This week's installment on historic advertising for Medicinal Bitters is particularly interesting. The Temperance movement was and anti-alcohol crusade led mostly by Protestant Women and groups like the Salvation Army. It was remarkably powerful, resulting in the disastrous Prohibition laws that gave rise to organized crime, tainted liquor, put historic craft breweries and distilleries out business and a terrible erosion of American liberties. Although well meaning, it resulted in broken families as women were encouraged to divorce their drinking husbands and place their children in orphanages run by religious and social institutions associated with the Temperance movement - to get the kids off the farm and into factories. It was used to advance the institutionalization of public education as private schools and home education could not be trusted to teach "Temperance and moral hygiene." It was also a decidedly anti- Immigrant and anti-Catholic movement, portraying European and Irish immigrants as liquor soaked, violent and lazy liabilities to the sober and "progressive" world they hoped to create. They even tried to outlaw Communion wine and make the Catholic Eucharist illegal. As the Temperance Movement grew in fervor, it often resulted in violent attacks on taverns, ethnic stores and organizations. It supported mental institutions in which people lacking the proper "mental hygiene of Temperance" could be institutionalized given shock treatment and sterilized. In the end, those who pledged to combat the "evils of drink" found a "final solution" in eugenics... if the "inferior" Irish, Italians, Jews, Africans and Mexicans (etc... basically anyone not a white, progressive, teetotaler) would not change, they would have to be exterminator. In many ways, the Temperance movement sowed the seeds that would lead to the horrors of World War Two. Fortunately, The Volstead Act was repealed, but the damage could not be undone - there were still more laws, more government regulations and powerful agencies that would only grow and grow in power and scope.... freedom lost is seldom reclaimed.
Now, on a lighter note.... it is not surprising that the brilliant marketers in the Bitters and Patent Medicine industry would capitalize on the Temperance Movement. How better to reach a growing and powerful market and damage their competitors? Here, we have two publications by Vinegar based Bitters, targeting the Temperance movement. Their clientele was women and their advertisements were oriented to female readers of the Victorian era.
The first is absolutely delightful. It is full of poems and folk lore, gardening and household tips that are useful and entertaining.
Our Lady's Book by the R.H. McDonald Drug Company:
https://archive.org/details/b3048053x
The next is stereotypical of Temperance Literature... it is the "Crusade Temperance Almanac", sponsored by Dr. Walker's California Vinegar Bitters. It is full of scary illustrations of monstrous, drunken men abusing their families and stirring calls for women to unite against the evils of drink.
https://archive.org/details/101182272.nlm.nih.gov
Taken together, these promotionals are not only fascinating glimpses into a remarkably influential era, but they are classic fore-runners of the kind of propaganda they would engender. They fall somewhere between the "pamphleteer lighting fires in the readers' minds" and the sophisticated manipulation of Edward Bernays. It runs the gamut from endearing to disturbing.
It is well worth noting that as all this was going on, Jazz was being born in New Orleans.... in the saloons and dance halls of the "red light" district known as Storyville... where dancers drank cocktails made with Peychaud bitters to the sounds of Jelly Roll Morton, Buddy Bolden and King Oliver. I know on whose side I would have been.... tenor banjo in hand. You can't have Sunday morning without Saturday night!
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