“A Church, a Bar, and a Brewery”: Prohibition and Ethno-Religious Identities in Berlin,
Wisconsin, 1910-1933
Danielle Ann Schroeder
History 489: Research Seminar
December 18, 2015
Copyright for this work is owned by the author. This digital version is published by the McIntyre
Library, University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire with the consent of the author
Contents
Abstract
iii
List of Figures
iv
Introduction
1
Historiography
4
A Profile of Berlin, WI
14
Prohibition in Wisconsin
19
Prohibition in Berlin
21
Conclusion
31
Works Cited
34
ii
Abstract
In the mid nineteenth-century, large numbers of German and Polish immigrants began to arrive
in Wisconsin, and they brought with them customs of beer and liquor-drinking. In response to
the turbulent changes the country was undergoing, middle-class, native-born, and Protestant
Americans started a grass-roots movement against the alcohol intemperance of immigrants and
the working-class. The culmination of their efforts was the ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment in 1919. This paper studies how the residents of Berlin—a small, centralnortheastern Wisconsin city with a heavy German-Polish population—reacted to Prohibition.
Religious, ethnic, and class identities play a significant role in Americans’ relationship with
alcohol and drinking. Therefore, this paper analyzes the demographic make-up of Berlin, and
points out ways that identity influenced Berlinites’ stances on federal and statewide Prohibition.
With information gathered from census data, temperance organization records, newspapers,
circuit court records, and election data, this study pieces together the story of Prohibition within
a small Wisconsin community.
iii
Figures
Figure 1
Location of Green Lake County and Berlin, WI ....................................................1
Figure 2
Ethnicities of Berlin’s families in 1910 ................................................................17
iv
Introduction
Whenever she was describing one of the numerous unincorporated communities that
surround our hometown, my mother would sometimes say something to the effect of “Oh, it’s
nothing more than ‘a church, a bar, and a ballpark.’” The phrase aptly describes many places in
central Wisconsin. Communities like Neshkoro, Eureka, Waukau, Poy Sippi, Auroraville—
places even native Wisconsinites might not have heard of—come to mind. In such places, one
might assume that the residents have few options for passing their free time other than
participating in worship, drinking, and outdoor recreation.
Figure 1. Location of Green Lake County and Berlin, WI.
Map modified by the author. Original map courtesy of
http://printerprojects.com/maps/wisconsinblank.html, accessed November 23, 2015.
My hometown of Berlin does not quite fit this profile, as the city has a dozen or so
churches, a dozen or more bars, and a ballpark or two in addition to a variety of successful
industries, retail stores, and restaurants. Berlin is located in the northeast corner of Green Lake
County, Wisconsin (see Figure 1). The Fox River, running from south to north, splits the middle
of the city. With a current population of 5,431, Berlin is the largest city in Green Lake County.
My own personal observation about Berlin’s residents is that they are generally quite religious
1
and conservative; growing up, more than half of my peers were regular church-goers. Another
observation is that Berlinites, like many Wisconsinites, have a great affinity for beer and liquor.
From family barbeques to formal holiday dinners, alcohol has always been present, at least in my
experience. So while Berlin consists of more than “a church, a bar, and a ballpark,” its residents
still devote much of their time to those institutions.
I will not discuss ballparks in this paper, and I wish to take a moment to explain why it
has been replaced with “brewery” in the paper’s title. My father, who has a memory longer than
his years, sometimes likes to lecture me on local history. “You know we used to have brewery
here,” he would tell me, “At one point in time, nearly every little town in Wisconsin had its own
brewery.” My research has found this be true, and I will discuss it at a later point.
In recent years, I have had the opportunity to travel throughout the United States, and in
doing so, it has become clear to me that Wisconsin is the home of a unique and robust drinking
culture. Knowing that this culture is most definitely tied to Wisconsin’s history, ethnic heritage
and other aspects of identity has led me to question how Wisconsinites—and Berlinites—
responded when the federal and state governments prohibited their drinking culture. In other
words, how did the people of my hometown feel about national Prohibition and the temperance
movement that came before it? Posing this initial question led me to develop a slew of others.
How strictly were Prohibition laws actually enforced in Green Lake County? In what ways did
Berlinites violate or fight against dry laws before and during Prohibition? To what degree did
residents support temperance and Prohibition? What role did ethnic, religious, and class
identities play in people’s attitudes towards alcohol and Prohibition?
In order to answer these questions I have turned to a variety of sources. First, I looked at
the 1910 and 1920 US Federal Censuses to determine the demographic profile of Berlin in terms
2
of ethnicity and class. Listings of churches and saloons in the city directories aided me in
determining Berlin’s religious make-up and its relationship with alcohol-related institutions. The
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Wisconsin records helped me understand
what kind of presence temperance groups had in Berlin and to what degree Berlinites supported
Prohibition. To determine the frequency and the nature of liquor law violations, I consulted
Green Lake County circuit court records and Berlin’s newspaper, The Berlin Journal-Courant.
The newspaper also helped me gauge the community’s general attitude towards Prohibition.
Finally, I also examined the Wisconsin Blue Books and the Board of Canvassers Election Return
Statements to get an idea of how Green Lake County voters responded to referenda regarding
Prohibition. Through the study of these sources, I have found an ethno-religious divide on the
issue of Prohibition in Berlin, Wisconsin; Polish and German Catholics and Lutherans were more
likely to oppose and/or violate Prohibition laws, while native-born, Protestant Americans were
more likely to support them. Even though election results indicated that most Berlinites wanted
to do away with Prohibition, the “noble experiment” seemed to be generally successful in the
City of Berlin.
As I will discuss in my historiography, historians of Prohibition have generally agreed
that Prohibition sentiment originated as a grass-roots movement in rural America. For this
reason, it is meaningful to study Prohibition at a local level. Was Berlin one of those nativist,
middle-class, Protestant communities that, threatened by immigration, urbanization and
industrialization, rallied for temperance and stricter control of alcohol? Or does Berlin have a
different story?
There are no major works that focus specifically on Prohibition in Wisconsin, let alone
Prohibition in the small, overlooked community of Berlin, Wisconsin. This paper documents the
3
city’s experience with the “noble experiment,” and adds to our understanding of how aspects of
identity influence relationships with alcohol and reactions toward its control.
Historiography
Secondary literature on national Prohibition in the United Stated is extensive. Histories
that document Prohibition on the national level provide interpretations on the origins of the
Eighteenth Amendment. The arguments of these authors have helped me place Berlin’s
experience during this era within a national context. A number of histories documenting
Prohibition at state and local levels exist. From these, I have come to recognize how the
relationships between regional, ethnic, religious, and class identities play out differently in
different localities. Works about religion and ethnicity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
provide specific knowledge on how various aspects of identity interacted with the alcohol
question. These bodies of work—histories about Prohibition on the national and state/local levels
and histories about religion and ethnicity in the United States—are important for placing Berlin,
Wisconsin’s experience with Prohibition within a broader context.
