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.Saloons were the primary retail outlet for the distribu-tion of liquor, but people were able to purchase liquor from grocers, drug stores,135 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City 1870-1920, 42.47 Brewing Battles : A History of American Beerand other retail establishments.On-premises sales accounted for the majority ofalcohol consumption.The quintessential saloon, as a distribution outlet, seemed to occur most of-ten in two situations, the frontier town and industrial city.In Chicago therewere more saloons than groceries, butchers, or dry goods stores.Unlicensed es-tablishments such as blind pigs and the ever present kitchen bar provided anadditional 50,000 places for people to drink.The term blind pig described ille-gal establishments which charged admission for viewing an attraction such as asightless animal, and then provided the customer with a free drink.In 1897, therewere more than 215,000 licensed liquor dealers throughout the country.136Wholesale and retail liquor and malt beverage dealers all paid special taxes to the federal government; fees ranged from $25 to $100.137 The states also sup-plied licenses to both dealers and drinking establishments, including saloons.Prior to the 1880s, this fee was nominal, sometimes as low as $10.Beginning in1881, states began legislating high licensing fees, starting at $500 and going up to$1,000.Some states differentiated the fees by the size of the city; others allowedsaloons which only served malt liquor to pay a lesser amount.Thus the stateswere determined to regulate the liquor industry in a way the federal governmentdid not.High license fees also served to intensify competition in the brewing in-dustry: by raising the cost of a saloon doing business it furthered brewing owner-ship of drinking establishments.138The first connection between a brewery and a saloon was usually throughadvertising or the distribution of free products such as glasses, trays, and wallhangings all bearing the company s name and a reduced price for the beer.Inreturn, the saloonkeeper promised to sell only that brewers beer.Saloonkeepersregularly violated these agreements, setting off price wars between the variousbrewers operating in any particular market.139136 Jon Kingsdale, The Poor Men s Club: Social Functions of the Urban Working-Class Saloon, American Quarterly 25 (October 1973): 472.At the turn of the century the United States wasboth urban and rural.California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, for exam-ple, were all more than fifty percent urban.However Wisconsin, which was a large brew-ing center, was only thirty-eight percent urban.America s population in 1900 was almost76,000,000.See U.S.Congress, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, TwelfthCensus of the United States, 1900 (Washington, D.C.) 1901.137 United States, Internal Revenue Service, Annual Report of the Commissioner of InternalRevenue, 57th Cong.1st Sess., House Document, 11 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.InternalRevenue Service, 1901), 4.138 Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, ed.Ernest Cherrington (Westerville, Ohio:American Issue Publishing Company, 1924-30), vol.4, 1541; Nuala McGann Drescher, The Opposition to Prohibition, 1900-1919: A Social and Institutional Study (Ph.D.diss.,University of Delaware, 1964), 13.139 Carl Miller, The Brewer And The Saloonkeeper, under saloons, http://www.beerhistory.com/library/holdings/saloon.shtml, (accessed October 20, 2006).48 Chapter 3.Do As the Romans Do: Drinkers, Saloons, and Brewers, 1880 1898The brewers next moved to financing saloons.Most saloons operated in eth-nic urban neighborhoods; the owner came from the same milieu.Lacking funds toopen a saloon, the would-be owner paid a brewery $200; the brewer paid for thelease and license fees and furnished the bar.The saloonkeeper had to sell only thebrewer s beer and paid a surcharge on each barrel of beer.In 1907, at least eightypercent of New York City s saloons operated under such an arrangement.140Figure 6: Photo courtesy of beerhistory.com
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