The Stunning Life & Death of Jacob Van Bokkelen

 

Beginning on the East Coast as a merchant seaman, Jacob Lorillard Van Bokkelen, shown here, found his way to San Francisco where he rapidly gained a reputation for leadership in ridding the city of criminal elements.  Moving to Virginia City, Nevada, while still in his thirties, Van Brokkelen played a pivotal role in the early history of the state while becoming the proprietor of a beer garden and saloon.  Nothing in his event-filled life, however, matched the impact of his departure from Virginia City.

Van Bokkelen’s drinking establishment attracted the “better sort” of Virginia City residents, mine owners, merchants, and professional people.  He located the place a mile or so outside the bustle of town, amidst the sagebrush and trees of Six Mile Canyon, below.  In that peaceful setting customers could sip their beer and whiskey while admiring the antics of the bachelor proprietor’s pet spider monkey while likely gossiping about the man himself.

Tales would be told of Van Bokkelen’s coming to Virginia City in the late-1850s and quickly establishing himself as a hardware dealer on Taylor and B Streets, later becoming an agent for the Giant Powder Company of San Francisco, the first United States firm to produce dynamite under license from Alfred Nobel.  Blasting powder and booze were Van Brokkelen’s “bread and butter.”

Attention also would be paid to Van Bokkelen’s rapid rise to local celebrity when he was named first the Assistant and then General Provost Marshal of Nevada early in the Civil War.  Shown in that uniform in the photo that opens this post, Van Bokkelen headed the Union’s military police, charged with keeping order among soldiers stationed in the territory and the civilian population.  His soldiers, outfitted like the Nevada troopers shown here, also hunted and arrested deserters, spies, and others suspected of disloyalty; confined prisoners; maintained records of paroles and oaths of allegiance; controlled the passage of civilians in military zones, and investigated the theft of Government property.

By all accounts, Van Bokkelen acquitted himself well.  Toward the end of April 1860, the Paiutes and their allies, the Bannocks and Shoshones, gathered at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, for a conference on continued white intrusion. It ended in a battle.  During the conflict, the Provost Marshal was credited in keeping peace and order in Virginia City, a scant 50 miles from the fighting.  Van Bokkelen was similarly praised for maintaining calm in 1865 following the assassination of President Lincoln.  

After the war Van Bokkelen continued his peacekeeping duties during a 1873 political struggle over management of the Nevada state penitentiary known as the “The States Prison War.”  When an ousted warden refused to relinquish the job,  Nevada’s Gov. “Old Broadhorns” Bradley ordered him to moblize a force of 60 men with artillery to surround the prison.  Pointing out to the warden that further resistance would cause casualties and possibly allow prisoners to escape, Van Bokkelen helped defuse the situation peacefully.

Just as important as Van Bokkelen’s achievements as Provost Marshall was his role in obtaining statehood for Nevada.  Strong political pressure from Washington was behind Nevada becoming the 36th state entering the Union in 1864, giving the President Lincoln three more electoral votes, and for Republicans, increased representation in Congress.  Van Bokkelen was one of five Virginia City residents chosen to the Statehood Constitutional Convention of 1864.  He subsequently was elected the first president of the Nevada State Legislature.

While these accomplishments were well-known to those frequenting Van Bokkelen’s drinking establishment, they probably were unaware of his earlier exploits.  He was born in 1822 in New York City into a large family headed by his mother, his father having “gone South.” The 1850 census recorded Jacob as a merchant seaman who already had advanced to “supercargo,” representing the ship’s owner on board the vessel and responsible for watching over the cargo and its sale.

One of his ocean voyages had taken Van Bokkelen to San Francisco, where in 1849 he decided to remain.  The City by the Bay at that time was a community beset by the presence of criminal gangs, often in league with city officials.  In 1851 seven hundred prominent San Francisco citizens formed a “Committee of Vigilance that took the law into their own hands, including hanging individuals found guilty of serious crimes.  Shown here as a younger man, Van Bokkelen was registered as Vigilante No. 173.  He was elected Chief of the Vigilante Police and given broad powers of investigation and arrest.  His work in helping clean up San Francisco won him election in 1854 as an alderman.