Historians began offering up their interpretations of Prohibition even before Prohibition
had ended. Charles Merz’s The Dry Decade was published in 1931. This account offers a critical
view of the “noble experiment.” Prohibition as a constitutional amendment, according to Merz,
was a failure. Indeed, this interpretation was popular among scholars and non-scholars alike for
some time. Unlike authors that came after him, Merz attributes the success of the Prohibition
movement to the social changes brought about by the First World War, namely the centralization
of government power, the patriotic drive to conserve resources, and the distrust of all things
4
German. 1 Later historians acknowledge the war’s role in helping to bring about the ratification of
the Eighteenth Amendment, but focus on other factors of the origins and defining characteristics
of Prohibition in the United States.
The main body of literature analyzing Prohibition on a national level emerged in the
1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. Herbert Asbury’s work, The Great Illusion, agrees with Merz’s view that
Prohibition was a disaster. Temperance could not be forced upon people by the government, and
efforts to do so only succeeded in breeding contempt for the law. 2 Asbury’s most significant
contributions to the literature on this topic are his disputations of commonly-held myths about
Prohibition. He argues that the First World War was not the main catalyst for the Prohibitionists’
success, but that Prohibition had already been won, by the efforts of the Anti-Saloon League, in
the elections of 1916. 3 Another significant point is Asbury’s acknowledgment that the saloon, as
an institution, was source of vice and corruption in late nineteenth-century and early twentiethcentury American society. With this, Asbury also acknowledged the merit in the Prohibitionist
and Anti-Saloon League cause.
Wet and dry forces were both guilty of extremism in the fight for their respective causes.
This is the thematic approach that Andrew Sinclair takes in Prohibition: The Era of Excess. The
work is regarded as the “first comprehensive and scholarly account on the subject.” 4 The tactics
used by both sides, Sinclair argues, were excessive and polarizing. For example, drys—those
1
Charles Merz, The Dry Decade (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1931), 25.
2
Herbert Asbury, The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition (1950; repr., New York:
Greenwood Press, 1968), 164.
3
The Anti-Saloon League was a Prohibitionist lobbying organization that was founded in 1893; Ibid., 136.
4
Gilman M. Ostrander, review of Prohibition: The Era of Excess by Andrew Sinclair, American Historical
Review 68, no. 1 (October 1962): 160-161, accessed October 15, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1847245.
5
who wanted a national Prohibition law—demonized the use of alcohol by exaggerating and
misrepresenting scientific facts. 5 They used scare tactics, but they were driven to these excessive
methods by the excessive drinking that was going on in the saloons. Like Asbury, Sinclair
acknowledges that intemperance was a blight on American society at the turn of the twentiethcentury. However, during Prohibition, disregard for the law and lax law enforcement practices
were also excessive. This gave wets—those who were anti-Prohibition—fuel for their repeal
movement. But their efforts, Sinclair argues, were just as fanatical as those of the drys. They
made extreme claims such as that Prohibition was responsible for causing the Great Depression. 6
Sinclair’s 1962 work is perhaps the first to make clear the polarization that the
temperance and Prohibition movements caused in American society. The wave of the
temperance movement that eventually led to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment was,
in part, a reaction of rural, Protestant Americans against the forces of industrialization,
urbanization, and immigration. Prohibition was more than just a battle of wet vs dry. It was a
battle of rural vs urban, Protestant vs Catholic, native-born vs foreign-born, and middle-class vs
working-class. 7
The next work on Prohibition arrived in 1963. James H. Timberlake’s monograph,
Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900-1920, makes clear the relationship between the
two most significant political and social movements of the early twentieth-century. Timberlake
understands both of these movements as ones based in the conflict between the moral values of
5
Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Era of Excess (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1962), 38-42.
6
Ibid., 371.
7
Ibid., 63-81.
6
rural, native-born, middle-class Americans and urban, working-class immigrants. 8 For the
purposes of this paper, Timberlake’s most significant point is that reform movements like
Prohibition won at a national level, because of the support they had at the local level.
Prohibition, like other Progressive causes, was a grass-roots movement, a bottom-to-top
phenomenon. 9 It was rural, middle-class Americans who affected this change.
Two more major works on Prohibition were published in 1976. These are Norman H.
Clark’s Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition and Jack S. Blocker’s
Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890-1913. In his book,
Clark assigns much more merit to the Prohibitionist cause than previous historians have. In fact,
he is critical of historians like Sinclair who lose sight of the Prohibitionists’ motives and are
overly critical of the movement. 10 To Clark, Prohibition was a justified response to save a
society that was drowning itself in the “Demon Rum.” He argues that Prohibition was mostly a
success. Despite the rise of illegal speakeasies, gangsters, bootleggers, and moonshiners,
Americans drank less alcohol between 1920 and 1933 than they did in earlier centuries. 11 The
problem was that Prohibition laws were terribly difficult to enforce. 12 Blocker’s book, a history
of the Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League and their leaders, also questions the arguments
of earlier historians. In particular, Blocker doubts the role of ruralism in determining support for
8
James H. Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1963), 2.
9
Ibid., 123-148.
10
Norman H. Clark, Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1976), 10.
11
Ibid., 155.
12
Ibid., 159.
7
Prohibition. He argues instead that class and ethnicity were more powerful factors in determining
Prohibition support.13
Another significant scholarly book appeared in 1979. This was W.J. Rorabaugh’s The
Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. The book provides a history not of Prohibition, but
of the history of the drinking habits of eighteenth and nineteenth century Americans.
Rorabaugh’s study is important because it suggests an alternate theory as to why temperance
became popular in the mid-nineteenth century. According to Rorabaugh, the years between 1790
and 1840 saw the most intemperate drinking habits in American history. The United States was
at risk of becoming “a nation of drunkards.” 14 Unlike other historians of Prohibition, Rorabaugh
does not stress factors of industrialization or immigration as the main reason for the onset of
heavy drinking in America. Nor does he see the temperance movement as a native-born
American reaction against immigrants’ intemperance. Excessive drinking of spirituous liquors in
America began before the great influx of immigrants from northern Europe. This was due, in
part, to the United States’ agriculture-based economy—farmers found it more profitable to distill
their grains rather than transport them. European countries with the highest rates of alcohol
consumption (Scotland and Sweden) shared many characteristics with the United States: they
were “agricultural, rural, lightly populated, and geographically isolated from foreign markets;
they had undercapitalized agrarian, barter economies; they were Protestant.” 15
13
Jack S. Blocker, Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890-1913
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 240.
14
W.J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press,
1979), xi.
15
Ibid., 11.
8
Yet Rorabough’s main explanation for the sudden rise in alcohol consumption between
1790 and 1840 is a psychological one. Americans drank to alleviate the pressures and anxieties
that arose as a result of immense social change. 16 The next generation of Americans were offered
a step up out of the downward spiral. Their low-motivated parents raised them to be highlymotivated by instilling in them Protestant values. This generation set the temperance movements
in motion because of their belief that “a man must act as his own agent to save himself”—a
belief they obtained from the rhetoric of the Second Great Awakening. 17
These works, though they are admittedly dated, still remain the most highly respected
interpretations of Prohibition on the national level. Histories on the topic published since have
not offered any significantly new perspectives. The histories I have discussed here have been
essential in helping me to develop an understanding on the social history of Prohibition.
