1907 – The Year Howell County Went Dry

While many are familiar with America’s experience with alcohol prohibition between 1920 and 1933, you might not be aware that Howell County citizens successfully voted a ban on drinking over a decade earlier. In 1907, a quarter-century self-induced drinking drought began and continued until the repeal of prohibition in 1933, leaving Howell County with some of the least restrictive liquor laws in the nation.

It was also in 1907 that William Monks, in his book describing the early history of Howell County, wrote about alcohol use in the earliest settlement period before the Civil War. 

 

His perception of the 1850s was idyllic. He wrote, "I don't believe there was as much dissipation by partaking of intoxicants, or other wickedness, as exists today among the same number of persons. It is true that then any man who was able to purchase a little still and had a spring could erect his own still house and make his own whiskey without paying any tax or duty upon the same, and anyone of his neighbors who wanted a gallon of whiskey could carry a bushel of corn to the still house and get a gallon of whiskey in exchange for it. And if men became drunk on the whiskey, it did not appear to make them wild and crazy as the whiskey of today does."

 

Monks had a tendency to spread it on thick when it came to “the good old days.” In the next page of the same book, he describes a whiskey-fueled fight in that early period between two men at a watermill at Bakersfield, resulting in one of the combatants getting all the fingers on his right hand and three on the left bitten to the bone.

 

Alcohol was an important part of our earliest history, and I’ve been told by more than one family that government attempts at regulation and taxation of distilled alcohol were what drove their ancestors into these Ozark hills and hollers. Besides being in common personal use by the early settlers, corn liquor or fruit brandy was bartered or sold for cash and carried to market a lot easier than a bushel of corn. One of the first actions of the Howell County court (commission) in reestablishing county government following the Civil War was to grant a license to a dram shop or liquor by the drink bar, located in a room in the county courthouse.

 

Illegal distilling was always here, and enforcement was about taxes. One of the earliest articles I’ve found describes United States Internal Revenue agents descending upon a still in the Dry Creek Community of Howell County in October 1876. The article published in the West Plains Journal related, "Of course they were after crooked whiskey men and all others who fail to 'tote fair' with Uncle Sam. On Monday evening, a raid was made on the Collins still on Dry Creek, which resulted in the capture of a 60-gallon still and Edward Collins, one of the parties engaged in running the crooked institution. David Collins, owner of the still escaped pursuit. The captured still was set up in the mouth of a cave from which a clear stream of water issued. Surrounding the still were all the paraphernalia of a mountain still. Five or six pine barrels were filled with beer, kegs of singlings (sic), tubs of corn, buckets &c. were ranged around. The worm of the still was made of seven or eight musket barrels neatly brazed together and given the necessary twist. The confiscated still and a horse and wagon belonging to David Collins are all in the hands of the authorities."

 

Reporting on the legal side of consumption, the West Plains Journal announced in November 1877, "West Plains is to have a saloon now, for sure. Then it will be whiskey by the glass and not by the gallon." 

On the other hand, voices were making themselves heard in their effort to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol nationwide. The World Women's Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1876, and a National Prohibition Party was formed. Both groups grew in numbers and influence each year. In 1882, the Missouri Legislature passed legislation allowing individual counties and incorporated cities to regulate alcohol individually. Some counties and cities immediately voted themselves dry.

 

In June 1906, Oregon and Shannon counties voted to "go dry," prompting the shutdown of saloons in Birch Tree, Winona, Eminence, Thayer, Alton, and Koshkonong. A.H. Livingston of West Plains was prominent in the fight for local option as a prerequisite for doing the same in Howell County. Initially targeting the town of West Plains, he was joined by fellow attorney H.D. Green representing the Anti-Saloon League to put the issue on the ballot both in West Plains and the county. Our Circuit Judge W. N. Evans was staunchly anti-alcohol.

 

Coming to a head in January 1907, a measure required a tenth of the legal voters in the county to sign a petition, which was quickly accomplished. Attorney R.S. Hogan represented the saloon owners in a public row in the Howell County courtroom over election rules, validation of petition signatures, and election time frame. Among the public meetings held during the month to support local option, one was in the Howell County courtroom attended by every minister in West Plains, asking for a shutdown of drinking establishments. 

