Digital Bob Archive

JANUARY 1918 - PART 1:

As dawn began to break over Gastineau Channel on Tuesday, January 1, the temperature was 45 degrees, a welcome change from the near zero temperatures of the holiday week. But the warming did have a drawback; it had brought heavy wet snow and the roof of the barn at the Juneau Dairy had collapsed the previous afternoon, killing several cows.

Channel residents woke that morning to one thing that was months old and getting tiresome, and to two things that were brand new that morning and as yet untried. The old one was that the war in Europe had been thundering on since August 1914 with the United States as an active participant since the previous April.

The two brand new things that January morning were prohibition and the eight-hour day. Both had been enacted by popular vote in the election of 1916, to become effective on January 1, 1918. The vote for the eight-hour day had been overwhelming: 10,416 to 1782. The prohibition vote had been less one-sided, but still decisive: 9052 \"dry\" to 4815 \"wet.\"

Consequently, a dozen saloons in Juneau and eight in Douglas had locked their doors. Some of them closed even before midnight, having run out of their stock in trade. But Gus Studebaker of the Old Stand played what he considered a huge joke. The Rainier Brewing Company of Seattle had been advertising its two new \"cereal beverages,\" New Rainier and Rainier Special. Both were non-alcoholic but were described in the ads as \"rich and mellow.\" The ads didn't call them \"near beer\" as some people did.

Several Juneau saloon owners laid in supplies of the new beverage in anticipation of the \"dry\" days to come. Gus was one of them, and when he ran out of the regular suds, during the evening of December 31, he started serving the new stuff. \"They couldn't tell the difference,\" he laughed. \"They sang just as loud and had just as much fun as ever.\"

Many people, however, didn't care much for \"near beer.\" They liked to quote Mark Twain: \"The man who called it near beer was a poor judge of distance.\"

More noticeable to most residents were the effects of the eight-hour day. The Juneau Ferry & Navigation Company, which was Juneau's connection with Douglas and its principal one with Thane, cut out one trip a day, and most stores decreased their hours. Store hours had commonly been from 8 a.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. Now they began opening at 8 and closing at 6. P.M. Behrends, the Goldstein Emporium, I Goldstein, Quality Grocery, Wills Grocery, three meat markets, three hardware stores, two furniture stores and several clothing stores joined in announcing the new hours. B.M. Behrends, however, announced that his bank would remain open until 9 p.m. on Saturdays and on payday at the Alaska Gastineau Mine. His announcement didn't mention the Alaska Juneau which was still struggling to get its mill operating satisfactorily.

News of the war in Europe occupied much of the space in the morning \"Daily Alaska Dispatch\" and the evening \"Alaska Daily Empire.\"