However, given their nationwide focus, they can only provide broad generalizations about what
motivated people to fight for or oppose the temperance and Prohibition movements. As these
historians have generally agreed, Prohibition was a grass-roots movement that first gained
momentum on local levels. It is therefore helpful to understand how Prohibition played out in
specific localities. Such studies might confirm what the authors above have already observed, or
it might reveal a very different story.
There are three secondary works that help make sense of Prohibition in Wisconsin. The
first, Breweries of Wisconsin, is a popular work by Jerry Apps that focuses not so much on
Prohibition as it does on the history of the brewing industry and drinking culture in Wisconsin.
Apps attributes the rise of brewing in Wisconsin to the influx of German immigrants that arrived
16
Rorabough, The Alcoholic Republic, 125-146.
17
Ibid., 181.
9
in the mid nineteenth-century. Among these immigrants were those who brought their love and
expertise for brewing with them. As Germans spread throughout Wisconsin, so did breweries. In
fact, by the 1890s, nearly every Wisconsin community had its own operating brewery. 18
Apps’ book also provides a brief overview of the rise of temperance sentiment in
Wisconsin. Temperance societies sprang up in Wisconsin, as they did throughout the nation, as
early as the 1840s. Apps echoes the interpretations of historians like Sinclair and Timberlake
who recognize the temperance and Prohibition movements as a conflict between native vs
immigrant, rural vs urban, and Protestant vs Catholic. With the coming of the First World War
and the subsequent rise in anti-German sentiment, it became popular, even in Wisconsin, to
oppose breweries as most were run by German Americans. 19
The remaining two works focus on specific Wisconsin cities. “Women and Prohibition in
Milwaukee” is a master’s thesis by Kathryn Marie Gilbert Rank. The work focuses specifically
on the activities of the Milwaukee Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the
decades leading up to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. In her analysis of the
Milwaukee WCTU, Rank finds that the ethnic, religious, and class backgrounds of its members
matched the demographic profile of statewide and national WCTU groups. That is, women of the
WCTU were “native-born or Anglo-Saxon in origin, generally from evangelical Protestant faiths,
and were a part of middle-class America.” 20 The women of the Milwaukee WCTU were not
particularly successful in their efforts to secure support for Prohibition laws. This was because
18
Jerry Apps, Breweries of Wisconsin (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). xiv.
19
Ibid., 60-61.
20
Kathryn Marie Gilbert Rank, “Women and Prohibition in Milwaukee,” abstract (master’s thesis,
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1978).
10
Milwaukee had a heavy German population that was intent on preserving their cultural heritage,
which involved brewing and the social consumption of beer. Furthermore, brewing was one of
Milwaukee’s largest industries, and so the WCTU did not receive much support from
Milwaukee’s business community. Poles and Italians were Milwaukee’s second and third largest
ethnic groups. They, too, adamantly opposed Prohibition. 21
When it came to the Prohibition movement, Wisconsin’s political climate set the state
apart from the rest of the country. The Republican Party in Wisconsin did not support
temperance like it did in other states. Democratic parties actively opposed it. Even the
Progressives offered little support. In fact, “Robert M. Lafollette, Wisconsin’s best-known
progressive, not only did not support prohibition, but went so far as to remark that ‘it was not
within the power of government to dictate what a man might eat or drink.’” 22 Unlike other areas
of the country where, according to Timberlake, the Progressive and Prohibition movements
worked hand-in-hand, in Wisconsin, the Progressives and Prohibitionists were “hostile
opponents.” 23
While Apps and Rank provide details about the Prohibition movement in the years
leading up to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, Andrea Wandrei’s paper, “‘Gibraltar
of the Wets’: Prohibition in the City of Eau Claire, 1919-1933,” focuses on a single city in the
years during National Prohibition. The undergraduate thesis uses election results, newspaper
coverage, and circuit court cases to understand Eau Claire residents’ attitudes towards
Prohibition as well as how Prohibition laws were enforced in Eau Claire. Though Wandrei
21
Rank, “Women and Prohibition in Milwaukee,” 39-40.
22
Ibid., 28.
23
Ibid., 29.
11
acknowledges Eau Claire’s mixed attitudes towards the issue, she finds the city to be generally
“wet” throughout Prohibition. She argues that state laws and city ordinances had more impact on
Eau Claire citizens than did federal laws, but yet the enforcement of Prohibition in the City of
Eau Claire echoed a national pattern. 24
I use methods similar to Wandrei’s throughout this paper. But before I move on to my
analysis of Prohibition in Berlin, Wisconsin, there is one more body of work that needs to be
addressed. Since this paper deals with ethnic and religious identities and their significance to
Prohibition, I want to present a brief background on how these identities played a part in reform
movements in the past.
The Second Great Awakening was an evangelical Protestant revival movement that
gained momentum around 1800. The movement inspired Americans to live by the ideas of
Protestant morality in their everyday lives. 25 Protestant morality called for, among other things,
moderate use of or abstinence from alcohol. By the late 1820s, temperance had become “a
middle class obsession,” and was one of the many movements that the emerging middle-class
turned to in an attempt to control working-class behavior. 26
In the 1840s and 50s, large numbers of German and Irish Catholics began to arrive in the
United States, and evangelical Protestants found themselves with another threat. Kyle G. Volk’s
Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy documents the struggles of
antebellum minority groups against America’s majoritarian Protestant democracy. Majority rule
24
Andrea Wandrei, “‘Gibraltar of the Wets’: Prohibition in the City of Eau Claire, 1919-1933,”
(undergraduate thesis, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 2008), 22-23, accessed September 21, 2015,
http://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/30669.
25
Barry Hankins, The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists, (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2004), 4-5.
26
Ibid., 52-53.
12
in the United States promoted Protestant Christianity and sought to protect American democracy
from “enemies foreign and domestic.” 27 The majority fought for the observance of the Christian
Sabbath, temperance, and abolition. Sabbatarian legislation and liquor regulation infringed on the
rights of certain minority groups. For example, they discriminated against German saloonkeepers and cheated them out of business. 28 Those who did not subscribe to the Protestant
rhetoric of the Second Great Awakening—Jews, Catholics, other religious minorities, and recent
immigrants—formed alliances and fought for their rights as minorities within a Protestant
democracy.
A 1979 report created by the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Rural Sociology
looks at how minority immigrant groups quickly became the majority in Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s
first native-born settlers were English, Welsh, Cornish, and German miners who came from the
southern states in the 1820s and 30s. Yankees from New York and New England (mostly of
British and Irish descent) followed in the 1840s. These groups consisted of Congregationalists,
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists. Immigrants from northern Europe began
to arrive in the 1840s and continued to come throughout the 1910s. 29 With the largest immigrant
group being German Lutherans and Catholics, the religious composition of Wisconsin drastically
changed during this period. Within fifty years, Wisconsin went from being predominantly nonLutheran Protestant to predominately Catholic and Lutheran. Other groups contributing to this
27
Kyle G. Volk, Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 38.