My guess is the massive silver strike known as “The Comstock Lode” caused Van Bokkelen to leave San Francisco for Nevada. As shown below, Virginia City was bustling with activity.  While there is no evidence of his attempting to mine, his provision of explosives to miners and mines proved lucrative, providing him the money to build his beer garden and saloon.  His patrons also must have discussed the New Yorker’s cavalier attitude toward dynamite, boasting that he had such confidence in the product that he stored it in his apartment when inventory grew too large for his store.

 

What Van Bokkelen’s fellow citizens likely did not know was that he also apparently was experimenting with more volatile explosives. In August 1973 the New York Times printed a letter from a man named White that stated:“When I visited Gen. Van Bokkelen, he told me that he would soon have a blasting agent in the market that would excel giant powder [dynamite].”  On my asking what it was, he turned to [six] cases and opened them, showing me the gun-cotton saturated with nitro-glycerine, together with the cotton pulp mixture.”

At 10:45 p.m. on June 29, 1873, a huge explosion rocked Virginia City.  When the dust and smoke cleared, ten people were found dead, among them General Van Bokkelen. Van Bokkelen’s body was found in a corner of his room, “his features so bruised and charred as to be unrecognizable,” read one newspaper account.  Other victims were three local merchants, a female hotel owner, three other men and an eight-year old girl.  Many were killed by falling timbers and bricks.  One man died when he was stuck by an iron door hurled the distance of 100 feet. Other potential victims had to be rescued by the fire department.

A number of Virginia City buildings were destroyed or severely damaged.  They included the Bank of California, Armory Hall, Daly’s Saloon, a grocery store and a building that used the upper floor as a lodging-house.  The city went into mourning and flags were flown at half mast.  The city’s Fourth of July celebration was canceled and the money collected for it used to burying the dead.  Subsequent days were filled with funeral processions wending through the gates of the local graveyard.

As with any disaster of this kind, townsfolk looked for someone to blame.  Fingered as the chief culprit was the spider monkey, whose remains could not be found amid the rubble, presumably blown to bits.  Speculation was that Van Bokkelen’s pet was playing with a can of nitroglycerine and dropped it.  The container exploded, causing the others to explode.  That blast in turn detonated the 150 pounds of dynamite Van Bokkelen had stored.  Others residents, perhaps more accurately, blamed the Provost Marshal for his cavalier attitude toward explosives, including experimenting with nitroglycerine in a downtown building.  In the end no one ever knew the cause.

With Van Bokkelen dead and his remains lying somewhere in an unmarked grave in the Virginia City Cemetery shown above, his beer garden and saloon went up for sale.  A local woman purchased the property for an order of Catholic nuns, the Daughters of Charity, to open a hospital in Virginia City.  St. Mary Louise Hospital opened in 1876, the four story building shown here. It had 36 rooms and could accommodate up to 70 patients. The hospital operated until the 1940s and then lay idle until 1964 when it became a center for the arts.  One room has been dedicated  to Jacob Van Bokkelen in honor of a man rightly hailed as a historic Western figure and a “Father of Nevada Statehood.”  The Provost Marshal’s role in the 1873 blast largely has faded from public memory.

Note:  This post has been gathered from the rich resource material that surrounds Van Bokkelen’s life story.  Accounts of the explosion are derived from articles from the New York Times and Sacramento Daily Union.

Whiskey Men Who Fought for the North ll

Foreword:  This, the second post about soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War,  recounts three quite different stories.  The “whiskey men” involved had quite diverse experiences that ultimately took those soldiers into postwar careers of prosperity and recognition in three disparate parts of the country.

Within a week of President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men to serve for three months at the outset of the conflict, John Low, 25 years old, joined a Carlisle, Pennsylvania, troop called the Sumner Rifles and was given the rank of corporal.  His unit performed garrison duties in Delaware and West Virginia.  When its term of service ended the company returned to Harrisburg to be mustered out.  Low enrolled again at Carlisle and became a 2nd lieutenant.  Within a month he was engaged in hot combat at Antietam, West Virginia, one of the costliest battles of the Civil War.  After that he was engaged at the fierce battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in Virginia.

A captain by war’s end, Lowe returned to Carlisle to an uncertain future.  Married with two children and others on the way, none of Low’s Civil War heroics seemed to translate into prosperity.  He tried and failed as a produce dealer and later as a mechanic.  In the 1880 census Low’s occupation was listed as “huckster,” someone selling items from a push cart or stall. 

