Singing Along with Prohibition: Part Two

Foreword:  In the previous post, “Singing Along with Prohibition:  Part One,” the emphasis was on songs and sheet music that pre-dated National Prohibition, with the song writers asking or predicting what life would be like in a completely “dry” America.  This post examines the music and lyrics generated by the actual imposition of what came to be known as “The Great Experiment.”

The topic is ushered in by a 1919 song by Andrew Sterling and Harry Von Tilzer that  on the July passage of the Volstead Act that implemented the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that had many Americans thinking that alcohol sales had been immediately banned.  The legislation, however, simply set the date for the following January first, 1920.  In this song the gent is moaning “Whoa January, oh January, I hate to see you come around, July was mighty tough but we could get enough…” Von Tilzer was a prolific songwriter who wrote "Shine on Silvery Moon" and "Wait Til the Sun Shines, Nellie."

When January and National Prohibition did occur, the liquor firms going out of business did brisk sales of their barrels, jugs and bottles of liquor.  Long lines of people stood outside the stores to buy as much as their budgets would let them.  The wealthy established liquor cellars in their homes in which they stock wines and whiskeys.  Author H. L. Mencken created his behind a locked medal door with dire imprecations against anyone trying to enter.  When he died in 1956, long after Repeal, he still had a liquor stash.  

American songwriters were not long in noting these events. Grant Clarke and Milton Ager in 1920 teamed up to give America “Its a Smart Little Feller Who Stocked up his Cellar That’s Getting the Beautiful Girls.”  The lyrics suggested a new era in wooing and winning a “girlie full of charm:”

Oh, they won't call you honey, because you've got money,

It isn't for money they sigh,

You could once grab a queen with your big limousine

But now times are changing, you know what I mean,

Oh, they won't know you're livin' if all you can give'em

Is just pretty diamonds and pearls;

It's the smart little feller who stocked up his cellar,

That's getting the beautiful girls.

Clark and Ager were not the only songwriters to see possibilities in the burgeoning liquor caches of America.  A trio of writers gave the country the song, “Everybody Wants a Key to My Cellar,”  with the sheet music featuring six hands grabbing toward the key.  In the opening verse the owner confesses to having changed things around in his cellar, stockpiled liquor, tried to keep it a secret but told his wife.  She blabbed:

Now ev'rbody wants a key to my cellar, my cellar, my cellar,

People who before wouldn't give me a tumble,

Even perfect strangers beginning to grumble,

'Cause I won't let them have a key to my cellar,

They'll never get in just let them try.

They can have my money,

They can have my car,

They can have my wife

If they want to go that far,

But they can't have the key that opens my cellar,

If the whole darn world goes dry.

The “I write the songs,” crew also picked up on another phenomenon of the Dry Era — the sudden popularity of doctors.   During America’s dry age, the federal alcohol ban carved out an exemption for medicinal use, and doctors nationwide suddenly discovered they could bolster their incomes by writing liquor prescriptions. They typically charged $3.00 for such and prescribed it for a wide range of supposed ills.  Pharmacies filled those prescriptions and were one of the few places whiskey could be bought legally.  They raked in the dollars. Through the 1920s, fueled by whiskey prescriptions, the number of Walgreen stores soared from 20 to nearly 400.

On this sheet music, entitled “Oh Doctor,” a gent is whispering his needs to a doctor who is in the process of writing a prescription for whiskey.  Meanwhile behind him a line of well dressed men are calling for similar assistance.  According to the song, the petitioner is pleading, “Write the prescription and please make it say, ‘Take with your meals,’ I eat ten times a day.”  The authors, Billy Joyce and Rubey Cowan, were New York songwriters who also worked as publishers.

Even the famed American songwriter, Irvin Berlin, took a turn at writing a Prohibition ditty, both music and lyrics.  Remembered far and wide for “White Christmas,” his song, “I’ll See You in C-U-B-A,” falls far short of that classic.  Written in 1920, Irvng B. is going to Cuba “where wine is flowing,” and “dark eyed Stellas light their fellers pan-a-gel-as.”  That apparently is Stella on the cover of the sheet music, looking saucy and sexy.  Berlin ends the verse by asking everyone to join him in C-U-B-A.  In that island country, as might be fathomed from the song, alcoholic beverages flowed freely.  

