Capitalism, Protectionism, and Beer Wars in Rock Island, 1880–1900

Abstract

IN SPRING 2020, A JUDGE PASSED the latest ruling in a series of conflicts between two of America's, and indeed the world's, largest breweries. The most recent Anhueser-Busch and Molson Coors phase of bellicosity stemmed from the 2019 Super Bowl. Anhueser-Busch spent thirty million dollars letting the nearly one hundred million Americans who watched the Super Bowl know that Molson Coors used corn syrup in their beers. A fact largely unimportant in the massive consumption of Molson Coors beers on that day or since. The fight over ingredients and the purity of their respective beers erupted into an advertising, litigious, and public war. Ultimately, the judge sided with Anheuser-Busch, and claimed Molson Coors could just as easily go after their competitor's ingredients.1Beyond the clear dimensions of defensiveness in terms of beer purity, an attitude reflected by brewers across time and space, this reveals another crucial element of the brewing industry. Breweries, large and small, have engaged in conflicts over supremacy with a host of tools and weapons. This is not only done today by giant international breweries but also by brewers throughout American history. During the early days of American industrial brewing in the nineteenth century, there were many of the same ideological and ingredient wars.Beer wars commonly broke out between and within late nineteenth-century American cities. These “beer wars” often illustrate the dramatic competition local brewers faced in the rising power, production, and reach of larger midwestern breweries in Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, including such companies as Schlitz, Anheuser-Busch, and Pabst, which grew into beer-producing powerhouses. They also reveal complex economic relations between brewers, workers, consumers, retailers, and the various members of the brewing industry.This study addresses a handful of issues. First, beer history offers an important avenue to explore American history and the negotiations disparate groups undertook to navigate power relations. Breweries, retailers, and customers were not monolithic groups but identities that came with internal struggles. Microbreweries—an anachronistic term—a century ago competed with each other while they collectively rallied against major breweries. Second, the nineteenth-century beer industry is rich with potential to complicate historical understandings of foodways. Here, the messiness of monopolization and capitalism are examined on a micro level.Third, I want to examine forms of resistance to large brewing companies that grew ever larger during the late nineteenth century. This was a time of mergers, acquisitions, and monopolies that posed existential risks for smaller companies outside the metropole. Brewers located outside but near such major hubs as Chicago, Milwaukee, or St. Louis needed to zealously maintain their market share against the incursion of mass-produced, cheaply transported beer.Smaller breweries that existed on the periphery of larger-scale beer factories have escaped the attention of beer historians. Much research on American breweries focuses on particular cities, such as Chicago, Cincinnati, or Milwaukee, or specific breweries, such as Anheuser-Busch or Coors.2 These cities and breweries, due to their longevity, financial and political weight, and current power in the brewing industry, do warrant considerable examination and inquiry. Many threads of American, and global, beer history are illuminated through the annals of these entities’ histories.Yet more attention needs to be paid to the histories of local, smaller breweries and to how larger, national issues played out on the local scale. I believe a closer analysis of breweries sufficiently proximate to major cities to receive regular shipments of beer and yet have their own local brewers is an important next step in beer history; near enough to the action to experience firsthand the threat and pain of expanding breweries, yet far enough to not be gobbled up immediately. Those in this geographic zone arguably were more capable of resisting rather than succumbing to these brewing giants. Certainly, all brewers face challenges across the industry—finding ingredients, mitigating costs and risks, attracting customers, and so forth—but here the focus is on one specific type of battle: the beer factory against the local brewery.Breweries of sufficient size to be well-established businesses but never able to step up to the level of a beer factory occupy an important middle ground in the beer industry. Attention to local breweries that were neither simply local watering holes with tenable future prospects nor major breweries—craft or otherwise—reveal the complexity and range of financial decisions and opportunities in the beer industry. I argue that the middle ground occupied by this type of local brewery is unstable; breweries must either grow or diminish, and the example