Beer: War, Depression, and Prohibition

In 1900 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union member Carrie Nation challenged the public imagination when she allegedly took a hatchet and proceeded to chop at the bar of the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas. Four years later a resolution to prohibit liquor through a constitutional amendment lost narrowly in the House of Representatives. The beer, spirits, and wine producers were hampered in forming a cohesive front against the prohibitionists by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. The identification of the beer industry with Germany was part of the reason that the beverage alcohol producers never mounted an answer to the prohibitionist challenge.