28
Ibid., 43-66.
29
Stephen J. Tordella, Religion in Wisconsin: Preferences, Practices, and Ethnic Composition, Population
Series 70-13, Applied Population Laboratory, Department of Rural Sociology (Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1979), 4-5.
13
change were the Dutch and the Irish (Catholic with some Protestant denominations), the
Scandinavians (Lutheran), and the Polish (Catholic). 30
The concentrated settlement patterns of these groups “combined with Wisconsin’s liberal
suffrage laws, allowed for political participation and expression” that enabled minority groups to
work together to preserve their old country customs. 31 Issues such as temperance, particularly
Sabbath temperance, split Wisconsinites along ethno-religious lines. Protestant Yankees
disapproved of the drinking practices of the Germans and Irish and sought to control their
alcohol use, while the recent immigrant groups resisted these attempts. 32 Unlike Blocker, this
report finds that religion and ethnicity, rather than class “were the primary factors which shaped
the behavior of Wisconsinites during the 19th and early 20th centuries.” 33
These bodies of scholarship—histories of Prohibition on national, state, and local levels
and histories on the interaction between ethno-religious identities and reform movements—are
important to understanding the complicated story of Prohibition in the Unites States. These
authors’ interpretations have aided me in developing my own about Prohibition in my
hometown.
A Profile of Berlin, WI
In order to understand Berlin’s experience during Prohibition, it is important to have
some knowledge of the city’s history, its industries, religious atmosphere, and its ethnic and class
30
Tordella, Religion in Wisconsin, 6.
31
Ibid., 6-7.
32
Ibid., 7.
33
Ibid., 9.
.
14
make-up. The earliest white community in Berlin consisted of settlers from New England and
New York who began to arrive in the 1840s and 50s. At that time, the community was called
Strongsville or Strong’s Landing after its founder, Nathan Strong. Farmers in the area grew
wheat, and so flour and grist mills were among Berlin’s first industries. Cranberries also became
an important crop, as they grew naturally in the area. Many local sources claim that Berlin is
where Wisconsin’s cranberry-growing reputation originated. 34
Once a railroad was established in 1857, Berlin began to grow at a rapid rate. The
population grew from 250 in 1850 to 2,778 by 1870. 35 Immigrants from Wales, Scotland, Italy,
and Poland came to work as stone-cutters in the Berlin quarry where they mined rhyolite. 36 Like
most Wisconsin cities at this time, Berlin had its own brewery. The first brewery was operated
by Oscar Caswell, a New Englander, in 1850. August and Edward Buhler—Germans—bought
the brewery and began the Berlin Brewing Company. The company brewed its first beer on
November 22, 1867. The Buhlers continued to operate the brewery for a decade before they sold
it to Louis Schunk (also German). 37 After Schunk’s death, his widow, Jacobina, took over
operation of the brewery—even though it was unheard of for a woman to be involved in the
brewing industry at this time. 38
34
Bobbie Erdmann, Carol Frank, Dan Freimark, and Marilyn Voeltner, Home Town Ties: Berlin,
Wisconsin, 1848-1998 (Berlin, WI: Berlin Journal Newspapers, 1998), 3.
35
Ibid., 4.
36
Ibid., 85.
37
The birthplaces of Caswell, Buhlers, and Schunk were found in the US Federal Census; United States
Federal Census, accessed October 27, 2015, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
38
Erdmann et al., 89.
15
Since the 1860s, Berlin has been known as the “fur and leather capital.” This is due to the
city’s multiple glove and whip manufacturers, its tannery, and fur coat retailers. By the 1920s,
glove factories were Berlin’s largest employers. In 1926, two of these factories employed onethird of the city’s wage earners. 39 Other early Berlin industries included bottling and canning
factories, a milk condensery, clamming, ice harvesting, and cigar-making.
As stated earlier, Berlin’s earliest inhabitants were New Englanders. An 1860 history of
Green Lake County observes Berlin’s population as being “mostly Yankees, or the worthy sons
and daughters of the enterprising family…Some 20 or 25 families of Welsh…Some 20 families
of Irish, and a few families of German Jews.” 40 These first groups formed Presbyterian,
Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopal societies, along with one Roman Catholic Church. With the
arrival of more immigrants in the 1880s, religious diversity increased. By 1915, Berlin had
eleven churches and religious societies. These included one Baptist church, one Christian
Science Society, one Congregational church, one Episcopal church, one Evangelical church, two
Lutheran churches, one Methodist Episcopal church, and three Roman Catholic churches. This
remained mostly the same up through 1933, the only difference being two additional Lutheran
churches. 41
To help make sense of how ethnic identities might have impacted Berlinites’ attitudes
toward Prohibition during a period when dry laws were becoming more prevalent in Wisconsin, I
have used the 1910 United States Federal Census to analyze the City of Berlin’s ethnic make-up.
39
Erdmann et al., 103-105.
40
John C. Gillespy, The History of Green Lake County, containing Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, etc.,
as Related by Old Pioneers; with a Reliable Description of the City of Berlin, Town and Villages, Soil, Productions
Population, etc., Observations and General Remarks (Berlin, Wisconsin: T. L. Terry & Co., Printers, 1860), 31.
41
Berlin City Directory, 1915-1916 (Rockford, IL: Farrell-McCoy Directory Co., 1916), 10; Greater Berlin
City and Rural Directory, 1933 (Berlin, WI: Tri-County News, 1933), 6.
16
In 1910, Berlin’s population was 5,415. 42 The city, its five wards, and the township of Berlin
consisted of 1,278 families. Fifty-six percent of these families had at least one foreign-born
member (either the household head or his spouse). First-generation Americans (the children of
foreign-born immigrants) made up thirty-one percent of families in 1910. The largest
immigrant/ethnic group in Berlin at this time were the Poles. Thirty-seven percent of families
possessed some degree of Polish heritage—that is, either the head of the household, his spouse,
or one of their parents were identified in the census as Polish. The second-largest ethnic group
were Germans—twenty-five percent of families had German heritage. Twenty-three percent of
families were at least second-generation Americans—meaning that the head of the household,
his spouse, and their respective parents were all born in the United States. An overwhelming
majority of families in this category had origins in New England and New York. Other
significant nationalities/ethnic groups included the Irish (six percent of families) and the
Scottish, English, and Welsh (together, eight percent of families). Immigrants (and the
descendants of immigrants) from Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Norway, and Italy made up
the rest of Berlin’s households. 43 Figure 2 depicts the
ethnic breakdown of Berlin families in 1910.
Figure 2. Ethnicities of Berlin’s families in 1910. Bureau of the
Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910 – Population,
Berlin, Green Lake County, Wisconsin, accessed October 14, 2015,
http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
42
Wisconsin Blue Book, 1921 (Madison, WI: State Printing Board, 1921), 458.
