Liquid Bread: Brewery Advertising Countering the Prohibition Campaign, 1900–20

Thursday, January 2, 2014: 1:00 PM
Embassy Room (Omni Shoreham)
Mark E. Benbow, Marymount University
In the early years of the twentieth century, groups such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union successfully pressed a campaign to modify the United States Constitution to ban the sale and production of alcohol. The 18th Amendment was intended to end the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the country, including, of course, beer and ale. American brewers tried a variety of tactics to combat the anti-alcohol campaign including an effort to portray beer and ale as healthy, family-friendly beverages distinct from higher-alcohol distilled liquors. The brewers efforts included not just changes in advertising, but the creation of new brands as well in an increasingly desperate attempt to create a new, positive image that would allow them to survive the increasingly powerful temperance campaign. In the end, their efforts were unsuccessful, but the family-friendly campaign illustrates how a particular industry could attempt to reinvent itself as an answer to political and public pressure.
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