The United States celebrates National Beer Day on Monday. While you may think this is just another arbitrarily made-up holiday, April 7 commemorates one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s earliest and most successful New Deal policies combating the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Roosevelt promised “bold, persistent experimentation” and he followed through on that pledge. Shortly after his inauguration, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare beer nonintoxicating. Yes, that’s right. For the prior 13 years, the 18th Amendment prohibited the production and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” which Congress defined as anything above 0.5% alcohol by volume.
Roosevelt’s rationale for legalizing beer wasn’t to let depressed citizens drown their sorrows. Rather, with 14 million people out of work, he hoped that beer’s return would create jobs tied to its production, distribution, service, and consumption. Congress took quick action and set 12:01 a.m. April 7, 1933, as the moment that beer up to 4% by volume, which is in the vicinity of most light beers today, would be permitted.
April 7 was like Mardi Gras, the Fourth of July and 10 New Year’s Eves rolled into one. In Chicago, the sounds of whistles, bells, horns, and other noisemaking devices commenced at the “beero hour,” and they continued to fill the Loop deep into the morning. The line at the bar of Berghoff’s German Restaurant was consistently eight deep — dimes were passed forward while steins were passed back.
Further north, every one of Milwaukee’s taverns, tap rooms, bars, and cafes overflowed to the curb as people climbed onto parked cars and serenaded one another with drinking songs.
Out west, thousands cheered as actress Jean Harlow broke a beer bottle across the first in a line of more than 500 delivery trucks leaving the Los Angeles Brewing Company at 12:01 a.m. To the east, the Acme beer garden on New York’s 3rd Avenue sold 1,650 gallons of beer in six hours, and similar scenes played out on nearly every block of Manhattan.
The buzz became noticeable across the U.S. economy. As though a switch had been flipped, the nation kicked into a production and job-creation gear not seen before nor since. Over the next four months, manufacturing output jumped 78%. Durable goods, such as automobiles and heavy equipment, surged nearly 200%, and the stock market leaped 71%.
Most remarkably, 4 million unemployed people went back to work. Much of Roosevelt’s mystique, which lives on to this day, can be attributed to the economic miracle — there is no other way to describe it — that took place in the spring of 1933.
Beer’s return contributed mightily to this turnaround. Hundreds of long-defunct breweries began major rehabilitations, hiring construction workers and purchasing new trucks, kegs, kettles, and refrigeration equipment. Restaurants, taverns, bars, and bottle shops took on new employees, as did firms in scores of other industries, from bottle-making to pretzels, that were tied to beer. The revival of the brewing industry is estimated to have created around half a million new jobs.
Perhaps more significant was the psychological lift that beer’s return provided. The “New Beer’s Eve” celebrations of April 7 were like an economic baptism, washing away the stain of the Great Depression. Newspapers showed countless pictures of smiling faces raising a pint, and featured headlines such as “Beer Boom Brings Jobs,” “Jingle of Coins with Gurgle of Legalized Beer,” and “Trade Swells on Beer Crest.”
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Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” was joyfully repurposed as “Happy Days Are Beer Again.” The economy turned the corner from the pit of the Great Depression, and beer played a major role in this recovery.
April 7, National Beer Day, is truly a day worth celebrating. Cheers!
Jason E. Taylor is a professor of economics at Central Michigan University and a member of the Board of Scholars at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. His new book is The Brew Deal: How Beer Helped Battle the Great Depression (Palgrave Macmillan).