43
I obtained this data by taking a random sample of ten percent of Berlin’s families from the 1910 US
Census; Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910 – Population, Berlin, Green Lake
County, Wisconsin, accessed October 14, 2015, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
17
The class make-up of Berlin was more difficult to determine from the census data. In
distinguishing middle-class families from working-class families, I took the following factors
into account: home ownership status (whether the home was rented, owned free, or mortgaged),
and the head-of-household’s occupation and industry. Farmers, city-workers, artisans, civil
servants, managers, clerks, lawyers, proprietors, etc. who owned their homes free or mortgaged
were considered middle-class. Heads-of-households who labeled themselves as laborers in
factories or in the quarry, and some of those who rented their homes were considered workingclass. By this loose and imperfect classification system, sixty-two percent of Berlin’s families
were middle-class in 1910. 44
As could reasonably be expected in a town with a heavy German and Polish population,
Berlin had a number of saloons. The 1989 Berlin City Directory lists seventeen saloons. By
1915, even as Prohibition sentiment was becoming more prevalent in Wisconsin, the number of
saloons listed in the city directory increased. But in 1917, only three saloons and seven sample
rooms (places where one could purchase alcohol, but not drink it) are listed. Of course, when
Prohibition began in 1920, saloons shut down completely—but that did not end Berlinites’
access to alcohol. 45
44
Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910, accessed October 14, 2015,
http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
45
Berlin City Directory, 1898 (Berlin, WI: Cavanaugh & Burns, 1899), 102; Berlin City Directory, 1915-
1916, 84.
18
Prohibition in Wisconsin
Before I detail Berlin’s experience with the “noble experiment,” I want to provide further
context on the Prohibition laws themselves. After much effort by groups like the Anti-Saloon
League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Eighteenth Amendment to the US
Constitution was ratified on January 16, 1919. Section One of the resolution stated: “After one
year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating
liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and
all territories subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.” 46 It
is important to note the Amendment did not define “intoxicating liquors.” Many Americans
expected this definition to remain the same as it was in the Wartime Prohibition Act of 1918,
which defined “intoxicating liquors” as those containing more than 2.75 percent alcohol. But
thanks to the Anti-Saloon League and House of Representative member Andrew Volstead of
Minnesota, this was not to be. Congress passed the Volstead Act on October 28, 1919. The act
defined “intoxicating liquors” as beverages containing 0.5 percent or more of alcohol by volume.
The Volstead Act also specified how the Eighteenth Amendment would be enforced. It is worthy
to note here that neither the Eighteenth Amendment nor the Volstead Act prohibited the purchase
or the consumption of intoxicating liquors.
State legislatures were able to pass their own Prohibition enforcement packages.
Wisconsin’s version of the Volstead Act was the Mulberger Act, which defined intoxicating
liquors as liquors containing more than 2.5 percent of alcohol and established a State Prohibition
Commissioner. The Mulberger Act took effect on January 16, 1920, the same day as the
Eighteenth Amendment, and was to continue until January 1, 1921. Unlike the Volstead Act, the
46
US Constitution, amend. 18, sec. 1.
19
Mulberger Act prohibited the possession of liquor by anyone without a permit—possession of
liquor within a private home, however, was still permitted. 47
Prior to national Prohibition, local option statutes regulated liquor in Wisconsin. By
1900, public opinion in Wisconsin was beginning to shift “from anti-prohibition to some degree
of concern over liquor controls.” 48 This is evidenced by the increasing number of counties,
towns, and cities that were beginning to go dry: “By 1909 fifty per cent of the area of Wisconsin
was dry; by 1917, seventy per cent.” However, the dry territory in 1909 only contained nine
percent of the state’s population, while the dry territory in 1917 contained thirty percent of the
population. By 1919, ninety percent of Wisconsin was dry or under no-license. 49
A November 2, 1920 referendum asked voters if the Mulberger Prohibition Enforcement
Act should remain in effect after January 1, 1921. The majority of Wisconsin voters were in
favor of sustaining it. However, the differing definitions of “intoxicating liquors” between the
federal and state levels caused problems with enforcement in Wisconsin; there were too many
loopholes that resulted in confusion. The legislature of 1921 sought to alleviate this confusion
with the Severson Act. This act changed the state definition of “intoxicating liquors” to match
the definition put forth in the Volstead Act. However, voters expressed an interest in having the
Severson Act repealed in a referendum on April 2, 1929. 50
47
Frank Buckley, "Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws: Official Records of the National Commission on
Law Observance and Enforcement: A Prohibition Survey of the State of Wisconsin" in Enforcement of the
Prohibition Laws, Official Records of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement vol 4.
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), 1098, accessed October 29, 2015,
http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/tp/id/48320; Wandrei, “‘Gibraltar of the Wets’,” 3-4.
48
Rank, “Women and Prohibition in Milwaukee,” 30.
49
Ibid., 31-32.
50
Buckley, “Enforcement of Prohibition Laws,” 1097.
20
The fact that the majority of Wisconsin voted wet in these referendums does not mean
that dry sentiment was absent. In fact, the number of people who voted dry steadily increased
throughout the 1920s. For example, by 1929, thirty of seventy-one Wisconsin counties voted
dry. 51 Regardless, when it came to voting for the member of the state convention to ratify the
repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, eighty-two percent of Wisconsin voters were in favor of
repeal. 52 With the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933, the
Eighteenth Amendment became the only Amendment to the US Constitution in history to be
repealed. Prohibition was over. Wisconsin rejoiced.
Prohibition in Berlin
By 1920, Berlin’s ethnic profile had changed slightly since 1910. There were less
families with foreign born members, but first-generation German and Polish immigrants still
made up the majority of Berlin’s families. They made up twenty-six percent and twenty-eight
percent of Berlin families, respectively. Native-born Americans with native-born parents made
up twenty-one percent of Berlin’s families. 53 With Berlin’s heavy German and Polish population,
it might be easy to assume that the city was not terribly enthusiastic about the Prohibition
movement—given that the Germans and the Polish were recent Catholic and Lutheran
immigrants who did not subscribe to the Protestant idea that drinking was a social evil. However,
the city’s third largest “ethnic” population group (by household, not by number) consisted of
51
Buckley, “Enforcement of Prohibition Laws,” 1097-1098.
52
Wisconsin Blue Book, 1933 (Madison, WI: State Printing Board, 1933), 559.
53
Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 – Population, Berlin, Green Lake County, Wisconsin,
accessed November 21, 2015, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
21
native-born Americans who had no foreign parentage. Many of these Americans were Wisconsin
natives whose parents had been born in New England or New York. Existing literature on
Prohibition suggests that people who fit this profile were the ones who were most likely to
support the temperance movement. Indeed, the temperance movement was present in Berlin,
Wisconsin. A WCTU chapter was organized as early as 1882. 54 I was not able to find any
organization records of the activities of the Berlin WCTU (aside from meeting notes in the local
newspaper), but the WCTU of Wisconsin chapter books and ledgers gave an idea of the group’s
popularity. In 1898, the Berlin WCTU had thirteen members. Between the years 1899 and 1909,
membership fluctuated between eight and eighteen members. Records for the years 1910-1918
were absent, but by 1919, the Berlin WCTU had grown greatly. A chapter record book reported
thirty-nine members in 1919, with that number growing to sixty-four by the following year. 55
This steady increase in WCTU membership is one indication that Prohibition sentiment in Berlin
became more prevalent as the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment came closer. This
reflects patterns at both the state and national levels.
