Whiskey Men Targeted by Prohibitionists

Foreword:   While prohibitionists as a movement seldom targeted individual whiskey men for their wrath, some free-lancing zealots did — Carrie Nation stands out as an example but others as well.  As a result publicans and liquor dealers who simply were tending to business could find themselves singled out in their communities as targets.  Presented here are four such situations and their often unforeseen consequences.

In 1914 Max Friedlander was operating a successful liquor house in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, when a traveling evangelist named Henry Stough, preaching at a tent revival there, leveled a personal blast at four men he said were principally responsible for sin and corruption in Hazelton.  Among them was Max Friedlander.  If it were not for that four, the evangelist declared, there would be no houses of prostitution, no saloons open on Sunday, no slot machines, no gambling dens or poker games in town.  “I lay the moral condition of Hazelton and the vicious things here at the foot of these four.  Let them take up the gauntlet.  I have thrown it down,”  Stough declaimed.

Friedlander and the other three were quick to retaliate, filing suits for slander against Stough, shown left, each asking for $50,000 in damages, the equivalent of $1.2 million each today. The legal battle that ensued became a circus. The trial was disrupted by demonstrations by the preacher’s followers who crowded a Hazelton courtroom to “hoot and holler” during the taking of testimony.  The trial had to be moved to Wilkes Barre and no one was allowed inside the courtroom except attorneys and “interested parties.”  Nevertheless, the demonstrators followed and continued their loud protests in the courthouse corridors. 

Eventually damages of $2,700 each ($65,000 today) were awarded to Max and the others.  This time Stough went to court, appealing the judgment.  His lawyer, explicitly cited the ethnicity of the allegedly slandered four, declaring in court that a Jewish liquor dealer (Max), an Irish councilman, an Italian politician and German brewer together held so much influence over the judges of Luzerne County that Stough could not get a fair trial there.  The attorney was disbarred but in the end the State Supreme Court dismissed the cases against Stough.  The preacher had been within his First Amendment rights and his charges were not slanderous or actionable, the judges ruled.  Max and the others saw no compensation. 

But Friedlander had other rewards.  The local community strongly rallied around him and not long after clergyman’s diatribe, he was elected president of the Hazelton Board of Trade.  The newspaper account of Max’s election dismissed Stough as an “itinerant evangelist” and his accusations as “unpleasant.”  Before the legal processes had run their course, Friedlander also had been elected a director of the Markle Banking and Trust Company, a Hazelton financial institution with assets equivalent to more than $12 million.

John Nunan’s travails began about 1906 when Professor H.K. Taylor, was named president of the Kentucky Wesleyan College at Winchester, Kentucky.  Early in his presidency Prof. Taylor became highly affronted by the saloons in Winchester, apparently feeling they were hotbeds of temptation for his male students.  In 1908 Taylor plotted a “sting” he hoped would put Nunan, and other Winchester saloonkeepers either out of business or facing heavy fines and maybe jail time by having an underage student named Green buy a bottle of beer in each.  

Being of a theological rather than legal turn of mind, the don had failed to mount an airtight prosecution.  At the trial, young Green said he was sure the proprietor had not sold the beer to him but could not positively identify either of the bartenders.   Other evidence that might have helped Prof. Taylor’s case were the bottles of beer that Green bought in each drink emporium.  Taylor had marked the each bottle to show the saloon it came from.  A local newspaper told the rest of the story:  “…But the first night of the trial Prof. Taylor brought the bottles to the police court room and the trial was postponed.  Prof. Taylor left the bottles in the court room but they disappeared and therefore could not be produced.” 

The judge summarily dismissed the case on the grounds that not only was there no physical evidence of purchases, Green could not identify who had sold him the beer.  The decision applied to Nunan and the other saloonkeepers, who walked out of court seemingly vindicated.  Prof. Taylor became a laughing stock in Winchester.  Within several months, he resigned as president of Kentucky Wesleyan and his resignation was accepted, seemingly with alacrity, by the Methodist Educational Board.  For a time Nunan went back to a more normal existence.

