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THE RISE AND FALL
OF PROHIBITION

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

I have seen hulking men enter a shop at nine in the morning, hastily tear off an ice-cream soda containing I know not what flavoring and dash out again into the world of business. No habitual drunkard could show a worse record. The soda-fiend is a sensualist, knowing nothing of the healthy ecstasy of comradeship. He is a solitary drinker of the worst sort.

THE RISE AND FALL
OF PROHIBITION

THE HUMAN SIDE OF WHAT THE EIGHTEENTH
AMENDMENT AND THE VOLSTEAD ACT HAVE
DONE TO THE UNITED STATES

BY
CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1923

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1923,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1923.

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.

TO MY FRIEND
JOHN M. DENISON

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The chapter from Mr. John J. Leary, Jr’s, book, “Talks with T. R.,” entitled “On Prohibition,” is used in this volume by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

Thanks are also due the editor of Harper’s Magazine, for his kind permission to include portions of E. S. Martin’s article, and to the Rev. W. A. Crawford-Frost, for his consent to reprint extracts from his sermon.

Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls have been most helpful in permitting the use of their files of The Literary Digest; and Mr. William L. Fish, Mr. Frederic J. Faulks, Mr. Thomas K. Finletter and Mr. Herbert B. Shonk rendered much assistance in the preparation of this volume.

Two chapters are reprints of articles which originally appeared in the New York Times.

I must also thank Mr. Markham, Mr. Le Gallienne and Mr. Montague for the use of their poems.

CONTENTS

THE RISE AND FALL OF PROHIBITION

CHAPTER I
THE PHENOMENON OF PROHIBITION

The strange phenomenon of Prohibition, after an appearance amongst us of over three years, is still non-understandable to the majority of a great, and so-called free, people. It is one of the most astonishing manifestations the world has ever witnessed. It came upon us like a phantom, swiftly; like a thief in the night, taking us by surprise. Yet the Prohibitionists will tell you that no one should be amazed, since for years—for almost a century—quiet forces have been at work to bring about this very thing.

Most of us can remember how, not so many years ago, when we wished to throw away our vote, we cast it for the Prohibition ticket. Some unknown “crank” was running for office on a dry platform. “What a joke,” we said, “to give him the weight of our affirmation, to enlarge his pitiful handful of white ballots! It will be a good way to get even with the arrogant Mr. So-and-So.”

And into the box we laughingly dropped the bit of paper which might cause a mention to be made of the crank in the next morning’s news columns. Delightful, insincere flattery, which could not possibly do any harm. How well, how thoroughly, how consistently we gave it, never dreaming that the solemn hour would strike when our gesture would no longer be a joke.

The morning came when the headlines in our newspapers proclaimed the fact that State after State was following the road of Kansas, Washington, Maine and Oregon, to mention only a few States which for some time had elected to make laws that were almost blue. Local option—yes, we had heard of it in the effete East. There were districts, we knew, which chose the path of so-called virtue; and they were welcome to their sanctimoniousness. In our hearts we rather approved of them for the stand which they had taken—particularly when we learned, on an occasional visit, that it was mighty easy to give a dinner-party with plenty of liquid refreshment. All one had to do, it seemed, was to lift the telephone receiver in Bangor, and ask that Boston send over a supply of whatever one desired. There were no restrictions against the transportation of liquor over the State line, though it was impossible to purchase wines and spirits in the holy community itself.

Our national insincerity began right there. The hiding of the ostrich’s head in the sands—that is what it amounted to; and we all smiled and laughed, and went on having a perfectly good time, and we told one another, if we discussed the matter at all, that of course the worst could never, never occur. What rot even to think of it; what idiocy to take seriously a state of affairs so nebulous and remote. It was like predicting a world war—which eventually came about; it was like dreaming of the inconvenience of a personal income tax—which also came about; it was like imagining that man would be so uncivilized as to break all international law—which, only a few years later, he did. Who foresaw the use of poisonous gas in the most frightful conflict of history? Who had vision enough to tell us that noncombatants would be killed, as they were in Belgium, though treaties had been signed which forbade such wanton cruelty? Who could foretell the bombing of cities far beyond the firing line? Yet these atrocities occurred with singular regularity once the world entered upon that stupendous struggle which began in August, 1914. We came to take such happenings for granted. We grew accustomed to terror, as one grows used to pain; and all that we had built and dreamed went crashing to dust and ashes.

