Foreword: This is the third and last in the series of posts featuring the individuals whose activities of the late 19th Century and early 20th that have shaped the America whiskey trade of contemporary times.
In 2013 a Prohibitionist leader accused President William Howard Taft of having made a back room deal to keep liquor flowing into “dry” states. He also must have been concerned that Taft earlier had defined the meaning of whiskey in a way that forever enfranchised one entire arm of the liquor industry. Taft’s decision has endured down to the present day.
Taft himself was not a drinking man. As shown here, food was his addiction, weighing at times as much as 360 pounds, Historians have determined that he apparently drank beer with his classmates in college. Upon coming to Washington, he apparently drank a glass of champagne from time to time on celebratory occasions. Taft became an absolute teetotaler about 1906, three years before becoming President. He remained such until his death in 1930.
Ironically, circumstances would plunge this non-drinker into the center of a controversy about whiskey. For decades a debate had been raging in the liquor industry about the genuineness of whiskey. Distillers of “straight” bourbons and ryes, chiefly located in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, saw their products as those only worthy of the name and were vocal about disparaging everything else called “whiskey.” On the other side were the “rectifiers,” outfits that blended whiskeys to achieve desired taste, smoothness and color. Too often these blenders were known to add raw alcohol and sometimes potentially harmful ingredients.
Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act brought the debate to a head. Section 8 of the Act stated that no whiskey could be considered misleading if the label stated that it was a “blend” or “compound” or “imitation.” Led by Col. Edmund Taylor, the bourbon distillers pressed hard to have all rectified whiskey branded as “imitation.” Dr. Harvey Wiley, chief Food and Drug enforcer, agreed.
The blenders and rectifiers fought back, creating their own representation group and hiring Washington lobbyists. They recognized that the very future of their industry was at stake. The drinking public would never buy a product labeled “imitation whiskey.” Watching anxiously from the sidelines were the distillers and importers of Scotch and Irish whiskey, both historically blends.
The issue was debated during the years of the Roosevelt presidency without resolution. It was waiting for Taft when he took office. The incoming President delegated the matter of defining whiskey to his Solicitor General. That official studied the problem and came up with solutions that satisfied neither side. Both interests then appealed to President Taft to render his own decision. He agreed.
President Taft was virtually a lawyer from birth and later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the only man in American history to hold both offices. This was his kind of issue. Taft took months to explore its ramifications, inviting commentary from a wide spectrum of stake-holders. They included John C. Carlisle, Col. Taylor and a number of prominent distillers like Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, (left below) and George Garvin Brown (right). It is unlikely that tasting was part of Taft’s study.
On the day after Christmas,1909, Taft announced his decision, making headlines across the Nation. He declared that any spirit made from grain could be called whiskey. Blends were whiskey. Rectified products were whiskey. Neither were “imitation.” “Time in a barrel is not what gives it its name, and the addition of flavoring and coloring do not take the name away from it.”
What became known in the liquor trade as “The Taft Decision,” caused some heartburn in both camps. The straight whiskey advocates thought it went too far; for the blenders it was not far enough. To satisfy the former, Taft specified that every bottle labeled as whiskey should contain an indication of its ingredients, e.g., “straight bourbon whiskey” or “whiskey made from neutral spirits.” He also decreed that molasses could no longer be used to add color. In the final analysis, however, it was the blenders and rectifiers who had won.
This could not have pleased the prohibitionist crowd. Blended whiskeys were cheaper and thus favored by the working class men and women who frequented saloons as a respite from their daily, often grueling, labors. Those people, not the country club set, were the main target of the “drys.” Taft’s decision had cleared the way for cheap whiskey.
As Chief Justice, Taft unsuccessfully had opposed the Constitutional amendment creating National Prohibition in 1920. After its passage, however, he accepted it. Taft, however understood the problems of banning alcohol. He later wrote: “The habits of an important section of a congested part of the country cannot be changed overnight or in years. The reform and adaption of society to that at which the [Prohibition] Amendment aims must be gradual.” Taft also recognized the “temptation of corruption” as bootlegging erupted nationwide.
The action that brought Taft under attack by prohibitionists had come during his presidency in 1913. By that time many state and localities had voted themselves “dry,” banning the making or sale of beer, wine and liquor. An earlier Supreme Court had ruled that the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution meant that alcoholic beverages could still be shipped from out of state into dry zones. Mail order liquor dealers had sprung up in “wet” states doing a brisk business via railroad express. Some state anti-alcohol laws, likely as a “safety valve,” actually allowed a limited amount of such traffic to individuals. Prohibitionists, however, were livid about such signs of laxness.
Two legislators, Representative Edwin Y. Webb of North Carolina (below left) and Senator William S. Kenyon of Iowa, joined to sponsor a bill to make such liquor shipments illegal. After the bill had passed both Houses of Congress, Taft vetoed it, arguing that the legislation unconstitutionally took powers away from states that permitted such shipments. Subsequently passed over his veto by a two-thirds vote of both bodies the Webb-Kenyon Act became law, its enforcement hobbled by court challenges until a Supreme Court favorable ruling in 1919.
In the meantime, Taft came under attack for his veto during his run for re-election in 1914. His principal accuser was the Reverend Purley Baker, the head of the Anti-Saloon League, the Nation’s most powerful prohibition lobby. Writing in the League’s magazine, American Issue, Baker, shown here, told its tens of thousands of readers of a conversation he had had with an unnamed “prominent Democrat” who claimed that “A deal was entered into at the Chicago [GOP] convention at which Mr. Taft was nominated, that in consideration for the support of the Milwaukee brewers, which doubtless included others, no interstate liquor shipment legislation should be passed while he was president.” No other proof was offered for this accusation of bribery and no evidence exists of its validity. Whatever the effect Baker’s charges had, Taft lost badly in a three-way race for President.
Nonetheless Taft’s definition of whiskey, while amended a time or two at the margins, has stood the test of time. Whiskey blends have taken their place beside straight brands without stain or stigma. When linked with the Bottled-in-Bond Act and the Pure Food and Drug laws, the “Taft Decision” helped forge the American liquor industry of today.
Note: This article was gathered from a wide range of sources. It should be read in conjunction with the two posts immediately preceding for a complete picture of the making of the modern whiskey industry. Prior posts on two of the figures mentioned here are: Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, December 10, 2014, and George Garvin Brown, January 9, 2020.
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