The Great American Saloon Series / South St. Louis Beer Gardens
Koenig, Robert
O O O Q I O O O I Q I Q O O O O O I O Q O Q O g l g O U Q Q O Q Q Q Q D O 6 Q Q I O I 6 1 0 Q l I Q . . . . Q I ~ O t I Q O . . . . Q O O U Q g I O O U I Q m O O O B O Q Q O D Q Q I Q l I O . . . ....
...Qmg0IIQ0QO0QIOQ000D0Q0QD0QmO06000OIOD~iQI0OOOQi0B000i0Q0g0QD00mQDOI06QQOI0QQ0iIQQOioIo~0DBiQQ~000DQQ6Q00I0QQe000IUoo OODO~00090OQ0QII~0togoQ*oDQOoo000 BOOK REVIEW The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics Edited by Edwin G. Dolan / Sheed, Andrews & McMeel / I12.00 Howard Dickman The Austrian School, the most distinguished and least known group of free market economists in the last hundred years, may be staging a comeback...
...Take the case of the Bavarian Inn beer garden, located down by the Gravois Street where it runs together mit Arsenal...
...for that one must turn to the magna opera, von Mises' Human Action or Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State...
...They began here more than a century ago and reached a peak in the 1880s and The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 31 Gay '90s...
...Recently, however, the distinguished and orthodox neo-classicist Sir John Hicks intimated that Hayek's business cycle theory may contain important truths for the current pickle the Western market economies are in...
...Why, there was a time when there were so many beer gardens in St...
...He tapped the first keg of beer in the saloon, polkaed with the best of the beer gardeners, and started the horseshoe tournaments that were popular out in.the garden in the '30s and '40s...
...But those who drink beer, think beer--as one sage once murmured--and modern drinkers at least can still ponder the wonders of their favorite brews under the stars in South St...
...An old German by the name of Pete Bly opened it as a tavern after the spectre of Prohibition disapBeer Gardens peared in 1933...
...It is seen in the productivity of active members, by their ability to gain an audience in, and the allegiance of, the rising generation of scholars...
...Louis, then operated a small tavern before buying the Inn in 1963...
...He converted the backyard of the restaurant into a beer garden a year later and has drawn hundreds of customers on every summer night since then...
...The three~ day Bavarian rests at the park offered thousands of pig knuckles, liver sausages, and the best of wursts...
...Louis that we'd stumble out of one and just follow the sounds of oompah bands to the next...
...And the older the beer gardeners, the more of those cavorting spots there used to be...
...Moreover, the essayists carve up many sacred cows which have too long been allowed to wander unmolested along the avenues of public discourse...
...Louis--it can handle 350 persons easily--but the oldest is probably Delisa's Bungalow Beer Garden, an unlikely name for a backyard spot that has kept some of the same customers for 40 years...
...If so, then the crucial investment component (capital goods like machines, buildings, inventory, etc...
...Economics, emphasize the contributors, is a deductive science that studies the logical implications of purposeful, value-directed human action...
...Kirzner and Lachmann argue in an ingenious if somewhat abstruse pair of essays that the "nation's" capital stock cannot ever be consistently measured (except when the economy is in the unreachable state of final equilibrium...
...the misconceptions of aggregative constructs and mathematical economics as tools of economic theory...
...Herman Eisele, the owner, hails from a little town on the Neckar River, not far outside of old Heidelberg...
...If they won, they come to the beer garden to celebrate...
...now it is getting international recognition...
...The "Beer Barrel Polka" is the most popular tune, but the Polka Toppers players have enough other old standards up their sleeves to keep the weekend singers hoarse...
...O O O Q I O O O I Q I Q O O O O O I O Q O Q O g l g O U Q Q O Q Q Q Q D O 6 Q Q I O I 6 1 0 Q l I Q . . . . Q I ~ O t I Q O . . . . Q O O U Q g I O O U I Q m O O O B O Q Q O D Q Q I Q l I O . . . . O O I ~ Q O O J Q Q O I Q Q t Q O Q t O B g Q O O Q J Q O O D I O I O Q ~ Q l I ~ Q Q O O I O 6 Q THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES by Robert Koenig Suds under the Stars" The South St...