The cover of the sheet music for “I’m the Ghost of that Good Man John Barleycorn” may be be the most interesting part of that song.  It depicts a ghost-like figure in a mist looking over a broken whiskey barrel and some broken and intact bottles.  The words were by George A. Little and the music by Earl K. Smith.  Another Geo. Little song, “When a Black Man is Blue” was recorded by Duke Ellington’s band and is still available on disc.

Some new words and phrases were coming into the vocabulary of the average American, words like bootlegger, rum-runner, speakeasy, home brew, and moonshine.  Actually moonshine had been around for a while.  Bert Williams, a black man who performed in black face, had a hit song in the Ziegfeld Follies called “The Moon Shines on the Moonshine.”  Williams was by far the best selling recording artist before 1920 and is said to have done much during his career to push back racial barriers.

The cover of the 1923 song, “The Moonshine Shudder,” is austere enough to induceat least a slight chill.  It shows five empty bottles on a window sill silhouetted in the light of a smiling moon.  The cover design is by Jan Farrell, about whom I was able to learn nothing, nor anything about the songwriter, Wade Hamilton. Given the lyrics, perhaps their obscurity is deserved:

                                   Oh, could you ever keep from doing it,

I mean the moonshine shudder,

After gurgling, guzzling, lapping up home brew

First you shiver at your throat,

Then you shimmy at your chest;

You wiggle out of your coat,

And you nearly shed your vest.

But you cannot keep from doing it,

I mean the moonshine shudder,

After gurgling, guzzling, lapping up home brew.

As Prohibition wound on through the 1920s and into the 1930s, the songs continue to come.  Some representatives titles were “Kentucky Bootlegger,” “Bootlegger’s Story,”  “Moonshiner,” “Prohibition is a Failure,”  “The Old Home Brew,” “Whiskey Seller,” “Down to the Stillhouse to Get a Li’l Cider,” and “Drunkard’s Hiccups.”  The last-mentioned song is also known as “Jack of Diamonds,” a euphemism for hard drink.   An excerpt from it seems a suitable way to end this post:

Wherever I go

Jack of diamonds, jack of diamonds

I've known you from old

You've robbed my poor pockets

Of silver and gold.

Singing Along with Prohibition: Part One

 Foreword:  From “Yankee Doodle,” to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” to “Blowin’ in the Wind,”  many American songs have had a strong political content.  National Prohibition spawned many such a lyric,  both in anticipation of the Nation going “dry” in 1920 and during the 14 year experience of “The Great (Failed) Experiment.”  This post and the one to follow will explore some of those songs and their messages.  This post deals with the anticipation of Prohibition; the second will feature songs spawned by the actual experience.  

 

The lyrics below are from an 1918 ditty by writers William Jerome and Jack Mahoney, two of the best known songwriters of the early 20th Century.  Jerome created many popular songs of the era as well as musical comedies.  Mahoney, a lyricist, is best known for his co-authorship of the American favorite “When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose.”  Their anti-Prohibition song was entitled “Every Day Will be Sunday When the Town Goes Dry,” alluding to the general Lord’s Day ban on alcohol sales.   The cover of the sheet music shows a well-dressed gent in a top hat contemplating the doom destined to fall with National Prohibition. 

 

 

Goodbye, Hunter; So long, Scotch; Farewell Haig and Haig;

Oh my darling old frappe, they will soon take you away,

At the table with Lola they will serve us Coca-Cola;

No more saying: "Let me buy,"

No more coming thru the Rye;

Old Manhattan and Martini have received the big subpoena,

Ev'ry day'll be Sunday when the town goes dry.

In something of the same vein is “How Are You Going to Wet Your Whistle (When the Whole Darn World Is Dry?”)  It shows a similarly tuxedoed man about town asking the crucial question outside a cafe that once sold whiskey and draft beer that tried to get by on candy and soda.  Apparently the attempt failed since the sign on the door says “for rent.”  One of the authors, Percy Wenrich, began his career as a music demonstrator in a Milwaukee store and staff writer for music publishing companies.  Moving to New York Wenrich became one of the Nation’s most successful song writers, remembered even today for “Moonlight Bay,” “Sail Along, Silv’ry Moon,” and “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet.”