Low’s fortunes were about to change.  His reputation and income rose significantly sometime in the 1880s when he established a liquor wholesale house and bottling facility.  He featured a proprietary brand that he marketed as:  “A Whiskey Without a Headache.”  It was “Elk’s Pride.” Low also became the local distributor for several important breweries, including Pabst beer from Milwaukee and Bartholomay beer from Rochester, New York, two very popular brands of the times. He also was bottling soft drinks sold under his name. His building in downtown Carlisle is shown below.

When he died at the relatively young age of 55, Low was mourned as one of the leading businessmen of Carlisle and given a well-attended church funeral, with full military honors.  

Almost a quarter of the troops fighting for the Union in the Civil War were foreign born, among them some 216,000 from Germany.  Less well known were the thousands of immigrants who stayed in the military, moved West and fought in the Indian Wars.  Among them was Fritz Jessen who eventually found a permanent home in Prescott, Arizona, running a popular saloon and earning praise as “a good citizen in every sense of the word.”

Coming to America from Germany in 1850, Jessen was 19 when the Civil War broke out, joining the 29th Regiment Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry in December 1861, the only non-Celtic regiment in the famed Irish Brigade.  Over the next four years  Jessen’s regiment took part in 29 battles and four sieges, including Vicksburg.  Just before the South surrendered, during the siege of Petersburg, his unit suffered its worst casualties during the March 1865 Battle of Fort Stedman, shown above.  Jessen appears to have escaped serious injury throughout the conflict.

Unlike other Union soldiers, who went back to civilian pursuits at war’s end, Jessen stayed on as his battalion was reorganized ordered to the Presidio of San Francisco to counter resistance from Indian tribes. In June 1870 the federal census found him there, unmarried and 28, assigned to the Signal Corps.  Stationed with him were a number of other German-born soldiers.  It is likely that Jessen took part in the war against the Modoc tribe in California during 1872-1873.

Perhaps as early as 1882, Jessen left the Army to buy an existing drinking establishment in Prescott. Arizona,  and changed its name to the Headquarters Saloon.  Located on busy Gurly Street, it is shown on the postcard view below, the two story frame building second from right.  Jessen advertised frequently in the local newspapers, emphasizing sales of both draft and bottled beer. He also claimed to have “The best Wines, Liquors and Cigars in the market always on hand.”  Over the next few years, Jessen thrived in his adopted city.  The Headquarters Saloon proved to be one the most popular in Prescott, known throughout the West for its teeming “Whiskey Row” of drinking establishments.

When he died in 1903 at the age of 69, Jessen was hailed in the local press as a Civil War veteran and valued Prescott resident.  Said the Weekly Arizona Journal Miner:  “The deceased from his long residence in Prescott had made a great many friends, who will be pained to hear of his death. He was a good citizen in every sense of the word, and during his business career, was always progressive and enterprising, taking a natural pride in the progress of the town.”

Born in Ireland, Lawrence J. Logan immigrated to the United States, joining the Union Army in 1865 as the conflict was coming to a close.  Upon return he assisted his brother with his saloon and liquor business.   According to a biographer, Logan developed “a love for military life.” Serving in a reserve capacity he was promoted through the ranks until 1879 when he was made a lieutenant colonel. Logan’s rise in Boston’s business circles also had been rapid.   Within seven years of joining his brother in the whiskey trade, Logan took over the business completely. Eventually the scope of Logan’s sales would cause social historian Dennis Ryan to declare him the “baron of Boston’s liquor business.”

With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Logan, now 57 years old, was determined to participate and was mustered into regular service, arriving in Cuba on July 1, 1898.  Almost immediately his commanding officer became violently ill and had to be returned to the U.S.  Lt. Col. Logan took command.  Soon he found himself leading the main body of the regiment to the fighting front.  It required an all-night march through forested and swampy ground that one writer termed “tedious and memorable.”  

After a brief halt in the morning, the advance continued and by noon of the same day the regiment arrived at field headquarters. With Logan leading, the Massachusetts volunteers were assigned key positions in trenches on the extreme left of the siege of Santiago, shown here.  There the regiment experienced fierce combat and significant casualties from hostile fire and disease, recording 129 fatalities, including four commission officers.

The colonel’s business and military prowess carried him into South Boston political prominence.  For many years he was a member of the Democratic City Committee and for four years served as treasurer.  In 1886 and 1887 he was elected to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council, a governmental body that provided legislative and advisory assistance to the governor in matters such as judicial nominations, pardons and commutations. 

