i don't think you would have the risk and other indicators. the system's being played. >> it's something that maybe worthying about. all come forward with varying degrees, the least of all fit. keeping a high degree of confidentiality and discussions prior to interest rate changes and we discovered we could live with a high level of transparency and much better consequences. thank you very much. we may need further exchanges in written form. we're very grateful. thank you very much. >> thank you. next, the radio program back story covers the history of beer and spirtds in america, then a tour of george washington's

whisky distillery at mt. vernon and a lecture on the history of opiates in america from scott martin. next, the history of beer and spirits in america. it's presented by backstory with the american history guys. this was recorded at the annual meeting of historians and national council on public history. it's an hour and 20 minutes. >> are you ready, guys? >> ready. >> plug it in. >> all right. >> hey, on the air, dude. >> major production support for backstory was provided by the national endowment for the humanities. ♪ >> from the virginia foundation

for the humanities in charlottesville, virginia, this is backstory. ♪ >> it is october 8th, 1871. we're in chicago and a fire is spreading. it is a horrible fire. nobody is exactly sure how it started, started in the west side of chicago but it spread incredibly quickly and before long the central district is aflame and by the end of two days, 300 people are dead and 100,000 people are left homeless. >> in the weeks following the great chicago fire, people from all over the country rallied to help the great city, business men in places like boston, new york, and cincinnati sent food and clothing and money and chicago's nearby neighbor to the

north, the city of milwaukee, also pitches in and it sends something else, something that comes with that special milwaukee flavor. ♪ >> the beer that made milwaukee famous simply because it taste so good. >> that ad in case it is not clear to you is not from 1871. it is from 90 years later. >> my period. >> why are we playing this? well, it is because that tag you heard at the end of the jingle, the beer that made milwaukee famous, hard as it may be to believe, it wasn't because schlitz tasted so good. or at all. that's not what first made its hometown famous beyond its

borders. it was because in the wake of the great fire joseph schlitz donated thousands of barrels of beer to chicago, all of chicago's breweries were wiped out in the fire. this was brilliant marketing, a true loss leader. >> today on backstory we're coming to you from the city that was made famous by schlitz, we're in milwaukee, at the 2012 annual meeting of the organization of american historians and the national council on public history. which in case you haven't noticed, guys, means we're surrounded by a lot of people who know more history than us. >> fortunately we're used to that. >> true. >> but not all in one place which is intimidating so hello, milwaukee. >> great to see you. >> hey, milwaukee. >> yay!

>> all right. big surprise. our theme for today's show is, guess what, americans relationship with beer. and drinking in general. as we do in each week on our radio show, we'll be bouncing around through the centuries trying to see what a trans- historical approach to the subject like alcohol might reveal about other aspects of american life. as always, i, peter onuf will represent the 18th century, ed the 19th century. >> and i, will be toasting the 20th century. to kick things off, i want to go back to your period, peter, and just a few basic questions. we want to know who was drinking. i want to know what they were drinking and, hold on, i want to know mainly how much were they

drinking? >> you should have asked who wasn't drinking. would have been a short show. we could have shut down right now. they're drinking everything. you might even say that this is the golden age, guys, the 18th century for alcohol in america. actually, it is not a very nice century to be honest, but if -- >> call it home. >> if you're into alcohol, you have all kinds. have you pear trees, paris coming from pear trees, apples, cider, home brew, small beer only 1%, you have to drink a lot to get wasted, and you have rum. you have various distilled fruit drinks and basically you also have dirty water. i ask you as a sensible healthy american which way will you go? you will drink the chesapeake area, think of the tide water area, you died, and they did, and they deserved to and we're not going to get -- >> that's not endorsed by

backstory. >> more about the virginian at the time. >> it is ubiquitous. that's the first point to make. it is incorporated into the daily lives of all americans. it is not good to be totally wildly drunk and preachers will rail against that, but they don't blame it on demon rum. that's ed's century, all mystical about it. if you choose to get drunk, it is, well, it used to be a free country. that's what we say about ourselves now. it is your choice. it is a question of will. this is not an addiction. it is not a disease, it is just your choice and of course there is enough social regulation and longstanding colonial areas that it can be reasonably orderly and, yeah, there is some disapproval but by in large i want to give you an example what my second favorite founding father said about alcohol in --

that would be benjamin franklin and his drinker's dictionary printed in 1737, and what franklin does, and this demonstrates how accepted drinking was because he lists more than 200 synonyms for being drunk and we're going to give you a sample of that. we have a few very brave audience members who were doing a little drinking before the show, and so they're ready to go. >> that's how we got them, peter. >> they volunteered to do sampling of the beer and to give us a sample from franklin's dictionary. are you ready out there, volunteers? >> we're ready. >> go for it. >> he is afflicted. he is in his airs. he has been at barbados. his head is full of bees. >> he has been too free with the creature.