Prohibition, I venture to say, was the last thing in the world the American people expected to have come upon them. Though temperance advocates were thick through the country, the brilliant bar-rooms held their own; and we came to look upon them as an essential part of the pageant of life, especially in cosmopolitan cities, with Salvation Army lassies entering them to pass the tambourine. Men in their cups gave generously; and I often wonder if the revenue of pious organizations has not seriously diminished, now that there are no haunts of vice for holy workers to penetrate. Surely they must miss this casual liberality—the coin or the bill cast with a grand and forgotten gesture into the extended hand.

But do not imagine I am holding a brief for the corner saloon. The sins of an enforced Prohibition are many, as I shall seek to prove; but the passing of the common drinking-place cannot be deprecated. No sane, thinking citizen wishes to see a return of promiscuous debauchery. A glimpse now of the London “pubs” in the poorer districts of the English capital is enough to convince any American that he should thank his stars—if not his three-stars—that one phase of our social consciousness has vanished forever. If we could have sensibly rid ourselves of these rum-hells, without punishing a vast multitude of us who knew how to drink wisely, much good would have been accomplished. But, American-like, we had to go the whole gamut; we had to make ourselves ridiculous before the rest of the world, in order to bring about a check upon the gross appetites of a scattered few.

There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a reaction. The pendulum has swung too far, as any observer must admit. The present conditions throughout the country are so disgraceful that something must be done to remedy them. Our personal habits became a matter for federal investigation; our daily conduct is now given to the scrutiny of the authorities—to our everlasting discredit. We are a nation of self-appointed law-breakers, rejoicing alike in our secret and open wrong-doing. We are the laughing-stock of Europe; we are the jest of Canada and Mexico, our neighbors, and decent Americans feel that a stigma has been put upon them. We stammer explanations to visiting foreigners, who, confused and confounded, ask us what it all means; we are confused ourselves at the muddle our Government is making of the whole wretched business; and yet, being Americans who tolerate all kinds of injustices, we meekly submit, the while we complain, and are too lazy, most of us, to lift up our voices, to utter one word publicly in derision of this monstrous foolishness.

What is to happen to us? Are we to become a race of machines, supinely submitting to autocratic mandates? We have always allowed ruffians to rule us in our civic politics; and though once in a while we bitterly cry out, the ruffians, knowing our weaknesses only too well, pay no attention. We are like the worm that turns; but who cares, since no change is evident when the worm shows its other side?

One of the great troubles with America is that only in rare instances will the finer type of young manhood enter politics. We leave the high business of running the Government to men of inferior caliber, whereas in a land like England, a political career is a distinction, as much to be chosen and sought as the Church. Until we come to a realization of the peril that confronts us through our spirit of laissez-faire we shall deserve, as Plato says, exactly the kind of Government we get.

With all our recognized national gusto and verve, there can be no denial of the tragic fact that we are mentally indolent when a political cause is in the balance. I have known men of worth in the professions and in the world of business to neglect the polls on Election Day in order to indulge in a game of golf; yet these are the first to cry out when the low-brow politicians triumph. We permit our jury-boxes to be filled by incompetent German-American grocers and butchers, clerks with little imagination, played-out failures and cab drivers and chauffeurs who are morons. Even the women, who were so anxious for equal suffrage, find, in many cases, that civic duties are a burden, and avoid their obvious responsibilities. We let George do everything which we find in the least unpleasant.