 

The saloon owners asked for a delay in the election date, which was denied, and the issue was put on the January 31, 1907 ballot, with the City of West Plains and Howell County voting separately. In a fairly close race, the anti-drinking faction won. While all the West Plains precincts voted in favor of no alcohol, the margin was much narrower in Willow Springs, with one of the precincts voting for the saloons to stay open. All South Fork precincts and one Siloam Springs precinct voted against the measure. 

 

The result was that four of the five saloons in Howell County were immediately closed, with the fifth required to close in May 1907. Of these, three saloons were in West Plains, one in Willow Springs, and one in Mountain View. Besides closing the saloons, the measure immediately put out of business the native wine dealers and owners of wine cellars in the county. Under local option, wine makers could only make wine from grapes or fruit grown on their immediate property, and could not sell that wine in the county. Brandsville wine maker Hermann Wisch, and the Brandsville Fruit Farm Company were eventually put out of business, and their volume was huge. A legal distillery near Moody was shut down. The Howell County Gazette reported to its readers, "In the south part of the county, there is big rejoicing in general over the result of the election. For several years, a distillery has been in operation near Moody, and this has become the eyesore for many people. It is said young men and boys would get large quantities of the 'white lightning,' fill up on it, and no school entertainment, religious meeting, or public gathering could be held unless some sort of disturbance resulted. The distillery will now close down and the manufacture of 'white lightning' will cease."

 

The financial impact of this decision was substantial, and I believe it helped lead to the eventual failure of some of the enormous fruit farms already in existence and shipping fruit by rail to metropolitan markets. Fruit blemished or unsuitable for shipment was distilled and aged in oak kegs, making a profitable value-added product and a surplus market. The loss of the local market for cider, whiskey, and brandy reduced profits as the law tightened and the 1920 nationwide prohibition took out the market completely.

 

The conflict was, also to a degree, political, though both sides claimed it was not. The Republicans were generally in favor of the local option and the Democrats against it, though both sides crossed over to the other party to vote on the issue. The newspapers engaged in the battle along political lines, and editors got personal.

 

The West Plains Weekly Journal reported in April 1907: “The contest was conducted throughout, while it was a strenuous one, so far as we know, with absolute fairness on both sides. It has been a contest throughout between principles, and not between men. It was simply a question of whether or not the open saloon should be permitted to sell intoxicating liquors as a beverage. The question of whether this or that man was for or against either side of the question should not and did not materially enter into the determination of anyone’s action in the premises. Neither did political lines figure much in the contest. Republicans, Democrats, and Populists worked side by side on both sides of the question.”

 

“We will soon see one of the strongest arguments against local option disproved, viz: that it cannot be enforced. We predict that it will be enforced better than any other criminal statute of its grade. The people of Howell County are law-abiding. There may be an occasional bootlegger cross over the line from Arkansas, or there may now and then one drift in from St. Louis or Springfield, cities that yet tolerate the open saloon, but if they do, they will find to their sorrow that the pre-election prophesies of some of their fellow townsmen ‘will not hold water.’ The majesty of the law is supreme in Howell County.”

 

“The West Plains correspondent of the St. Louis Republican tried desperately hard to make some politics for the Democratic Party in Tuesday’s issue of that paper, in reporting the result of the local option election in this county. If the correspondent had wanted to tell the whole truth, he could have stated that the chairman and secretary of the Republican county committee were strong for local option, and the corresponding officers of the Democratic committee were for the saloons. That the only paper in West Plains that openly advocated local option and refused to print ‘wet’ literature for pay, was a Republican paper. That the local member of the Republican state committee worked and voted for local option. That the president of the Anti-Saloon League was a Republican. The well personal animosity of the correspondent to the postmaster of this city easily explains the misrepresentations of that official in the article.”

 

The State of Missouri finally took control of alcohol regulation in 1934, ending local option. With the repeal of Prohibition, attitudes toward temperance remained in the Ozarks with blue laws and regulation of Sunday sales (finally lifted in 1975).  A tactic practiced in many communities was for local churches to purchase all available liquor licenses, denying bars and package stores the right to set up a business. Drug stores featured curtained shelves where alcoholic bottles were sold discreetly to clients who did not want to be seen in a liquor store. Attitudes toward alcohol consumption will continue to change based on several factors, including a changing population demographic, but Missouri still has one of the lowest rates of taxation on alcohol in the nation and less regulation in general.