of Rock Island reveals the ferocious competition as breweries sought to step into a higher category of production while simultaneously resisting degradation.Drawing a line between craft, micro, and mass production breweries even today poses difficult definitional problems. This is also true of the late nineteenth century. For the purposes of this article, I categorize breweries with significant output, whose names we today recognize, as beer factories. Their historical mass production of beer made them into giants in their field; they owned massive property, distributed well beyond the vicinity of their factories, and controlled a sizable amount of the market share and political power. Such major producers such as Yuengling, Schlitz, Pabst, and Coors are examples of beer factories. Longevity is an imperfect metric, as many small breweries have persisted for decades despite not reaching the size of Pabst, for instance, but this definition will help differentiate between beer factories and small, long-defunct breweries.Local brewers fiercely fought against incursions across the US, and the beer wars in Rock Island, Illinois, offer a prime example of this. In the late nineteenth century, Rock Island was a small town with a thriving brewing industry situated down the Mississippi from major beer-producing Chicago. This city exemplifies the protectionism local breweries exhibited toward outside beer and the tendency for local breweries to compete vigorously with their neighbors. The beer industry during the late nineteenth century was not only a story of ever-expanding monopolistic breweries but also vociferous attacks between small brewers attempting to maintain soluble businesses.On national, regional, and municipal scales, breweries expanded to control as much of the available market as possible. In their efforts to expand, they came up against other brewers in their town, regional brewers, and then national beer factories. By declaring war, Rock Island breweries announced their opposition to other breweries’ attempts to sell beer in the city and firmly committed themselves to undercutting prices to protect their market—both on an individual brewery level and as a municipality. The verbiage, strategies, goals, and casus belli echoed other brewery battles for survival.What follows is, first, an abbreviated history of beer and brewing in late nineteenth-century America. Next is an examination of beer wars, who instigated them, how they differ, and their consequences. After that, I offer a deep dive into Rock Island's beer wars and the vicious fights between breweries to keep their businesses afloat. Within the Rock Island microcosm, we can explore market monopolization within the city, protectionism against incursions from outside, and forays into nearby towns. Beer is a crucial commodity to explore issues of capitalism and monopolization in America during a period of rapid market consolidation.Beer production exploded in late nineteenth-century America, driven by major influxes of German immigrants with capital, skill, and the desire to establish breweries. These characteristics, plus the roaring Industrial Revolution, meant that savvy brewers and business owners could generate capital, construct massive brewhouses, and distribute their mass-produced lager across their city and region.3 This is not to say Americans were not brewing before this time, simply that German immigration and industrialization drastically ramped up the production, shape, and direction of brewing in the US in the late nineteenth century.Although brewers often started breweries out of a desire to make a living and recreate German cultural spaces, such as beer gardens and halls, their efforts expanded into large-scale ventures, assisted by technologies and markets available to them. By the end of the nineteenth century, many midwestern cities, such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, possessed beer factories that produced lager on a tremendous scale. This level of production required massive amounts of capital, the capacity for mass production, and a search for new markets which, in turn, brought them in direct conflict with brewers in cities within their reach. To continue to grow, beer factories had to find new markets, saturate them completely, and repeat.Germans predominantly produce lager, a traditional bottom-fermented beer, which means that the yeast used works more effectively at cooler temperatures. Today, it is by far the most mass-produced type of beer in the United States; Coors, Budweiser, Miller, and their derivatives are all lagers. Brewers in the same city thus struggled to make their particular brews stand out. Today, many brewers use such additives as fruits, sugars, or other flavorings to make their beers distinctive. Also, varying levels of acidity or minerals in local water can result in tremendously different beers.In nineteenth-century American cities, these options were severely curtailed, especially for German