Like the foregoing, several pre-Prohibition songs speculated on the kinds of effects the alcohol ban would have on daily life.  Among them was “What’ll We Do on a Saturday Night (When the Town Goes Dry).”  It shows a young swain talking his lady friend to the movies but worried about what to do afterward:

 

What'll we do on a Saturday night,

When the town goes dry?

Where will we go after seeing a show

to make the weary hours fly?

Imagine a fellow with a cute little queen,

Trying to win her on a plate of ice cream;

        What'll we do on a Saturday night,

           When the town goes dry?

The songwriter was Harry Ruby, who with his longtime partner Bert Kalmar were a successful songwriting team for nearly three decades.  In 1950 MGM made a musical of their lives called “Three Little Words,” starring Fred Astaire as Kalmar and Red Skelton as Ruby.

Another anti-Prohibition song of 1919 contemplated massive unemployment as a result of shutting down saloons and cafes.  Called “No Beer — No Work,” the cover of the sheet music shows four men, all apparently unemployed, standing outside a closed drinking establishment with a for rent sign. It is padlocked and someone has thrown a rock at the front window.  The lyrics told a story about a miner named Johnny Hymer who being told impending about National Prohibition, threw his tools on the ground and intoned:  “No beer, no work will be my battle cry;  No beer, no work when I am feeling dry.”  Hymer’s unemployment seemingly would be self imposed:  “I’ll hide myself away, until some brighter day.”

Naturally the thought of National Prohibition would bring on “The Blues” for many and songwriters were there to express it.   Al Sweet, a rather obscure composer who died in 1945 at the age of 59, wrote both the music and words to a 1917 “Prohibition Blues,” that included this lyric:

Oh! my Brothers and Sisters, listen to what I say

By nineteen twenty dere'll be no boose sold in the U.S.A.

De whole country am goin' bone dry,

Prohibition am de battle cry,

'Scuse me while I shed a tear,

For good old whiskey,gin and beer.

Goodbye forever, Goodbye forever

Ah got de Prohibition, Prohibition, Prohibition blues.

The cover for the sheet music is particularly interesting for the image of the distraught diner over not having any wine, the weeping waiter, and the bottles of wine, whiskey and beer flying away.  The man in the top hat peering around the corner was known as “Mr. Dry,” the creation of a New York cartoonist. [See my post on “Mr. Dry” on December 23, 2023.]

Since it is not possible to copyright a title, a second “Prohibition Blues” followed in 1918.  This one was produced by two celebrities.  Ring Lardner, noted as one of America’s prime short story writers and novelists, also was a composer and lyricist.  His co-author, Nora Bayes, was a well known American singer, comedienne and actress of the period.  In 1918 she was at the height of her fame, having been heavily involved in morale-boosting activities during the First World War.  Her photo and credits on the front of the sheet music would have boosted sales.  A year later Bayes recorded “How Ya Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree),” a huge hit for Columbia Records.

As the months rolled on toward total abstinence, the song “I’ve Got the Prohibition Blues (for My Booze)” was rolled out in 1919 by the Elite Music Company of St. Louis.  The sheet music featured a waitress and two customers faced with a choice of tea, coffee, milk or soda, and clearly unhappy with any of them.  The lyrics to many anti-Prohibition songs are far from distinguished, but this one is among the worst.  Penned by an obscure songwriter named Carl Zerse, part of it goes like this: “I’m so thirsty that I’m blue, Old friend Booze I long for you.  I never knew that I’d miss you, the way I do, Boo-hoo, Boo-hoo.”  Think of that verse put to music.

Joseph McCarthy was an American lyricist whose most famous songs include “You Made Me Love You,” and “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”  For this 1919 song — “I’m Going to Settle Down Outside of London Town (When I’m Dry, Dry, Dry)” — he teamed with four time Academy Award nominee, James Monaco.  The words tell the story of a man who loves America but will settle in an English village by the sea come June.  He hates to say “goodbye,” but he is man “who must have a little liquor when I’m dry, dry, dry.”  He then pledges to come back when America has changed its mind.  That, unfortunately would be more than 14 years away.