...But the vitality of an academic school cannot be judged by the dazzling brilliance of older (or deceased) theoreticians...
...professor at Dartmouth and author of TANSTAAFL, a popular, free-marketoriented fiook on the economics of environmental issues), The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics is based largely on the proceedings of a Conference on Austrian Economics held in 1974 at Royalton College, Vermont...
...Thousands of malt lovers packed Lemp's Park--near the present site of the Falstaff brewery--during summer months for a huge beer garden atmosphere...
...Eise!e worked for a brewery after coming to St...
...The sudsy groves took a hard right from Prohibition and a left hook from anti-German sentiment during the two World Wars, and then--before they could get off the canvas--were smacked square in the jaw by the advent of airconditioning...
...Stars such as Carlotta Maconda, Grace von Smddiford, and the unforgettable Lillian Grub thrilled the hearts of revelers at the renowned Uhrig's Cave, a brewery adjunct that seated 3,500 persons in a man-made cave lined with potted palms and candles...
...The conference attracted some fifty participants who heard Professors Murray Rothbard (Polytechnic Institute of New York), Israel Kirzner and Ludwig Lachmann (both of New York University), and others deliver a baker's dozen papers on issues such as the proper methodology of economic science...
...The place was once a ramshackle house that used to be feared as haunted by neighborhood children...
...But their laments tend to fall mostly on deaf ears nowadays, when disco-crazy youngsters seem to think beer gardens are plots where brewers grow beer plants...
...In fact, the tournaments grew so popular that players warred nearly every day with the iron shoes, and the metallic sound of horseshoe-on-ring echoed through those streets far into the night...
...Rothbard and Kirzner demonstrate why the failure to follow "methodological individualism" consistently results in an illegitimate use of holistic constructs and mathematically functional relationships as tools of economic theory and explanation...
...Attempts to revive the grand old traditions had some success in the 1930s, but the golden age was over, and the oompah bands were forced to tone down when the Nazis came to power in Germany...
...Delisa's improbable appellation comes from the names of its present owners--Dean (Dino) and Liselotta (Lisa) Gable...
...Messrs...
...Samuelson, Friedman, et al...
...The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics is not'a systematic, textbook exposition of Austrian (or free-market) theory...
...may have quite a tussle on their hands in the battle to win academic friends and influence public policy...
...Perhaps the great beer gardens are things of the past, victims of modernity's onslaught...
...It has enough chairs and benches to seat 60 persons, enough concrete-block barbeque pits to serve a good-sized picnic, and an old juke box taking the place of the traditional oompah band...
...In some ways, the music here is more German than it is in Germany," Said Mrs...
...Here, most of the customers just go inside...
...To these papers Dolan adds an essay of his own, "Austrian Economics as Extraordinary Science," an intellectual Baedeker for the entire conference proceedings and a survey of our current economic policy landscape...
...Louis newspaperman in the wet year of 1933 could reminisce: "It is now a popular diversion for the older generation to sit in their homes or local cafes quaffing cool steins of a newfound freedom, and to recall another time when St...
...Edited by Edwin G. Dolan (economics Howard Dickman is a graduate student in history at the University of Michigan...
...The Bavarian Inn may be the largest beer garden in South St...
...Other essays attack headlong the venerable God of the Marketplace, Gross National Product...
...Bly, whose English vocabulary didn't go much beyond "Hi" and "Sure," slapped together a few boards for tables and rounded up a group of chairs about two years later--and the beer garden began...
...In fact, some of the beer gardens became local meeting places for the pro-German Bund movement, and were subsequently raided by local authorities...
...Louis...
...Louis Germans on the sentimental topic of beer gardens, and the laments last for hours...
...They find the latter two "ideal constructs" distinctly less than ideal...
...In the old days, people must not have had good hearing...
...Lachmann and Kirzner continue in this vein, opposing the individualistic theory of "market process" (decentralized decision-making and voluntary exchange in the real world of imperfect knowledge and ever-changing tastes) to the collectivistic "equilibrium analysis" and one of its more preposterous children, "perfect competition...
