Unions and (beer)advertisement in 1914

Beer 'n History? Sounds Good!

So I've always been interested in history especially when it comes to old books.
It's pretty exciting to get a sort of first-hand look into what people thought and felt prior or during events that later became major parts of history as we know it today.

However sometimes in addition to learning stuff I never knew I wanted to know, I find myself laughing over silly statements or pictures.
So I thought I'd show you some advertising campaings by the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) dating back to roughly 1914 and give you a brief introduction on how the A.F. of L. were marketing their products made by union labour.

At that time the A.F. of L. had a membership of about 18.000.000.
Much unlike the European Labour Movement the Americans trusted in selling products and capitalizing on them to provide money for their cause.
They did so by creating labels and regulating them in a way that only trusted "Shop-Stewards" had acces to them.
Today we'll have a look at two almost meme-worthy ads for Beer made by Union Labour!

So they handed these out as a kind of flyer with the adresses of companies producing beer made by union labor on the backside of the first one and the adresses of breweries that were owned by "Hyde Park Brewing Co." on the other one.

You can tell they didn't really try to keep it too sublte.

Thank you for your ride on the antiquity train and I hope you found these pictures at least mindly interesting!

Images taken from: "Aus Amerikas Arbeiterbewegung" by "Carl Legien". Published by "Verlag der Generalkomission der Gewerschafkten Deutschlands ::: Komssionsverlag: Buchhandlung Vorwärts Paul Singer G.m.b.H." in 1914.