brewers. First, additives for flavor, not economy, could have raised the cost of the beer at a time when brewers raced to the bottom. Second, culturally, additives would have been frowned upon. The Reinheitsgebot, a series of German purity regulations passed in 1516, dictated that proper German beer must have only water, barley, and hops.4 Not all brewers followed this, but to make a proper lager, ingredients outside this list were prohibited. Further, it is improbable they manipulated the water's content since to do so on a large scale would have entailed additional labor, precise fine-tuning, and it would have also committed the brewer to ensuring the same levels every brew.With all this in mind, brewers faced a number of obstacles to setting their beer apart from that of their competitors. Certainly, there was variety in the beers, but since recipes were closely guarded secrets, ascertaining how brewers varied the levels of hops or malt in their brews is difficult. Instead of distinguishing their beers by taste, brewers employed simpler method to make their beer stand out: newspaper advertising. Brewers employed advertising schemes to attract new customers, most falling into one of two categories. The positive approach was to promote one's beer as the best product around. The negative approach was to attack other breweries’ ingredients, practices, or recipes. The 2019 Anheuser-Busch television commercial resulting in lawsuits that opened this article is a more recent example of this negative approach. For the most part, however, people choose beer based on price, not advertising. Lowering prices, cutting costs (typically using less malt or hops, or reusing them), and driving down the price of beer were the most effective methods brewers used to attract new customers and build a base.When prices dropped below the profit level of a brewer—intentionally losing money to drive a competitor out of business or grow a consumer base—they were called beer wars. Beer wars were declared both seriously and flippantly with great frequency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sometimes these wars were essentially drinking contests, with varying degrees of levity. One, between two Germans in Williamsburg, ended with one imbiber consuming fifty glasses and the victor guzzling fifty-five. Perhaps begun in a spirit of fun competition, sadly after that much alcohol, both men died a few days later.5Commonly, the wars were over financial concerns and revolved around constant negotiations and interconnections between saloonkeepers, brewers, and consumers. When brewers or saloonkeepers adjusted their prices, it had immediate tangible effects on the community. The American beer industry was variegated and divisive in the late nineteenth century, and businesses struggled to rise to survive, let alone succeed. Saloons, brewers, and customers competed among themselves and against one another to buy or sell beer at a price that most benefited their interests—typically at the cost of similar businesses or the beer industry writ large.Economic beer wars can be further split into two types. The first resulted from saloons or brewers raising prices, and the second from competitors racing to the bottom. Both types were designed to renegotiate power and profits within the community. Saloons raised prices to increase profits and push back against brewer's control of the beer industry. On the other hand, brewers drastically dropped prices to drive out competitors who could not run on thin, or negative, margins for a length of time.Several beer wars began when saloons attempted to raise prices and manipulated their relationship with brewers, other saloons, and customers. One, in 1873 in Denver, called the five-cent beer, war pitted saloons against brewers. Some saloonkeepers wanted to sell beer for ten cents a glass, increasing their profit margin, and brewers resisted this hike as it may cut into their production. At the time, some saloons sold beer for five cents and were undercutting the others that wanted ten cents to dispense beer. In order to present a unified front, the saloon keepers agreed to ten cents and formed a “Saloonkeepers Society” to present their demands to brewers. After several days of debates, the brewers and saloonkeepers came to an agreement of 10 cents per glass, a standard keg price, and a promise of saloons to not buy beer from “foreign brewers” or those outside of Denver.6Denver's beer war is a case study in the power of united saloons to negotiate prices. This was not always the case, and the Denver saloonkeepers exhibited a great deal of power in their beer war once they unified around ten cents a beer. Their agreement stated they would purchase beer for $3.50 per keg and sell it for ten cents a glass. A standard keg today is 15.5 gallons and amounts to 124 pints. Therefore, Denver saloons profited almost seven cents per glass. Often, saloons were reactive to brewers’ price changes rather than proactive. In Detroit in 1874, brewers raised