COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND RATES. C. W. FEIGENSPAN, Chairman. J. GEO. JUNG... WILLIAM UIHLEIN. HUGH F. Fox. .2 Freeman St., Newark, N. J. 13th & Cherokee Sts., St. Louis, Mo. ...2019 Elm St., Cincinnati, Ohio 3rd & Galena Sts., Milwaukee, Wis. 7th & Sycamore Sts., Evansville, Ind. Secretary. 109 East 15th St., New York City REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIFTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE United States Brewers' Association HELD IN BOSTON, MASS., AT THE COPLEY-PLAZA HOTEL SEPTEMBER 19 AND 20, 1912. FIRST DAY. (THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19.) The Fifty-second Convention was called to order at 10:00 A. M., by Mr. James R. Nicholson, President of the Brewers' Association of Massachusetts, who said: Gentlemen of the United States Brewers' Association: When we learned here in Massachusetts that your Association had voted to accept the invitation which we had extended to you to hold your Convention in this city, the pleasure we felt was increased by the thought that you were to come here during the term of office of our present Mayor. We knew that with the present incumbent in office, you would be assured of a friendly, cordial and eloquent greeting. We were pleased that you were coming here at this time and would have an opportunity of meeting our Mayor, who has done so much to extend the fame of Boston, who has inaugurated and promoted so many movements contributing to its growth and progress and to enhancing its reputation and standing throughout the world. We are pleased that you are to be welcomed by one who, through his mental attainments, his great ability, his untiring energy, has made an actuality of his own alliterative phrase, “A bigger, busier, better Boston." It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the Hon. John F. Fitzgerald, Mayor of Boston. (Applause.) MAYOR FITZGERALD:-Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is with a great deal of pleasure that I find myself privileged this morning to extend to you officially the welcome of this great city. I do not think you could go to any city on this continent, if you were but given the time, and enjoy yourselves more than you will in Boston during the two or three days' sojourn with us. I am personally pleased, because I have tried for a great many yearsunsuccessfully until the present time-to induce my old-time friend, Col. Jacob Ruppert, to come and spend a couple of days with me here. It was my good fortune to be associated with him in Congress some twelve or fourteen years ago, and we began a friendship at that time which has ripened until now. I have told him repeatedly, when I have gone to see him in the great city of New York, that we would be very much pleased if he would come over for a few days, and that I would show him the inside of Boston -not perhaps as the Mayor of New York could, because they give the Mayor there charge of the police-(laughter and applause)—I am glad I haven't got it, in view of recent events. (Laughter.) So Mr. Ruppert is here, at last, and I am very glad that your organization is headed by such a splendid type of man, because I think it means everything to an organization like this that it should be properly led. You gentlemen are of course aware of the fact that men in your business do not receive the greatest favor in the world at the hands of most legislative assemblies, and when in the Congress of the United States and in the Legislature of Massachusetts, or in the Legislature of New York, you are asking a simple matter of justice, which appeals, as justice, to the good sense and fairmindedness of the average legislator, he is so afraid that he is going to be criticized by unfair and narrow-minded men, that he just simply sits in his seat and lets you get what is coming to you. (Applause.) I do not think I could better illustrate this than by citing an incident which occurred while I was in Washington, serving with Mr. Ruppert. The question of the sale of liquor in the Philippine Islands came up, at the time those Islands were absorbed by the United States, and then it arose on the question of prohibition in Porto Rico, when Porto Rico was taken over by the United States, and Mr. Littlefield, who is now a distinguished citizen of New York, and was at that time a representative from the State of Maine, introduced a resolution calling for the enactment of laws which would mean prohibition in the Philippine Islands, if it were passed, and he made a speech in support of it. There did not seem to be anybody willing to take the opposite side and tell what prohibition meant. It looked as though the resolution was going right through, and I stood up and told what I thought would be the result if prohibition were enacted as a law for the Philippine Islands. There we were, just absorbing that 'great domain-there was not a man in the House of Representatives who had ever set his foot in the country, or who knew anything about the conditions in the Islands or the personal habits of the inhabitants—and we were willing to put prohibition in force there, so far as the action of that House of Representatives was concerned. I told the House what I knew of prohibition in this country. I happened to know something about the conditions in the State of Maine; I had summered there. I knew how the prohibition law worked in Mr. Littlefield's own city of Rockland; I was there campaigning the year before. I pictured Maine-Rockland, and Portland, and Bath, and Brunswick, and Bangor-with open saloons, and the kind of liquor they were drinking, which I said no man in the House and there were some pretty good judges of liquor there— would dare to taste. (Laughter). I spoke for about ten or fifteen minutes, and Mr. Littlefield was simply rattled when the truth was presented to him, and I succeeded in having the resolution laid aside. I called attention at the time to the hypocrisy of the men in that assembly, though they were my colleagues, who were willing that prohibition should be placed on the statute books, as far as the Philippine Islands were concerned, though there were millions of men in those Islands who had just become part of the nation and were entitled to fair treatment at our hands. It was a splendid lesson for the members of that assembly, and it should be your policy to take care that the law-makers of State and Nation are correctly informed as to your business, the character of the men engaged in it, the amount of capital involved, the kind of men who are in organizations like this, having as its object to see that the business is properly conducted, and to let it be known that most of the people of the world want to drink beer, under proper circumstances and conditions, and that the law which permits that to be done, leads to the largest amount of happiness and is the best possible kind of government. (Applause.) That is the personal word I give you. By doing this, as I have said, much can be accomplished. Mr. Ruppert was a tower of strength to your interests in Congress, because he conversed with those men who had an altogether different impression and who were willing to go the other way, simply because the votes were there. And therefore, it seems to me that in your respective districts you ought to make it your business to cultivate the acquaintance and association of men in public life, so that when the interests of the ` public are at stake you will have men with the courage of their convictions to stand up and tell the truth. Take the conditions in Maine today. I was up there two or three weeks ago. It is one of the most beautiful countries on the face of God's earth, and there are five hundred thousand automobilists from all over this country at the present time who would be only too glad to go through the State of Maine but for its miserable roads. If you were to start from Boston for Portland today, you would not find a finer trip in the country, as far as natural scenery is concerned. Maine's woods are filled with game, her rivers with fish, her mountains and seashore attract the eye of everyone who loves natural beauty, but the condition of the roads in Maine is such that the automobilists cannot go there. I wrote to my good friend Governor Plaisted a couple of years ago and told him that if the Local Option bill were passed and the prohibition statute repealed, he could raise two million dollars a year in license fees. We raise, in the city of Boston alone, something over a million and a half dollars from license fees, and I figured that the State of Maine could raise two million dollars a year, and in five years Maine, with the expenditure of ten million dollars, would be a haven for the automobilists. That proposition was put before the people of the State of Maine a year ago, and it was defeated. I was over in Portland a few weeks ago, and visited one of the big hotels—the biggest in the place—and I went down to the bar with a friend of mine who could not believe the situation he saw before his eyes. I had said to him, "Come down here and let |