The Great American Saloon Series
Holland, Gerald
The Great American Saloon Series by Gerald Holland Whatever odium may be attached to beer in other parts of the Republic, its status in St. Louis is as firmly grounded as James Eads' span...
...In Carondelet, the German section, his social position was high, and even in Kerry Patch, altogether Celtic, he was greeted with profound respect...
...Taking drink for drink himself, he entered saloon after saloon, radiating a magnificent geniality and prefacing his ever-ready oration on any subject with a wave of a beer stein and, "Veil, I tell you...
...All but ten percent of it was drunk in the United States, but even the relatively small amount send abroad exceeded the entire sales, domestic and foreign, of most of its rivals...
...In a few years, the beer trade of the United States was predominantly in the hands of Anheuser-Busch...
...His work was done magnificently...
...The union scoffed at the doctrine, but it reinstated the man...
...Brewing was then distinctly a local industry...
...The sales strategy centered around the so-called beer collector, who bought and did not sell...
...One day while driving through his brewery principality with a reporter for a St...
...Adolphus came to St...
...The first proof of his potency came when he backed Eddie Noonan for mayor in the late eighties, and on the strength of his approval, Eddie walked into office...
...An English syndicate attempted to crowd in on the local market during the nineties...
...There was money to be made and Adolphus set out to make it...
...All brewers had such spending agents, but Adolphus gathered a crew that was extraordinarily accomplished...
...But it soon forgot...
...There was never before a funeral like his...
...William Lemp, son of old Adam, had a brew that was vastly superior...
...He was expected to attend all funerals in the families of saloon-keepers, and to exhibit a decent grief...
...He bought a glass of beer there for a few cents that struck him as being even better than Budweiser...
...pretty damn swell, by Gott...
...Among his customers was the aforementioned Eberhard Anheuser...
...There was perhaps more beer consumed in St...
...Louis, and a profusion of beer-gardens and breweries had sprung up all over town...
...The brewery would stay open and the sinful apparatus would be cleansed, that it might make sweets and goodies to truly confound the Devil...
...Soon, then, the blow struck...
...Upon being presented with a note, Noonan would pretend to read it...
...Every year Anheuser-Busch flung 1,600,000 barrels of beer to a thirsty world...
...The majority, however, remained true to Busch and beer...
...He charged the new customer $9 for a $6 keg of beer and applied the extra $3 to the city license...
...With Budweiser now the chief product of his brewery, he reduced his sixteen brands to four—Michelob, Faust, Budweiser, and the standard pale beer...
...he was the king of the brewers...
...The plant might have been closed down entirely...
...Disliking to refuse anyone outright, he gave every applicant a letter to the mayor, enumerating several imaginary but laudable qualities in the bearer...
...At one point in the early career of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery its product was so inferior that St...
...Louis is as firmly grounded as James Eads' span across the Mississippi...
...Louis Germans went through the motions of flag-waving while inwardly hoching der Kaiser...
...Adolphus had bottled beer to sell...
...Possessed of boundless energy and limitless good humor, he had the rare quality of adaptability...
...Adolphus had an agent in every city in the Union, and owned real estate in every state...
...Returning to America, he had the Busch brewery make the beer for him and called it Budweiser after the town of Budweis, where he had discovered it...
...The price of a barrel dropped from $6 to $3...
...And every Groundhog Day he gave $5000 to a Catholic convent in St...
...And when it became evident that enforcement would be a myth, Busch malt and yeast sold tremendously...
...Rock bottom was touched when one enterprising retailer offered two glasses of beer and a boat ride on the small lake adjoining his saloon, all for five cents...
...As a result Eddie's gratitude was boundless...
...Obviously, he was in a position to wield a considerable influence in local politics...
...Notwithstanding the desperate fight of the local Methodists to erase the blot from the city's history, the record stands...
...After a tedious day at the brewery, he was always ready for the less intricate problems that arose over the boards at Tony Faust's restaurant, where it was his habit to spend a portion of every evening...