the price of their kegs to nine dollars and saloons pushed prices to five cents a glass, which resulted in saloons losing two cents a glass despite the outrage consumers expressed at the price hike.7 Standing alone as individual businesses, saloons and breweries acted independently to protect themselves and only rarely acted in concert.Saloons were rarely as unified as they were in Denver in 1873, and they competed vigorously against one another to destroy others’ businesses. A Wheeling, West Virginia, beer war erupted over selling beer for three rather than five cents a glass. By dropping the prices, saloons enjoyed “rapidly increasing business” at the cost of decreasing profit margins, which dropped from 125 percent for five-cent beer to 60 percent for three-cent beer.8 Although still healthy margins, there were numerous costs associated with running a saloon. By halving the profit margin, more established and lucrative saloons relied upon their economies of scale to undercut and dismantle smaller, less secure saloons.A saloon's power was constantly negotiated not only among saloons but also between saloons and brewers, propped up by saloons’ capacity to sell alcohol at sufficiently profitable levels. Several factors played into this, and by no means were saloons united. Selling products besides beer—wine, spirits, and so forth—offered them some respite from pressure to adjust their beer prices. For example, one commentator noted, “Each valiant saloon-keeper declaring that his especial brand of lager is the best in the world, and that all other brands are but weak inventions of the enemy.”9 Saloons could offer only what was brewed, and they had little say in what beer was produced. To a degree, they could choose which breweries to partner with, but again, the available options dwindled as beer wars reduced the number of breweries. As producers, brewers ultimately had the most say in beer wars, and often instigated them to drive other brewers out of business and claim a larger market share.The most serious, and most devastating, wars were price gouging battles in which brewers dropped their prices considerably to drive away competition. Brewers with sufficient capital to run on a loss for a period of time stood a good chance of nipping any rising competition in the bud. These battles were reported widely; one commentator in Pioche, Nevada, noted that in Austin, Texas, a saloonkeeper “proposes to give the beer away, and still another . . . says he will give a trade-dollar to every purchaser of two-bits worth of beer.”10Customers clearly were the winners of price-dropping beer wars. Understandably, people flocked to vendors of cheap beer. Certainly, brewers poised to tap into customer loyalty attempted to leverage that during these wars; perhaps if they could not afford to drop prices as low, they counted on a superior product or a devout customer base to tolerate higher beer prices. Cheap beer, in addition to reorienting breweries production and profitability, heavily influenced municipalities’ social life.Although painful in the short term, if successful, these wars proved highly effective in changing customers’ drinking patterns. Price dropping allowed brewers to undercut local competition, block outside incursion, and establish footholds in new cities. Brewers at all levels employed these strategies, as far as they could sustain financial hardship for long-term growth.Between 1896 and 1907, there were serial beer wars in Rock Island that restructured the beer industry there and in neighboring towns. They varied considerably in duration, depending on when the belligerent parties agreed to a price for a floor or ceiling. Three beer wars in the late 1890s–1895, 1896, and 1899– illustrate the impacts of beer wars upon the breweries and the city. The frequency of beer wars in Rock Island in the 1890s, though higher than in many of their American peer cities, was indicative of the larger beer industry. First, brewers operated within a fiercely capitalist market, restrained by few rules and characterized by high risk. Second, beer wars frequently broke out whenever a single brewer felt threatened by incursions, particularly by brewers from Chicago or other cities. Third, beer wars immediately involved the entire brewing industry and sent waves through the local community. In such a tight market, small movements shifted regional industry tectonic plates and engulfed all in beer wars.Home to a handful of breweries during this period, Rock Island produced a good deal of beer. In 1886, Brewers at Atlantic Brewery, City Brewery, and Rock Island Brewery produced sixty thousand, twelve thousand, and eight thousand barrels of beer, respectively.11 The town population a few years earlier, in 1880, was only 11,700 people, and by 1890 it had reached only 13,600.12 To consume all the beer produced by the three breweries, a population of this size would had had to consume almost eight hundred beers per person annually. The nineteenth century was a