Before he died at age 80 in 1920 at the advent of National Prohibition, according to one account:  “Lawrence Logan was raking it in as head of the company.  There were at least eighteen large breweries operating in and around Boston, but the Galway-man’s outfit dominated the “Irish market,” the pubs in the Irish wards…”   Lawrence also lived to see his son Edward become a much-decorated WWI general and the man after whom Boston’s Logan airport is named.

Note:  More complete vignettes of each of these whiskey men may be found elsewhere on this website:  John Low, April 27, 2018, Fritz Jessen, September 19, 2019. and Lawrence Logan, August 2, 2019.  An earlier post on whiskey men as Union soldiers ran April 15, 2018.

 

President Taft & The Definition of Whiskey

  

            

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.

Dr. Harvey W. Wiley and Pure Food & Drugs

Foreword:  This is the second of three posts in a series on national figures whose activities more than a century ago set the pattern for the whiskey industry even into the present day.  

Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, more than any other single individual, was responsible for the design and passage of the Pure Food & Drugs Act of 1906.

That legislation, sometimes referred to as the “Wiley Act”  was responsible for two important reforms in the whiskey industry, one plagued by adulteration and false claims of medicinal qualities.

Born in a log farmhouse near Kent, Jefferson County, the young Harvey was a man on the move from his youth.  Although, he left college to enlist in the 137th Indiana Infantry Regiment, rising to corporal, at war’s end he embarked on enriching his educational credentials.  A true polymath, Wiley earned degrees in Greek and Roman literature, medicine as a physician, and after a short stay at Harvard a B.S. in chemistry.

Although his career included teaching in fields of literature and medicine, Wiley’s main chance arrived in 1874 when he accepted an appointment in chemistry at the newly opened Purdue University in Indiana.  Recognized as an outstanding intellect on the campus, it was not long before he also was appointed state chemist of Indiana.  Eight years later at the age of 38 Wiley was a candidate for president of the entire university.  He was passed over, allegedly because he was "too young and too jovial," unorthodox in his religious beliefs, and a bachelor. He married in 1911.

The same year the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture reached out to offer him the position of Chief Chemist of the United States and he accepted.  As one author has put it:  “Wiley brought to Washington a practical knowledge of agriculture, a sympathetic approach to the problems of agricultural industry and an untapped talent for public relations.”

When he got to Washington pure food and drug legislation had been languishing in Congress for decades.  Employing a variety of publicity generating gambits, Dr. Wiley used his position and staff to take hold of the campaign to prevent the adulteration of food, beverages and medicinals.  With a reform-minded Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, the Food and Drugs Act was enacted in 1907 and Wiley was put in charge of its enforcement.

Dr. Wiley’s primary mission was to prevent ingestion of harmful substances by the American people and his attention to whiskey was on that basis, not that of a prohibitionist.  In fact, as a result of his agricultural background, he understood that wheat, rye and corn were the backbone of whiskey, and income for farmers.  Considered an expert on both whiskey and wine, he pushed sales of both.

He decided that the Paris Exposition of 1900 was a perfect time to show Europeans the decided benefits of  American made alcoholic products.  Using his many contacts in the liquor industry, Dr. Wiley collected commitments from fourteen “leading houses”  to submit their whiskeys for exhibit in Paris. Shown here, they were displayed in the United States pavilion, sponsored by the U.S. Government under the auspices of the Agriculture Department.

In his final report on the results of the showcase, Dr. Wiley had this to say:  “Some of the best brands of rye and indian-corn whiskey made in the country were on exhibition and all the whiskies were of exceptional high quality.  This exhibit has the unique merit, I believe, of being the only one containing more than one display in which every sample secured an award.  One-third of the samples received gold medals and all the others silver or bronze.  The whiskey exhibits were most attractively arranged and commanded a great deal of attention.”

When Dr. Wiley looked at whiskey through the Pure Food Lens he saw something different.  He recognized that “rectified” whiskey was being adulterated with poisonous substances to add color and substance to otherwise watered-down products.  He also saw distillers and liquor dealers making all manner of “purity” claims against the evidence, including whiskey men brazen enough after its passage to advertise falsely that their products were sold “Guaranteed under the Pure Food and Drugs Act,” as shown below.  Finally, he saw some in the liquor trade continuing to make claims that their whiskey had medicinal properties that could cure diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.  

