When Beer was Outlawed in Milwaukee

×

Expand

True confession: My grandfather was a criminal under the laws of his time. During Prohibition, he brewed beer and sold his illicit wares in North Milwaukee. According to Ben Barbera, curator of “How Dry I Am: Prohibition Milwaukee,” small-time operators like my grandfather were not uncommon in the City that Means Beer even when the frothy beverage was deemed an illegal substance.

Beer is a big—but by no means the only—part of the exhibition at the Milwaukee County Historical Society. Among the displays is a moonshine still, operated in the 1920s by one Maryann Kwapiszewski. Included among the many text panels is a photograph of a boiler in a Milwaukee factory illegally modified for cooking up whiskey. A nearby panel shows a Cudahy house on a residential street reduced to splinters when a moonshine still exploded inside.

The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which took effect in 1919 and remained in force until repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933—outlawed the recreational use of alcohol. “It’s a fascinating topic,” Barbera says. “The more research I did, the more I found good stories to tell.”

The beer barons saw it coming. Milwaukee breweries lobbied the U.S. Congress in an unsuccessful effort to distinguish hard liquor (bad) from beer (benign) and saloons (low dives) from beer gardens (family fun). According to Barbera, Augustus Busch paid off a prominent suffragette and Prohibition advocate to change colors and lobby against banning booze, and that curious detail casts light on the curious coalition supporting Prohibition. It included feminists fighting abuse against women (which they saw as rooted in drunken male behavior) and medical reformers who understood alcohol addiction as a health issue.

Prohibition was also supported by teetotaling Protestants who despised wine-drinking Roman Catholics and Jews, aligned with xenophobes fighting to make America sober again in the face of Irish, Italian, Greek and other alcohol-loving immigrants “invading” the U.S. Opinions on Prohibition often ran along a rural-versus-urban divide in battle lines that look strangely familiar today.

Support for Prohibition in Milwaukee was probably as weak as anywhere in the U.S. “Local politicians and law enforcement had little interest in prosecuting violators,” Barbera says, “but the city never became lawless. Milwaukee didn’t see the rise of vicious gangs like Detroit or organized crime like Chicago.” Al Capone drank here—a text panel shows the gangster’s favorite Elm Grove roadhouse, which was also notable for its singing washroom attendant, Hattie McDaniel (later the first black woman to earn an Academy Award)—but Capone’s methods never took hold in Cream City. “Local organized crime was involved in transporting alcohol, but basically Milwaukee didn’t need to rely on criminal networks” for drinking, Barbera says. Thwarting Prohibition was almost a community wide enterprise.

Milwaukeeans could buy beer from neighborhood producers and drink at home. For a night on the town, speakeasys operating as private clubs were accessible by flashing a membership card at the door. Many taverns were reinvented as “soda shops—the soda could be stiffened by something stronger,” Barbera explains. Some German restaurants brewed beer in their basements. Karl Ratzsch, Downtown’s famed restauranteur, was busted for brewing but received only a slap on the wrist.

Milwaukee During the War Against Alcohol

Enforcing Prohibition was challenging. A handful of U.S. Treasury agents were responsible for the war against alcohol in Southeast Wisconsin. By law, the feds could demand support from local police, but rumors suggest that cops were happy to tip off covert saloon keepers with word of upcoming raids. At least in the Upper Midwest and New England, Canada was the source for the good stuff: premium whiskey and rum and even European wine. One of the exhibit’s text panels includes photographs of an intrepid little U.S. Coast Guard boat on patrol against Canadian “rum runners” and one of their prize catches: a steamship loaded with liquor barrels seized off the coast of Milwaukee.

Milwaukee beer barons were prepared for Prohibition before it began. Schlitz switched to making chocolate bars, Pabst produced processed cheese, and Gettleman made snow plows. All the breweries marketed “Near Beer,” a beverage roughly equivalent to today’s legal CBD cannabis products. “The breweries diversified,” Barbera adds. “They went into real estate holdings, and the rents they collected from hotels, theaters and other properties kept them afloat. They rented out factory space in their breweries. They were ready for the day Prohibition was repealed and released thousands of barrels of beer almost immediately.”

Milwaukee’s small businesses, bottle- and barrel-makers as well as brewers, were hurt worst by Prohibition, but the giants lived on. “The city had nine breweries going into Prohibition; the seven biggest ones came back after it was all over,” Barbera says.

How Dry I Am: Prohibition Milwaukee runs through Saturday, May 4, at the Milwaukee County Historical Society, 910 N. Old World Third St. For more information, visit milwaukeehistory.net or call 414-273-8288.