Others apparently saw no reason for such drastic action.  Another 1919 song seemed to take the alcohol ban with some aplomb.  Written by a trio of New York “Tin Pan Alley” songwriters, it was entitled:  “(For If Kisses Are Are Intoxicating As They Say) Prohibition, You Have Lost Your Sting.”  The cover of the sheet music indicated that it had been successfully introduced by Sophie Tucker, backed by her band, the Five Kings of Syncopation.  Known as “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas,”  Ms. Tucker was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the early to mid-20th Century.  With the advent of television in the 1950s she had a rebirth of popularity and I remember her well.  Over the years she spawned almost as many imitators as Elvis.

As January 1, 1920, hove into sight, one song captured the dread.  As the cover of the sheet music made clear, even as the couples waltz around the floor, the hour was about to chime midnight ushering in an “alcohol-free” America,  The Grim Reaper — perhaps Mr. Dry in disguise — was lurking there to point out the lateness of the hour.  The song is entitled “At the Prohibition Ball.” Written by Alex Gerber and Abner Silver, the lyrics provide a fitting conclusion to the songs antecedent to “The Great Experiment.”

We'll be at the Prohibition Ball,

There we'll mix with Mister Alcohol;

Folks will pay their last respects

to Highballs and to Horse's Necks.

Note:  The songs above all were penned and published in advance of the imposition of National Prohibition.  The next article, to be posted shortly, treats some of the songs that followed during the ensuing 14 (ostensibly) “dry” years.

The Highs and Lows of Louisville’s Pattersons

The label on a whiskey bottle that opens this vignette is an important part of a story that involves an immigrant father, William Patterson Sr., and his son, William Patterson Jr., both engaged in the distilling business in Louisville, Kentucky.  Both men experienced success mixed with failure, one with tragic consequences.  Both Pattersons, however, must be reckoned among the “whiskey barons” of that state.

Shown here, Patterson Sr. was born in 1813 in County Tyrone Northern Ireland, likely of Scottish heritage, the son of  William and Mary Louisa Culver Patterson. His family apparently were reasonably affluent, allowing him to attend local elementary and secondary,schools and go on to higher education.  He then entered the Greenwich, England, Royal Navy College with the goal of becoming a naval officer.  After losing his right eye in an accident and having no chance at a military career, he became an apprentice to a London manufacturer.  Tiring of that occupation, at age 25 Patterson Sr. emigrated to America.  He headed to Eastern Kentucky, settling in Louisville.

Patterson Sr. almost immediately began working in the iron and steel industry.  Because of his ability he rapidly rose to ownership and, a biographer commented, “soon amassed a large fortune.”  In 1848 he was helped along the way by his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy local merchant.  She was Mary Culver, likely a distant cousin, a woman who would bear him eight children, four girls and four boys.  Among the latter was William Patterson Jr.

As his family grew, the members watched the Patterson fortunes rise and fall.  With the outbreak of the Civil War, although technically part of the Union, Kentucky was riven with conflict.  The result resulted in ruin for Patterson Sr. He lost his business and post-war was required to go to work for an iron and steel works in an adjoining county.  When that company shut down a year later, the Scots-Irish immigrant, in a startling change of occupation, bought an interest in a Louisville distillery.

It was the Swearingen & Biggs whiskey operation, called Mellwood Distillery. “Beginning on a small scale it became one of the largest and most successful institutions in the state.” Shown above, insurance records indicate a large facility built of brick and equipped with a fire-proof roof.  The property contained seven warehouses, one a “free (no federal regulation) that stood 70 feet southwest of the still and six “bottled in bond” warehouses, all within 300 feet of the still. The Mellwood Distillery could mash 1,200 bushels of grain daily and had the capacity to hold 65,000 barrels of aging whiskey.  Later the warehouses would be expanded slightly to 70,000 barrels. [See post on Swearingen and Mellwood, October 8, 2015.]

Although Patterson Sr. continued his interest in distilling, his entrepreneurial spirit also led him to found the Louisville Mantle & Casket Company.  Not long after, however, bad health caused him to end his business career.  For the next five years he lived as an invalid attended by wife Mary and six children still at home.  On January 29, 1891, Patterson Sr. died.  The cause given was apoplexy, probably a stroke.  His death was expected and his family was gathered at his bedside as he peacefully expired at the age of 78.

