August Mencken Sr. (1854–1899) was an American cigar magnate who founded Aug. Mencken & Bro. in 1873 with a starting capital of $23 of his own money and $21 of his brother's. A member of Baltimore's

German-American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

community, Mencken was a high-tariff Republican who ran a nonunion factory, viewed the

eight-hour day The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses. An eight-hour work day has its origins in the ...

as a foreign innovation destined to destroy America, and drank rye whiskey before every meal, including breakfast. In about 1889, the Baltimore local Cigar Makers' International Union called a strike. The union did not have the funds to pay full benefits to members; the best it could manage was the $2.10 cost of a ticket to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

, which had so many cigar shops it was known as the Cigarmaker's Heaven. The only proof that it required of a candidate's profession were the tools of the trade: a

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South ...

cutting-board and cutting tools. The anti-union Mencken acquired a large quantity of the tools, rounded up a large number of drunks and tramps, gave them a shot of whiskey and a set of the tools, and sent them to Union headquarters for their tickets. In the course of a few weeks, according to Mencken himself, "at least a thousand poor bums were run through the mill." The union went broke and was effectively destroyed, and the strike was broken. In 1879, August married the German-American Anna Margaret Abhau (1858 – 1925). Their first child, Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken, was born there in Baltimore in 1880 and their second, August Mencken Jr., was born in 1889.

References

* Henry Louis Mencken, ''The days of H. L. Mencken: Happy days, Newspaper days, Heathen days''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1947) {{DEFAULTSORT:Mencken, August Sr. 1854 births 1899 deaths American agnostics American manufacturing businesspeople American people of German descent Businesspeople in the tobacco industry Maryland Republicans Businesspeople from Baltimore 19th-century American businesspeople

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References