In November of 1908 Martin J. Breen, a Chicago wholesale liquor dealer, was arrested on a charge of giving liquor to a minor in suburban Englewood, and released only after posting a $500 bond. The warrant claimed that nine-year-old Elmer Flodin had been enticed to drink whiskey.  “My boy had left the house on his way to school and was standing on the front porch when a man came up to him and gave him a bottle of whiskey,” his father related. “He hardly knows what whiskey is and is certainly not fit to handle it.”  Down the street Flossie Thompson, age nine, and Emma Lindquist, thirteen, also reputedly were given bottles of liquor.  Breen had been targeted by Little Elmer’s outraged father, A. S. Flodin, an anti-drink zealot.   

The law provided a fine of from $20 to $100 or a jail sentence of from ten to thirty days, or both, and Flodin was demanding a jail sentence.  In his defense, Breen issued a statement admitting that his firm had been distributing sample bottles of whiskey but insisted that they were being given only to adults. He intimated that he was being framed by prohibitionary forces:  “If bottles of our whiskey were delivered to children it probably was done by persons not connected with us in any way and who desired to prejudice the public mind against us merely by reason of our being engaged in the wholesale liquor business.”  Although Breen likely paid a fine, there is no evidence he ever went to jail and he continued to run his liquor house.

During the early 1900s Conrad Glosking and Jacob Levy had formed a highly successful distilling and wholesale liquor dealership in Wilmington, Delaware, attracting the attention of temperance advocates.   The “drys” had succeed in getting a law passed in Delaware that decreed that no one under the age of 21 could work in a saloon or barroom. Because much of the help for such establishments came from youths under 21, the laws severely constricted the labor pool for drinking establishments.

In 1914 Levy & Glosking reapplied for their usual state license. It allowed the company to compound and rectify as well as sell intoxicating liquors to be drunk off premises, in any quality not less than one-half gallon. To their surprise and consternation, the issuance of the license was challenged in court by local prohibitionists.  They argued that the company employed minors in their store to handle liquor by transferring whiskey from barrels to bottles on premises. As a result, the Society contended, the liquor was unsealed and the opportunity given to minors to drink some. In effect, Levy & Glosking were being accused of running the equivalent of a saloon.

If the Delaware license had been denied, Levy & Glosking were finished. The partners fought back by hiring perhaps the most potent lawyer available in the state. He was Daniel O. Hastings, a former Associate Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, shown here. Hastings effectively made the case in court that Levy & Glosking were not, in fact, a saloon and that the law on minors had no application to them. The opposition had no real answer. The judge agreed with Hastings and dismissed the argument of the prohibitionists.  Levy & Glosking received the precious license.

For Friedman, Nunan, Breen, and Levy & Glosking, overcoming those targeted attacks by prohibitionary “lone wolves,” marked only temporary victories for the whiskey men.  As state after state went “dry” and finally the entire Nation in 1920, all of them were forced to shut down their enterprises for good.

Note:  More extensive treatment of each of the men featured here can be found on this blog.  Max Friedlander, January 7, 2016;  John Nunan, October 20, 2015; Martin Breen, July 18, 2017, and Levy & Glosking, March 12, 2012.

Levy & Glosking of Delaware: Targeted by Temperance

Market Street, Dover Delaware

For Conrad Glosking and Jacob Levy, one of German Catholic background, the other of German Jewish ancestry, involvement in the liquor trade was an unashamed part of their heritages. Together they forged a wholesale liquor and distilling company that was unsurpassed in the State of Delaware. Unfortunately, it also made Levy & Glosking a tempting target for the forces of Prohibition and ultimately they struck.

Conrad Glosking was born in 1865 in Philadelphia into a family of German immigrants from Rhineland-Palatinate in Western Germany. His father, Henry nee Heinrich, ran a wine house in the City of Brotherly Love, providing a living for his wife, Elizabeth, and five children. The 1880 census found all of them at home, with everyone but the youngest out of school and working. Conrad, then age 15, listed his occupation as “segar maker.”

Jacob Levy shows up 1900 census, living with his wife and children in the Slaughter Subdivision of Dover, Delaware. In a local survey Levy was represented as “Euro-American of Prussian descent.” He owned a distillery on N. Front Street in Dover in a neighborhood described as largely Afro-American.