The Louisville Courier Journal headline of the news read:  “A Highly Respected Citizen Passes Away.”  The story continued: “During his long residence in this city Mr. Patterson had formed extensive acquaintances. He was a man of conscientious character, and during severest hardships in business, his friends never deserted him.”  Patterson’s funeral took place at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, his pallbearers drawn from the Louisville business community.  He was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery where many of the city’s “Whiskey Barons” are interred.

His father’s interest in the liquor trade was carried on by William Patterson Jr., his eldest son, who was 36 years old when his father died, and already involved in Louisville’s whiskey industry.  Widely known as “Billy,” Patterson Jr. began his career at the age of 16 when he went to work for a distillery, likely Mellwood.

He proved to have ample business acumen.  Before reaching 21 he already had amassed a considerable fortune by buying old malt from local distilleries and selling it at a profit.

Unlike his father, who primarily was an investor, Patterson Jr. was full bore into the whiskey trade.  In 1866, J. G. Mattingly, of a noted distilling family, had built a distillery  on Rudd Lane in Louisville, calling it The Marion County Distilling Co.  In December 1887 the plant and brand were sold to Patterson Jr. and two partners.  By the following year, the distillery was turning out 5,000 barrels of whiskey a year.  Insurance records indicate that the property included four warehouses, all brick with metal or slate roofs.  Three were bonded with one “free” warehouse located 115 feet north of the still.  A cattle shed and a six-story aging facility adjoined the cistern room.

In addition to his own warehouses, Patterson Jr. was making use of other storage opportunities.  Louisville investors in 1884 had built a large warehouse, shown here, on Main Street, a block from the area known as  “Whiskey Row.”  It principally provided public storage for aging whiskey as well as tobacco and other local manufactures.  The company also came to own a similar warehouse in Bremen, Germany, the city shown below, that allowed local distillers to ship their whiskey abroad.  Because of taxes, it was cheaper to age whiskey out of the country and pay import duty.  The cost of transport across the Atlantic was relatively inexpensive and the sloshing inside barrels on the high seas was generally believed to enhance quality.

Patterson Jr. was among the Louisville “whiskey men” to take advantage of the opportunity.   The note that opens this post tells the story.  The bourbon had been distilled by Patterson’s Marion County Distillery in 1894, sent to Bremen by ship in February 1902, returned to the U.S. in 1906, and bottled in July 1911.This 17-year-old, well-traveled bourbon subsequently was put on sale in New York City by liquor dealer C. A. Van Rensselaer, shown here.

Annual production of the Marion County Distillery put Patterson Jr. squarely in the ranks of the whiskey-making elites of Kentucky.  He featured a number of house brands, none of which he copyrighted.  They included “Old Patterson,” “William Patterson Rye,” Marion,” and “Portland.”  He had, however, arrived on the Kentucky whiskey scene as a major player at a difficult time.   There was a growing glut of whiskey on the American market.  According to industry spokesmen, Kentucky distillers by 1895 had 85 million gallons of whiskey in bond, worth $34,000,000 that they feared “cannot be gotten rid of.”

Patterson Jr. was a member of  a small group of leading distillers who met at Louisville’s posh Gall House Hotel in July 1895 to discuss the crisis.  As the board of managers of the Kentucky Distillers Association their purpose was to discuss endorsing a yearlong shut down of the state’s distilleries.  “To further manufacture whiskey means further glutting the market and a ruinous slackening of profitable business.”  Characterized as a “strike” by the Louisville Courier Journal, the board unanimously voted to propose that Kentucky distilleries shut down for a year beginning in July 1896.  The action, it was claimed, would yield between $20 million and $25 milllion additional value to the bonded whiskey stocks currently on hand.