he is fishy, foxed, fud led. footed. been to france. >> he is glad, globular, loose in the hits, clips the king's english and sees two moons. >> pigeon-eyed, punky, pridy, as good conditioned as a puppy. >> in the suds, staggerish, he carries too much sail, stewed, soaked, soft, been too free with sir john strawberry. >> double tongued, swallowed a tavern token, makes virginia fence. >> does that sound like fun? yay! all right. >> thank you, volunteers. >> thank you very much. >> it was so hard to get them here from the 18th century. spared no expense. >> everybody is drinking all the time. well, maybe about five gallons per capita of alcohol per every

person, man, woman and child. it is hard to know because some of it -- so much is brewed at home, distilled at home and not yet a big business. all that other stuff happens in ed's century. i am sorry, i didn't mean -- >> it is all right. >> there is growing concern as the revolution approaches of nobody knows this, of course, be like historians, they don't know it but there is a growing concern about drinking in certain areas. one of the things is that the taverns are crowded with lots of people and including a future patriots and they have been squeezed out of the legislature so what else are they going to do? they'll have a drink about it. but there is some concern. maybe there is too much drinking and too much rowdiness in the cities and the mob that is the patriots use in order to overthrow the old regime, well, they could be potentially dangerous force so there is

concern about drinking on the frontier, drinking in newly settled areas, sailors, of course, notorious because they have to drink. it is part of their job. so we have a revolution, right? >> and since the revolution basically fixed everything that was wrong in america, that must have ended after that alcohol consumption declined? >> absolutely, a new world began in 1776, right? wrong. >> it is all the time we have. >> i have news for you and i want to share it with our friends out here, and that is, well, my people in the 18th century, they were concerned about regulation, about moderation, about maybe there is some excessive drinking. well, it is a free country. it was a free country, and american democrats, they're going to drink. they're going to drink. you're not going to be able to impose any order on them. guess what? by 1830 this is, talk about a golden age. >> 1830.

>> the drunkest moment in u.s. history. >> my century now. be quiet. >> 7.8 gallons per capita. >> in the 19th century, 1830, so in the early decades of the new nation it kind of goes crazy. >> yeah. >> you wouldn't think you could drink more five gallons of pure alcohol a year. turns out you can. >> and also in drunken stupors. >> no, no. >> it helped political participation. >> it did. what you find, too, of course is this is the time when markets are rapidly expanding, finding the population is rapidly growing and you find a very complex geography of drinking across the country. you have the culture of the eastern cities and you're also finding new cultures in the frontier, down in the south the perpetual frontier of slavery and the plantations and you're finding, too, that right after this huge infusion of

immigrants. >> i am a little confused. this is emerging and things get even worse. how did we ever turn the corner on alcohol to become such a sober and moderate people? >> yes. look at them coming out on a saturday night to listen to radio live. they're very temperate people. >> to watch radio live. >> to watch radio. be clear what these people are doing here right now. >> think about that. >> this is a very serious problem you got, folks, watching radio. >> here is the situation. they didn't know about radio back then. what they did notice is that after it peaks in 1830, alcohol consumption remains remarkably stable across the 19th century. the civil war is a huge catastrophe and what you find is that if you are worried about trying to maintain order in the troops, trying to control that alcohol, but when either confederate or union troops come near a household that they can

appropriate the alcohol they do. afterwards it turns out the consumption of alcohol per capita, it is far better than in your century. >> like half, right? >> it is. it stays stable which is kind of a surprising thing. why would that be? it would have to be in part that people decide to drink less, that maybe they read the words and decided to interpret them. >> what were they drinking, ed? wasn't it harder stuff? >> yeah, yeah, they were drinking harder stuff. >> seems like this is an early triumph of capitalism, that's a big thing here, isn't it? it was the market that brought lots of whiskey for lots of drinkers. it is very american in its progress. >> yeah. >> why didn't that just go on forever? >> well, because people said, you know, we're able to make and market this much alcohol, we better find ways to control it a little bit and so that's a little later in the show. just to keep people wondering,