How Gosking and Levy connected is not clear. By the late 1890s Glosking had left off making “segars” in Philadelphia and had joined Levy in a Wilmington, Delaware, wholesale liquor business with a store on Market Street, shown above as it looked in the 1890s. They called their company Levy & Glosking. State tax records show that the company paid $100 in 1905 for a license to produce alcoholic beverages. 

They also were listed as owners of a distillery on North Street in Dover, 47 miles from Wilmington, probably the same facility that Levy had begun some years earlier.  According to a 1906 government survey, Levy & Glosking's Dover complex consisted of the distillery, two warehouses, an office building , a storage facility and four out-buildings. 

The company prospered, issuing whiskey containers that variously cite each city. Of particular interest are the firm’s stoneware jugs, shown here, all with a Dover address. They bear differences in shape, color and, albeit slightly, in fancy calligraphy. Years later the Wilmington Museum would feature Levy & Glosking jugs in an exhibit.


The Wilmington address appears on the label of the Levy & 
Glosking flagship brand, Diamond State Rye Whiskey, named after Delaware’s state sobriquet. That whiskey was sold in flask size and, as shown here, in quarts. The company also issued shot glasses that advertised the brand. With passage of the Bottle-in-Bond Act by Congress, the partners joined up and put their warehouses under government control, as reflected by the label on Diamond State Rye. Federal records show five bonded warehouse transactions by the partners from 1898 to 1914.

Meanwhile, the forces of Prohibition were closely watching Levy & Glosking’s success in Delaware. A group of Temperance advocates in nearby Philadelphia had formed an organization called the “Law and Order Society.” Composed of clergy and others dedicated to a “dry” America they had succeed in getting laws passed in Pennsylvania and Delaware that decreed that no one under the age of 21 could work in a saloon or barroom. Because much of the help for such establishments came from youth under 21, the laws severely constricted the labor pool for drinking establishments.

In 1914 Levy & Glosking reapplied for their usual state license. It allowed the company to compound and rectify as well as sell intoxicating liquors to be drunk off premises, in any quality not less than one-half gallon. To their surprise and consternation, the issuance of the license was challenged in court by the Law and Order Society. It alleged that the partners employed a minor in and about their store to handle liquor, contrary to law, and that the youth transferred whiskey from barrels to bottles on premises. As a result, the Society contended, the liquor was unsealed and the opportunity given to minors to imbibe. In effect, Levy & Glosking were being accused of running the equivalent of a saloon. The lawyer for the Society was Caleb E. Burchenal, who also was the attorney for the Delaware Anti-Saloon League.

Daniel O. Hastings

If the Delaware license had been denied, Levy & Glosking were finished. The partners fought back by hiring perhaps the most potent lawyer available in Delaware. He was Daniel O. Hastings, shown here. Hastings had served as Deputy Attorney General of Delaware from 1904 until 1909, Secretary of State from January 1909 to June 1909. He then resigned to accept an appointment as Associate Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and served there until resigning in January 1911. He also had been Special Counsel for the Delaware General Assembly in 1911 and City Solicitor of Wilmington. Later Hastings would be elected to the United States Senate from Delaware. Without a a doubt Levy & Glosking had hired a Delaware legal powerhouse.

Hastings effectively made the case that Levy & Glosking were not, in fact, a saloon and that the law on minors had no application to them. Burchenal had no real answer. The judge agreed with Hastings and dismissed the argument of the Temperance forces. At the same time, however, no doubt feeling political heat from that cause, the judge suggested that the “spirit of the law” if not its letter militated against minors working anywhere liquor was involved. The judge concluded: “And we now caution against the employment of minors for such purpose,” hinting that in the future such a practice might result in refusing a license. Then he decreed that a license be granted once again to Levy & Glosking.

The victory was not to be long lasting for the co-owners. As National Prohibition was voted, Levy & Glosking were forced to terminate business in 1919. Almost immediately the Dover distillery premises was occupied by the Harrington & Bailey Apple Products Company, later to become an ice plant and cold storage warehouse. All the other buildings on the property were demolished by 1929.