...His burial, as he had directed, was in St...
...the commonplace stifled him...
...Adolphus widened his field...
...He wore flowing mustachios and a trim goatee, and was robust and erect...
...He accomplished that under peculiar circumstances...
...Later, they were caught in an attempt to buy a newspaper...
...While his rivals in St...
...H. Because of the incessant warfare of the brewers for the local market, the process of obtaining a saloon was no difficult task for any aspiring barkeep with a hundred dollars or so...
...The dictator received the information with his usual stern look, albeit with evident satisfaction...
...In his day, Adolphus Busch was so well liked that if he caught a cold a dozen organizations and conventions would adopt resolutions of sympathy before he had time to sneeze...
...There the townsfolk were one in mourning the merchant prince...
...He dictated the order for the dinner to Faust, who repeated it to the waiter...
...He was philanthropic as well, but he always made it clear that he gave because the notion appealed to him and not because he thought he owed the world anything...
...A beggar approached and asked for alms...
...not only that, he was expected to drink it...
...He was the real father of Budweiser...
...Most American brewers had dismissed the warnings...
...But soon, like old Eberhard Anheuser, he found it hard to keep his books balanced, and before long he was in debt to Adolphus...
...But the rumblings grew more distinct...
...In the midst of his most bitter sobs, he was kept under close watch by all the male mourners, for they knew that, once the rites were over, there would be a gay time at the bar of the nearest Busch customer...
...It is an amazing estate—one that would shame a Kaiser...
...His workers, too, fared well at his generous hands...
...But he arranged with Noonan that if the eye of the eagle on the Busch letterhead had not been pricked with a pin, the statements therein were to be disregarded...
...He scoured the nation, and eventually the world, everywhere preaching the gospel of Budweiser...
...so long as it was Busch beer that was being drunk, it made little difference who drank it...
...He would call for bottles of ten brands and name the vintage of each after a sip...
...Louis trade was the plum, and it was a luscious one, for the natives, including those whose forebears had been hostile to the lures of drink, were already consuming millions of gallons a year...
...His deep voice, with its trace of accent, was such as to command attention any-where...
...He didn't care...
...A year later a double wedding resulted and Adolphus joined his talents to those of his father-in-law...
...It succeeded in buying up most of the smaller works, but William Lemp and Adolphus refused to sell...
...Ho," they scoffed, "die American peebul—dey vill neffer stand for dot...
...The trips to the keg were considered a vital portion of the day's routine...
...The story goes that while traveling in Bohemia during the early seventies he dined at a small monastery where he was served a brew that he immediately declared to be the best he had ever tasted...
...The plant in St...
...Adolphus very fittingly observed the day by crowning his consort with a diamond studded diadem...
...not only that, but he had the best bottled beer in the country at the moment...
...He maintained his family in a luxury that included estates in all parts of America and a castle on the Rhine...
...Every saloon that sold Busch beer was favored with a visit by the collector once each month, and in each he spent royally an amount proportionate to its monthly buy...
...Like Budweiser, it originated in Bohemia, but in this case it was Adolphus himself who found it...
...He hadn't the best beer in town by several kegs full...
...It was less expensive, but withal an excellent brew worthy of the sound food that accompanied it at Tony's...
...He returned home and ordered his staff to duplicate it...
...Beer made St...
...Faust, a constant sufferer from the wit of Adolphus, was always trying to turn a trick on him...
...He had outguessed all his rivals...
...Death was as merciful to old Adolphus as life had been kind...
...He was ready with a gift for the happy couple, a story for the dinner, and a kiss for the bride...
...He bought a railroad or two, a coal mine, and several hotels...
...He was essentially great and grand...
...In 1880 old Eberhard went to his reward and Adolphus prepared for his really great achievements...
...Adolphus was a political power in St...