In order for this strategy of “shut-down” to work, however, ninety percent of Kentucky’s distilleries would be obliged to comply.  The advocates expressed the hope that the state’s liquor dealers also would agree with the yearlong “dry” period. Advocates, however, were hard-pressed to declare any advantage for dealers.  Since the objective of the strike was to raise the price of whiskey from the distilleries, the increased cost would be felt in the first instance by the dealers.  A dissenting distillery owner also argued that an increase in the price of whiskey to the consumer would have the effect of leading the drinking public to consume the “cheapest and impurest” whiskey, and encourage dealers to compound and mix their own liquors.  He argued that “the man who drinks will drink whether the drink be fine or bad.”  In the end the one year strike fell far short of enlisting the necessary numbers of cooperating distillers.  The proposal failed and the glut of whiskey continued.

The resulting downturn in the profitability of Patterson Jr.’s Marion County Distillery continued into the 20th Century.  By 1905 he decided to sell out to the Whiskey Trust that was taking advantage of the downturn in the profitability of Kentucky distilleries to buy them up.  Although the Trust’s strategy was to close many of them, it kept the Marion County Distillery open and producing until the advent of National Prohibition.  The property was razed in 1904.

Patterson Jr. pivoted to becoming a whiskey wholesaler, operating from locations in the 200 block of West Main Street, a denizen of “Whiskey Row.”  As National Prohibition loomed ever larger on the horizon, he advertised as a mail order house seeking to serve “dry” cities and towns.  When Congress passed new legislation to outlaw that practice and the Supreme Court upheld it two years later, Patterson Jr.’s days selling whiskey were over.

He became despondent.  At 61 years old, this once recognized millionaire Kentucky “Whiskey Baron” was found dead in the bathroom of his residence.  He had committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. It lay on the floor by his side.  That morning he had told his wife he was going to shave himself.  When he had failed to emerge from the bathroom two hours later, his wife, alarmed, went looking for him and discovered his body.  Although medical aid was summoned, Patterson Jr. already was dead.  The Coroner was summoned and ruled the death self-inflicted.

Friends of Patterson Jr. told the press that he had been despondent for some time because of business losses and attributed his suicide to that cause.   After a funeral in Calvary Episcopal Church, he was interred in Cave Hill Cemetery. His grave, shown right. is adjacent to that of Patterson Sr.  Both men had faced the highs and lows of doing business in post-Civil War Kentucky.  For one of them the experience had proved fatal.

Notes:  The major source of information about the Pattersons are articles from the Louisville Courier Journal, the city’s leading newspaper.

 

 

  

Mike Owens and His Revolutionary Bottle Machine

Foreword:  The late 19th Century was a time of many important inventions, among them the light bulb, the automobile, and telephone.   None was more important to the whiskey trade, however, than the automatic bottle machine.  Before its coming all glass containers had to be blown one by one by hand at the potential health peril of the glassblower.   After its advent,  glass containers proliferated in the whiskey industry and costs plummeted. The man responsible for this invention, Mike Owens, is recognized here as a pre-Prohibition genius.

On February 26, 1895, a Toledo, Ohio, glassworks employee named Michael J. “Mike” Owens, shown right, was granted a patent on his machine for blowing glass and 2,000 years of making bottles other ways went crashing into shards.  Early next year  we celebrate the 125th anniversary of that defining moment in glass manufacturing.

Glassblowing as a technique is believed to have been invented by Syrian craftsmen in the first century B.C. somewhere along the Syro-Palestinian coast.  The rise of the Roman Empire served to spread the technology to other areas and blown glass became common for household and other uses.  Over two centuries, techniques for glass blowing were tweaked but did not change significantly.  The worker attached molten glass on the end of a blowpipe and with his breath pumped air into the blob until it reached a desired shape. After the glass had cooled it was broken away from the pipe, rough edges smooth and, voila!, a bottle.

Growing up Mike Owens knew a lot about blowing glass.  Born on January 1, 1859 in West Virginia, he was the son of an Irish immigrant coal miner.  Sent early to work for the family, by the age of fifteen he became a glassblower in a Wheeling WV factory.   Through intelligence and hard work he advanced to master glass worker, leaving his native state to help organize a glass company at Martins Ferry, Ohio.

Owens’ reputation soon reached north to Toledo, Ohio, where rich and well-born Edward Drummond Libby, left, had taken control of a glass factory and in 1888 offered Owens a better paying job.  His talent evident, within three months the Irishman was managing the glassworks department.  Several years later he approached Libby to say that he had idea for an automatic bottle machine and asked for money, time, and assistance to bring it to reality.

