I spent a few hours on Friday acquiring newspaper articles from the Prohibition era in the Livermore Herald at the Livermore Heritage Guild. The old Carnegie Library building that houses the Guild still has the smell of old books, which is one of my favorite smells in the world. Unfortunately, my allergies didn’t get that particular memo, despite never having acted up while being there before.
The most entertaining part about looking at these old newspapers back in this period are the advertisements. One of the articles I posted in my previous blog had an advertisement showing voters how to mark their ballots if they are against the prohibition of alcohol. Part of what made this so funny was the finger pointing directly at an X on a ballot that had the proposition written out so much clearer than in today’s elections. In an article I found on Friday there was an advertisement for the Penny’s parade that was happening in the coming soon to raise the hopes of locals during the Great Depression. Newspapers show so many social differences between down and then. Today advertisements seem more attuned to physical perfection than happiness. I am not by any means saying that advertisements did not used to try to sell people things, but today’s advertisements seem like they are focused on making people feel ugly or unhappy in order to sell us a product. But that is kind of off topic, so back to my topic of Concannon during prohibition…
While some citizens were campaigning for prohibition of alcohol, Livermore winemakers were campaigning heavily against it. I cannot tell you how many articles I found about the campaigning to revoke the Prohibition law. In the May 9th (and yes, I am posting on the anniversary of this date) 1924, an article titled Light Wine and Beer Meeting Saturday was printed. The meeting was hosted by the Anti-Prohibition Association, and our very own J.S. Concannon was chairman of the Livermore committee of arrangements. He later arranged for a public meeting of local vineyardists. The papers are littered with little articles such as these, talking about meetings of local vineyardists and all sorts of anti-prohibition gatherings that were attended and/or partially planned by Concannons. This shows that despite the Concannon winery being one of the few to stay in business, the family was interested in expanding business, and allowing their neighbors to begin again. While so many vineyards went out of business, the Concannon vineyard stayed afloat by selling sacramental wine to the Catholic church.
In September 1930, the California Grape Control Board placed restrictions on the purchase of grapes. They purchased grapes to divert the grapes that were flooding the market due to excess. The Livermore Herald announced that the grape situation was improving. A large broker in Boston posted a bulletin, “We have continually advised you that we are satisfied that we would have a better grape market than was generally expected. What does that mean? Well, since the Great Depression was still in full swing and showed no sign of ending any time soon, I am a little suspicious of the motive behind the bulletin. This was, afterall, during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s time in office, and he is notorious for trying to put a positive spin on everything. My hunch is that this could have been a part of the whole positive spin and an attempt to give hope to a group of people. It is sort of like how every time George W. Bush went down in the polls, the emphasis on “terror threats” increased. Except with FDR, a positive spin was put on things every now and then to boost hope, rather than Bush’s fear boosting effect.
For a detailed timeline of the Great Depression, I recommend visiting the following website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/index.html
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