...Even in South St...
...Louis Globe-Democrat...
...Eisele's customers may be timid in the rain, but they are a wild bunch of revelers when it's hot...
...The one remaining horseshoe court in the beer garden is now overgrown with weeds, for the sports that draw the modern crowds are amateur softball and volleyball...
...But there is the natural air-conditioning of cool breezes...
...In the 1930s, conventional economists chose the Keynesian rather than the Hayekian diagnosis of and prescription for the Depression...
...People love to dance and sing outdoors --that's the secret of beer gardens," another customer explains...
...The demise of beer gardenry is a favorite topic of many of the old-timers at the lounge--but even those faithful customers have little conception of how rich the history of St...
...They don't play much besides modern music there nowadays...
...Beer gardens...
...The ballplayers aren't bothered by the bad weather," Gable quips...
...There's no air-conditioning, that's true...
...If it snows, it snows--the Germans still stay and drink their beer...
...Beer gardens are more popular in Robert Koenig is a staff writer for the St...
...But this book is a very good introduction...
...It was nothing but dirt roads around here, back then," reminisces 95-year-old William Atmether, a steady customer...
...But Prohibition closed most of the beer gardens for a decade, so that a St...
...This is where economic reasoning properly begins, and not with the fashionable view that economics is the study of how "society" allocates "its" resources...
...That beer garden was nothing but some tables in a pile of weeds, and this place looked like an old barn...
...The neighbors complain every time a door slams around here-that's why we don't have a band," Gable grumbles...
...the meaning of valuefree social research...
...At that time, most of the large beer gardens in the city had achieved a national reputation...
...Louis If you listen to the old-timers, not much is as good as it used to be...
...they'll ask with a wistful shake of the head...
...Anne Noenning, a regular customer...
...Aggregates and econometric tools have a place in historical research and business forecasting, adds Dolan, but only causal, individual-based theory can explain economic behavior...
...The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics contains papers by working Austrian scholars, and is an indication of such vitality, as is a series of companion volumes sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies in Menlo Park, California--the "Studies in Economic Theory...
...You don't see any cigarette smoke out here...
...Though Ludwig yon Mises died in 1973 without receiving the honors due him, his most illustrious student, Friedrich A, Hayek, was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economic Science a year later...
...If they lost, they come to drown their s o r r o w s . ' ' Delisa's Bungalow Beer Garden is in a modest little corner of land, set apart from sidewalks only by a picket fence...
...Louis beer gardens is...
...The old fellow ought to know...
...If it rains, it rains...
...Louis, where the malty odor from Anheuser-Busch, one of the largest breweries in the world, permeates the air, the Silver Age of beer gardens has tarnished...
...of national income accounts and macro32 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977...
...Kirzner shows in particular how only the "market process" approach makes entrepreneurship and advertising intelligible and necessary for the operation of the free market...
...Socalled because its founder, Carl Menger, and the first few generations of his students were Viennese, the school has long been international...
...Louis abounded in attractive spots where beer could be sipped to musical entertainment from grand operas to vaudeville...
...Once the old-time bands begin to oompah their way through polkas and the like, excited grandmas start dancing their improvised versions of established steps, tables full of middleaged couples sway their beer steins, and out-of-tune drinkers start singing the old songs...
...Germany, mostly because the people there don't mind sitting outside--no matter what the weather is," Eisele concedes...
...Renowned operas such as I Pagliaeei received their American debuts in Schnaider's beer garden, while people from all over America visited the Cherokee Garden for its famous scbmierkaese-cottage cheese...
...The spirit of the old hop groves declined to a point about 15 years ago when nearly all of the gardens had disappeared, transformed into parking lots or some other profitable function...
...Before that, it was "Joe and Jim's" and, even earlier, "JimoLou's...
...But a few remain, and some old-timers envision a resurgence around the corner...
...But get a few of the old South St...
...The conferees surveyed the basic tenets of their theory, exposed the fallacies of competing views, and indicated future research problems...
...the meaning of capital and money...
...and the challenges Austrian theory poses to current macroeconomic policy...
Vol. 10 • February 1977 • No. 5
