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St. Cloud State University
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Stearns wettest of counties
By Wendy Myers
Published:
Thursday, May 1, 2003
SCSU is often accused of being a party school, but did you know that you live in a party county? In the 1920's S.B. Qvale, a Prohibition Administrator stationed in Minnesota said that Stearns County was the "wettest" in the state. This was concluded since the people in St. Cloud made the best beer.
Stearns did not just start out in a drunken binge. It had help from the Pope and a few monks.
It all began when Abbot Boniface Wimmer, founder of American Cassinese Benedictines, took his audience with Pope Pius IX. "When I was in Rome last summer, even the Holy Father plagued me a little in an audience I had with him, about the beer affair. I replied: 'Holy Father, you have a good saying about your Benedictines brewing and selling beer; but you forgot that we don't drink any these nine years, and that we have no brewery,' 'Germans and not drinking beer,' he replied 'that is much.' " Yes indeed," I said, 'until now we could do so, being young; but when we grow older, we will probably be in necessity to make beer. 'Of course,' he said, 'St. Paul also wrote to St. Timothy he should take a little wine for his weak stomach, and so you must have something'- and he laughed heartily."
Two years after this conversation, Wimmer sent a small assembly of Benedictines out to find a monastery in Stearns County. The monks of St. John's, as their monastery would come to be known, had a large impact on the culture of Stearns including those about alcohol.
St. Benedict took a fairly moderate stance on the consumption of alcohol. "Although we read that wine is not all a drink for monks, yet, since our days it is impossible to persuade monks of this, let us agree at least about this, we should not drink our fill, but more sparingly."
According to Father Godrey, O.S.B, one monk helped local farmers construct good copper stills that were used to make "Minnesota 13" moonshine.
Minnesota 13, was a name given to the corn liquor distilled on many Central Minnesota farms. It was consumed by many natives in moderation although there were a few alcoholics.
To enforce the 18th Amendment, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, usually called the Volstead Act because Congressman Andrew Volstead of Minnesota introduced it in 1919.
Shortly following the creation of "Minnesota 13," Congress passed the National Prohibition Act to enforce the 18th Amendment.
This law defined the prohibited "intoxicating liquors" as those with an alcoholic content of more than .5 percent. However, it made concessions for liquors sold for medicinal, sacramental and industrial purposes, and for fruit or grape beverages prepared for personal use in homes.
The Volstead Act was taken lightly at St. John's. The prohibition occurred during a depression. That way farmers that could not sell their corn would make moonshine to earn a few extra dollars.
Urban Gaida, who grew up on a farm near Holdingford, said "even the priest at one of the town's churches would call and alert his bootlegging parishioners when federal agents were in town."
Catholic clergy often sanctioned the activities of moon shiners and bootleggers and assisted them when they ran into trouble, but many civic officials in Stearns County went a step beyond and actually became moonshiners and bootleggers.
After a long fight, Federal agents managed to sharply curtail the large-scale manufacturing of moonshine in Stearns county. They succeeded by burning barns and sheds and through various acts of intimidation. They exploited divisions within the community by using informers and they undermined the tip system by sharpening their raiding strategies. Increased surveillance and a bigger stick to punish in the form of Jones Law finally blunted community resistance.
However, while they managed to alter behavior, they failed to change beliefs. Stearns County had its revenge when it voted 4 to 1 for repeal of the hated 18th amendment to the Constitution.
The next time someone asks you if you go to a party school, you can tell them the university is in the "wettest" county in the state, the home of "Minnesota 13."
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