizen, or was ever convicted of a felony. Furthermore, the

questionnaire asked whether the vendor had, within the past year,

knowingly permitted gambling or the presence of "improper females"

upon the premises, and whether the retailer had knowingly sold liquor to

minors, drunks, or habitual drunkards. Perjury, refusal to respond, or an

26. USBA, Yearbook: 1909, 147-148.

27. Ibid., 1909, 156-157, 1910, 136-142; Hatton, "Liquor Situation in Ohio," 420-421.

16                                                   OHIO HISTORY

affirmative response to any single question resulted in a fine and/or

imprisonment. In addition, the law permitted the abatement of any

disorderly saloon upon the petition of five voting taxpayers who lived

within one thousand feet of the establishment. Should the defendant

request a jury trial, a "YES" answer to any question on the character

inquiry constituted prima facie evidence of a disreputable establish-

ment.²⁸

The decision to embark upon this counteroffensive entailed certain

risks, especially for the Ohio Brewers' Association. For one thing,

neither the state nor the national organization represented a majority of

the brewers even though USBA members accounted for nearly two-

thirds of the total annual beer production of the country. By contrast,

the Ohio affiliate represented only forty percent of the state's output in

1910. There was the distinct danger either that the Vigilance Bureau

could become an expensive but ineffectual campaign, or that the impact

would fall disproportionately upon retailers affiliated with association

members, and thus alienate them from the organziation. Deliberately

closing outlets in an already overly-competitive industry might have

seemed counterproductive to some.²⁹

Secondly, some apparently deep-seated animosities existed within

the liquor industry, as revealed in congressional testimony during the

Great War. "For too many years there has been an everwidening chasm

between the Brewer and the Retail Liquor Dealer," asserted the presi-

dent of the National Retail Liquor Dealers' Association in an address

before the USBA. Brewers reciprocated. In a speech before the liquor

dealers' annual convention in 1910, brewer lobbyist Percy Andreae saw

the prohibition movement as a joint problem which necessitated joint

cooperation. A similar gap also existed between retailers and wholesal-

ers. The former group, according to testimony, had spent nearly a score

of years in building bridges between them, resulting in the erection of

"substantial cables" across the chasm.³⁰ Vigilance Bureau activity

could well accentuate internal lines of cleavage.

Despite these potential risks, it appears that the counteroffensive was

successful in uniting the industry. According to brewer sources, nearly

one hundred breweries cooperated in the drive to clean up Ohio saloons,

suggesting that nonmembers of the state brewers' association partici-

28. Hatton, "Liquor Situation in Ohio," 413-415.

29. USBA, Yearbook: 1911, 30-31. The Ohio Brewers' Association embraced fifty-six

members in 1910 and ranked second lowest among thirty-three state affiliates in the

proportion of state production by members; Ibid., 305.

30. Percy Andreae, The Prohibition Movement in Its Broader Bearings Upon Our

Social, Commercial and Religious Liberties (Chicago, 1915), 135; Brewing and Liquor

Hearings, I, 91, 365.

Politics of Temperance                                                 17

pated in the program. Furthermore, the Ohio Wine and Spirit Associa-

tion joined the brewers in printing and distributing broadsides to the

state's retailers informing them of the Dean Character law provisions

and requesting their cooperation in ferreting out offenders. The USBA

also formed two groups to overcome the decentralized nature of the

organization, as well as to build upon existing bridges. One such group

was the Interstate Executives' Association, comprised of officers of the

national as well as state and local brewers' associations. It was to serve

as a clearing house of information gathering and dissemination in such

areas as trade problems, court decisions, and legislative activities in the

various states. The second group was the Organizational Bureau, estab-

lished in 1907 to take charge of the liquor campaigns in state wet-dry

contests.31

The impact of the counteroffensive reached beyond solidifying indus-

try ranks and began to tip the balance in the prohibition movement in

Ohio. "At the present time," Cleveland reformer Augustus Hatton told

fellow members of the National Municipal League in 1910, "there are

indications that the wave of prohibition which has swept over Ohio has

reached its maximum. In fact," he warned, "it will require strenuous

work for the anti-saloon forces to retain all that they have gained."³²

Evidence underscores Hatton's assessment. For example, Table 2,

TABLE 2

Liquor Dealers and Brewers In Ohio, 1907-1912

1907                  1908               1909              1910              1911            1912

