National Beer Day isn’t random, it marks FDR’s economic gamble

The United States celebrates National Beer Day on Monday. While you may think this is just another arbitrarily made-up holiday, April 7 commemorates one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s earliest and most successful New Deal policies combating the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Roosevelt promised “bold, persistent experimentation” and he followed through on that pledge. Shortly after his inauguration, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare beer nonintoxicating. Yes, that’s right. For the prior 13 years, the 18th Amendment prohibited the production and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” which Congress defined as anything above 0.5% alcohol by volume.

Roosevelt’s rationale for legalizing beer wasn’t to let depressed citizens drown their sorrows. Rather, with 14 million people out of work, he hoped that beer’s return would create jobs tied to

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