The WCTU chapter books did not give names of members, but it did provide the
identities of the women who served as the chapter’s treasurers. These women, according to the
US Census, were native-born Wisconsinites, whose parents came from eastern states.
Berlin’s local newspaper, the Berlin Journal-Courant provides many clues as to how
residents felt about temperance and Prohibition. Issues of the paper published prior to the
enforcement of national Prohibition indicate that Berlinites shared many of the same sentiments
54
“Addresses and Music on W.C.T.U. Program,” Berlin Journal-Courant, January 19, 1922.
55
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Wisconsin, “Record of the Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union of Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wis.” Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Wisconsin Records, 1881-1956,
Mss 512, Box 1, Wisconsin Historical Society, Library-Archives Division. Madison, WI, Vol. 4-7.
22
with dry reformers. Newspaper articles from 1918, for example, were almost entirely dominated
by news of the Great War, and spouted ideas of patriotism, Protestantism, and Americanism.
Even though roughly twenty-five percent of Berlin’s families had German heritage, the Berlin
Journal-Courant was overtly anti-German during the war. So much so, in fact, that there were
numerous editorial pieces debating the question of changing the city’s name. One former resident
in 1928 writes:
I could never say with pride that my birthplace was in Berlin, for what is there to be
proud of when the wickedness as displayed in the present war, centers in a city bearing
the same name…The changing of the name of this city would prove the sentiment of the
loyalty of our better citizens, not by talk but by deed. 56
This article and ones similar to it carried sentiments that were anti-immigrant and proAmericanization. One article discussed how a city with such a name as “Berlin” could prove its
loyalty, and suggested ways in which the United States could be made into a “one language
nation.” Suggested efforts included banning the teachings of foreign languages in public schools,
closing parochial (Catholic or Lutheran) schools for the period of the war, and discouraging
religious services given in a language other than English. 57 Another article acknowledged that
“near half” of the population of Berlin were of German descent, but stated that those who still
felt allegiance to their homeland should return there. 58
According to scholars of Prohibition and the Progressive Era, these very sentiments—
anti-immigrant, anti-German, patriotism, Americanism, and Protestantism—were shared by
those who favored Prohibition. Berlin’s eagerness to prove its patriotism suggests that any
56
“Changing our name, Resident of Washington, D.C. wants change,” Berlin Journal-Courant, August 1,
57
“Changing the name of Berlin,” Berlin Journal-Courant, June 27, 1918.
58
“Changing our name, Resident of Washington, D.C. wants change,” Berlin Journal-Courant, August 1,
1918.
1918.
23
attempt to help the war effort would have been popular. Indeed, the Berlin Journal-Courant was
quite enthusiastic about the Wartime Prohibition Act which took effect June 30, 1919. The act
banned beverages with an alcohol content greater than 2.75 percent with an intent to help save
grain for the war effort. When news of the bill reached Berlin, the Journal-Courant reported that
“Prohibition leaders here Thursday night were jubilant when informed” that there would be an
amendment that “would doom liquor to the discard for all time to come.” 59
Even through its enthusiasm, the Journal-Courant acknowledged some of the negative
impacts that Prohibition would have on the City of Berlin. Prohibition would put saloon and
brewery employees out of a job—the newspaper estimated a total of seventy men who would be
obliged to seek other employment. 60 The paper also expressed some concern over what the loss
of the saloon would mean for Berlin’s men: “Efforts to provide ready-made social centers for
them, as substitutes for the saloon, will probably not be successful,” the journal said. However,
the journal remained confident that an adequate and more wholesome substitute for the saloon
would come in time. 61
Despite these hopes, the saloon remained a place where men could go to obtain nowillicit liquor. Between the years 1919 and 1929, twenty-one Berlin men were charged for liquor
law violations. These offenses included the sale, manufacture, transport or possession of
“intoxicating liquors” and/or possession of distilling equipment. A few of these men were
saloon-keepers prior to Prohibition. When they could no longer sell alcohol on their premises,
they, like many breweries during this time, had to adapt their businesses accordingly. These
59
“Nation to be bone dry July 1,” Berlin Journal-Courant, November 28, 1918.
60
Ibid.
61
“Substitutes for saloons,” Berlin Journal-Courant, January 30, 1919.
24
former saloons now sold near-beer (a beverage with an alcohol content of less than 2.5 percent
by volume) or soft drinks. These men therefore possessed licenses to sell “non-intoxicating”
liquors, but yet many were caught with “intoxicating liquors” on their premises. 62
Berlin’s first Wartime Prohibition case centered on one of these saloon keepers. In
August 1919, Theodore Druggish was charged with “willfully and unlawfully vending, selling,
dealing, and trafficking in for the purpose of evading the laws of this state giving away
spirituous, malt, ardent, and intoxicating liquor and drinks” without a license or permit. 63 The
case garnered a lot of local attention, and when the trial took place on August 22, 1919, it drew a
large crowd:
Business men in Berlin took a self declared holiday Friday to hear the case…Men hurried
to get there first for a good seat. In five minutes all the chairs available were taken, and
the crowds were compelled to remain standing. In spite of this fact, however, an attentive
and breathless silence was preserved throughout the entire proceedings. 64
The entire transcript of the trial was published in the Berlin Journal-Courant. Druggish was
found not guilty—mostly because his alibi matched other witnesses’ accounts, and because the
main witness testifying against him provided inconsistent testimony. However, Druggish was
later tried in the federal courts where he was found guilty on two of three counts. He was fined
$100. 65
During national and state-wide Prohibition, Theodore Druggish was again arrested along
with fellow saloon-keeper Theodore Bombinski. These arrests occured during Berlin’s first big
62
Green Lake County, Wis. Circuit Court, “Information record, 1891-1975,” Green Lake Series 35, vol 1.
Oshkosh Area Research Center, Polk Library, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Oshkosh, WI.; Berlin City
Directory, 1915-1916, 84.
63
“Whiskey violators get into court,” Berlin Journal-Courant, August 21, 1919.
64
“Druggish is found ‘not guilty’,” Berlin Journal Courant, August 28, 1919
65
“Druggish Fined $100,” Berlin Journal Courant, October 9, 1919.