Many industrialists might have scoffed and told Owens to get back to work.  Libby, for whom my aunt, Nell Sullivan, was a secretary, was an enlightened entrepreneur. (Around my Toledo home we always referred to him reverentially as MR. Libby.)  He gave full backing to Owens and on February 26, 1905, the inventor was awarded Patent No. 534,840 for a glassblowing machine, the drawing shown here.  In the paperwork accompanying his application, Owens stated:  “My invention relate to an apparatus for blowing glass and has for its object to perform mechanically, what has heretofore been done manually.”

With that announcement, two centuries of making bottles by human breath came to an end, except for artisanal purposes.  By automating the manufacture of glass containers Owens helped eliminate child labor in glassworks — a practice of which he was well aware.   Two diseases were eliminated that plagued the workers, an inflammation of the the lungs and digestive tract and clouding of eye lenses, both resulting from exposure to hot gases.  

On the economic front, the cost of glass bottles was reduced by 80%, leading many canners, brewers and distillers, to move rapidly to machine-made containers.  At the same time, however, it left many glassblowers and their helpers unemployed since the mechanized process needed many fewer workers.

Within three years of the invention, the early Owens machine produced an estimated 105 million bottles.  As he gained experience with the process, this mechanical genius continued to improve on his invention, ultimately producing the “Owens Automatic Bottle Machine.”  It is shown below, one of the rare views of the inventor with his brainchild.  By 1915 this machine increased production numbers to over one and one half BILLION bottles manufactured annually.

Owens was fortunate that Edward Drummond Libby was an individual of integrity. A lesser man might have tried to marginalize the unlettered inventor and “stolen” his invention.  Libby, on the other hand,  encouraged Owens to continue inventing, financed his efforts and advanced his name to the forefront of American industrialists. Note Owens Bottle Machine Co. (now Owens-Illinois), Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass Co. (later Libby-Owens-Ford), and Owens-Corning Fiberglass.

In 1915 the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania awarded its coveted Elliott Cresson Metal to Owens.  Established by philanthropist Cresson in 1848, the medal was awarded annually  “for discovery or original research adding to the sum of human knowledge, irrespective of commercial value.”  Because of its “novelty and utility” the automatic bottle machine earned Owens the honor.  Seen here front and reverse is the Cresson Medal.

 As additional evidence of the importance of Owens's machine to the industry, within 20 years nearly all bottles manufactured in the United States, like this Libby “glacier glass” example, were produced automatically.  Standardization of bottle sizes and quality led to high-speed filling capabilities in industries that used  glass containers.  As a result, the bottle machine had a huge impact on food, soft drink, pharmaceutical, and alcoholic beverage producers.  Shown below are glass paperweights issued by the Owens Bottle Machine Co., depicting early  glass blowing mechanisms.

In the summer of 1956, I worked as an intern at Owens-Illinois in Toledo, writing items for plant newspapers.  As a result I was allowed on the factory floor to see the contemporary version of the Owens machine in action.  It was an unforgettable experience.  The heat and glare of the molasses-like glass, the long mechanical arms reaching into the inferno and scooping up a blazing orange glob, blowing air into the molten mass, shaping it in a revolving mold, dislodging the glass as it cooled, and reaching back for more — it was an unforgettable experience.

Mike Owens died in Toledo on December 23, 1923, at the age of 64, having revolutionized an industry.  His passing came unexpectedly. He was attending a meeting of Owens Bottle Company directors when he got up, walked a few steps, sat down in a chair, complained of feeling ill, collapsed and died within 20 minutes.  He was buried in Toledo’s Catholic Calvary Cemetery, his gravesite shown here.

In a memorial booklet to Owens, Libby providrd this tribute:  "Self-educated as he was, a student in the process of inventions with an unusual logical ability, endowed with a keen sense of far-sightedness and vision, Mr. Owens is to be classed as one of the greatest inventors this country has ever known.”   Libby commissioned a pressed glass bust, shown below, given to a limited number of Owen’s relatives, associates and friends.