THE BREWER AND THE FARMER. Perhaps nothing was more interesting in the reports of the year's activities than what the Brewers' Association has accomplished, and aims to further accomplish, in the work of improving the crops of the American farmer. Everybody who has ever probed the high cost of living has discovered that much of the fault lies at the door of the farmer, who is not fulfilling his duty of feeding the nation. The popularity of city life has beaten the farm in the competition for followers, and even the farmers now tilling the soil are not getting from it all that they might with more intelligence and a reasonable proportion of science. The work of the Crop Improvement Committee, under the joint patronage of the brewers and the several grain exchanges, has already accomplished wonders in the way of stirring up interest and pointing the way to improvement. Farmers may have considered themselves well off in their barley crops, but when the brewers report barley crops of twice their requirements, but only half of it suitable for use, it is evident the breeding of better quality is important. To that end the great crop States have been furnished better seed, the farmers told how to select seed for fertility and quality and introduced into the mystery of grain pedigree, with tremendous improvement. The committee claims that they can prove to the farmers that raising 80cent barley will pay better returns for acreage and labor than dollar wheat. Then, again, when it is found that brewers are forced to import hops, while great stretches of hop land are uncultivated or with poor quality, they are evidently pointing another road to prosperity for the farmer. The recent invention of a picking machine which can reduce the price of hops 20 per cent. already is another great step forward in pushing the crop resources of the American farmer. THE MODEL BREWERY. [From the Boston Traveler.] In the Pierce building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology there is now on exhibition a model brewery. By observing it in operation Bostonians may learn just how it is that the beverage against which so much has been said and written is manufactured in this age of science. The model brewery has been installed in connection with the convention here of the United States Brewers' Association, and its presence in the Institute of Technology is significant of the vast change that has been effected in the attitude of the public toward the men who constitute what it used to be the fashion to call the "liquor interests." The modern tendency is not to condemn without inquiry, and the brewers now meeting here at the invitation of the Chamber of Commerce have taken full advantage of this tendency to show that they are, in their way, workers for temperance. However one may feel personally on the "liquor question," one cannot withhold due respect from these men who have put their giant business on a scientific footing. They meet here, as any other great manufacturers meet in convention, to discuss the best methods of manufacture and sales, to learn how they may encourage the farmer in the production of the best grains and the maximum yield, to find out how they may co-operate with the moral forces in their respective communities—in short, to demonstrate that the business of brewing may be conducted on a dignified and worthy plane. It is needless to recount the measures that the brewers have taken to suppress the "dive" and the brothel by refusing to supply their product to places that have been shown to be demoralizing. Aside from its ethical phase this action has been "good business." There may come a time when Americans will lose all taste far beer. But that will be long after it has been proved without possibility of refutation that the moderate use of beer is harmful. That time is not yet, for beer has been a "popular" beverage ever since primitive man first learned to crush meal between rude stones and ferment the malt with an admixture of water. The model brewery at Tech is an interesting exhibit, and even total abstinence advocates would do well to see it and to learn from seeing it something more than is commonly known about the scientific and commercial side of brewing. CONSTRUCTIVE REFORM WORK. The New York Journal of Commerce thus refers to the work of the United States Brewers' Association to make the beer trade thoroughly respectable and less under the ban of prejudice: Much of its work of the past few years has been along this line -trying to discourage disorder and lax morality of the saloon; trying to put higher class merchants in charge of the beer business; working for more effective, but perhaps more liberal legislation and control in the liquor license business; seeking to get out of politics; promoting better crops of barley and hops; aiding in the cause of pure food; helping rid the landscape of objectionable beer signs on saloons and always striving to merit and secure the acceptance of the industry and business as a legitimate part of the national commerce. When a business dates back to the days of the Mayflower and has attained a magnitude of 63,000,000 barrels a year it would appear that making it and keeping it respectable and conserving for it a square deal in public opinion might be a legitimate and useful work for a national trade association and that it might justify some encouragement in the mercantile world, whether one is a consumer of its product or not. Unfortunately for the brewer, the sale of his product has long been associated with bad company, and the relative innocence of beer has been besmirched by its companionship with drunkenness, misery, poverty and crime with which it had little or no part. With the testimony of Europe at hand-where beer is a family beverage, as harmless as any other drink—the brewers really present a rather strong case against public prejudice as having consigned them to an association they would gladly abandon. If the intelligent policies of the association for reform inward and promoting charitable tolerance outward—are persisted in and as energetically pushed as in the past year or two, it would appear as though the brewery trade is "looking up." Admitting the Truth. REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON TEMPERANCE OF GENERAL "When all allowances are made for false and garbled statements, deliberate falsehoods, and misleading charges, the fact remains that there is an alarming increase in the use of alcoholic liquors in the United States as a whole. Only harm can result from deceiving the public by charts which indicate a rapid advance in temperance legislation and by boastful statements about making 'the map all white,' while we are doing nothing of the kind.”—Evening Post, N. Y. City, 5-23-11. The Public Be-Dry! CERTAIN RAILROADS FORCED TO INCONVENIENCE THEIR PATRONS. Following the action of the Pennsylvania Railroad forbidding the sale of liquors on the dining cars of its lines east of Pittsburgh, it is said that the Baltimore and Ohio will abolish the sale of liquors on its dining cars in the near future. The Reading Railway Company has stopped the sale of liquors on all its lines in Pennsylvania. The Anti-Saloon League is credited with having brought the railroads to this state of mind. The State Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of New Jersey has sent to the heads of the passenger departments of the railroads running through that State a letter declaring that the sale of liquor on trains while in New Jersey renders the railroad men aboard them liable to arrest for misdemeanor. The Lackawanna road has decided to stop the sale of liquor on its trains within the State limits, and it is probable that in the near future there will be no liquor sold at all on these trains, even outside of New Jersey. A protest is voiced by the New York Sun against the weakness of the railroad companies in thus yielding to the demand of a fanatical minority. Says the Sun: "No doubt the intemperately temperance people would be delighted if they could exclude whisky, beer, champagne and all sorts of such wicked things from trains all over the country. Result -a man who was accustomed to take a little wine for his stomach's sake at luncheon and dinner, and possibly between, to oblige a friend, would view a trip to California with horror. Tea and coffee at the wrong time would be poor substitutes. "A great improvement in land travel was brought about when the sleeping car was invented. The supreme virtue of the new contrivance lay in this, that persons going long distances could keep up in a way the ordinary routine of life. They lounged in a drawing room, took their meals in cheerful surroundings and went to bed in comparative comfort. But discomfort is the aim and object of our reformers. Comfort is all wrong. Habits are bad. People must be broken of them, for the time at any rate. So why should not these innovators gratify their meddling propensity by insisting that passengers be compelled to sit up all night, dine out of luncheon baskets and travel only in ordinary cars?" As smoking is associated in the minds of many with drinking, the Sun argues that an effort will doubtless be made to remove it as an evil comfort to the flesh that must be mortified at any cost! |