Foreword: Individuals in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade generally were not inclined to writing books. The vast majority of distillers, rectifiers, wholesalers and saloonkeepers did not have the time nor the inclination to put pen to paper so busy were they operating their businesses. This post briefly treats four exceptions, each of whose books remain available today.
If your parents named you “Byron,” after the famous British poet, it might be expected that you would have literary inclinations. Byron Veatch indeed did exhibit writing talent, authoring well-received books of fiction in the early 1900s, while at the same time contributing a well-recognized brand of whiskey to the Chicago liquor scene. Veatch, somewhat ingeniously, found a way to combine his literary aspirations with selling liquor.
While carrying on a thriving business called Security Distilling Co., begun in the Windy City in 1904, Veatch was writing stories. His major work, “Men Who Dared,” was issued in 1908 by Homer Harisun & Co, a Chicago publisher. Opening with the motto, “The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,” the book was composed of seven long short stories, all but one with settings in the West or Southwest. They were yarns that provided lots of gunfire and knife play. Although Veatch’s book seems stilted by modern standards of literature, it was the kind of fiction avidly read more than a century ago. 
The book went to at least two editions and Veatch was sufficiently encouraged to extract several stories and publish them separately. “Men Who Dared,” achieved some critical acclaim. The Dial, a noted Chicago literary magazine, cited it as “One of the most remarkable books of short stories ever written.” The eminent social critic, Elbert Hubbard, while calling Veatch “a spicy raconteur,” was enthusiastic about his novella,”The Two Samurai,” calling it the best thing the author had done “...better, stronger and, to my way of thinking, more interesting and thrilling....” 
Ever the promoter, Veatch saw an opportunity to mix his liquor and literary interests. In October 1910 he sent a letter to customers along with a magazine he published, called “Good Cheer.” The magazine contained literary articles but was primarily a merchandising vehicle for the alcoholic beverages to be obtained from Security Distilling. The magazine also pitched his fiction: “As the book is written by the patriarch of our firm,” we want every customer doing business with us to avail himself of the liberal offer there outlined” — and buy a book. As shown here, in 2005 Amazon saw fit to reproduce Veatch’s book in a new format, 
Our next author called himself Andrew Madsen Smith, a name he assumed upon emigrating from Denmark to the U.S. In his autobiography Smith identified himself as “Soldier and Sailor, Moulder and Merchant, Tramp and Trader, Soap-boiler and Scribe, Peddler and Philosopher, Overseer and Understrapper, Jack-of-all-Trades and Master of Fortune.” He was all of those and additionally a successful whiskey man, with a thriving wine and liquor store in Minneapolis beginning in 1886.
Eventually Smith’s wine and liquor business became one of the largest in the region. As localities in Minnesota and neighbor Wisconsin were voting “dry” through local option, he also did a thriving mail order business. Discussing his success, Smith said, “And we are continuing to do better and better and better. I have increased in size, property and family.”
With his growing prosperity Smith decided, using a nom de plume, "Hans Lykkejaeger” to write the story of his early life and likely self-financed its publication. Originally entitled “Up and Down in the World: Or Paddle Your Own Canoe” and later “Luck of the Wandering Dane,” the book ran 130 pages, with illustrations on virtually every page by an unnamed artist. A reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly said sourly of Smith’s autobiography: “Occasionally the tale is told with snap and cleverness, but on the whole its humor is rather of the swaggering sort and hardly worth smiling over.” 
Smith also was a world recognized collector of rare coins, beginning earlier in Philadelphia where he worked as a coin dealer as well as a liquor merchant. He subsequently wrote three books on coins, beginning in 1881. His “Encyclopedia of Gold and Silver Coins of the World” is still prized by numismatists. “Luck of a Wandering Dane” has been reprinted by Hewlett Packard as part of a series of reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library.
No figure looms larger in the early history of New Mexico than George Curry, a transplant from Louisiana who ran an early saloon in the territory but ultimately became the governor and then a congressman. Along the way Curry, shown here as a young man, met Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson and other notorious Western figures. He became a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider and later served in the American occupation of the Philippines. 
Fortunately Curry described his colorful life in an “as told to” autobiography, an account that touches briefly on his life as a saloonkeeper. In 1888 Curry was in Lincoln Station, part of the New Mexico Territory, working for a wealthy merchant named Dolan, whose general store included a large stock of hard liquor. There he met Jack Thornton, a Dolan clerk, who asked Curry to partner with him in a saloon, hotel and livery stable. Already experienced in Las Vegas, New Mexico, with running a hotel, restaurant and bar, handling as he said, "everything from dishwashing and bookkeeping," Curry agreed and paid his share by borrowing $1,000 from a friend. The resulting establishment, shown above, became known as the Thornton-Curry Saloon and more recently as simply the Curry Saloon. The building, shown here, now is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Curry’s adventurous life was captured in the book, George Curry,1861-1947, an Autobiography, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1958. The editor was Horace Brand Henning, who knew Curry well and added a foreword. A paperback reprint was issued in 1995. 
It is likely that the world would never have heard of Joseph J. Mersman if Dr. Linda A. Fisher, a public health physician, had not been doing research for a lecture on the 1849 St. Louis cholera epidemic and came across Mersman’s diary in the Missouri Historical Society where it had laid “undiscovered” for years. She found the whiskey merchant’s story intriguing, edited the diary with annotations, and put it into book form. It was published in 2007 by the Ohio University Press. As a result, the day to day activities and thoughts of the German-born St. Louis rectifier and liquor house owner have enjoyed a wide audience.
In November 1847 while serving an apprenticeship in a Cincinnati wholesale liquor business, Mersman began his diary, documenting his work in the whiskey trade and other aspects of his daily life. He soon moved to St. Louis, and 25 years old, with a partner, established a wholesale whiskey and tobacco house. The company did well. St. Louis boasted hundreds of saloons and other establishments selling alcoholic goods that Mersman could supply. In March 1855, he abandoned his diary only to take it up again in 1862 after the outbreak of the Civil War. Mersman’s last diary entry was made in 1864.
Dr. Fisher sees Mersman’s diary as “a record of a man transforming himself from an impoverished, unschooled newcomer into a successful, skilled merchant…a path many took in the mid-nineteenth century.” All that is true but seen from a slightly different perspective, his story also demonstrates how the liquor trade in particular hastened the economic and social rise of immigrants who understood — as Joseph Mersman clearly did — the riches to be made.
Note: All the books by whiskey men cited above are either still in print or available from used book sources.
No comments:
Post a Comment