Retail Liquor Dealers*                               13,616          13,655           12,523          11,630           12,264        13,937

Wholesale Dealers                                       351                401                 362                317                 367              370

Retail Dealers

Malt Liquor              306     261      199     339     247     273

Wholesale Dealers

Malt Liquor                                              661                624                 522                418                 405              687

Brewers                                                            143                125                 119                122                 113              125

SOURCE: USBA Yearbook: 1909. p. 88, 1910, p.289, 1911, Appendix Table G, 1912,

Appendix Table G, 1913, p. 293.

*Probably includes some druggists, who were permitted by law to dispense alcohol

upon physician's prescription. The USBA, for example, gave the number of saloons in

January 1910 as 6,908 and as 7,097 in 1911.

31. USBA, Yearbook: 1911, 29-30, 208-210; Brewing and Liquor Hearings, I, 327.

Testimony on the role of the Organizational Bureau in Ohio is conflicting. One witness

asserted that the Bureau limited its activities in the Buckeye State to an advisory role; but a

memorandum of the Bureau claims considerable credit for the election of Governor

Harmon in 1908. See Brewing and Liquor Hearings, I, 404, 836.

32. Hatton, "Liquor Situation in Ohio," 421.

18                                              OHIO HISTORY

which provides some rough indicators of the state of the liquor trade in

Ohio, suggests a general pattern of liquor decline through 1909, reflect-

ing in part the impact of the Rose law county option elections beginning

the previous year. After 1910, the pattern is reversed, showing an

expansion in the number of those connected with liquor marketing. This

expansion, in part, reflects a series of reversals experienced by dry

forces in succeeding Rose law elections. Beginning in 1911, counties

which had balloted initially on the subject were eligible to hold another

election, and many of them did so. In the eleven-month period, begin-

ning July 1, 1911, eighteen of twenty-seven dry counties which held their

second election returned to the wet column. In the only new election in

the period, the county voted dry. On the town and township level in the

same period, the results were more evenly split; yet even these returns

reflect a distinct change from the general ASL successes of the pre-1909

era.³³

The brewer drive to clean up the saloon not only met with a favorable

outcome, but it placed drys on the defensive. In explaining the county

election reversals of 1911 an Anti-Saloon League editor conceded the

defensive posture forced upon them by wets "through promises to

install so-called 'well-regulated saloons' devoid of the objectionable

features connected with the saloons that were voted out under the

county law in 1908."³⁴ Ohio citizens were witnessing the anomalous

situation of both antagonists operating in parallel fashion, and although

the ASL could boast that some two thousand saloons had been

abolished by 1910, it could no longer take sole credit for the result.

Furthermore, brewer invitations seeking ASL assistance in ferreting out

unscrupulous establishments placed drys on the horns of a dilemma.