robust time for drinking, but even still, this is considerably over the average for the time.13 Clearly, a surplus of beer meant a healthy industry with resources to protect itself and breweries that sought to export their product. To gain a foothold in nearby towns such as Davenport, Iowa, located across the river, they had to market their beer at attractive prices. Beyond acceptably low prices, opening and operating a brewery required significant upfront capital, investment, and expertise.Industrial level breweries invested in buildings, equipment, material, labor, and other necessary tools of their trade. In 1886, Rock Island breweries employed seventy people, bought grain, hops, barrels, fuel, and so forth, and thus carried a great deal of risk.14 On top of their financial investment in equipment, Rock Island brewers often carried insurance, primarily against fires. Breweries required tremendous fuel to boil water and heat the beer during the fermentation process. Larger breweries, producing larger batches, required exponentially more fuel. These fires, if they grew out of control, could wreak havoc on brewers’ expensive equipment, burn through supplies, and ruin barreled beer. Kilning, where maltsters soak grain and then heat the kernels to encourage germination, is an essential part of brewing and also requires heat. Once the grain begins to sprout, the maltster places the budding grains in a kiln to heat. The color of the gain in the kiln in large part determines the color of the beer. Malt left in the kiln longer becomes darker, and results in a darker beer. Ensuring malt is kilned to the correct color is a tedious and skilled job. This process takes hours, even days, and required vigilant watch of the heat. Lapses, or miscalculations of wind, could have disastrous effects.Fires, an omnipresent threat in brewing, erupted in 1886 and devastated breweries around Rock Island. Across the river from Rock Island, in Davenport, brewers also suffered from fires when embers spewed forth from malt kilns. One such fire began by the kiln “in some unaccountable manner” and quickly spread through the brewery's property. The water used to germinate malt was nearby and doused the fire, likely by the flames breaking the cistern. Though contained rather quickly, the fire destroyed six months of barley and cost the brewery eight thousand dollars in damages. The owner, Mr. Frahm, had insurance to cover only six thousand dollars. Luckily, the building remained mostly undamaged, yet the financial damage was extensive.15Fires were one element aspiring and long-term brewers had to factor in. For this reason, as well as other financial concerns, Rock Island, home to a handful of large breweries, and likely a handful of smaller operations, in the 1880s had been reduced to just a few breweries by 1894. By far the most prominent was the Rock Island Brewery Company (RIBC), which in the preceding years had gobbled up the Atlantic Brewery, City Brewery, Rock Island Brewery, and Junge's Bottling Works.16 How these companies formed is unclear, but a combination of price-gouging, buying out, and mergers and acquisitions was a likely path. It is easy to see how breweries, instead of competing, found it advantageous to combine facilities. Brewers had major investments in equipment, and although buying out a company outright may have been too expensive, mergers were quite common in the nineteenth century. Also, the RIBC luckily did not suffer from major fires. Luck coupled with careful diligence was a significant part of capital preservation and the success of certain breweries over others. Once formed, the RIBC turned its focus to maintaining its position in the city and projecting its power and product outward.The diminishing number of breweries had a compounding impact. With fewer players, the intensity and frequency of beer wars were only amplified and accelerated. When there were numerous small breweries, it would have been difficult for one to drop its prices enough to beat the entire city, attract enough customers to make it worthwhile, and have enough production to meet demand. With the consolidation of the RIBC, the beer industry in Rock Island comprised of the RIBC and agents selling beer—primarily beer from Mendota, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Once the RIBC consolidated, beer wars in Rock Island were no longer between Rock Island breweries and saloons or between competing Rock Island breweries attempting to win a larger share of the market; instead, the wars were between larger metropolitan beer factories looking to push into markets further afield and an RIBC determined to protect its market from expansionist beer factories. In 1895 and 1896, two beer wars broke out in quick succession, and, like military wars, there were multiple fronts and objectives.The series of wars began in February of 1895, when Schlitz Brewing company in Milwaukee, eager to expand their market, instigated a war in Rock Island by reducing the price of