Tonic for Sale

Come, come, come and make eyes with me,

Under the Anheuser Busch; Come, come drink some Budweis' with me

Under the Anheuser Busch; Hear the old German band!

(Ach, Du Lieber Augustine!) Just let me hold your hand (Ja!). Do, do, come and have a beer or tivo

Under the Anheuser Busch.

Stacked in cases in what is left of the Pabst brewery (Milwaukee) have been thousands of bottles of medicinal malt tonic. Last week permits to make and sell the tonic were issued by the prohibition section of the Treasury Department to Pabst of Milwaukee and AnheuserBusch of St. Louis. Professional Anti-Saloon League furor ensued, and thus the names of two firms, once household words, flickered in U. S. minds which had almost buried them in subconscious limbo.

Except for the two classic names. there was nothing to warrant excitement. In the first place, the malt tonic is unpotable. While it contains 3.5% alcohol, it also contains 25% solid. One slimy gulp of it is unpleasant, two are unspeakable, three unthinkable. In the second place, the permits granted were only temporary, and if U. S. ingenuity finds ways of using the tonic as a base for soul-satisfying beer, the permits will be, according to General Lincoln C. Andrews, speedily withdrawn.

These facts to the contrary, notwithstanding, the morbid or wholesome craving for alcoholic content created a big, quick demand. Pabst began shipments. August A. Busch announced that Anheuser-Busch could not ship for several months. Small druggists will be. limited to five cases a week, big druggists to 25. Twelve-ounce bottles will cost about 35-c-. At 50-c-, drug store clerks in Minneapolis were the first to pass them out. Sale in Manhattan followed several days later. In Indiana, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union became hectic, threatening that "our Congress will impeach General Andrews and even Mr. Mellon." In no state was the President directly attacked.

The Chicago Tribune lugubriously pointed out that if prohibition will sacrifice health needs to the mere possibility of using a distasteful tonic as beer, the end of the matter might well be the prohibition of the raising of grain, fruit. Simultaneously wise Mark Sullivan (political critic) suggested that the eastern wets were all wrong in advocating "beer and wine" because in the West beer is dreaded as much as anything. The reason for the dread is that beer is associated with saloons. For it was brewers like Pabst and AnheuserBusch who monopolized the saloon business, controlled the licenses, exerted through the saloon an influence on public affairs. As owners of saloons, the beer men were the chief dispensers of hotter drink. Thus that part of the dry population which remembers saloon days, does not easily distinguish between the mildness of beer and the ferocity of gin.