Well, there is a price for such lethargy. It is terrifying to read over the names of the judges and magistrates on the American Bench, and see how many are of foreign origin. Listen to the roll-call in any court-room. The Poppelfingers and Morinos and Sauerkrautzers predominate. Where are our first American families? It might be well to ask, indeed, where they will be in another generation or two.

You and I walk along the streets and see a man suddenly stricken. A crowd quickly gathers about his pitiful form, stares into his countenance. A policeman calls an ambulance. A gong rings, and he is carried off to a hospital. You and I go our way, with perhaps a momentary tug at our heart. But it never occurs to us that the man in the street might have been ourselves. Such things happen to others—no, they could never, never happen to us. The lightning may strike a neighbor’s house or barn—but not our own. Death or disaster may come to the other fellow—never to us.

“It never can happen” might be our national slogan. Thus has a stupid Pollyanna optimism penetrated our civic thought, our political consciousness, our spiritual being; and the false doctrine is screamed from every housetop from Manhattan to Gopher Prairie. Pretty little poems, printed in neat frames, greet us wherever we turn. They urge us to cheer up, that it is not raining rain, but only flowers, and that God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world—forgetting that Browning, when he penned his immortal line, referred to a particular morning for a particular man of vision, and by no means intended to be quoted out of his context, as a basis for the silly “gladness” of hoards of people who think they think. Our music-halls are crammed with comedians who sing, in loud voices, something about what’s the use of worrying, it never was worth while, and bidding us smile, smile, smile. And we clap and giggle and stamp our easy-going feet, and go out into the night, and are shoved and pushed into an over-crowded subway train, and still fondly cherish the delusion that we should keep on smiling, though a brutal train-guard’s boot is jammed into our reluctant back, so that we may become one more sardine in the steel box he is so expert in packing.

It would all be very amusing were it not so serious. Sinclair Lewis, who is becoming the best photographer this country ever produced, has not given us a false picture of our towns and cities. He tells the brutal truth, bravely. But we read him, smile, and say that of course it’s all very well, and such localities may exist, but they are not those in which we dwell. And all the while, about us, are the very folk his deft pen has drawn. Babbitt—what a stupid old fool he is, and we may have seen him in smoking-compartments; but we never will admit that he is our next-door neighbor.

The day may come when we will have to admit that he is our very self. We have the superiority complex. Which of course is nothing but a confession that we are inferior. And in allowing restriction after restriction to be put upon us, how, in the name of common sense and in the words of the man in the street, do we get that way? We are the most governed people in the world today. There are plenty of laws, but little order; and the millennium that the Prohibitionists promised with the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment is farther away than ever.

Let us wake up, and face conditions as they are. Let us not try to delude ourselves into a state of false happiness, when, at heart, we are the most unhappy nation now breathing the celebrated air. It is high time we did some solemn thinking. The writing is on the wall. It is our business to read the words inscribed there in letters of fire.

CHAPTER II
OUR GREAT UNHAPPINESS

Are the American people any worse than other people, that they should be put en masse upon the water-wagon? Who is it that sits in judgment over them? What unseen Kaiser, Czar, autocrat passes sentence upon their morals? We fought a War to get rid of such leaders and rulers; and now, ironically enough, we find ourselves under the domination of far stronger task-masters.

I have recently been traveling through a great portion of this great country. Everywhere I found a curious unhappiness. People may not be articulate about their sorrows, just as the poor may not speak of their poverty; yet the canker is there, the worm i’ the bud is eating away the heart of the flower. Perhaps I should use the word discontent rather than unhappiness. Or restlessness. Or resentment. At any rate, the feeling, whatever it is, exists; and there is a new menace over our days. The placid reformers, resting between reforms, smack their lips in sadistic glee. In the face of repeated and open violations of the law, they give out interviews to the effect that all is moving serenely; that the people are under beautiful control—though they have to admit that they squirm once in a while. Here again it is a case of stupid optimism. They want all to be well, and they fondly imagine that all is well. They will have a great awakening; for this smoldering discontent and anger is bound to rise in a great tide one of these days.

