Post by Wolfgang on Nov 30, 2012 10:37:22 GMT -8
It is sometime of an urban legend that the American slang ‘cup of joe’ derives from an insulting reference to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels ban on alcohol at the officer’s mess on ships. The background of this controversy:
[Woodrow] Wilson's secretary of the navy, Josephus Daniels, who had become a lightning rod for criticism of the president's military policies. A North Carolinian by birth, Daniels vigorously supported Wilson's election in 1912 and had been rewarded with a cabinet appointment. His attempts to modernize the navy, especially his encouragement of technological innovation, were overshadowed by his issuance of General Order 99 on June 1, 1914, which banished alcohol from all United States Navy ships. This provoked a certain amount of outrage among naval officers, who had long relished their "wine mess," and it gave the opposition press ammunition to use against the man the Hearst papers lampooned as the self-righteous "Holy Joe." Rendering the U.S. Navy dry, these papers claimed, had made America an international laughingstock. [George Creel, publicist with the Wilson administration] showed that the ban on the shipboard sale or issuance of alcoholic beverages to enlisted sailors was not Daniels's innovation but had been in effect since 1899; Daniels had merely extended the ban to officers-and he had done so not out of his own moral convictions but in response to a recommendation by the surgeon general of the navy, who was alarmed by the high rate of courts-martial for drunkenness on duty. Creel also showed that, far from laughing at the liquor ban, the Russian, French, and German navies followed suit within a year. He even uncovered the text of an address Kaiser Wilhelm II made to German naval cadets: "The next war and the next sea battle demand sound nerves. Nerves will decide. These become undermined through alcohol. The nation which consumes the least alcohol wins, and that should be you, gentlemen. Take heed, and provide that indulgence in alcohol not be counted as belonging to your privileges."
[Source: [Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) 45-46]
Snopes.com disagrees that this is the ‘cup of joe’ origin;www.snopes.com/language/eponyms/cupofjoe.asp
But Snopes ignores the effect of anti-Wilson newspapers deriding ban as a means of attacking the administration, which would have circulated the story. Did newspapers spread the expression 'cup of joe'? Inquiring minds want to know.
Ironically, just a few years later, the ban on alcohol was extended to the entire American public in the form of Prohibition.
[Woodrow] Wilson's secretary of the navy, Josephus Daniels, who had become a lightning rod for criticism of the president's military policies. A North Carolinian by birth, Daniels vigorously supported Wilson's election in 1912 and had been rewarded with a cabinet appointment. His attempts to modernize the navy, especially his encouragement of technological innovation, were overshadowed by his issuance of General Order 99 on June 1, 1914, which banished alcohol from all United States Navy ships. This provoked a certain amount of outrage among naval officers, who had long relished their "wine mess," and it gave the opposition press ammunition to use against the man the Hearst papers lampooned as the self-righteous "Holy Joe." Rendering the U.S. Navy dry, these papers claimed, had made America an international laughingstock. [George Creel, publicist with the Wilson administration] showed that the ban on the shipboard sale or issuance of alcoholic beverages to enlisted sailors was not Daniels's innovation but had been in effect since 1899; Daniels had merely extended the ban to officers-and he had done so not out of his own moral convictions but in response to a recommendation by the surgeon general of the navy, who was alarmed by the high rate of courts-martial for drunkenness on duty. Creel also showed that, far from laughing at the liquor ban, the Russian, French, and German navies followed suit within a year. He even uncovered the text of an address Kaiser Wilhelm II made to German naval cadets: "The next war and the next sea battle demand sound nerves. Nerves will decide. These become undermined through alcohol. The nation which consumes the least alcohol wins, and that should be you, gentlemen. Take heed, and provide that indulgence in alcohol not be counted as belonging to your privileges."
[Source: [Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) 45-46]
Snopes.com disagrees that this is the ‘cup of joe’ origin;www.snopes.com/language/eponyms/cupofjoe.asp
But Snopes ignores the effect of anti-Wilson newspapers deriding ban as a means of attacking the administration, which would have circulated the story. Did newspapers spread the expression 'cup of joe'? Inquiring minds want to know.
Ironically, just a few years later, the ban on alcohol was extended to the entire American public in the form of Prohibition.