Acceding to the offer would compromise ASL objectives of eliminating

the commercial traffic in alcohol; while refusal to cooperate would

expose the League to charges of hypocrisy. When the ASL countered

with a proposal of joint efforts to eliminate bootleggers in dry areas, the

Vigilance Bureau superintendent declined. " 'Dry' territory is the

peculiar property of the Anti-Saloon League," he observed. "The Vigi-

lance Bureau has the right on the mere face of the thing to assume that its

responsibility ends where local option begins."³⁵

Finally, although both agencies utilized private detectives to expose

liquor law violators, Vigilance Bureau efforts met with generally favor-

able reaction. By contrast, such practices backfired at least once for the

ASL in the form of the so-called Newark riot of 1909. When Licking

33. USBA, Yearbook: 1912, 106-107.

34. ASL, Yearbook: 1912, 184.

35. Quoted in USBA, Yearbook: 1911, 60.

Politics of Temperance                                        19

County voted dry in a Rose law election, the outcome not only

threatened the existing saloons in the county seat of Newark, but it

jeopardized the livelihood of some of the two thousand men employed in

a beer-bottle factory. Speakeasies continued to flourish with the indif-

ference if not connivance of local authorities. Drys appealed to the state

ASL for relief. A nearby village mayor granted search and seizure

warrants to ASL detectives, but when they attempted to serve them in

July 1910, a mob assaulted them. The crowd chased one, a nineteen-

year-old, over two miles and beat him. In self-defense, the youthful

detective shot and killed one of his assailants, a saloonkeeper. The

detective was arrested, jailed, and later hanged by a mob which broke

into the jail and dragged him out. It required state troopers sent in by the

governor to restore order. Despite League efforts to portray the incident

as solely the result of the liquor traffic, Licking County voted wet in the

second Rose law election in January 1912.36

It was at this point that the liquor controversy spilled over from the

legislative halls and judicial chambers into the Ohio Constitutional Con-

vention, which assembled at Columbus in January 1912. Although the

convention was primarily the result of efforts by the Ohio State Board of

Commerce, who wished to alter the tax structure of the state, other

pressure groups also saw in the convention a way to circumvent legisla-

tive obstructions to their respective goals. Among the most active were

backers of the initiative and referendum (led by advocates of the single

tax), woman suffragists, and those active in the liquor controversy.³⁷

At least two factors assured a prominent role for the liquor question in

convention deliberations. First, once voters approved the calling of a

constitutional convention in a 1910 referendum, the enabling act permit-

ted candidates for the 119 delegate positions to declare whether or not

they supported a separate submission of the liquor licensing question in

the convention. Many candidates, either by conviction or as the result of

pressure applied by partisans of the issue, took advantage of this oppor-

tunity. Further, the second round of the county option elections began

by mid-1911. Not only did these Rose law elections keep the liquor issue

36. Hatton, "Liquor Situation in Ohio," 400-401; Cincinnati Enquirer, January 7, 1912.

For an "eyewitness" account of a rather bizarre county option election in Chillicothe, see

USBA, Yearbook: 1911, 194-195.

37. The 1912 Ohio Constitutional Convention is surveyed by Hoyt Landon Warner in

his Progressivism in Ohio, 1897-1917 (Columbus, Ohio, 1964), Ch. 12. For a more detailed

analysis, see Lloyd Sponholtz, "Progressivism in Microcosm: An Analysis of the Political

Forces at Work in the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1912" (unpublished Ph.D.

dissertation, University of Pittsburg, 1969).

20                                                  OHIO HISTORY

before the public consciousness, but the two-to-one ratio of wet vic-

tories encouraged brewers to press their offensive further by seeking

adoption of a liquor license amendment to the constitution. In that way

the legitimacy of the liquor trade would be constitutionally established

and efforts to police the traffic enhanced.

The Anti-Saloon League remained on the defensive by working to

maintain the constitutional status quo, fearing that any tampering with

the state's charter might undo their progress to date. An ASL editor

aptly set the tone for the forthcoming convention. "The struggle of 1912

between the temperance and liquor forces will unquestionably be the

most desperately fought contest in which these forces in the State of

Ohio have ever been engaged," he observed grimly. "Whatever may be

the result in this specific contest, the war will continue until there has

been established a permanent sentiment in the state which will no longer

tolerate the liquor traffic."³⁸

Because of its power of life-and-death over any proposal involving the

question of liquor, the Liquor Traffic Committee ranked among the most

significant of the convention. It was one of the few to number twenty-

one members, and its composition was watched with keen interest. Drys

were represented by former state representative John Winn, who had

authored one of the local option laws passed by the general assembly, by

Professor Henry Elson of Ohio University, a former Lutheran theolo-

gian and ardent prohibitionist, and by William Kilpatrick, who had

recently resigned from the general assembly in order to serve in the

convention. Kilpatrick was the author of an equal suffrage proposal

currently favored by the Equal Suffrage Committee. Wets could count

upon John Roehm, an officer of the Ohio Personal Liberty League, and

Republican Judge Edmund King from Sandusky, where the manufac-

ture of liquor was an important industry.

Within the first month the committee received over a dozen proposals

from delegates embracing a spectrum that ran from a choice between

prohibition or license, through various degrees of restrictive license, to a

license/no-license option. Both wets and drys made their positions

perfectly clear. Brewer and liquor retailers preferred a constitutionally

mandatory license system, but one that would leave the details of license

38. Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 70; Cincinnati Enquirer, August 4, 1911; ASL, Yearbook:

1912, 184. A speech by USBA secretary Hugh Fox in 1910 or 1911 also shows the

organization's adoption of the license idea, as well as a sensitivity to public relations.

