More Hot Dog History

This post wasn't enough.  The Atlantic gives more history:

Why should the hot dog—a food so entrenched in American culture that more than 150 million of them will be consumed this Independence Day, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council—have needed such defending, and to a roomful of the men who should have been its most loyal allies? One compelling answer: Until the 1930s, when our hot-dog-lover-in-chief, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, gave hot dogs a much-needed boost, many Americans hated them.

Newspaper articles from the early 1900s often make hot dogs, despite their widespread consumption at the time, seem like the lowest of the low. These were not plump Ball Park Franks you might squirt with primary-colored condiments and give to your five-year-old. They were gritty symbols of booze, drug dealers, and adulterated food. "SECRET OF HOT DOG IS EXPOSED," said one 1921 Los Angeles Times story about a novel alcohol-smuggling technique, adding, "Innocent-Looking Sandwich Found to Contain Moonshine." The connection between hot dogs and liquor was particularly strong. As a 1929 New York Times article put it, "For every frankfurter sold by a delicatessen in the ante-Volstead days, three had been speared and consumed by patrons of the saloon." Even the tendency of reporters to bracket the term with quotation marks—"hot dogs"—gave the whole topic an air of shadiness and skepticism.

The same Times story reported on the efforts of a suburban town to prevent a hot dog vendor from setting up shop near a high school, saying, "This attempt to remove the frankfurter from scholastic circulation was not the first time that its status had been impugned." In rich communities like Scarsdale, New York, and Evanston, Illinois, hot dog sales were banned. As stands and carts proliferated along the country's motorways, plans emerged to do away with these "eyesores"—or beautify them. Hot dog advocates defended their wares from allegations that the products contained actual dog meat, launching campaigns to change the name to "franks," "red hots," and even "hot pig and cow." There were odder stories, too: A kitten gone berserk after eating a hot dog, or an especially weird New York Times piece, "Scorned a Throne, Now Faces Swahilis' Curse; Hot-Dog Man Gets Ominous Note From Africa."

Hot dogs and moonshine smuggling?  I'd never heard that before.  I'm sure rich communities were much better off by banning hot dogs.