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About The Reason. (Savannah, GA.) 1908-19?? | View Entire Issue (June 20, 1908)
2 keeping within the strict letter of the law. It was hoped in. this way to furnish a drink which looked like beer and tasted like beer but was practically devoid of alcohol. People drank it for a while, wagged their heads and went away in silence and sorrow, (doom was deep upon the people. There was the voice of one crying in the nitrht. There was weeping and wailing, and the weepers would not be comforted, because of whiskey there was none, brandy could not be had. and the beer was a snare and a delusion. “ Woe, woe is me” was in the hearts and on the lips of the majority of the people. Finally, a ray of light filtered through and Geor gia once more began to “sit up and take notice.” The Court of Appeals of the state decided that the prohibition law. as passed, had failed to stipulate how much or how little alcohol there might be in the prohibition beverages: it merely stated that it must be an amount which would not be sufficient to intoxicate when drunk to excess. Brewers and many of the most prominent and influential temperance workers have always contended that beer is not an intoxicating beverage, but in order to be on the safe side and to keep within the strict limits of the law, the brewers of Georgia decided to place upon the market a malt liquor containing from l'<> to 2 per cent of alcohol instead of from 3 1 o to 4 per cent, as was usual. The way in which the public welcomed this drink would have been laughable, had it not have been so pitiful. “It looks like beer, it tastes like beer, and, by the Eternal. 1 believe it is beer.” many were heard to say. In fact, there were comparatively few who could tell the difference in taste, and only the man who tried to make a hog of himself by drinking thirty or forty bottles was able to tell the differ ence in the effects. Thousands of people who would never have permitted a case of standard beer to be brought into their houses under any circumstances now keep the prohibition beer in their homes, per mit their children to drink it. and recommend it to their friends as a healthful and non-intoxicating beverage. Some idea of the vogue which this drink has obtained among the people can be gained from the fact that formerly the Savannah Brewing Company sold the entire output of its brewery in one county, but now they sell the DA per cent beverage not only all over the State of Georgia, but ship it by the car load to Florida. Alabama and Tennessee. The Macon brewery, which started by putting out a beverage containing .(IO 1 per cent alcohol, which they called “Acme Brew.” has now ceased to manufacture this drink, and is doing an enormous business on their “Maltale,” containing PA per cent alcohol. The Atlanta brewery is keeping pace with the procession, and their “Bud." containing 1.75 per cent alcohol, is on sale at every drug store, soda water fountain and fruit stand in northwest Georgia. The Augusta brewery for a time placed on the market a malt beverage containing .OOIA per cent of alcohol, which they called “Belle of Georgia,” but since the decision of the Court of Appeals they have been offering for sale “Augusta Brew.” containing 1.90 per cent alcohol. The Augusta brewery is still experimenting, and within a week or two expect to have the percentage of alcohol in their “Augusta Brew" reduced to 1 1 j per cent. The “Georgia THE REASON Home Beer.” manufactured by the Savannah Brew ing Company, which has achieved the largest degree of popularity, due to the fact that it has been on the market longest, contains 1.66 per cent of alcohol. The Macon, Atlanta and Augusta breweries care fully refrain from the use of the word “beer” in connection with their non-intoxicating malt bever ages, feeling that the word beer might act upon the extremists as a red flag does to a bull: but the Savannah brewers take the stand that while the drink which they manufacture is not intoxicating, even when drunk to excess, it is in all other respects identical with the beer which they brewed prior to January Ist. and hence it is a beer and should be called beer. Appreciating the enormous demand for soft drinks, all of the brewers in Georgia have enlarged their bottling works, and are manufacturing soda waters, ginger-ale, sarsaparilla, etc., on a large scale. The public, realizing that the brewers have unusual facilities, have given the preference to their products whenever they were procurable. So profitable has this branch of the business become that Air. Abe S. Guckenheimer. president of the Savannah Brewing Company, told the writer a few days ago that even in the event of the repeal of the prohibition law, the Savannah Brewing Company would continue to man ufacture soft drinks and their 1 1 A> per cent beer. The Georgia brewers are not without competition in the manufacture of “near-beers.” by any means. Brewers outside the state were quick to note the demand for malt beverages containing a small per centage of alcohol, and carload after carload was shipped into the state from Montgomery, Chatta nooga. Richmond, Evansville. St. Louis and Alilwau kee. On all of this the labels declared that the bev erage in the bottle contained less than 2 per cent of alcohol, but in many cases it has been found that it was a standard grade of beer, containing the usual percentage of alcohol, the only difference being in the label. During these trying times the man who feels that he needs a drink occasionally has had to do without unless he was fortunate in having a friend who possessed sufficient foresight to order his hard* liquor in the original package from Chattanooga, Jacksonville or Montgomery. In the report of the committee of fifty, there ap pears the following: “There have been coneommit ant evils of prohibitory legislation. The efforts to enforce it during forty years past have had some unlooked-for effects on public respect for courts, judicial procedure, oaths and law in general, and for officers of the law. legislators and/ public servants. 'The public have seen law defied, a whole generation of habitual law-breakers schooled in evasion and shamelessness, courts ineffective through fluctuations of policy, delays, perjuries, negligences, and other miscarriages of justice, officers of the law double faced and mercenary, legislators timid and insincere, candidates for office hypocritical and truckling, and office-holders unfaithful to pledges and to reasona ble public expectation.” The Reverend Dr. AV. N. Ainsworth of Savannah, one of the leading prohibition workers and lecturers of the state, has already from his pulpit and in the public prints, made the accusation that the juries who returned verdicts of “not guilty” in several “blind-tiger" cases had perjured themselves bv so