At the trial, the package in evidence was placed on a large green-covered table, in the presence of the jury and the court. The prosecuting attorney worked himself into a fine fury of eloquence. The majesty of the law must be upheld.

Listen to a lady reformer in Chicago, speaking after a church league meeting, in September, 1922. Evidently she is out of touch with the world, secure in the sanctity of a liquorless home. She has never attended a real dinner-party, poor dear; and somehow my heart goes out to her.

“The law is being enforced, and the results are more than satisfactory. The brewers are skulking opponents. What are they doing now?” she inquired blandly of her audience. “Some are making candies, some soft drinks, some other things; but they are all making money, and are happy. Prohibition is a wonderful thing, and I am proud to be a citizen of the country that has adopted it.”

How sweet and cheerful! But as she spoke, I wonder if she knew that almost around the corner real beer and whiskey were easily procurable. That as she uttered her oracular words, men with hip-flasks passed the door behind which she was speaking, on their way to joyful occasions.

The law was never less effectively enforced, dear lady. You are living in a world of dreams and fancies. You should get about more, and meet the flappers and jeunesse dorée, who could tell you and show you a thing or two. Your rhapsodies are all very well; but your smug delight in conditions has a note of pathos to one who has observed the country as it is, and not as you would have it. Alas! you are but deluding yourself, and my heart goes out to you in your simplicity.

Is the law being upheld when, at a dinner-party at a certain country club, two policemen in uniform were sent by the local authorities to “guard the place” while much liquor was poured? These minions of the sacred law were openly served with highballs, and they laughed at the Constitution of the United States. I saw them and heard them myself. They came to get drunk—and certainly succeeded. Everyone at that party deplored the company’s behavior, was loud in denunciation of Prohibition and what has come in its wake; yet went on eating and drinking and dancing with the casual remark that it was of no consequence whether or not they broke the law, since everyone was doing it.

Is there any veneration for the law of the land when advocates of the Eighteenth Amendment, men who sponsored it publicly, in private deride it, and, at the mention of Mr. Volstead, sneer and jeer, and purchase cocktails in New York restaurants at a dollar apiece, gulping them down openly?

I asked such an advocate—a politician who would like to be called a statesman—why it was that, if he believed in the Volstead Act, he continued to consume his daily quota of Scotch. I don’t believe anybody had ever ventured to put such a frank question to him. His wife, on my left, blanched—she, by the way, never touches a drop; but her exalted husband is fond of the cup that cheers—and inebriates. He has held high office, and has been loud in his advocacy of Prohibition—for the other fellow. He glared at me when I rashly put my question to him, lifted his glass high and cried out, intending to be witty (I thought him merely disgraceful, and drunk, as usual), “I drink as much and as often as I can, in order to lessen the supply!” And then he had the effrontery to add: “Of course I mean to see to it that the law is upheld, when liquor cases come up before me.”

Yet I had read a statement of his in the newspapers when he was running for office, declaring that wine was a mocker, and that whosoever was deceived thereby was not wise. Oh, yes, he could quote Scripture with a vengeance, this minion of the law. My lady friend in Chicago, seeing him on the street, would count him as among the holy band who have put their O. K. upon Volstead, Anderson, et al. Yet behind closed doors he is a Mr. Hyde who takes a fiendish pleasure in his dual nature. I like him not. The lady in Chicago is at least consistent. Were I a W. C. T. U. worker or an Anti-Saloon member—or even a judge who tried bootleggers—I think I should strive for a similar state of holiness, and always be willing to let my left hand know what my right hand was doing.

The truth is that laws of intolerance defeat their own ends. The instant you tell people not to do something, they have an irresistible desire to do it. There cannot be laws greater than the people themselves. And that law is the most insidious and dangerous of all which discriminates between the rich and poor.

I am, by temperament and training, a Conservative; yet I confess that were I a workingman deprived of my beer, I would find it hard to remain calm, when, returning from my day’s labor, I was forced to go to an arid tenement, passing the homes of those who possessed well-stocked cellars—and who replenished them at will.