 

Dr. Wiley often was frustrated in enforcing the pure food laws, dependent on Federal authorities at the state level who often were reluctant to curb local businesses. Frequently the levels of fines by lenient judges amounted to little more than slaps on the wrist for perpetrators.  Jail time was almost unknown, even for repeat offenders.  Nevertheless, over the next few years following passage of the Act, Wiley was able to curb much adulteration of whiskey and to eliminate “guarantee” citations of the Act on liquor labels.  He was considerably less successful, however, in ending medicinal claims for whiskey.

A key example was Wiley’s personal battle against Walter Duffy, a liquor dealer from Rochester, New York, shown here. The 1880s were a time when patent medicines began their meteoric rise in popularity by aggressive advertising and other ploys. Many whiskey makers began to advertise their wares as being “for medicinal use” without being specific as to the ills they were meant to remedy. Duffy took a different approach. He decided to hawk his booze as a cure for specific diseases.

Thus, early in the 1880s was born the “Celebrated Duffy’s Malt Whiskey,” that Duffy advertised as the “greatest known heart tonic.” He also claimed that his product could cure consumption (tuberculosis), bronchitis, dyspepsia (chronic indigestion), and even malaria. To make his point about its medicinal value, Duffy supplied a dose spoon with his liquor.  Samuel Hopkins Adams, whose series of articles in Colliers Magazine in 1905-1906 led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, took particular aim at Duffy’s Malt Whiskey because of its claims to “cure” and its inferiority even as whiskey. Adams also exposed as phony the newspaper testimonials to its healing effects by purported clergymen and temperance advocates.

Wylie sought to shut Duffy down:  “I stated that Duffy's Malt Whisky was one of the most gigantic frauds of the age and a flagrant violation of the law, and that there was no necessity that we delay at all in the matter.” After his pleas for Justice Department prosecution were ignored for two years, the doctor denounced the “determined efforts of my colleagues to protect Duffy’s Pure Malt Whisky from being molested either by seizure or bringing any criminal case against the maker.”

Frustrated by the antagonism he had received and the paralysis that had gripped enforcement, symbolized by the Duffy case, Wiley resigned as head of the Chemistry Bureau in March 1912 and left government.  For the next eighteen years, however, he directed the laboratories of Good Housekeeping magazine where he continued his work on behalf of consumers.  In the meantime National Prohibition spelled the ended of medicinal claims for whiskey, not to be revived with Repeal.

Wiley lived long enough to see enforcement gradually strengthened and his former bureau become the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Dying in June 1930, however, he never saw the law itself largely replaced by the more comprehensive Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938.  Recognition of Dr. Wiley’s important role in protecting the American consumer came in June 1956, the 50th anniversary of the Food and Drugs Act, when a postage stamp was issued in his honor.

Note:  More information about Walter Duffy and his whiskey is contained in a post of May 31, 2011.

John Carlisle and “Bottled in Bond”

  

Foreword:  This is the first of three posts featuring individuals whose activities and decisions indelibly have shaped the liquor industry in America.  Not “whiskey men” in the sense generally used on this blog, these three figures were simultaneously agents of change and stabilizing forces in a business historically riven by chicanery and conflict.

John G. Carlisle, a Kentucky senator and later U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, was the individual most responsible for the development and passage of the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897.  After decades of internecine wrangling over quality, branding, and taxation of whiskey, the act made the Federal Government the watchdog on authenticity, gave distillers a monetary incentive for participating, and helped insure an accurate collection of taxes.  The act has stood essentially as first written 123 years ago — strong testimony to its value.

Prior to the passage of the Act, much of the liquor being peddled nationwide  under the rubric of straight whiskey was adulterated.  Unscrupulous distillers, rectifiers, and dealer were adding other substances to flavor and color their products.  Some like water and food coloring were harmless. Others like iodine,  tobacco and paint thinner were harmful, particularly at a time when whiskey was being recommended for childhood ailments.  A cry went up across America for authentication of whiskey quality.  The result was the first consumer protection legislation in American history.

The requirements were stringent.  Participating distillers were required to put their products into federally bonded warehouses for at least four years and bottled it at 100 proof (50% alcohol by volume). They also agreed their whiskey would be the output of one distiller, one distillery and one distilling season. The owners stipulated the labels on their bottles would identify where the whiskey was distilled and where it was bottled if at a different location.

