The brewing of ale has been so long an established industry in this country and advances so regularly from year to year as to offer no striking facts for comment. With lager beer the case is different, and the rapidity of the increase in its use is something remarkable. Fifty years ago it was hardly known as a beverage in the United States. Now and then some good old German would import a keg from his native home in the old country, to be drunk on the occasion of some great family festival, and call up in his adopted home thoughts of the merry days of youth and friendly faces, last seen perhaps in some deep valley of the Tyrol or in the shadows of a city that was old when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. But in the case of so good a creature as lager beer such occasional and almost poetical use could not always remain the only one, and at last a German of Philadelphia conceived the idea of erecting a lager beer brewery. According to the Hon. Frederick Lauer of Reading, Pa., (and we have all reason to put implicit faith in his version) it was introduced by one Wagner, a practical brewer who came from Germany to the United States in a sailing vessel in the year 1842, and shortly after landing he brewed the first lager in a miserable shanty on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and thus became the Gambrinus of America. (We would here refer the reader to the biographical sketch of Frederick Lauer, Esq., in Appendix A.) His success induced another German to try the same experiment on a small scale in the city of New York, and from this insignificant beginning the business has increased to its present immense proportions, so that there are now according to the latest return of the Internal Revenue Department at Washington, no less than two thousand eight hundred and thirty ale and lager beer breweries in active operation. The number is in fact considerably larger than that given by the Department, owing to the method of returning only those in actual business at the beginning of the year and to other causes. The annual product according to the Department figures, is over three hundred million gallons. More exactly the figures are, 303,147,552 gallons, or 9,473,361 barrels. In addition to this there are numerous private breweries where beer is made for home consumption but not for sale, and these do not fall under the Internal Revenue regulations and are consequently not reported. Figures as given below in reference to the capital invested in the brewing, malting and hop business, and taken after careful investigation from the best sources attainable, will give the reader a faint idea of its vast extent. CAPITAL. Capital invested in 2,830 breweries in operation at the end of the last fiscal year, (taking the low estimate of $10.00 upon every barrel of malt beverage produced, viz.: 9,473,361 barrels at $10.00) $94,733,610.00