Brewers, according to Fox, should pay atttention to the saloon's physical appearance.

Attract laborers with "clean white tiling on the walls; clean white glass beer counter; clean

floors and plain but comfortable furniture." Remove screens, he urged, and open the

"premises to public scrutiny" (USBA, Yearbook: 1911, 149-165).

22                                                  OHIO HISTORY

saloons, prohibition of brewery-owned saloons, etc ...." Furthermore,

should such a license proposal be referred to the voters, the League

favored an alternative choice that would prohibit all liquor traffic out-

side of the state's five largest cities. Wayne Wheeler conveyed the

League's position to the Liquor Traffic Committee.⁴¹

As it turned out, Andreae and Wheeler established the parameters of

the convention's consideration of the liquor question. On February 12

the Liquor Traffic Committee, by a close vote of twelve to nine, en-

dorsed Judge King's proposal. King presented voters with a choice of

the current no-license situation or an unrestricted license which allowed

the general assembly to regulate the traffic while retaining the local

option laws then in force. John Winn, on behalf of the minority, reported

a proposal imposing strict limitations upon a license system, including

one restricting saloons to one per one thousand population. Over two

weeks of debate ensued, after which the weary delegates killed all

proposals and started anew.⁴²

All later proposals submitted to the convention called for varying

degrees of restricted license. The proposals and amendments indicate

that some informal agreement had been reached. All called for a voter

choice between some form of restricted license and a continuation of the

no-license status quo, and all provided that the issue was to be submitted

to the voters separately from other proposals. Furthermore, delegates

insisted that the licensee be an American citizen of good moral character

who had no other liquor interests.

There were a number of key points at issue. One concerned the proper

ratio of saloons to population. Although strict regulationists favored a

limitation of one saloon per one thousand population, the ratio of one per

five hundred was more commonly accepted. The Anti-Saloon League

took great delight in the obvious discomfiture of the liquor retailers over

the considerable reduction in the number of saloons that would result,

estimated by retailers at twenty-five hundred.⁴³ Closely related was the

number of infractions to be tolerated before a license would be revoked;

hard-liners fought for a maximum of one liquor law violation. A third

area of controversy involved the degree of latitude to be granted cities.

The liquor industry had chafed under the Rose law because of the

coercive potential of rural areas to outvote-and thus dry up-towns. "I

41. American Issue (Ohio edition), January 27, 1912; Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 70. See

also ASL, Yearbook: 1909, 176. Unless otherwise indicated, all future references to the

American Issue are from the Ohio edition.

42. CC Debates, I, 249-250, 353, 542-543; Royal D. Frey, "The Ohio Constitutional

Convention of 1912" (unpublished M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1950), 23-27.

43. Liberal Advocate, March 6, 1912; American Issue, March 16, 1912.

Politics of Temperance                                       23

have nothing to say against local option," Percy Andreae told an Ohio

legislative committee on temperance. "What I assert is that county

option is not local option." Remembering the Newark riot several years

before, a liquor editor pleaded for local administration of the law "in-

stead of an army of mercenary desperados . . . financed by the Anti-

Saloon League and let loose upon these communities, armed, blood

thirsty, reckless and murderous..."⁴⁴ The League, of course, feared

that such latitude would thwart the eventual goal of statewide prohibi-

tion.

Proponents of home rule in liquor licensing would permit municipal

corporations and townships to determine the number of saloons and to

provide for the collection of license fees, exempting those areas already

dry under one of the various local option laws. Yet there were limits

here, too: delegates refused to exempt cities totally from saloon limita-

tion, as proposed by two delegates from Toledo and Cincinnati respec-

tively.⁴⁵

Once delegate sentiment swung to saloon limitations, wets sought to

soften the blow. One proposal sought to reduce the number of saloons to

the prescribed ratio gradually, giving existing saloonkeepers prece-

dence over other license applicants. Furthermore, brewers and

wholesalers would be exempt from the license provisions. The latter

groups especially aroused the wrath of the ASL, which took the view

that those subject to liquor tax payment should be included in the

limitations. Wholesalers "sell to blind tigers and the bootleggers," the

League charged. "These houses have to pay the Aiken tax and there is

no reason why they should be exempted from the limitation clause."