 

At the same time significant benefits accrued to distillers.  They were quick to use Bottled-in-Bond in their advertising as a guarantee, as shown in ads scattered through this post. Many of these featured Uncle Sam as insuring a pure and high-quality product.  In truth, the Act set a relatively low bar that did not reflect the skill of the distiller, the purity of the ingredients or the sanitary state of the process.

Perhaps an even more important effect of the Bottled-in-Bond Act for distillers allowed them to delay payment on stored whiskey until warehouse aging was completed.  Before the Act whiskey makers were taxed on the amount of liquor put in a barrel before the aging process.  This was a cause of anguish because distillers all knew that least 10% of the liquid would have evaporated when the time came for bottling the whiskey.  They called the lost portion “the

angel.”  Moreover,  fires at distillery were an ever present threat to destroy warehouses in which whiskey was being stored  When the tax was assessed in advance, the 

Feds were not of a mood to give it back. [See my post of March 25, 2019 for incidents].

The new regime also facilitated the collection of liquor taxes, at the time a major source of national government income.  Federal agents were assigned to each distillery. They were able to control access to the liquor and prevent whiskey being syphoned off during the aging process.  The widespread criminality that was uncovered with the exposure of the “Whiskey Ring” during the Grant Administration was still fresh in everyone’s mind.  The new Act meant greatly improved accounting for and collection of liquor taxes.

The Bottle-in-Bond Act could have had no better advocate than John Carlisle.  Born in Kentucky, the center of Bourbon whiskey distilling, he knew the state well, serving most of the 1860s as a Democrat in the Kentucky House of Representatives and in the Kentucky State Senate. He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky in 1871.  At the end of that term he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected to seven terms.  Soon recognized for his abilities Carlisle became the leader of a group known as “Bourbon Democrats.”  The title had nothing to do with whiskey, referring rather to the conservative wing of the party.  He was elected three times as Speaker of the House.  A Harpers cartoon of the time shows Carlisle being scolded by Uncle Sam for Congressional inaction.

As Carlisle’s political star rose he became a friend of President Grover Cleveland, who failed to tap him for a cabinet post during his first administration.  One night while the two were engaged with others in a poker game, Carlisle bluffed the ex-President into losing a pot.  Pretending to be angry, Cleveland warned him never to do that again, but promised if elected President again he would give him a cabinet post.  Re-elected, Cleveland made good by making the Kentuckian Secretary of the Treasury.

That was a perfect launching platform for Carlisle to introduce needed reforms into the whiskey industry.  In his efforts he was aided by advice from Col. Edmund Haynes Taylor, a prominent Kentucky distiller with strong ties to the Nation’s Capital.  [See my post on Col. Taylor, January 10, 1910].  Together they crafted a legislative enactment that not only gained widespread support in its day but has passed the test of a century and a quarter virtually unchanged.  Carlisle was honored by having his portrait as the centerpiece of federal revenue stamps.

While Carlisle’s political career was largely a success, his personal life was one filled with grief.  He married Mary Jane Goodson in January 1857.  By all accounts she proved to be an able and constructive partner.  But John and Mary witnessed the deaths of all five of their children.  Two, John G. Jr. and Liliborn died in infancy.  Three others, George, Logan and Laura, died in their 30s.  Mary Carlisle pre-deceased her husband by five years.  John Carlisle died at the age of 75 in July 1910 at Covington, Kentucky, the family home.  He is interred there with family members at Linden Grove Cemetery, Range V, Lot 54.

Because the whiskey industry and the drinking public are both quite different today, “bottled-in-bond” might seem like an antiquated concept. Yet it continues to have relevance.  As one author has put it: “…The proof and age aspects defined by bottle in bond can go a long way, with upstart distilleries popping up in every and corner of the country and many brands choosing to be very tight-lipped about just where their sourced whiskey actually comes from. So maybe bottled in bond still means something; a statement that a brand not only recognizes bourbon distilling as an integral part of American history, but a declaration and adherence to certain standards that are universally recognized as helping to produce decent, if not always excellent, whiskey.”

Note:  This post was drawn from a variety of sources.  The quote above is by Jonah Flicker, dated September 24, 2015, on www.pastemagazine.com. 

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