agglomerations of storage depots, agencies, salesmen, managers, and saloons. Nowadays, of course, manufacturers assume the existence of a national or even international market, but in the 1870s and 1880s, the notion of selling Milwaukee beer in, say, San Francisco was still new and untested. It is a measure of the genius of Adolphus Busch and the others that they not only envisioned such a market but created and succeeded in it.
But the brewers’ success also rested on what is too often overlooked by those eager to condemn the era’s industrialists: Captains of industry like Busch and Uihlein amassed their wealth during decades of hard work. Pabst “knew more about the details” of his company, claimed one of his agents, “than any other [brewer] in the business.” The brewer earned that knowledge. He left the house, which stood on the same grounds as the brewery until the early 1890s, each day before breakfast to tour the plant and check on the day’s work. That round completed, he returned home for a quick meal and then hustled back to the office, where, except for a lunch break, he stayed until six o’clock. “He knew the different bottling machines just as well as the men operating them,” an employee once said, “and he took a pride in making a personal inspection” daily.
Adolphus Busch never claimed to be a “practical brewer”—indeed, almost none of the century’s titans possessed formal training as a brewmaster—but few men in the business knew as much as he did about making lager, and he deserves recognition as one of the great American brewmasters. He analyzed and mastered every detail of the work, including “the various ways of brewing and the manipulation of the material, the boiling of the beer, fermenting and storing and especially the preparation of the malt,” which he regarded as “one of the most significant factors in making fine beers.” Study inspired confidence. “I am the maltster [and] superintendent of the malt-house,” he once explained, “ . . . and I am the buyer of the barley and the hops and I keep a general superintendence of the brewing process, fermenting process and stirring process.” Each day, he said, “I examine the barley” and visit “the malt houses with my various foremen and give them orders how I want everything done; . . . ”
He also became a superb judge of hops and personally selected those needed for the brewery. Woe to the dealer who submitted “mouldy” or “watery” samples, or ones “miserably picked, full of leaves and stems” that would taint beer with “a disagreeable and bitter taste.” “You hop men,”he told his brother August, a German hops merchant, “do not consider what harm you do if a brewer wants a certain fine hop and is willing to pay for it, and does not get it.” “I wish it understood,” he informed one dealer, “that I must have nothing but the very best and finest picks.” To another, he wrote: “What I said about stems and vines, I meant in dead earnest. . . . Why should I pay duty and freight on an article that is absolutely worthless and injures our product besides?” It’s not likely the agent made that mistake again.
Nor was the man surprised to hear from Busch himself. Corporations today are managed by layers of specialized bureaucrats and university-credentialed “experts,” but late-nineteenth-century Americans were just learning how to construct managerial flowcharts and chains of command. Busch and Pabst captained enormous enterprises, but they relied largely on tiny in-house staffs, often consisting mostly of members of their own families. Charles Best, to name one beleaguered example, shouldered a burden of detail and tasks that would be shared among several dozen employees in one of today’s corporations. The owners pitched in, corresponding regularly with their salesmen out on the road and making personnel decisions that a modern CEO would dismiss as trivial.
T HE
But the brewers’ success also rested on what is too often overlooked by those eager to condemn the era’s industrialists: Captains of industry like Busch and Uihlein amassed their wealth during decades of hard work. Pabst “knew more about the details” of his company, claimed one of his agents, “than any other [brewer] in the business.” The brewer earned that knowledge. He left the house, which stood on the same grounds as the brewery until the early 1890s, each day before breakfast to tour the plant and check on the day’s work. That round completed, he returned home for a quick meal and then hustled back to the office, where, except for a lunch break, he stayed until six o’clock. “He knew the different bottling machines just as well as the men operating them,” an employee once said, “and he took a pride in making a personal inspection” daily.
Adolphus Busch never claimed to be a “practical brewer”—indeed, almost none of the century’s titans possessed formal training as a brewmaster—but few men in the business knew as much as he did about making lager, and he deserves recognition as one of the great American brewmasters. He analyzed and mastered every detail of the work, including “the various ways of brewing and the manipulation of the material, the boiling of the beer, fermenting and storing and especially the preparation of the malt,” which he regarded as “one of the most significant factors in making fine beers.” Study inspired confidence. “I am the maltster [and] superintendent of the malt-house,” he once explained, “ . . . and I am the buyer of the barley and the hops and I keep a general superintendence of the brewing process, fermenting process and stirring process.” Each day, he said, “I examine the barley” and visit “the malt houses with my various foremen and give them orders how I want everything done; . . . ”
He also became a superb judge of hops and personally selected those needed for the brewery. Woe to the dealer who submitted “mouldy” or “watery” samples, or ones “miserably picked, full of leaves and stems” that would taint beer with “a disagreeable and bitter taste.” “You hop men,”he told his brother August, a German hops merchant, “do not consider what harm you do if a brewer wants a certain fine hop and is willing to pay for it, and does not get it.” “I wish it understood,” he informed one dealer, “that I must have nothing but the very best and finest picks.” To another, he wrote: “What I said about stems and vines, I meant in dead earnest. . . . Why should I pay duty and freight on an article that is absolutely worthless and injures our product besides?” It’s not likely the agent made that mistake again.
Nor was the man surprised to hear from Busch himself. Corporations today are managed by layers of specialized bureaucrats and university-credentialed “experts,” but late-nineteenth-century Americans were just learning how to construct managerial flowcharts and chains of command. Busch and Pabst captained enormous enterprises, but they relied largely on tiny in-house staffs, often consisting mostly of members of their own families. Charles Best, to name one beleaguered example, shouldered a burden of detail and tasks that would be shared among several dozen employees in one of today’s corporations. The owners pitched in, corresponding regularly with their salesmen out on the road and making personnel decisions that a modern CEO would dismiss as trivial.
T HE
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