From Chapter 6 of "AMERICAN BEER, Glimpses of Its History and Description of Its Manufacture." By G. Thomann, New York: United States Brewers' Association, 1909. http://alpha.rollanet.org/library/ambeer/AB_00.html The brewer's explanation of the rise of the temperance movement: "All these impediments, however, would not so materially have retarded the progress of brewing, if laws tending to restrict country distilling could have been maintained; and, from the standpoint of true temperance, nothing could have appeared so desirable as a judicious restraint upon what might be styled rural distillation. All authorities concur in the opinion---confirmed by the voluminous report of the Statistical Bureau of Switzerland---that in Sweden unrestricted distillation in the rural districts rendered intemperance a national vice of consequences all the more pernicious as, owing to the unavoidable deficiencies of a primitive mode of distillation, the spirituous liquors produced were of an extremely ardent nature. But it was precisely in respect to country distilling that our first restrictive laws were only partially successful. Those persons who distilled for the trade cheerfully obeyed the laws from the very beginning; and had they not elected to do so, little difficulty could have been experienced in controlling and coercing them. It was not the trade distiller, if this term may be allowed, but the distilling farmer from whom the opposition to excises emanated, and with him, the question resolved itself into one of personal rights, on the one hand, and of a limitation of the taxing power of the Federal Government on the other."