...At the Holland House in New York it was a tradition that he took more time to sign the register than any other guest, so busy was he with handshaking admirers...
...The dual courtship was pursued with characteristic energy and disThe Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 19 patch...
...He bottled the new drink in his own small shop...
...its value was in proportion to the weekly sales...
...Louis, the scene of his conquests...
...Consequently, the St...
...He arranged for the rental of a shop, put in the fixtures and a few choice murals, and then directed the young man to begin...
...At the Irish wakes in the Patch, he wept with the most accomplished weepers...
...For that accomplishment he was known in Carondelet as the Todsailfer—the dead-drinker...
...Louis expanded to such a point that it almost dwarfed the city...
...he infused into its members his own masterly manner, and as a result his beer was soon selling almost as well as Lemp's...
...He extended his operations through the German lodges...
...He covered every bet that disputed his judgment, and win or lose, he laughed loudly, paid for every bottle, and ordered drinks all 'round...
...Every brewery issued a complimentary series of paintings, and those of Anheuser-Busch were of outstanding merit...
...One of his favorite diversions was to display his ability as a connoisseur of wines...
...But the old competition was ended...
...His first objective was the local market...
...He liked the role of benevolent monarch and he played it well...
...Adolphus was to turn this technical advance into a brewing revolution, for bottled beer could not only be brought home, it could also be shipped to distant points unspoiled...
...When the war waned the fresh horror of Prohibition confronted them...
...Louis and to Harvard...
...A beer war ensued...
...Here was man's work and he pitched into it with zest...
...At one point in the rivalry of the breweries beer was even cheaper than that...
...The old home of Adolphus in the shadow of the malt-house is deserted now, but in its stead stands a castle built far out in the country (though taken in a bit today by the suburban sprawl) on the acres that General Grant once tilled with his own hands...
...But in his energetic search for a brewer and a formula, he never let his production be interrupted...
...The four-minute boys kept the German sector under strict surveillance...
...He was always a welcome guest, if for no other reason than that he always paid for the drinks...
...The Kaiser sent his personal representative and the President ofthe United States his condolences...
...At Christmas he had a handsome present for the saloonkeeper's wife...
...He was taken up and Conrad joined the Busch brewery as technician...
...The saloonkeepers, instead of combining and pocketing the extra profit, cut the price to two glasses for five cents...
...Busch and Faust were standing talking at the bar...
...The brewers were in very bad odor on patriotic grounds...
...Ach," said Adolphus, "dot schlop...
...he tumbled with the Turnvereine and roared and gurgled with the Gesangvereine...
...A gang of idlers followed his buggy all through the day...
...He gathered about him his own circle of friends and let it go at that...
...Years now have passed since the drought, and old Adolphus' descendants live on, true to his traditions, in the grand, baronial manner...
...Prior to 1850, despite the attempts of some French and English brewers to ply the town, there was very little beer in St...
...One collector, concentrating his whole talents in this field, rose to be Police Commissioner...
...Michelob was perhaps the best beer ever made in pre-Prohibition America and the most expensive: it sold for twenty-five cents a glass...
...on land where President Grant once lived...
...In middle age he was an imposing figure...
...With beer at five cents a glass, including free lunch, it was a luxury within the reach of everyone, however humble...
...With all his ingenious devices, however, Adolphus was still trailing Lemp when bottled beer dawned upon the world...
...Louis restaurant proprietor who was Adolphus' best friend...
...This king of brewers, curiously enough, was not really a brewer at all: he was a super-salesman, perhaps the greatest ever in America...
...He offered the holy man who had made it a good price for the recipe...
...On the occasion of his fiftieth wedding anniversary, festivals were held throughout the land...
...Michelob was the result, but it cost so much that the sales were always comparatively small...
...The payroll exceeded $10 million a year and the properties were worth $40 million...
...Noting the fact, the jobseekers descended upon Busch, asking his intercession...
...He died at Villa Lily, his castle on the Rhine that he had named for his wife...