did america spin into oblivion, no, but something happened along the way. you also found the other sort of counter-veiling pressures came in that people decided maybe we better show up on work on monday and a lot more they did in the 18th century and internalize this. >> we drank on the job in my century. that's the job description, isn't it? >> by the time we handed the baton over the 20th century, we don't do that anymore. >> you have to have sober workers to produce good drink, that what you're saying? >> if you want to produce the alcohol you have to have somebody show up at work. >> one of the contradictions of capitalism. >> you think the story is over because we're drinking less and we're drinking everywhere, but we're drinking less and a lot of the story in the 20th century is how this drinking becomes distilled if you will, and becomes concentrated and

ironically becomes embodied in beer, not in whiskey. >> and beer is good for you relatively speaking. >> it starts out at the beginning of the 20th century as being promoted as helpful. >> especially lager. >> right. >> it is like water and it still is. >> what is not so helpful in the view of many americans is the concentration, the distillation of this drinking in places called saloons. saloons were places that were associated with prostitution, with political corruption, and let me put in a good word for saloons. saloons were key sites for labor organizing. they were basically offices for lots of union leaders who wanted to organize workers and saloons were a safe haven, a way from the view of the boss. when you got your act together

in the 19th century and made sure people didn't show up drunk at work, and probably good thing, they're working with heavy machinery, well, they just started drinking in these saloons. they took their alcohol -- >> that's where they went. >> yeah, yeah, i told you you should read about the 20th century. what worried people as much or almost as much as the problems related to alcoholism, the kind of domestic abuse that it led to, what it did to families, was the fear that this working class was forming, it was forming in uncontrolled places. >> in taverns you had a revolution. >> that was against the bad guys, you see. >> good revolution. >> this would have been against the capitalists, and they were not happy about that. really they didn't need to worry so much. a couple of things happened. first, prohibition came along and absolutely shut down the

saloons. we don't believe in doing things halfway in the 20th century. >> no, no. >> after that you had the great depression. so by the time that breweries got going again, a lot of the local breweries, regional breweries, had really been wiped out, and a lot of those had been supporting those saloons. in fact, 70% of the saloons at the turn of the century had tie-ins as they call it with the big brewers. those connections are severed. what you get is the emergence of these national beer companies that are distributing widely, using things like steel cans in order to distribute the beer, no longer doing it in -- they're bypassing the saloons, and they are pitching their beer to more of a national audience and to be honest, it is kind of generic. they talk about the flavors of

the beer, all of the ads have pictures of women or when we get tv, we have mable that brings us black label and she winks at the end of the commercial. >> they're all too young. >> they can probably find it on youtube. >> i bet you can. it is a very generic thing. in 1971 something truly remarkable happens. advertisers, actually phillip morris, who has bought this beer company to be specific, discover that beer drinkers feel left out, and they start to focus their attention on that beer drinker, on you, the beer drinker, so i want you guys to listen to this jingle. ♪ ♪ if you got the time, we got

the beer, miller beer ♪ ♪ when it is time to relax, beer after beer ♪ ♪ if you got the time, we got the beer, miller beer ♪ >> so if you have the time, and they're appealing to all kinds of americans who are really at the peak post world war ii earning years. they're getting more fringe benefits. they have more leisure time and miller would like them to have endless leisure time because they have the beer and they can drink beer after beer, and it is not just miller. the bud slogan right after this -- >> if this bud's for you, i don't want it. >> whatever you do, this bud's for you. >> what happens to the working guy and his beer?

>> we know the only real working guy here is ed ayers. >> yes. >> only because he is a university president. >> that's right. >> average old university president. >> turns out that not everybody buys this idea of everybody has all the time and they have all the beer, and in 1973 one of the biggest hits in the country addressed this issue head on in sort of a fearless way and johnny russells timeless classic red necks, white socks and blue ribbon beer that we need to hear a little bit of right now. >> seemed to be two cities there in white socks and blue ribbon beer. >> you will have to sing it, ed. >> you know, that is a really a horrifying prospect to think about. what it was suggesting is that this whole message that we're just one big class and it is for

you, whatever you do, kind of a sham, and in fact that there is a place to get the bars that you can hear the record on the needle there. i don't know if we're going to hear it there. >> hold on. ♪ a drunk at the bar is getting snoez noisy and mean ♪ ♪ some guy on the phone says i will be home soon, dear ♪ ♪ red necks, white socks and blue ribbon beer ♪ ♪ we don't fit in with that white collar crowd ♪ ♪ we're a little too rowdy and a little too loud ♪ ♪ there is no place that i would rather be than right here with my red neck, white socks and blue ribbon beer ♪ >> red, white and blue. >> i got the white collar.

