DRINKING, GAMBLING AND DRUGS A SIGN OF THE TIMES IN THE EARLY 1900S

Editor's note: On April 17, Rock Hill will celebrate its sesquicentennial,
the 150th anniversary of the day the city got its first postmaster. Each
Sunday, The Herald is highlighting important issues and events in the
city's history. This is the 21st article in the weekly series.

If you lived in Rock Hill in the first decade of the 20th century, you
would probably have thought a lot about drinking. And not only booze would
have been on your mind, but also drugs, tobacco and gambling. That doesn't
mean that Rock Hill was a den of vice and iniquity; it was just the times.

From advertisements in their city's newspapers, Rock Hillians would have
learned the virtues of Schnapp's chewing tobacco and would have learned
where to find the finest cigars and pipe tobaccos. At the same time, almost
every week they would have read editorials, either original or reprinted
from other papers, condemning cigarettes, which doctors blamed for a host
of diseases and judges blamed for juvenile delinquency.

News of deaths from drug overdoses, some accidents and some suicides,
cropped up in the papers regularly; drugs were legal, common and easy to
get. Laudanum, an extract of opium in alcohol, had been commonly used since
colonial days and remained available over the counter at drugstores and
some mercantiles. Opium also came in such patent medicines as the widely
advertised Gerstle's Female Panacea, a cure "for all your womanly complaints."

Churches in Rock Hill regularly condemned gambling and succeeded in getting
a cockfighting emporium on the edge of town shut down in 1906, when the
owner was found to be bootlegging as well. The owner moved nearer the state
line and reopened. Illicit forms of gambling such as crap games were
common. Later, though, in 1908, Rock Hillians who wanted to see
cockfighting without leaving town could go see "A Bird in a Gilded Cage," a
silent film of cockfighting that was a top draw at the Pastime Theater.
Films of boxing matches also were popular.

Of more concern, however, were "bucket shops," of which Rock Hill had at
least one in 1907. Bucket shops allowed patrons, in effect, to bet on the
rise or fall of stock and commodity prices without actually buying or
selling any stocks or commodities. The bucket shops, which operated in many
states, were run by a syndicate out of New York City. The shops provoked
intense debate, especially because some saw no real distinction between
these and the cotton futures market, which operated offices in town but was
tied to the New York City Cotton Exchange.

It was alcohol that held the public's attention the most. Alcohol had in
some ways shaped the politics of the town and was shaping the politics of
the state.

Rock Hill had officially gone "dry" in 1881, but the vote had been close
and the "dry" versus "wet" controversy continued in the town into the early
1900s. John Gary Anderson, a leader of the "dry" faction, recounted in his
memoir how the issue had affected a city election in 1900. According to
Anderson, a canvass of the town by "dry" supporters revealed that "wet"
candidates had an edge, and that "weak-kneed "wets'" would vote wet if they
could do so secretly.

Earlier, Anderson and his drys had approached Herald Editor J.J. Hull and
tried to enlist his active support. Hull had refused, and the result was
Anderson and his cohorts starting a dry newspaper, the Journal, which
became the Record. In fact, however, the editorial page of the Herald
advocated temperance as strongly as the Journal/Record's.

Bootleg whiskey was always available, however, and newspaper accounts of
poisoning were not uncommon.

If drinkers wanted "store-bought" alcohol, they had to buy it from the
state, and the politics of the state dispensary system, rife with
corruption, were shouted by headlines in almost every issue of the Rock
Hill papers.

The dispensary system was put in place in 1893, the brainchild of
then-Governor "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman. He had borrowed the idea from a
system used in Athens, Ga., which had copied it from the city of
Gothenburg, Sweden. Essentially, under Tillman's system, the state
government would have a monopoly on selling alcohol. Counties could decide
if they wanted dispensaries, which would have to purchase their stock from
a central state dispensary.

Tillman, who thought prohibition "not practicable or desirable," hoped the
dispensary system would defuse the prohibition issue. The system was once
ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court, which ruled the state
couldn't establish a monopoly for a profit-making venture, but after new
Tillman-friendly judges were selected for the court, Tillman put the system
back in place.

York had a dispensary, and, according to former Winthrop history professor
Louise Pettus, one operated at Tirzah for a time. At least one
state-licensed distillery operated in York County, the 200-gallon Jubilee
Distillery near Clover, until it was shut down in April 1904.