...One attempt turned out to be a miserable failure...
...Louis newspaper, he remarked the bowing and scraping of his employees as his buggy passed with, "See, just like der king...
...Adolphus grabbed the opportunity, for he had cast an appreciative eye upon Anheuser's pretty daughter, Lily...
...Six thousand employees marched in line and twenty-five trucks were required to transport the floral tributes...
...The Busches—Adolphus no doubt rested easier after this—dispatched a secretary after a block of Liberty Bonds and passively weathered the storm without forsaking their own people for violent pseudo-Americanism...
...While the bill was increasing, the new pasteurization process made it possible to bottle beer that would remain forever unspoiled...
...No favor was too great for him to do for his benefactor...
...There were, of course, no impecunious days in the offing for the Busches...
...Adolphus had no rivals...
...Before the interviewer asked his first question, he could be sure that Adolphus would ask this one, "Vell, vot to drink...
...The sad-eyed St...
...he wiped out the debt and staggered Conrad with an offer for the formula...
...He got it...
...Louis at the time, but the admiring natives threw a big party at the Coliseum and drank forty thousand bottles of free beer in honor of the event, after sending a solid gold card of congratulations to the prince and his wife in California...
...But Adolphus kept on selling it, and presently it was better, and by and by, incarnated as Budweiser, Michelob, and Faust, it was the best in America...
...The collector was also prominent at all weddings that had any bearing on the local market...
...While Busch and Faust were in Paris another time, Busch, who knew several languages, was helping his friend to learn French...
...The war days brought all the Busches and all of Carondelet into sudden dishonor...
...He needed only hint of his intention to a few brewery collectors and then recline to take his choice of propositions...
...After working witha wholesale commission house, and participating in some random Civil War skirmishes on the side of the Union, he entered the brewers' supply business...
...Lemp and Buschweathered the fight and the Englishmen retired in confusion...
...so far as he knew, indeed, it was to be the extent of his operations...
...By 1875 he had risen to the status of co-partner and the works were incorporated under the name of Anheuser-Busch...
...That was the day of elegant art in the saloons...
...A young lady Sunday-school teacher in Chicago was ousted because she was found to be in the employ of a brewer...
...It claimed him a scant year before his peoples set upon one another, and it spared him, too, the subsequent solemn declaration that to traffic in his beloved beer constituted one a felon...
...Adolphus took care of all three...
...He wasn't interested in society if he could find good fellows to associate with...
...Now the stage was set...
...There remained the necessity of obtaining fixtures, glassware, and the city license, which cost $600...
...There were omens...
...An inconspicuous start, but Adolphus soon found his way to glory...
...Altogether a noble work, it prompted many a barroom oration...
...It employed 7500 men and covered 142 acres of ground, and there were 110 individual buildings in the group...
...Now his name was revered at home, and abroad he was received with the deference due to a merchant prince...
...22 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975...
...Busch told him in language that called for the check...
...Sure," said Busch—and he went behind the bar and extracted $5 of Faust's money from the till for the supplicant...
...At the end of the meal, Tony asked how he might order cigars...
...The largest brewery had been started by Adam Lemp, whose craft has been perpetuated by his descendants...
...Adolphus was himself a free and easy spender...
...There was no bottled beer and without the protection of refrigeration the keg brew was sure to spoil if shipped to distant points...
...He knew good beer, to be sure, and always sought it, but he did not know how to make it, and although he eventually found men who did, that was a detail...
...If it was there, he assured the gentleman that a place would be made for him...
...The haut monde, in his day, was just a matter of the earliest worms, and if it did not fancy Busch the brewmaster, he gave it no more than an imperceptible damn...
...In it Adolphus was made to say, "I can assure Your Excellency that beer is the national drink of America...
...Eberhard, a brewer but no salesman, found difficulty in disposing of the beer that his small equipment produced—a mere 8000 barrels annually—and before long he found himself owing young Adolphus considerable money...