Predictably, the League also opposed any idea of providing compensa-

tion for saloons in excess of the ratio, as had been suggested in the 1911

legislative session, nor did they favor exempting resort areas from the

limitation clause.⁴⁶

The proposal finally adopted called for separate submission of no-

license versus a restricted license. The license alternative called for a

mandatory limitation of one license per five hundred population, allow-

ing municipalities to determine individual limits within this framework.

A licensee had to be an American citizen with a blameless record and

44. Percy Andreae, "Address before the Committee on Temperance of the Ohio House

of Representatives in Support of Dean Amendment to Rose Law," in his Prohibition

Movement, 153; Liberal Advocate, February 28, 1912.

45. CC Debates, I, 571-572, 596; Columbus Ohio State Journal, April 3, 1912; Dayton

Journal, March 5, 1912.

46. CC Debates, I, 975-978; Liberal Advocate, April 3, 10, 1912; American Issue, April

13, May 18, 1912.

24                                                OHIO HSITORY

with no other liquor interests. This latter clause was designed to prevent

ownership of saloons by breweries which at that time owned or con-

trolled an estimated seventy percent of the nation's saloons. In order to

preserve local control over liquor, the licensee was required to live in the

same county as that in which his license was issued, or in an adjacent

county. Lastly, the proposal defined a saloon (the word "saloon" was

deliberately inserted by amendment) as an establishment selling liquor

as a beverage in quantities less than one gallon, thus in effect exempting

wholesalers.⁴⁷

Because the end product represented a compromise, it is difficult to

assess the relative success of the antagonists. Both wets and drys

claimed victory. "The Anti-Saloon League believes that so far the

temperance forces have held their own and it is equally confident the

brewers are not satisfied with their own child." Not so, the liquor

retailers replied; they summed up the moral effect as "a victory for the

liberal element and a defeat for the prohibition and Anti-Saloon

Leaguers," although it would work a hardship "upon hundreds of

reputable men in the trade."⁴⁸

Superficially, both claims appear valid. Except for the saloon limita-

tion figure, the proposed amendment differed little from what Percy

Andreae and the brewers had been advocating for the previous few

years. By the same token, the provisions sound very similar to the

recommendations put forward by Wayne Wheeler in his testimony

before the Liquor Traffic Committee. Each settled for less than the

optimum. The League conceded prohibition in favor of apparent strin-

gent regulations; while liquor men swallowed constitutional regulation

instead of the more flexible legislative control in order to achieve their

goal of license.⁴⁹

Taken within the broader context, it appears that the balance tipped in

favor of the wets. Not only had they again thwarted further dry en-

croachments by at least legitimizing their trade, but by building upon

their recent county option electoral successes they had transferred their

self-improvement campaign to the public sector by securing constitu-

tional sanction for their efforts. In addition, the legislature retained the

right to establish the specifics of the licensing system, in terms of

47. CC Debates, II, 1807.

48. American Issue, March 16, 1912; Liberal Advocate, March 6, May 29, 1912.

49. Cincinnati Enquirer, February 6, 1912.

Politics of Temperance                                           25

determining the composition of the licensing board(s), and the degree of

centralization within the system.⁵⁰

The ultimate attitudes of both sides toward the proposal underscores

this wet victory. By the end of June the liquor forces backed up their

claims of satisfaction with endorsement of the liquor license proposal by

the Ohio Brewers' Association and by the Ohio Retail Liquor Dealers'

Association. Meanwhile the League lamely sought the sentiment of its

readership on the license proposal. At the end of June, the American

Issue reported that sentiment was running forty to one in opposition.