25
raid on November 15, 1921. This raid had “caused a big sensation in the city and [had] sent a
thrill through the spines of many. Those ‘close in’ had expected a raid sooner than this for it had
gone out that ‘moonshine flowed in plenty in this city.” 66 Punishments for crimes such as
Druggish’s and Bombinski’s included a few months of jail time and/or fines of up to $100. 67
Most of the other men charged with liquor law violations during Prohibition were
laborers, factory-workers, restaurant owners, or business proprietors—a mix of Berlin’s working
and middle class. One thing a great deal of these men had in common, however, was their ethnic
identities. Over half of these men were of Polish heritage (they were either born in Poland, or
one of their parents had been). There were also a handful of ethnic Germans in this group as well
as native-born Wisconsinites. 68
The Berlin Journal-Courant reported on issues related to Prohibition quite frequently. In
addition to keeping Berlin residents updated on changes in Prohibition laws and policies, it also
continued to report on liquor law violations. A March 1922 article put it quite simply when it
stated that Berlin had “a big moonshine problem.” 69 During the early years of Prohibition, Berlin
officials worked hard to track down lawbreakers, and the Berlin Journal-Courant made sure
citizens knew that. A 1922 article reporting on the arrests of moonshiners August Rossa, Frank
Arndt, and Ed Okon displays confidence in local law-enforcement’s efforts:
The “moon” is waning in Berlin. Having waxed exceeding large and bright for a
considerable period, it is now dimmed by clouds of hostile activity. A decided slump in
66
“Extra,” Berlin Journal Courant, November 17, 1921.
67
“Making moonshiners miserable,” Berlin Journal-Courant, March 30, 1922.
68
Green Lake County, Wis. Circuit Court, “Information record, 1891-1975,” Green Lake Series 35, vol 1.
Oshkosh Area Research Center, Polk Library, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Oshkosh, WI; Fourteenth Census
of the United States: 1920, accessed November 21, 2015, http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/; Berlin City Directory,
1915-1916.
69
“Making moonshiners miserable,” Berlin Journal-Courant, March 30, 1922.
26
the moonshine business is being predicted following the arrests of three alleged
moonshiners within the past week. 70
The newspaper encouraged compliance with Prohibition laws and in fact seemed to be greatly in
favor of Prohibition. The paper occasionally reported on the dangers of home-manufactured
liquor, and gave headlines such as: “Waupun man killed in crash: moonshine cause,” 71 in an
attempt to scare the public away from purchasing and consuming illicit liquor. The paper offered
no commentary or opinion pieces criticizing federal or statewide Prohibition. If anything, the
tone of some of the paper’s articles seemed to openly accept Prohibition as the law of the land,
whether anyone liked it or not. As one article says: “The prohibition of the nation has brought a
queer state of affairs…it’s common talk on the train, in clubs, hotel lobbies and the streets.
Moonshine, blind pigs, bootleggers, stills and—everything! It will all make interesting reading
twenty-five years hence.” 72
Indeed, the “queer state of affairs” that was Prohibition has made for interesting reading
even ninety-five years hence. I have found the Berlin Journal-Courant’s portrayal of Prohibition
to be very interesting when it was compared with Berlinites’ voting habits during this time
period (which I will discuss shortly). The journal, in its reporting of the WCTU’s special
programs, makes a point of mentioning how well-received the programs were amongst
community members. For example, on January 15, 1922, the WCTU held a program to celebrate
the second anniversary of “national constitutional prohibition victory.” The program was held at
the Methodist Episcopal Church and was open to the public. The program included music,
70
A moonshiner is one who illegally manufactured illicit liquor (a.k.a. moonshine); “Moonshine loses
lustre in Berlin,” Berlin Journal-Courant, March 23, 1922.
71
“Waupun man killed in crash: moonshine cause,” Berlin Journal-Courant, October 27, 1921.
72
“The moon shines bright tonight on pretty—,” Berlin Journal-Courant, March 23, 1922.
27
scripture readings, and talks by prominent local figures including the Green Lake County District
Attorney M.J. Paul. The Journal-Courant reports that “The Methodist church auditorium was
well-filled with townspeople who enjoyed the program thoroughly.” 73
As far as the Berlin Journal-Courant was concerned, the people of Berlin, save for a
handful of lawbreakers, were generally accepting of Prohibition. It would have been interesting
to examine how the paper’s and the public’s attitude changed throughout the decade—
unfortunately the Berlin Journal-Courant was only available to me on microfilm through the
year 1922. A future version of this paper will hopefully make use of issues published between
the years 1923 and 1933 to gain a fuller understanding of the story of Prohibition in Berlin,
Wisconsin. Nonetheless, the information records of the Green Lake County Circuit Court
indicate that no more liquor-related arrests occurred in Berlin after May 29, 1929. This may have
had to do with the fact that the Severson Act had just been repealed the month before (the
Severson Act called for stricter law enforcement practices regarding liquor control than the
Mulberger Act had). Another reason might have been that by 1929, many Americans had
become disillusioned about the effectiveness of Prohibition. Americans began to see Prohibition
through the same lens that historians like Merz, Asbury, and Sinclair saw it—Prohibition was a
well-intentioned mistake that was encouraging disrespect for the law. Enforcing Prohibition
seemed futile, and near the end, many law enforcement officials looked the other way. Whether
or not this was the case in Berlin, Wisconsin, I cannot say for certain.
The Berlin Journal-Courant, of course, cannot be regarded as a voice for all Berlinites.
Though I have limited biographical information on him, the paper’s editor, R.S. Starks, was not a
first or second generation Polish or German immigrant, as the majority of Berlinites were at this
73
“W.C.T.U. program to celebrate dry victory,” Berlin Journal-Courant, January 19, 1922; “Addresses and
music on W.C.T.U. program,” Berlin Journal-Courant, January 19, 1922.
28
time. He was, according to the 1920 US Census, a native-born American with native-born
parents. 74 Though I cannot report this with complete confidence, it is likely that the editors and
producers of the Berlin Journal-Courant were evangelical Protestants. The paper seemed to
regularly report on events and services that were put on by the Methodist Episcopal or
evangelical churches. Services or events put on by Berlin’s Lutheran and Catholic churches
seemed to receive little coverage.
Another way to learn about how Berlinites responded to or felt about Prohibition is by
looking at election statistics. Prior to Prohibition and during, the majority of Berlinites voted
Republican. A significant portion of Berlin’s citizens voted Democrat, but very, very few voted
for Socialist or Prohibition Party candidates to hold office. As sources discussed in my
historiography have pointed out, the Republican Party in Wisconsin took no stance on
Prohibition during the temperance movement. However, the Wisconsin Republican Party
platform of 1920 urged for the continuance of the Mulburger Act (Wisconsin’s Prohibition
Enforcement Act that defined “intoxicating liquors” as those containing 2.5 percent alcohol by
volume). 75 The Mulberger Act was to continue until January 1, 1921, but a referendum taken on
November 2, 1920 asked if the Prohibition Enforcement Act should continue beyond this date.
Seventy-eight percent of Berlin voters were for the Mulberger Act’s continuance. 76 Keeping the
definition of “intoxicating liquors” above 0.5 percent alcohol by volume (the definition provided
74
Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, accessed November 21, 2015,
http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
75
Wisconsin Blue Book, 1921, 81.