Those who labor ceaselessly for the cause of Prohibition will tell you that it will not always be possible to obtain liquor; that the rich, too, will come to a state of drouth; and I have even heard some of them say that, after all, there are many things the rich have always had which the poor could not possess, and drink is but another symbol.

For such light arguments I have no use. I could only say to so profound a student of human nature and the humanities that he, along with his kind, is sowing the wind, and will reap the whirlwind. With money, we seem to be able to purchase anything we desire in this land of lost liberty. One of them is a wine-cellar. Mr. Volstead did not quite dare to make it illegal to drink in one’s home. There might have been a serious exodus from the country had such a drastic law been passed—or even seriously considered. Since Magna Charta a man’s house has been his castle; and an invasion of the sacred precincts would cause unlimited chaos. Yet in certain of our States, John Doe search-warrants may now be obtained, and officials may enter one’s dining-room to ascertain if drinking is going on. It is unthinkable, but it is so. But, then, there are many foolish legislative blunders made from year to year, and a placid and long-suffering people pay little attention to them. I have heard men complain of the laws in their community, who would not lift a finger to see that they were changed.

In the Far West recently, learning of a certain intolerable mandate, I could not resist asking a lawyer why his State stood for it. His only reply was that they gave it little thought—until someone from outside, like myself, came along and drew its horrors to their attention. Then, with the going of the stranger from their midst, they settled down once more to calm acquiescence; or else they openly disobeyed the law, and, when they thought of the possible consequences, roared with laughter. For no one had ever been put in prison for a violation of the statute—and of course no one ever would be. Then why have it on the books? Oh, well, what difference did it make? The women wanted it there, but of course they didn’t mean it, and it was a joke anyhow, and it wasn’t worth worrying over, when you came to think of it, and maybe the Legislative body had to earn its salary, and how about a little game of golf to forget it?

I suppose we have come to be such a hodge-podge nation that we are losing sight of all the old ideals our forefathers fought for. The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment may have been the best thing that could have happened to us, since it has, in a sense, aroused us to the point of anger, whereas piffling restrictions put upon our liberty have left us cold and indifferent. But here, at last, is something big enough to cause most of us inconvenience—and the American people do dislike to be inconvenienced. We could get together on this burning subject, where we would fail to dovetail on lesser questions. Our heterogeneous citizenry is inflamed, as one man; for the German-American wants his beer, the Italian-American his red wine, the Irish-American his grog, the English-American his ale and port, the Russian-American his vodka, the Swedish-American his punch, the French-American his champagne and light wine, and so on down the line and through the maze of races that go to form our vast Republic.

Is it too late to get together? Here again we may fail to act in concert; for the foreigner within our gates, feeling the contagion of our national slothfulness in a Cause, and waiting to get his cue from us, sits back and wonders why we do not act.

And many an American waits and wonders too.

CHAPTER III
OUR ENDLESS CHAIN OF LAWS

When we sit back and rail at the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, we lose sight of other laws equally tyrannous which, however, do not happen to affect us.

Is it generally known, for instance, that in the State of Utah there is a statute which makes it a misdemeanor to purchase, sell or smoke cigarettes? One may not puff in a public place; yet one may do so in private, the law contends. The Mormon Church is opposed not only to drinking and smoking, but to coffee-drinking as well; and as the elders in that church are the big property owners in Salt Lake City, controlling the hotels and other public buildings, when I went there not long ago I wondered if I would be permitted to light a weed.

With soda-fountains gracing the lobbies of the smartest caravanseries, I had my doubts; but when I casually asked where the cigar-stand was, I was directed to a garish counter, and beneath gleaming glass cases I saw, to my amazement, all brands of cigarettes on sale. I asked how this could be.

“You don’t take this law seriously?” a native said to me.

