THE companies that merged in 1932 were by no means strang-
ers to each other. From about 1912, the Decatur Brewing Com-
pany, an ancestor of Premier, had been an agent for the distri-
bution of Pabst beer, and the arrangement had only been
terminated by the coming of prohibition in 1919. Later, Harris
Perlstein, of Premier, and Fred Pabst had come to know each
other well when Perlstein was president and Pabst a director of
the National Malt Products Manufacturers Association. The
firms manufacturing malt syrup in the twenties--Fleischmann,
Premier Malt Products Company, Anheuser-Busch, Pabst,
Schlitz, Wander, Ruppert, Ballantine, and dozens more--had
formed this trade association, and many well-known figures,
both within and without brewing circles, sat around the direc-
tors' table. Probably it was Perlstein's services as president of
this association for several years that showed Fred Pabst what
manner of man and executive he was; and, doubtless, it was
through that contact that Perlstein came to admire Fred Pabst's
steady character.

The Decatur Brewing Company, while relatively small in
size, was almost as old as the Pabst company. ¹ The business had
been started in 1855 by John Koeler and Adam Keck who soon
after sold it to Edward Harpstrite. Just as Jacob Best, Sr., is the
earliest known direct ancestor of present-day Pabst manage-
ment in the Mettenheim-Milwaukee line, so Edward Harpstrite
begins an uninterrupted succession of chief executives in the
Decatur-Peoria line. In 1862 Harpstrite took as a partner a
twenty-eight-year-old Decatur tobacco manufacturer, Henry

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