that's what i got. >> yeah. >> i have the blue shirt. >> i happen to be wearing one. which is unfortunate. >> what this suggests is we have come full circle the way that alcohol is tied into the social order. highly different before, marketers try to act as if there's one big market. comes back out and suggests don't fool us, alcohol is still deeply coated in every american way. you know, all of this talk about beer is kind of has me thirsty. pbr would be good. >> yeah. >> i think that we're so fortunate tonight to have a special guest. brian, you can tell us about it. >> she actually unlike us is an expert on beer. we have with us tonight lucy saunders. welcome, lucy. >> yay, lucy.

>> a short introduction. i know in milwaukee lucy needs no introduction. lucy is an award-winning food writer here in milwaukee whose books include cooking with beer, grilling with beer, are you picking up on a theme? best of american beer and food and i am dying to ask if lucy is currently working on a book called microwaving with beer. please help me welcome lucy, a round of applause, historian. >> thank you so much. actually, peter, this beer is for you. this is a beer -- >> we didn't know that you had any that we could drink. >> all right, peter. >> all right. >> crack that baby open. >> all right. time to salute the flag. red, white and blue. >> for the radio audience out

there, peter, what have you done. >> this is 24 fluid ounces. it means for any group of three history guys, have you eight ounces each, and it is an enormous pabst blue ribbon. >> a tall boy. >> a tall boy? wow. we're drinking my century now, is that right? >> it predates your century, the 18th century. >> there is no earlier century. >> this would be an example of a 16th century beer style, a dark, and they were the liquid bread brewed for nutrition during the fasting season of lent on monasteries and there is lots of speculation about the origins of lager yeast, lager yeast differing from ale yeast by being bottom fermenting, and really what you see is a beautiful dark --

>> you can't even see through it. >> it is mahogany. >> describe this to the radio audience. >> it is a deep mahogany. it looks so tasty. i wonder what it tastes like. >> please do. cheers. welcome to the beer portion. >> radio audience, we're now drinking the beer many in small, tasteful -- >> some of us have finished our beers. >> is this some kind of competition? >> and some of us are helping out the radio show by describing what we're doing and not thinking about it myself. >> this is remarkably good. >> it is remarkably good. it is actually -- >> this doesn't come from the 17th century. >> no. this is a beer style that was resuscitated by spruker in milwaukee county. in glendale. it is a popular german beer style. a seasonal beer. >> they would have brought this with them had they came to

wisconsin? >> they would have brought this with them. >> we made this into an american beer and took the best of the old world and gave it new life. >> it is giving us new life. >> the german brewers in milwaukee in the 19th century, there were many, many breweries here, and i would say that the bachs and brown ales, everything was dark but starting in the middle of the 19th century two things happened. refrigeration was widely adopted, and clear glass could be mass manufactured, and so suddenly the color of beer became much more important. a bavarian brewer -- >> i can see that in the twist off. >> they didn't have twist off. i have here example from another milwaukee brewer, the lake front brewery and it is a pilsner. it is a lovely, soft, straw gold. >> and this would have been -- >> are we going to share

glasses? >> no. >> we don't usually drink on the show. >> right, right. question of protocol here. >> there you go. >> as a matter of fact, i am knowing less history by the second. take that into account. >> we'll cover it in the q&a. >> the pilsner style, the lager, really was an invention that came about in the 19th century with the advent of the varum, the bottom fermenting lager yeast, and they use a hops that are grown in that borderline area between germany and the czech republic, the lovely saw hops. very floral. >> i am confused. did americans surely play some pioneering role in developing beer, did we not. >> that actually happened in the

70s. >> 1970s? >> i will drink to that. >> all right. >> before prohibition you could find many different beer styles. there were richer, special dark styles, many different styles of beer, and after prohibition there were so few brewery that is opened, we went from having more than 2,000 to just a bit over 700 breweries after prohibition. >> right. >> so the changing tastes evolved with a marketing of beer as something lighter, more enjoyable, and increasingly marketed to women. we were talking about that. it's actually true. she knows this stuff. >> for example, here in milwaukee, alice chalmers during the war years, the work force went from being 3% to women to more than 25% women.