Beer and Railroad Building by E. V. Smalley

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 22, 1883

Beer and Railroad Building.

By E. V. Smalley

The consumption of beer in the camps of the railway builders is enormous. At Bismarck I saw an entire freight train of thirty cars laden with bottled beer from a Chicago brewery, bound for the town nearest the end of the track. The chief engineer of the construction force said that an average of one bottle for every tie laid was consumed, and that the tie and the beer cost the same—fifty cents. Thus the workmen pay as much for their drink as the company for one of the important elements of railway construction.—E. V. Smalley, in the Century.