In the table of production last quoted the reader will notice remarkable increases in the years 1906 and 1907, amounting, respectively, to 5,129,607 and 3,970,362 barrels, and a very insignificant increase of 192,031 in 1908. In the succeeding fiscal ending June 30th, 1909, there was a decrease exceeding in the number of barrels the average increase of the two first-named years. The greater part of this loss is doubtless due to the panic, but it is quite certain that a considerable proportion of the decrease was caused directly by prohibition in one form or another. It is difficult to localize these losses with mathematical accuracy, but there can be no doubt that brewing has suffered in all parts of the country where the Anti-Saloon movement has succeeded. From present indications it is safe to infer that in the South the industry will in the end suffer more than anywhere else; it is equally certain, however, that, unless the adverse movement should develop greater strength than appears probable at the present time, brewing throughout the country will rapidly recover from its recent set-back and resume its former rate of development, acquiring new markets and new customers as has been the case during the fifty years. CHAPTER VIII. HOW BEER IS BREWED We now proceed to give a description of the various processes of brewing, which we trust will not be deemed too elaborate, in view of the special character of this work; and to this end we shall beg leave to conduct the reader through the several departments of one of the largest breweries of our country. It is to John Barleycorn, immortalized by Robert Burns and innumerable other poets of less renown, that we must first turn our attention; but we need not follow his career from the beginning, as poetically described by the Scotch bard, for he makes his entry into the brewery after he has already undergone a great part of his sufferings. “They laid him out upon the floor, To work him further woe, And still, as signs of life appeared, They tossed him to and fro. They wasted o’er a scorching flame The marrow of his bones.” * * * The entire poem is undoubtedly familiar to every lover of drinking-songs. In it the poet describes all the manipulations incidental to the cultivation of barley, from the planting of the grain to the reaping of it; and also all the numerous and manifold operations to which the ripe cereal is subjected after it has left the farm and passed into the hands of the maltster.