tion needs to be met by the Milwaukee breweries. Such remote production sites were aided and abetted by the dramatic development of refrigeration.

In the clarity of hindsight, the late 1880s period was a watershed for Chicago's beer production. Chicago's beer consumption did not decline. Instead, it rose, consistent with the emigration from Europe of Poles and Czechs; their numbers emulated the emigration of Germans that had taken place after the Revolutions of 1848 - emigration numbers that had only been slowed by the American Civil War.

Pressures for beer industry consolidation arose. Factors included labor union activity of 1886-1890 and the arrival of the English syndicates of investors from 1889-1890. The McAvoy, Wacker, and Birk families sold to one; substantial interests in the Schoenhofen, Seipp, Dewes, Huck, and Bullen companies were sold to another. Construction of substantial new brewery capacity followed. In 1890, beer price wars erupted. One consequence was the creation of "tied houses," designed to assure distribution of product. Significant increases of license and other fees during the 1890s only compounded the working capital problems of the individual tavern keeper. In short, the retail tavern/saloon business became more capital intensive, and the amount of capital committed by breweries to fixed assets increased dramatically. The favorable environment created by the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 only masked the severe economic pressure on the beer production industry of Chicago.

In 1900, the Schoenhofen family repurchased control of its former brewery; contemporaneously, harmony among the producers became the order of the day. Skilnik found in the archives of The Chicago Historical Society the 1900-1904 diary of John Weiss, chief executive officer of the Gottfried Brewing Company. Today, the contents of that diary would be the smoking gun that would lead to anti-trust prosecution for the price-fixing of beer produced at Chicago's breweries. Skilnik indicates that the issue was survival for all breweries that were thinly capitalized or had permitted control to pass to family members who did not understand that plant modernization and marketing expenditures took priority over distribution of earnings as high salaries or dividends.

Skilnik adequately describes the Prohibition years of Torrio, Capone, et. al.; those years are so amply described elsewhere that no additional comment herein seems necessary.

Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition had its analogue in its 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, opening just as Prohibition ended. After playing off the German-American and Irish-American voters of Chicago against each other, Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson was succeeded by the even more "wet" Anton Cermak. Neither Cermak in Chicago, nor Roosevelt in Washington, had any interest in continuing the "Great Experiment," and it came to an unlamented end, having created patterns of serious crime and disregard of authority that have their echoes today.

In the 1930s, in contrast to Milwaukee, Chicago failed to restart its brewing industry, due to the fact that the largest breweries were operating other than in Chicago; then, these served the needs of the war effort between 1941-1945. Some small Chicago breweries continued to operate because, out of scarcity of product, the consuming public accepted off-brands. However, inadequacies of equity capital led to deferred maintenance and small marketing budgets, and attrition continued. A last significant promotion effort was made by new management of the Peter Hand Brewery (Meister Brau), but its expansion was over-leveraged; and its house collapsed in 1978, here Skilniks writing effort ends.

After a thoughtful epilogue, Skilnik provides a list of what he calls "Brewery Relics" — sites throughout Chicago where bits and pieces of the City's brewing history can be found. He provides a clear map to them. Following it is a glossary that is useful even to an old hand, a list of brand slogans that provoked fond memories, and an excerpt from the Chicago portion of the 1984 edition of American Breweries.

This reviewer's Chicago history research has parallelled that of Skilnik for 1869-1915. He has been tracing the career of Edward G. Uihlein, the Vice President - Export of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company from 1872 until 1915. This research led to familiarity with most of Skilnik's sources. Skilniks bibliography lists published and unpublished sources, standard sources and ephemera, and original manuscripts and analyses of secondary sources. While Skilniks efforts cannot have been exhaustive, he has used imagination in locating many of them. His least productive tool was an ad in The Wall Street Journal that sought responses from descendants of the many families whose names appear in American Breweries II. Only following publication, have they contacted him (this reviewer was one such).

Skilniks first printing has sold out through the author's own efforts. As this review is being written, Skilnik is negotiating an additional printing. He is pleased with the positive reception accorded to his first published work. Its success has led him to consider a second book that will cover the years of beer production in Chicago since 1978.

Copies of Robert Skilniks The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, 1833-1978 (St. Paul, MN: Pogo Press, 1999) may be obtained by contacting the author at P.O. Box 793, Plainfield, IL 60544. It is only available paperbound, and its price is $17.95.