The results allowed the League to reverse its rhetoric and to oppose

license in the referendum campaign that summer.⁵¹

The liquor license question was only one of forty-two proposals

endorsed by the constitutional convention. Compared to some of the

other issues, license maintained a low profile in press coverage pre-

paratory to the September 3 special election on the amendments. Pro-

posals such as those governing taxation, labor, the initiative and referen-

dum, and woman suffrage captured voter attention. The referendum

outcome extended this placid appearance. Although license was among

the thirty-six proposals receiving voter approval, it ranked last in the

number of total votes cast on any issue. Its place on the ballot may have

contributed to this outcome. Not only was license the last of the forty-

two proposals in order of appearance, but it was located in a separate

column on the long, single ballot. Oversight and voter fatigue might have

complemented absence of controversy preceding the election.⁵²

Such tranquility was short-lived in Ohio. Far from resolving the liquor

question, the constitutional convention's actions seemed to have fueled

the fires of this simmering issue. By delegating to the legislature the task

of establishing a liquor license system, the 1913 session of the general

assembly found itself embroiled in a bitter controversy between wets

and drys as each sought to gain an advantage. Then, too, voter adoption

of the initiative and referendum in 1912 permitted both sides to take the

issue directly to the voters almost annually. Within a year wets submit-

ted a constitutional amendment aimed at eroding rural prohibitionist

50. Liquor retailers saw the legal recognition of the trade as the chief advantage; see

Liberal Advocate, May 29, 1912.

51. Liberal Advocate, July 3, 1912; American Issue, June 29, 1912; USBA, Yearbook:

1912, 106; Steuart, Wayne Wheeler, 70-72.

52. Woman suffrage received the greatest number of votes in suffering defeat-over

586,000 ballots. Liquor license was approved by a vote of 273,361 to 188,825-an aggre-

gate vote about 124,000 less than woman suffrage. See Ohio, Secretary of State, Annual

Report: 1912 (Columbus, 1912), 668-669. Voter turnout at the special election was some-

what light-slightly less than half of that of the November 1910 general election.

26                                                OHIO HISTORY

influence in the Ohio general assembly by reducing the size of the lower

house. This unsuccessful effort led to attempts in the next few years to

insure urban wet oases by providing constitutional home rule on the

liquor question, and by restricting the number of times drys could

submit prohibition amendments, which the ASL had sponsored in 1914,

1915, and 1917. In addition to these activities by the protagonists,

woman suffragists indirectly inserted the temperance issue into the

public arena through their efforts to secure the vote by initiative in 1914

and 1917.

It would exaggerate the significance of the Ohio controversy over

liquor to say that failure to forestall constitutional license in 1912 promp-

ted the Anti-Saloon League to embark upon a campaign for a federal

prohibition amendment the following year. There is no reason to doubt

the League's own explanation of this decision as having been "hastened

by the passage of the Webb interstate shipment law over the veto of the

president," Woodrow Wilson, which indicated "a strong and favorable

congressional interest in the subject of Prohibition."⁵³ At the same time,

the Ohio experience could certainly call into question Joseph Gusfield's

assertion that "from a number of standpoints the drive for national

Prohibition, which began in 1913, was an inexpedient movement."⁵⁴

The record in Ohio strongly suggests that the liquor industry had

mounted a successful counteroffensive and that drys were losing

ground. The "equable arrangement" described by Gusfield was en-

dangered by wet legislative and electoral victories and in effect

suggested the natural parameters of wet and dry territory as determined

by local popular commitment to temperance.⁵⁵ Should the liquor indus-

try have been successful in rejuvenating the respectability of the saloon,

and should the "Ohio plan" of self-regulation have spread to other

states, dry gains might also have faced erosion.

In view of that possibility, and given the increasing urban composition

of the nation's population-it was the urban vote which repeatedly

defeated Ohio prohibition amendments-it seemed politic for the ASL

to take advantage of rural over-representation in Congress and to work

for national prohibition. Furthermore, ratification of federal amend-

ments was also by rural-dominated state legislatures. The issue would

53. New Republic, May 16, 1913.

54. Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance

Movement (University of Illinois Paperback, 1972), 109.

55. Ibid.

Politics of Temperance                                           27

never confront voters directly; urban hostility as expressed in Ohio

could be successfully muted. Thus the temperance movement in Ohio, if

not instrumental in national ASL policy-making, certainly reinforced

their decisions. The apparent reversal of the dry pendulum in Ohio

raises intriguing questions about the temperance record in other urban-

industrial states, and it elevates the possible role of the Great War with

its attendant nativism and sense of national emergency as contributing

factors toward enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment.⁵⁶

56. The role of the Great War in stimulating national prohibition is analyzed by Andrew

Sinclair, Era of Excess: A Social History of the Prohibition Movement (New York, 1964),

116-28.