4.3: Hiram Walker & Sons, Ltd.: “A Plot against the People” (1911)

Paired Sources from U.S. History, 1877-present
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Abstract

Hiram Walker & Sons is a Canadian distiller founded by an American, Hiram Walker, in 1858. The company’s whiskey was created by a method that did not fit with Harvey Wiley’s conception of what whiskey was. Therefore, it lobbied heavily against Wiley’s interpretation of the PFDA as it applied to whiskey and attacked Wiley personally because of this issue. This section of “A Plot against the People” takes a legalistic angle rather than the personal attacks found in much of the rest of the pamphlet. President William Howard Taft favored Walker’s position on what could be called whiskey in a 1909 executive order. Nevertheless, this pamphlet went through multiple editions (including this one issued in 1911) because Wiley remained a controversial figure.

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