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Authors: Maureen Ogle
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nearest raft. As his startled companions watched, the sixty-two-year-old brewer strode from craft to craft until he reached the one that he had identified as the source of the clog. He poled it free, broke the jam, and then returned to his guests. “I spent my early life in rafting on the Rhine and Main,” he explained to them, “and I am familiar with the ways of rafts and raftsmen.”
That episode summed up the man. Busch was a natural leader, thanks to what one friend described as “assertiveness and good-natured aggressiveness” and an optimistic arrogance rooted in intelligence, self-confidence, and charisma. He stood but midheight—about five feet, five inches—but his stocky frame, ramrod posture, and elegant dress commanded attention. So did his voice, booming and articulate. When he spoke, he hypnotized his audience with sweeping gestures. “He wills and does,” a reporter for a brewing trade paper once observed. “His power over men is great, yet he does not seem to know or realize it.” He competed relentlessly, and assumed and believed that winners deserved their success. “I love work,” he said, “[and] find much pleasure and agreeable recreation in it, especially when I see that my efforts are crowned with success.”
In a lesser man, these qualities might have spawned resentment, jealousy, and enemies. But Busch tempered his dominance with kindness, an abiding passion for fair play, and generous respect for those who earned it. “I am an eternal optimist,” he once said, “[and] never lean in the least to the other side, and I am always coming out right.” He believed in “the ultimate good of man,” and he enjoyed nothing so much as identifying the deserving and nurturing their careers. At the brewery he captained for nearly fifty years, he expected everyone, including family, to start at the bottom—as he had—and work their way up. All of his supervisory and managerial employees, he once boasted, had started as laborers because men of modest beginnings were “more ambitious and industrious” than those from privileged backgrounds. His advice for any employer was to promote employees “according to their merits,” a tactic that he believed inspired and nurtured ambition.
A S B USCH settled into one St. Louis brewery, August Uihlein prepared to leave another. Uihlein, a quiet man of stocky build and cherubic face, had left Milwaukee and his uncle Schlitz’s brewhouse in 1860, moving to St. Louis to work at Joseph Uhrig’s Camp Spring Brewery. Uhrig was lucky to get him. Uihlein had studied bookkeeping at a Milwaukee business school, earned room and board by keeping the books at Schlitz’s brewery, and supplemented his education with a year’s unpaid apprenticeship at the mostly German-owned Second Ward Bank, whose directors included Phillip Best and other brewers. The young man, a “delightful companion and a lovable character” whose “word was as good as gold,” impressed his supervisors with his industry and honesty. Uihlein worked his way up to general manager at Uhrig’s in only two years.
But Uihlein’s talents were not enough to trump ties by marriage. When the war ended, Uhrig offered a partnership to his new son-in-law, twenty-four-year-old Otto Lademan. Lademan had emigrated to the United States from Prussia in 1856, landing at New Orleans and then heading to St. Louis, where he worked as a clerk and salesman for a number of merchants. After four years fighting for the Union cause, he returned to St. Louis and married Joseph Uhrig’s daughter. Uihlein stuck it out in St. Louis for another three years and then wrote to his uncle Schlitz: Was there room at the brewery for himself and brothers Henry, Alfred, and Edward, all of whom had also emigrated to the United States? There was. And so the Uihlein brothers returned to Milwaukee and Walnut Street. August became company secretary, and Henry, who possessed practical brewing experience, took charge of the
That episode summed up the man. Busch was a natural leader, thanks to what one friend described as “assertiveness and good-natured aggressiveness” and an optimistic arrogance rooted in intelligence, self-confidence, and charisma. He stood but midheight—about five feet, five inches—but his stocky frame, ramrod posture, and elegant dress commanded attention. So did his voice, booming and articulate. When he spoke, he hypnotized his audience with sweeping gestures. “He wills and does,” a reporter for a brewing trade paper once observed. “His power over men is great, yet he does not seem to know or realize it.” He competed relentlessly, and assumed and believed that winners deserved their success. “I love work,” he said, “[and] find much pleasure and agreeable recreation in it, especially when I see that my efforts are crowned with success.”
In a lesser man, these qualities might have spawned resentment, jealousy, and enemies. But Busch tempered his dominance with kindness, an abiding passion for fair play, and generous respect for those who earned it. “I am an eternal optimist,” he once said, “[and] never lean in the least to the other side, and I am always coming out right.” He believed in “the ultimate good of man,” and he enjoyed nothing so much as identifying the deserving and nurturing their careers. At the brewery he captained for nearly fifty years, he expected everyone, including family, to start at the bottom—as he had—and work their way up. All of his supervisory and managerial employees, he once boasted, had started as laborers because men of modest beginnings were “more ambitious and industrious” than those from privileged backgrounds. His advice for any employer was to promote employees “according to their merits,” a tactic that he believed inspired and nurtured ambition.
A S B USCH settled into one St. Louis brewery, August Uihlein prepared to leave another. Uihlein, a quiet man of stocky build and cherubic face, had left Milwaukee and his uncle Schlitz’s brewhouse in 1860, moving to St. Louis to work at Joseph Uhrig’s Camp Spring Brewery. Uhrig was lucky to get him. Uihlein had studied bookkeeping at a Milwaukee business school, earned room and board by keeping the books at Schlitz’s brewery, and supplemented his education with a year’s unpaid apprenticeship at the mostly German-owned Second Ward Bank, whose directors included Phillip Best and other brewers. The young man, a “delightful companion and a lovable character” whose “word was as good as gold,” impressed his supervisors with his industry and honesty. Uihlein worked his way up to general manager at Uhrig’s in only two years.
But Uihlein’s talents were not enough to trump ties by marriage. When the war ended, Uhrig offered a partnership to his new son-in-law, twenty-four-year-old Otto Lademan. Lademan had emigrated to the United States from Prussia in 1856, landing at New Orleans and then heading to St. Louis, where he worked as a clerk and salesman for a number of merchants. After four years fighting for the Union cause, he returned to St. Louis and married Joseph Uhrig’s daughter. Uihlein stuck it out in St. Louis for another three years and then wrote to his uncle Schlitz: Was there room at the brewery for himself and brothers Henry, Alfred, and Edward, all of whom had also emigrated to the United States? There was. And so the Uihlein brothers returned to Milwaukee and Walnut Street. August became company secretary, and Henry, who possessed practical brewing experience, took charge of the
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