their barrels from six to four dollars.17 The RIBC followed suit, and the conflict was off.18 It was around this time that the RIBC placed advertisements for consumers to “Sustain Home Industry” and purchase their beer, available in the Tri-city area and brewed only by union labor.19 This call to support the home industry was common in beer wars when an outside breweries attempted to gain a foothold. For example, in 1878, brewers in Georgetown, Colorado, a remote and sparsely populated city, called on locals to “support home industry” in their battle against brewers in Denver that were expanding and looking to export their beer.20The RIBC's calls for support were answered, although it took a serious toll on the brewery. After only a few days of reduced prices, the RIBC reported a possible capitulation due to the economic pain sustained already. Despite this, the brewery was resolutely determined to carry on and “protect its interests at any cost.”21 The war, with periods of ferocity and peace, raged into March of 1895 with customers gleefully participating. One construction worker, in Rock Island for work, happily bought up a supply of cheap beer, only to have it collapse his room from the sheer weight.22A truce was agreed to in early 1895 but had been in the works since at least March that year. The exact end went unreported so as to not alert customers that beer prices would rise to their previous levels. The peace was short-lived, however, and the war resumed in mid-1895. It is uncertain how this period of the beer war ended. Perhaps here, as was the case elsewhere, the costs to the belligerents became too much and they agreed to a price per barrel.Another war broke out in Rock Island on January 21, 1896. The cause of this war is unclear, and it was waged primarily between the RIBC and breweries in Mendota and Chicago, who fought via proxy through agents selling their respective beer. Prices quickly dropped again from six to four dollars per barrel.23 This price drop must have been below profit levels, as one brewer said, “$6 is the lowest any brewery can sell an article of beer fit to drink.”24 Business owners of local operations, the Zoller Brewery in Davenport, for example, decided to cease operations until prices rose. Instead of competing in the war, they chose to be neutral and furloughed their operations.25By January 23, only two days into the war, prices had dropped to three dollars a barrel, half the lowest price the above brewer claimed anyone could possibly sell their beer. Further, pundits predicted that it would drop another full dollar by the following day. At this point, the newspapers worried about the negative impacts on the town. In 1895, a beer war meant low prices. A second war in as many years perhaps heralded a frightful pattern. For example, in Chicago, an 1872 beer war reminded publicans of an 1855 Lager Beer Riot in a worrisome manner.26 Economic damage did not only involve brewers, but a whole industry with auxiliary jobs. Uncertainty about durations and frequencies of such beer battles meant financial insecurity for the many people directly and indirectly employed by the brewing industry.Only three days into the war, a reporter noted that if prices continued to drop at their current rate, “rival breweries will soon either be supplying the drinking fountains with their respective brands of amber fluid or taking the place of the pop corn vendors with a barrel always on tap and begging the public to quench its thirst at every corner.” From this bleak picture, the article finished, “then think of the dreadful consequences.”27While the RIBC attempted to become the dominant brewery in Rock Island and to keep beer from other cities out of their market, the ramifications impacted the city in multiple ways. Any number of “dreadful consequences” could occur with hundreds of gallons of cheap beer and underemployed workers. First, public intoxication by a supply of ever-cheapening beer could pose challenges or threats to public order, workplace efficiency, and other issues that the growing temperance movement claimed.28 Another concern is the elimination of brewery employees if companies could not keep pace with dropping rates. Large numbers of workers involved directly or indirectly with breweries would be put out of work, putting them and their families in financial difficulties. While a few days of unemployment were unlikely to impact the city's financial health long term, the fear of repeated wars and cyclical underemployment threatened the livelihood of many within the city.The war continued painfully; daily reports attested to a degree of fatigue over dropped prices. On January 27 and February 1, the Rock Island Argus noted the weariness of brewers and their hopes that the war would soon come to a close.29 A significant benefit of the war to the RIBC was, despite refusing to lower prices to three dollars per barrel, saloons continued to stock RIBC beer and consumers continued to drink it because “they believe