On April 7, 1934, a dust-covered, drought-weary crowd gathered to welcome President Franklin Roosevelt to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, with signs proclaiming, “You gave us beer, now give us water.” The previous year, Roosevelt again legalized the production and consumption of beer with the stroke of the presidential pen. Yet, the decade which ushered in the end of Prohibition and the return of the American brewing industry was one of ecological disasters for American farmers and brewers.
A series of devastating droughts in the 1930s wrought havoc on the American malting barley crop, the principal commodity in brewing beer. With massive crop failures, malt prices skyrocketed, fetching unprecedented premiums by 1936. In other words, brewing beer became incredibly expensive during the Great Depression.
This paper blends business and environmental history to explore the impact of the 1930s droughts on the fledgling post-repeal brewing industry. As historians have argued, the 1930s proved to be a critical period in the development of the modern American brewing oligopoly. Other scholars, however, have focused primarily on the societal and technological influences that contributed to the demise of the local firm and the ascension of the massive shipping breweries such as Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, Millers, Coors, and Schlitz. My research makes an intervention into this argument by focusing on the materiality of beer. By directing focus to critical brewing ingredients, this paper will demonstrate that the high commodity prices throughout the 1930s played an important role in small firm closure and industry consolidation.
*A version of this paper was to be presented at the 2020 BHC, but the panel was canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.