76
Wisconsin, Division of Elections and Records, “Referendum Election, November 2, 1920,” Election
Return Statements of County Board of Canvassers, 1836-1984, 1993-2003, Series 211, Box 86, Wisconsin
Historical Society, Library-Archives Division, Madison, WI.
29
in the Volstead Act) was a major goal for the wets in Wisconsin. 77 In this election, the majority
of Berlinites voted with the wets.
The results of three other referenda held between 1926 and 1929 are also helpful in
understanding Berlinites’ positions on Prohibition issues. One referendum on November 2, 1926
asked if the US Congress should amend the Volstead Act to allow for the manufacture and sale
of beer with 2.75 percent alcohol by weight. The second, held on April 2, 1929, asked if the
Severson Act (the State Prohibition Enforcement Act that replaced the Mulburger Act in 1921)
should be repealed. The third, held on that same day, asked if the Severson Act should be
amended “so that the State shall not arrest or fine anyone for manufacture, sale, or possession of
beer of not more than 2.75 percent alcohol by weight.” 78 The results of these referenda for Green
Lake County are not printed in the Wisconsin Blue Books, and therefore are not available to me
at the time of this writing. However, the majority of Berlinites continued to vote Republican
throughout the 1920s, and in 1926, the Wisconsin Republican Party adopted a stance against the
Anti-Saloon League to its platform. 79 By 1930, the Republican Party voiced a more overt
opposition to national Prohibition in its platform:
This experiment [Prohibition] has been tested by the Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and
Hoover administrations. Thoughtful citizens have seen its weaknesses in corruption of the
public service, intemperate use of illicit liquor, and loss of respect for law…We assert
the right, and the moral capacity of the people of Wisconsin, to deal wisely and
effectively with this and other domestic problems in accordance with their legally
expressed will. 80
77
Wandrei, “‘Gibraltar of the Wets’,” 14.
78
Buckley, “Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws,” 1100.
79
Wisconsin Blue Book, 1927 (Madison, WI: State Printing Board, 1927), 519.
80
Wisconsin Blue Book, 1931 (Madison, WI: State Printing Board, 1931), 450.
30
The people of Wisconsin clearly expressed their will on April 4, 1933, when they voted in favor
of the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Eighty-two percent of Wisconsin voters were for
repeal. Green Lake County responded the same as the rest of the state with eighty percent of
voters in favor of repeal. 81 Since the majority of Berlinites continued to vote for Republican
candidates throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, it is likely that they continued to vote wet in
these referenda.
With the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933, the “noble
experiment” was ended. This was good news to the numerous beer and liquor-loving Germans
and Poles that made up the City of Berlin. It did not take long for the taverns and pubs to reopen.
Advertisements for these establishments appeared all throughout the 1933 city directory like they
never have before. 82 During Prohibition, the Berlin Brewing Company did as many other
breweries did and switched, rather unsuccessfully, to producing and selling near-beer. After
Prohibition, the company resumed production of their Berliner Beer and Berlin Lager. 83
Advertisements for these products appeared numerous times in the 1933 directory as well. Berlin
had its beer back, but the question remains if Berlinites had learned something about the
moderation of alcohol use.
Conclusion
Berlin, Wisconsin’s experience with Prohibition was not especially unique, and this study
has reinforced much of what other historians have concluded about this era. The temperance
81
Wisconsin Blue Book, 1933, 559.
82
Greater Berlin City and Rural Directory, 1933.
83
Erdmann et al., 90.
31
movement in Berlin split the city along lines of ethnicity and religion. The women of the Berlin
WCTU that I was able to identify were native-born Americans who had origins in New England
and the eastern states—and given that WCTU meetings were held at the Methodist Episcopal
Church, most WCTU members were likely of that or similar faiths. Berlin’s saloon-keepers prior
to Prohibition, and many of those who violated liquor laws during Prohibition were foreign-born
Germans or Poles, or native-born Americans who had German or Polish parentage. The Germans
in Berlin were predominantly Catholic and Lutheran, and the Poles were Catholic. In 1920, the
Polish were among the more recent ethnic groups to arrive in Berlin, as many of them came to
Berlin to mine in the quarry in the 1880s. Given their recent arrival along with their Catholic
faith, the Polish were unlikely to be sympathetic to a Protestant, nativist cause like Prohibition.
According to circuit court records and reports in the city’s main newspaper, the Berlin
Journal-Courant, local law enforcement was vigilant against moonshiners and bootleggers.
Local law enforcement also cooperated with state and federal prohibition enforcement agents and
encouraged Berlin citizens to be compliant with liquor laws.
As evidenced by the apparent “moonshine problem” in Berlin and by the frequency of
Prohibition-related articles in the Journal-Courant, Prohibition had an every-day presence in the
lives of Berlinites—just as it must have had in the lives of all Americans. It was an issue that
impacted personal habits and one that turned normally law-abiding citizens into lawbreakers. As
such, Berlinites’ attitudes towards national and statewide Prohibition are reflected in their votes.
Berlin, along with the rest of Green Lake County, consistently supported the Republican
Party. However, unlike progressives and Republicans in other states who supported Prohibition,
the Wisconsin Republican Party was indifferent, if not opposed to Prohibition. In elections for
governor and president, the majority of Berlin voters favored Republican candidates all
32
throughout the 1920s. In state referenda relating to Prohibition, Berlin voted wet—and like the
rest of Wisconsin in 1933, the city favored the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.
Even though these elections showed that the majority of Berlinites were against
Prohibition, my conclusion is that the “noble experiment” was somewhat successful in the City
of Berlin. Yes, moonshining and bootlegging were prevalent during the early years of
Prohibition, but local law enforcement was earnest in its effort to stop the sale, transport, and
manufacture of illicit liquor. Furthermore, the obvious support that Berlin’s primary newspaper
displayed for Prohibition suggests that its readers shared similar sentiments. The majority of
Berlin’s residents likely got by just fine consuming 2.5 percent beer and the liquor that they kept
in their own private homes.
Berlin, Wisconsin—a barely rural, German-Polish community on the Fox River—is just
one example of how Prohibition played out in a small Wisconsin community. To study a
phenomenon like national Prohibition on a local level is important because it allows for closer
consideration on how aspects of identity impact a community’s experience with an
unprecedented state of affairs.
33
Works Cited
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Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement: A Prohibition Survey of the State of
Wisconsin" in Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws, Official Records of the National
Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement vol 4. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1931. Accessed October 29, 2015.
http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/tp/id/48320.
Gillespy, John C. The History of Green Lake County, containing Biographical Sketches,
Anecdotes, etc., as Related by Old Pioneers; with a Reliable Description of the City of
Berlin, Town and Villages, Soil, Productions Population, etc., Observations and General
Remarks. Berlin, Wisconsin: T. L. Terry & Co., 1860.
Greater Berlin City and Rural Directory, 1933. Berlin, WI: Tri-County News, 1933.
Green Lake County, Wis. Circuit Court. “Information record, 1891-1975.” Green Lake Series 35,
vol 1. Oshkosh Area Research Center. Polk Library. University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
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