...He wasn't in St...
...Meanwhile, the Lemps desperately followed the lead of Adolphus and achieved a wide circulation of Falstaff...
...Louis while the breweries were running full blast than in any other city of its size in the world...
...He sold the bad almost as easily as he sold the good...
...He was fond of the reporters and they were fond of the frequent assignments to interview him...
...Armed with that, he bought a government license for a trifle of $25...
...The collector had other duties beyond this mere buying of drinks...
...In New York, at one bar at least, it was sold for forty cents by a barkeep who told his patrons that it was imported...
...He sent tons of money to the Vaterland...
...Louis, and Adolphus Busch made the beer...
...But he never took himself too seriously...
...But by 1857, when Adolphus Busch arrived, German settlers had conquered St...
...More often than not, in fact, he was the ward committeeman...
...Adolphus realized that brewing no longer had to be a purely local business, and though he didn't have the first bottled beer in town he was the first to bottle it for shipping...
...The city made no secret of its grief...
...When he had selected a neighborhood, the prospective saloon-keeper first had to get the approbation of a majority of its residents...
...He could have sold anything...
...There he basked in the light of popular favor...
...The abashed job-seeker departed, confirmed in his conviction that Busch had a heart of gold and equally sure that Noonan was an egg of the worst sort...
...The collector made no complaint...
...Nevertheless, he encountered a certain The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 21 social coolness in St...
...Every man in the brewery was entitled to a generous portion of free beer every day...
...Louis rowdies were known to project mouthfuls of it back over the bar...
...The children of Adolphus in a castle...
...Another Busch opus was a brilliant poster depicting Adolphus himself and Bismarck...
...Louis were struggling with wagon-load orders, he coolly turned his back on the local market, invested deeply in a wardrobe, 20 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 and set out as a traveling ambassador of beer...
...One of the most inspiring was "Custer's Last Fight," in which scalped patriots and fierce Indians with poised knives were vividly portrayed...
...A close friend, Conrad the wine merchant, had been experimenting with the new process...
...Carondelet drank constantly, and Kerry Patch spent its evenings indulging the now lost art of rushing the can...
...Adolphus knew it, and he worked feverishly to correct his own deficiency...
...Ulrich Busch, his brother, had meanwhile been paying attentions to Anna, the elder sister of Lily...
...Actually he held it up to the light for the pin-prick...
...Faust was named in honor of Tony Faust, the St...
...But the Busches chose the course of noblesse oblige...
...The bill mounted and finally the supply agent was offered an interest in the brewery in lieu of payment...
...Louis because as he voted so did all of Carondelet...
...Louis at the age of 18, with a sound training from the Gymnasium in Mainz...
...And when Eberhard Anheuser had made enough money manufacturing soap to buy out the Bavarian Brewery, the stage was set for the entrance of the principal actor in that great drama—the drama of beer...
...If not: "Young man, you go back and tell Adolphus Busch that Eddie Noonan runs his administration as he damn well pleases and that no Dutch brewer can tell him who to hire...
...Their association had been involved in a German alliance late in the war...
...The method remained in use until the pinprick sesame became known and applicants took to puncturing the eagle's eye for themselves...
...Adolphus met the situation immediately...
...Competition was bitter but the profit was enormous...
...One young man sought to please him by calling for Budweiser...
...Before Prohibition Michelob was never bottled...
...This is the proprietor," said Faust, indicating Busch...
...The $50 million that old Adolphus had made and saved precluded any such possibility...
...Adolphus Busch made the offer most generally accepted...
...One man was ejected from the brew-workers' union because of failing in that particular: he went to court about it and a decision was solemnly rendered to the effect that in the judgment of the court it was not necessary for a man to drink beer at any time during the day in order to do a normal day's work...
...If bad beer was all that he could produce, he had to find a market for it...
...His gifts included handsome donations to Washington University in St...
...The collector was thus an important personage...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