they are upholding home industry.”30 Here, we see claims to support the home industry trumping pure economic considerations. This sentiment, in part, certainly grew out of the RIBC's advertising efforts in the 1895 beer war to depict themselves as the local, rather than interloper, brewer.Brewers were right to hope for a quick end to the 1896 war. In late January and early February, they had no idea how long the war would last. Sustaining losses from either beer sold below production costs or reduced sales would have drained breweries quickly of their war chest. Indeed, this war ran until almost the end of June 1896. Beer wars lasted months and dug deep grooves into the beer industry. During the five-month struggle, RIBC sold their beer for four dollars a barrel and the Chicago and Henning companies sold theirs for three dollars. The war concluded with the price per barrel restored to six dollars, though Milwaukee beer sold for a dollar more.31The conclusion of the 1896 beer war brought an end to several years of induced hardship among brewers. The RIBC remained a powerful player in the Rock Island region, effectively staving off two beer wars in as many years. These successes firmly established them as a dominant brewery in the city and locality. The next several years likely saw small disputes between brewers, vendors, and consumers but nothing to spark a major conflict. Unrestrained beer wars born out of an intensive capitalistic system were exhausting for the producers and morphed the brewery landscape. The respite lasted until 1899, when yet another war broke out. This one, however, illustrates the maturity of the RIBC. By this time, they were not only on the defensive but able to organize assaults of their own.The third beer war of the 1890s began when Gipps brewery of Peoria, a town about one hundred miles from Rock Island, set up an agent in Rock Island to sell beer in 1899. They began construction of a warehouse, and already the town anticipated a beer war.32 This prescient prediction took less than two months to unfold, and by November a war was underway. However, this war was a two-front conflict. Here, we can understand the mobility of the beer market and how breweries both defended turf and expanded their operations once able.On the Gipps side of the conflict, they built a warehouse, imported beer, and cut prices from seven dollars a barrel to three practically overnight. The RIBC responded to this precipitous drop by building an outpost in Peoria and cutting prices. As a testament to their business acumen, and lessons learned from earlier beer wars, the RIBC had a war chest of five million dollars and built a twenty-five-thousand-dollar cold storage building there. They had used this strategy recently when they fought to open markets in St. Joseph, Missouri, and had spent two hundred thousand dollars.33The 1899 battle highlights the complexity of the beer industry in the nineteenth century. Although the general trend was toward market consolidation and monopolization, this was not always the case. Smaller, local breweries were not always on the defensive against massive corporations, but instead actively engaged in economic warfare against their peers and even smaller enterprises.Needing cash, in 1921, the RIBC sold one of their buildings to Louis Guldenzopf for $4,500.34 The same day, a blaze broke out in the early morning, severely damaging the RIBC's—now Guldenzopf's—building.35 Despite these financial setbacks, along with injuries to workers, the RIBC continued to invest in their operations, expanding their buildings and digging wells. They continued like this into the late 1910s. Prohibition, as it did in much of the country, hit Rock Island in incremental waves. Much of the RIBC's production fell on the wrong side of a 1918 ruling designating dry and wet zones within the city limits.36 After much wrangling and dispute over license, production, and other mechanisms to curb alcohol production, the RIBC's fight to remain open ended with national Prohibition. All at once, the years of time, money, resources, and energy expended holding off intrusion, boosting production, and expanding their operations came to naught.The last decades of the nineteenth century were filled with clashes between brewers of all sizes. Brewers were another business caught in a vortex of violent capitalist wars during this period. Rock Island provides a useful microhistory of the countless battles and disputes throughout the US at the time. Brewers there fought constantly for market share on multiple fronts, through price dropping and undercutting each other with little concern for the immediate fallout. The end goal was survival, and the casualties along the way were the cost of sustaining business. In the end, Rock Island brewers’ drive to grow as large as possible proved prescient, as Prohibition eliminated all but the sturdiest, capital-intense beer factories that proved capable of pivoting and retooling to adapt to changing political winds.