Financing the Brewery Revival of 1933

Breweries spent $250 million toward rehabilitation, supplies, and equipment to get help bring back beer in 1933. They did this at a time when the US economy was emerging from the lowest point of the Great Depression[lak]Great Depression. With many traditional financing channels closed to them (the banking system was in tatters), breweries asked small and medium-sized American investors to provide some of the scarce resources they had squirreled away in exchange for ownership stakes in their companies through the sale of stock. In fact, investors were quite excited to get in on the ground floor of an industry that had excellent potential for growth and success after 13 years of Prohibition. At least 127 breweries, over one-fifth of all breweries that returned to legal beer sales in 1933, issued $66 million in new stocks. If firms in industries tied to beer—such as cooperage, bottle making, or distribution—are counted, around $77 million was raised to help facilitate the return of legal beer in 1933. This chapter offers dozens of case studies of brewery stock offerings, and it traces how the money raised from these offerings helped breweries return to life in 1933.