The Girls Club, Clydesdales and Prohibition

Prohibition hit the brewing industry hard.  In 1920 there were over 1300 breweries in the U.S. happily producing more than 2 billion gallons of beer yearly.  By the end of prohibition only a few of these job-creating, revenue generating economic engines were still alive.  Their secret to survival was simple, put their plants and personnel to work making something else, hunker down and wait out the storm.

            Coors started making ceramics.  Yuengling turned to dairy and ice cream.  In St. Louis the Anheuser-Busch company started making a nonalcoholic malt beverage called Bevo.  These companies obeyed the evolutionary law of adapt or die.  But their hearts were ever in the business of beer. 

            The end of Prohibition was a cause for celebration on both a personal and national level.  This joy was felt in no greater amount, and no less iconic a way than in the Busch family where the Busch brothers gave their father a gift that measured in the tons.  They presented August A. Busch, Sr. with a matched team of six Clydesdale horses. 

            Not one to overlook or ignore a marketing opportunity, Mr. Busch acquired a second six horse hitch and started them on the road to New York with a case of Budweiser for Gov. Alfred E. Smith as a thankyou for his years of work toward ending prohibition.  The trip attracted so much attention that the Clydesdales and their wagon were sent on a long, slow journey to Washington, D.C.  On April of 1933, they made another presentation of a case of Budweiser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

            Now, don’t get me wrong, Budweiser is a great beer, but, as a nation, what we really love, are those Clydesdales. 

            Over the years, the Clydesdale hitch has grown to eight, not six horses.  A dalmatian dog became a fixture when A-B opened its New Jersey training facility.  And Anheuser-Busch has become a breeder—and protector—of Clydesdales in this country. 

            The horses are huge.  They stand about 18 hands high and weight over a ton.  The color seen most often is a bay that can be dark, reddish or light.  Their hooves are covered with a long, white feathering. 

            I had a chance to see these horses up close when we did a family tour of the Warm Springs Ranch breeding farm for Anheuser-Busch, located near Booneville, MO.  During the tour we went from the foaling stalls (a new-born foal will weigh 125 pounds)   to the foal paddock, where mothers and babies are together for the first few months of their lives.  Then we toured both the yearling paddock, and the paddock for the two-year-olds.  Here is were the story gets a little interesting.

            Once the foals are old enough to get along on their own, they get rid of the males.

            There are a couple of hard-working stallions at the ranch.  There are also maybe a dozen geldings (the only horses used on the hitch) that are in training.  Young horses are paired with older, retired members of the hitch to teach them the ropes.  But in the paddocks the yearlings and the two-year-old horses are all females. 

It is a girls’ club. 

            Once the foals are weaned, colts are gelded and either trained for the hitch or sold to carefully vetted owners.  Only the females are kept at the ranch, taught good, horsey manners and then raised as potential brood mares.  Stallions are imported from outside stock to prevent in-breeding.   

            Clydesdales are big and beautiful.  They are smart, friendly and gentle, but you don’t mess with them.  They allow the women to run the show, make good use of the men once they have been gelded, keep the stallions segregated and limit them to the one job they are good at. 

So, why am I suddenly thinking of politics? 

            Order a beer and keep the faith.