A written request for alcohol

To buy alcohol, a customer had to make a written request, including a name
and address, the type of alcohol wanted, and the amount, from half-pint up
to five gallons. Initially, the dispensaries offered one brand of beer and
four grades of generic whiskey, labeled "X" through "XXXX," a system
Tillman himself had devised. By 1905, however, 24 brands of beer and 211
brands of whiskey and spirits were offered, partly because distillers and
brewers in other states made lavish payoffs to dispensary officials to
stock their brands, according to historian Edward Ayers.

In the early 1900s, almost every edition of the Record and the Herald
carried new stories of graft and swindling in the dispensary system. It had
become an ideal system for patronage and illicit profiteering for members
of the state Legislature and their cronies, according to Ayers. And for
Tillman, as he went on to become one of the state's U.S. senators, duly
chosen by the state Legislature.

Rock Hillians read as investigative panels learned what the unscrupulous
deals were putting on dispensary shelves, bottles of "rotgut" on which
labels of expensive brands had been pasted. One example was Hunter's
Baltimore Rye, retailing for $10.50 per case. It was actually found to be a
concoction of grain alcohol, water, coloring, rye flavoring and potash (to
chemically simulate "aging"), which could be produced for about $3 per
case. By unwritten rules of the stores, blacks were sold a special
watered-down grade of whiskey, at the same price as the full-proof article.

The profits of the dispensaries were supposed to fund public education in
the state, but according to historian John Evans Eubanks, in "Ben Tillman's
Baby: The S.C. Dispensaries," only about 6 percent to 8 percent of the
profits ever found their way to the schools. In 1904, for example, the
average distributed was 46 cents per pupil. Over its 13-year history, the
system netted the state an estimated $10 million in profits, most of which,
according to Ayers, was siphoned off through corruption.

In 1904, J.S. Brice, a legislator representing York County, pushed through
a bill allowing previously wet counties to vote out their dispensaries.
Another act in 1907 abolished the state dispensary altogether, and
authorized the counties to choose whether to operate dispensaries of their
own. In 1916, nearly three years before the Volstead Act brought in
prohibition, the state voted to go dry. South Carolinians were still
allowed to buy a gallon per month for "medicinal purposes." Later the
amount was reduced to a quart.

Soft drinks, soda fountains

The temperance movement and the debate over alcohol did, in the opinion of
historians, create another market that was very much evident in towns
across America, and Rock Hill was no exception. The soft drink and the soda
fountain became staples. By the middle of the first decade of the 1900s,
Rock Hillians could patronize at least eight soda fountains in drug stores
and mercantiles, based on newspaper advertisements.

Ginger ale, "celerystone cola" and fruit-flavored phosphates were offered,
but some soft drinks were intended as medicinal. The locally produced Thea
Soda was touted to "clear the brain, steady the nerves, pick you up." Thea
Soda had that in common with another offering, Pepsi-Cola, which had been
created by a North Carolina druggist in the 1890s as an alternative to
alcohol and as a medicine, to cure dyspepsia and peptic ulcers, hence its name.

But Coca-Cola was king. Coca-Cola had been developed by John Pemberton, an
Atlanta druggist, in 1886 as "the ideal nerve tonic and stimulant" that he
hoped would supplant alcoholic beverages. The temperance movement latched
onto the idea, and by 1905 Coca-Cola was marketed as "The Great National
Temperance Drink."

Churches did not immediately get on the bandwagon. By 1906, South Carolina
Baptists had followed suit with Georgia Baptists in warning that "we fear
great harm will come of this sooner or later, to our young people in
particular. We are told that the more you drink the more you want to drink."

The supposed addictive properties of Coca-Cola were debated roundly,
partly, according to historian Paul Johnson, because some of its principle
ingredients were derived from the coca leaf, the source of the alkaloids
that were refined into cocaine.

One person not impressed with Coca-Cola as a choice for teetotalers was
J.J. Hull, editor of the Herald. In a Feb. 6, 1905, editorial, Hull wrote,
"I doubt the wholesomeness of Coca-Cola and would avoid it as I would
morphine. " The last drink I took of it convinced me it was not fitted for
use and ought not be sold in the state."

Hull had died by the time both the Coca-Cola and Pepsi bottling plants in
Rock Hill burned down in 1909. His successor (and son) penned an editorial
urging the speedy arrangement of shipments of the soft drinks from
Charlotte until the plants could be rebuilt, because "the people of this
city need the lift they get from these beverages."