Most liquor dealers advertised. The majority kept their ads local to their city or county. Some advertised regionally and had traveling sales forces to back up their efforts. Dealers emphasizing mail order sales advertised more widely throughout the U.S., but constrained by cost often just with small notices in trade journals. John Schweyer, a Chicago liquor dealer, consciously set out to break that mold, issuing large display ads in magazines with coast-to-coast circulations. It worked.
Schweyer was born in Zutzendorff, Alsace, then part of the German empire, now a town in France. When he was 21 in 1870, he emigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago and in 1875 becoming a naturalized American citizen. From a passport description, Schweyer was 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with black hair, green gray eyes, a high forehead, long face and “sallow” complexion. He seems almost immediately to have engaged in the whiskey trade, learning the business in one of the many liquor houses in the Windy City.
Within five years of coming to America John found a bride in Chicago. Her name was Louise and at 15 years old, she was nine years younger than John. They would have two children, Edward, born in 1875, and Frieda, in 1879. Perhaps it was the impetus of a growing family that caused Schweyer to strike out on his own. He began being listed as an independent liquor merchant in local business directories in 1877, located at 581 West 12th Street. As his business succeeded, he soon moved to larger quarters along the same Chicago commercial avenue. By 1887 he was occupying the building shown here.
Although he called himself an “old Pennsylvania distiller,” Schweyer was in fact a “rectifier,” that is someone blending whiskeys to achieve a particular color, smoothness and taste. He featured a great many brands, including: “Arcola,” "Chicago Club,” "Oak Glen,” "Old Cabinet Penn,” "Rich Valley,” "Schweyer 10 X Cabinet,” "Schweyer Cabinet,” "Schweyer Cabinet Reserve,” "Schweyer Pure Rye,” “Nestor Sour Mash,” and "Straight Trip.”
Although he also tapped distilleries in Illinois and Pennsylvania, a major source of Schweyer’s supplies was The Old Darling Distillery in Carroll County, Kentucky, known in federal parlance as RD #4, 6th District. Founded in the late 1870s, over time Old Darling became an extensive facility with eight different warehouses, four free and four in bond. All but one were constructed of brick with metal or slate roofs. The distillery itself was of the same construction. The complex also included a barrel house (cooperage) on site, an engine and boiler house, an iron-clad grain elevator and frame cattle pens 26 feet south of the still.
The Old Darling Distillery could provide Schweyer with a substanial amount of the raw product he was rectifying in the back room or upper floors of his large quarters. He was mixing up his various brands, bottling them onsite, and putting his own labels on them as shown here for Chicago Club “Old Fine” Whiskey and The Schweyer Double Copper Distilled “White Rye.” The latter and a shot glass above contain illustrations of his trademark, a bird sitting on a barrel of whiskey surrounding by sheaves of grain. Most of his bottles have lost their labels over time but Schweyer embossed his containers with his name and “Chicago,” as shown on the flasks below.
It is not clear just when Schweyer decided that his best opportunity for marketing his whiskey was to sell nationwide by running advertisements in major publications. An ad, below, in 1889 carried a note, written to look as if it were added by the magazine: “The Schweyer Distilleries have been well known in the liquor trade for upwards of 25 years. Their change and future course of supplying consumers direct is said to be due to the increasing adulteration of their whiskies by wholesale and retail dealers.” The implications of this statement are preposterous. Schweyer was not a distiller but one of the wholesalers/retailers being demeaned in the ad. He had complete control of his Chicago blending, bottling, and sales process. There was no way any wholesalers or retailers could have tampered with his products.
The ad ran in Munsey’s Magazine, a monthly founded in New York City in 1889. The publication featured an innovative front cover in color and 36 pages of articles on subjects of widespread interest. It sold nationally on newsstands and through subscription. By 1895, the magazine had a circulation of 500,000 a month. Schweyer also was advertising in Leslie’s Weekly, a nationally circulated illustrated literary and news magazine with a circulation of 65,000 weekly. Shown below are Schweyer ads from each publication.
Although display ads in both magazines were expensive — Schweyer later sized them down — his gambit paid off. By the turn of the century many localities under prohibitionist pressure had voted themselves “dry,” banning alcohol sales. Many states and more localities would do so in ensuing years. Mail order booze, however, remained protected by the commerce clause of the Constitution. Schweyer pre-paid express fees east of Colorado and sent his liquor in plain boxes and parcels to thwart noisy neighbors. His whiskey found a ready — and thirsty — market. For 15 years the German immigrant prospered.
A few months after Congress acted to end the loophole of out of state shipments to “dry” areas, Schweyer died in Chicago at the age of 63. He was buried in in Section K of Forest Home Cemetery, Cook County, next to his wife, Louise, who had died earlier. His grave marker is shown here. The company he had founded, John Schweyer & Co., continued to be operated under his name by associates until closed in 1919 with the coming of National Prohibition.
By the time of Repeal, American advertising had become increasingly sophisticated. Leslie’s Weekly had folded in 1922; Munsey’s in 1929. Their place was taken by national magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and the New Yorker that after 1934 ran liquor ads of considerably less dense text and emphasized “modern” design quality. Earlier ads, such as those shown here, have come to look quaint, almost archaic. Nevertheless, John Schweyer deserves to be remembered among whiskey men for his pioneering advertising to sell liquor to all America.
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