Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America by Edward Behr Page A
Authors: Edward Behr
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scrutinized and revealed to the press, the Brewers Association in New York pleaded guilty and was fined $100,000.
Without any evidence to back his charges, Wheeler claimed that not only the brewers’ money but German government funds had been used to “subvert” the administration. It was Wheeler again, behind the scenes, who initiated the setting up of a Senate investigative committee, which began examining the activities of the German-American Alliance in February of 1918. In a note to the ASL, he cynically admitted that “we could not have bought for $50,000 what we have gotten onthis investigation thus far, and it will continue. . . . We are not willing it to be known at present that we started the investigation.” Later he wrote:
It is a conservative statement to say that we have secured more than a million dollars worth of free advertising against the liquor traffic, through the investigation and the material that we have secured and used. There is not a week passes now but that some magazine or paper has in it a special article relating to the Alliance.
The German Alliance and its financial backers, the Brewers Association, were the “enemy in the home camp.” Shortly afterward, the Alliance decided to disband, its charter was revoked, and Wayne Wheeler announced that “an active, organized opposition to Prohibition was silenced.”
But as far as Wheeler was concerned, this was not sufficient. He wrote to A. Mitchell Palmer, who had been appointed Custodian of Alien Property.
I am informed that there are a number of breweries around the country which are owned in part by alien enemies. It is reported to me that the Anheuser-Busch Company and some of the Milwaukee companies are largely controlled by alien Germans. . . . Have you made an investigation?
Palmer subsequently attacked the United States Brewers publicly for “subsidizing the press, dominating politics, being unpatriotic and preventing youth of German descent from becoming Americanized.” There were “sensational” disclosures in the media. Like all good lobbyists, Wheeler never forgot a favor. In due course, he would use his influence with the Wilson Administration to get Palmer appointed attorney general.
Palmer’s disclosures also enabled Wheeler to press for the first Senate investigation of the Brewers Association, and the findings, though lacking the sensational quality Wheeler had hoped for, further exacerbated ill public opinion. The fact that Arthur Brisbane — owner-publisher of the Washington Times , which mildly opposed total Prohibition and argued that beer should be exempt — had been loaned$500,000 by the brewers to take control of the paper was a further triumph for the extreme drys. It was all grist to the ASL’s propaganda department, by now working overtime — its printing operations working in shifts around the clock.
Wheeler also made headlines on his own. As the éminence grise of the Senate committee investigating the German-American Alliance, he had access to seized confidential papers. While he was on a train to Chicago to make one of his innumerable speeches to a church audience, a page fell to the floor. It was part of a compromising German-Alliance document, inciting some Germans in America to stick together and aid the Kaiser in winning the war. The alert train attendant who picked it up believed he had laid hands on an important German spy, and alerted the police. On arrival at Elizabeth, the next stop, Wheeler was arrested. As his biographer noted, “he made capital at once of the arrest by citing it as evidence of the alertness of America and the popular hatred of the Germans, especially those connected with the brewing industry.”
Wheeler also used America’s entry into the war to push through dry measures for the armed forces. The passing of the agricultural appropriations bill banning the sale of grain to distillers was largely his doing (to their consternation, it would remain in force after the end
Without any evidence to back his charges, Wheeler claimed that not only the brewers’ money but German government funds had been used to “subvert” the administration. It was Wheeler again, behind the scenes, who initiated the setting up of a Senate investigative committee, which began examining the activities of the German-American Alliance in February of 1918. In a note to the ASL, he cynically admitted that “we could not have bought for $50,000 what we have gotten onthis investigation thus far, and it will continue. . . . We are not willing it to be known at present that we started the investigation.” Later he wrote:
It is a conservative statement to say that we have secured more than a million dollars worth of free advertising against the liquor traffic, through the investigation and the material that we have secured and used. There is not a week passes now but that some magazine or paper has in it a special article relating to the Alliance.
The German Alliance and its financial backers, the Brewers Association, were the “enemy in the home camp.” Shortly afterward, the Alliance decided to disband, its charter was revoked, and Wayne Wheeler announced that “an active, organized opposition to Prohibition was silenced.”
But as far as Wheeler was concerned, this was not sufficient. He wrote to A. Mitchell Palmer, who had been appointed Custodian of Alien Property.
I am informed that there are a number of breweries around the country which are owned in part by alien enemies. It is reported to me that the Anheuser-Busch Company and some of the Milwaukee companies are largely controlled by alien Germans. . . . Have you made an investigation?
Palmer subsequently attacked the United States Brewers publicly for “subsidizing the press, dominating politics, being unpatriotic and preventing youth of German descent from becoming Americanized.” There were “sensational” disclosures in the media. Like all good lobbyists, Wheeler never forgot a favor. In due course, he would use his influence with the Wilson Administration to get Palmer appointed attorney general.
Palmer’s disclosures also enabled Wheeler to press for the first Senate investigation of the Brewers Association, and the findings, though lacking the sensational quality Wheeler had hoped for, further exacerbated ill public opinion. The fact that Arthur Brisbane — owner-publisher of the Washington Times , which mildly opposed total Prohibition and argued that beer should be exempt — had been loaned$500,000 by the brewers to take control of the paper was a further triumph for the extreme drys. It was all grist to the ASL’s propaganda department, by now working overtime — its printing operations working in shifts around the clock.
Wheeler also made headlines on his own. As the éminence grise of the Senate committee investigating the German-American Alliance, he had access to seized confidential papers. While he was on a train to Chicago to make one of his innumerable speeches to a church audience, a page fell to the floor. It was part of a compromising German-Alliance document, inciting some Germans in America to stick together and aid the Kaiser in winning the war. The alert train attendant who picked it up believed he had laid hands on an important German spy, and alerted the police. On arrival at Elizabeth, the next stop, Wheeler was arrested. As his biographer noted, “he made capital at once of the arrest by citing it as evidence of the alertness of America and the popular hatred of the Germans, especially those connected with the brewing industry.”
Wheeler also used America’s entry into the war to push through dry measures for the armed forces. The passing of the agricultural appropriations bill banning the sale of grain to distillers was largely his doing (to their consternation, it would remain in force after the end
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