In 1929, at the height of Prohibition, Reading, Pennsylvania was pictured as a city where the Volstead Act was little more than a farce. Dubbed the capital of Pennsylvania’s beer belt, Reading carried on its long brewing tradition almost as if the Eighteenth Amendment had never been ratified.
“In Every Other House in Town”
When a reporter asked Chief of Police Walter Schearer, “Where can you get a drink in Reading?” his prompt reply was:
“In every other house in town.”
Though he admitted this was “perhaps a bit of an exaggeration,” Schearer insisted it was not far from the truth. “Prohibition is a joke here, a rollicking farce,” he explained. “There is no such thing as prohibition in Reading.”
An impartial survey confirmed the chief’s claim. Beer and liquor were easily available in hundreds of establishments, and in the homes of ordinary citizens who brewed and fermented their own.
Socialists in City Hall
At the time, City Hall was run by Socialist mayor J. Henry Stump and his administration. Stump, a former cigar maker, believed his duty was to provide efficient government services, not to crusade for moral reform. He made his stance plain: Prohibition enforcement was the job of federal agents, not local police.
Chief of Police Walter Schearer echoed this philosophy. A Socialist and former heating contractor, Schearer bluntly admitted, “Prohibition is a joke here, a rollicking farce. There is no such thing as prohibition in Reading.” He refused to use city police as “dry snoopers,” pointing to the corruption scandals in Philadelphia under General Smedley Butler’s raids. Reading’s officials preferred to keep their police force “untainted” by the temptations of graft.
Wide Open, But Orderly
Despite its reputation as a wide-open town, Reading was surprisingly clean and orderly. There hadn’t been a single murder in 1929, drunkenness was less common than in many dry towns, and graft within the police force was virtually absent. As the mayor put it, beer drinking posed no serious municipal problem—though he admitted drunk driving and the abuse of “canned heat” did.
Before Prohibition, Berks County had around 400 saloons; by 1929, at least 350 establishments still dispensed beer and liquor, most within Reading itself. Beer gardens, clubs, lodge houses, and roadhouses kept the taps flowing. “Reading has plenty of beer to go with its pretzels,” one observer quipped.
The Beer Garden Atmosphere
Visitors could walk into any number of Reading’s beer resorts without sneaking through alleys. Many resembled pre-war saloons, complete with mahogany bars, brass foot rails, frosted mirrors, and white-coated bartenders. Others took on the character of cabaret-style nightclubs, with low lighting, spotlight dance floors, and orchestras playing sentimental favorites like “Japanese Sandman,” “Whispering,” and “Somebody Stole My Girl.”
Patrons drank freely, yet without the excesses often associated with speakeasies. “Everybody is guzzling beer,” one account observed, “yet there is no raucous whoopee-making. No one is passing out.”
Max Hassel: Reading’s “Beer Baron”
Behind much of Reading’s beer trade stood Max Hassel, the so-called “Millionaire Newsboy.” Once a poor vendor on Sixth and Penn Streets, Hassel seized opportunity when Prohibition closed Reading’s breweries. He soon acquired several major plants and built a brewing empire stretching across Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Unlike other racketeers who ruled by violence, Hassel ruled with money. He reportedly spent fortunes on protection, invested heavily in Reading real estate, and—despite constant suspicion—managed to avoid jail. Federal agents claimed Reading’s beer still flowed from his breweries in New Jersey, even when he was absent from town.
Beer, Applejack, and Moonshine
Outside the city, rural Berks County leaned toward applejack and moonshine. The so-called “Applejack Line”—the railroad between Reading and Allentown—carried apples in the summer and applejack in the winter. The drink, retailing at $8 a gallon, had deep roots in mountain stills. Meanwhile, small home breweries and wineries flourished in nearly every township. Reports suggested that in Reading’s southern wards, stills operated in “nearly every dwelling.”
Resistance and Futility
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) maintained a presence in Berks County, led by Mrs. A. M. Sampsel. She admitted drinking persisted but held out hope for gradual change through education. Still, she conceded: “The liquor traffic was too strongly imbedded in this county to be driven out without a long, uphill fight.”
Mayor Stump, meanwhile, declared Prohibition a national failure. Had the money wasted on enforcement been spent on temperance education, he believed, “it would have been a disgrace to be seen coming out of a saloon today.” Instead, drinking had become “smart and fashionable.”
A City Unchanged
By all appearances, Reading in 1929 was much the same as before Prohibition—an orderly beer town with lively clubs, strong German traditions, and little interest in the moral crusades of the dry cause. Residents shrugged off the law with phlegmatic indifference, confident that their way of life would outlast the federal experiment.
As jazz bands in Chicago blared “I Faw Down and Go Boom,” Readingers toasted each other in clubs and firehouses, unconcerned with federal law. As one salesman quipped on his way out of a Reading beer hall:
“Reading doesn’t know the war is over yet—so why should it know that the country is dry?”
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