“I am getting so that I cannot take any law seriously,” was my natural answer—as it undoubtedly would have been yours, dear reader. Yet you and I call ourselves perfectly decent, God-fearing American citizens, do we not?

I hadn’t the slightest trouble in purchasing everything that I wanted; yet a new fear possessed me. After dinner, would it be possible to smoke in the main dining-room?

To make a long story short—it was. Everyone was doing it, just as though a law had never been heard of; and I saw Mormons consuming coffee, too. Think of it!

For almost two years now the farce has gone on. No one thinks it curious any more that the mandate is not obeyed.

They told me of a case recently tried out there. A small tobacco merchant—an Italian, if I recall correctly—was arrested for selling a package of cigarettes to a detective. (To remind people of the august legislature and to give the tax-payers another reason for being taxed, a minion of the law must go about now and then, on a fat salary, to investigate conditions.) At the trial, the package in evidence was placed on a large green-covered table, in the presence of the jury and the Court. It was all very incriminating. The prosecuting attorney worked himself into a fine fury of eloquence, denouncing the pitiful little culprit in high-faluting language that the wretch on trial could not possibly understand. The majesty of the law must be upheld. This was terrible; it was atrocious—though nothing was said of the fact that down in the heart of the city, every hour of the day, this same law was openly violated. The judge solemnly charged the jury—and hastened out to luncheon.

But the twelve good men and true were out only a few moments. They brought in a verdict of not guilty.

“How can this be?” cried the Court, in wrath. And the counsel for the people tore his hair, metaphorically, if not literally. The detective looked blank. Then the foreman arose and said that the jury had had no evidence presented to them that cigarettes had been sold, as the package covering the alleged malignant little weeds had never been opened.

And so the money of the good citizens of Utah is being spent on such opera-bouffé trials—and they continue to stand for it.

A delightful state of affairs, my masters. Such incidents should get into the papers more frequently. For we can all stand anything but ridicule. And when the law is thus made ridiculous, it is to laugh, isn’t it?

Or should one remain serious in the face of such nonsense—as of course the reformers would have us do.

Well, I am afraid they will have to pass laws against smiling before I can be brought to terms. And even then I may break another law—and go to jail for it. Or more likely remain peacefully at home, as I do now, breaking so many that I have stopped counting them.

I fear that I break the speed laws—as do you. I am afraid that most of us do. Yet I am not conscious of good ladies of any N. S. L. S. (National Speed Law Society) giving up tea-parties that they may get out on the highways to watch us, and report us, and, if need be, arrest us themselves. Yet when you and I dine at a restaurant in a city like New York, we are apt to note a policeman in uniform standing in the doorway, his eagle eye upon us, to see that we do not take flasks from our pockets. I wonder what would happen if, under the very nose of this representative of law and order, one should pour from a bottle some harmless iced-tea. Alas! I fear that the law is not to be trifled with in that way. The dignity of our jurisprudence must not be disturbed. One might be hauled up and arraigned for disorderly conduct, or for some such trumped-up charge.

But it is a pretty picture, isn’t it, to see perfectly good tax-payers watched and spied upon while they eat their meals? Ye gods! and in a supposedly free country! How our ancestors must turn in their graves—they who wrote something, didn’t they, about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

Who shall define that last phrase today? I wonder what it means—what anything means—in these topsy-turvy times.

Not long ago, in solemn conclave in an eastern city, a holy body of men and women aroused the whole country to its first volume of fury by suggesting that gatling-guns be used to enforce obedience to the Prohibition law. In their fanatical zeal, they were seriously for murdering a number of us, and they saw no humor in their announcement. What were a few lives, if the LAW was upheld?—a law, by the way, which millions of thinking people do not believe should ever have been put upon our statutes. No more shameful resolution was ever made at a public meeting; yet I would not have been surprised had it been passed, to such a state of imbecility have we come. Why stop where we are? Let the digging in go on; let the teeth of the law sink into your flesh until we groan in agony. Let the busybodies and the cranks become as thick as flies and locusts in time of pestilence. Let them gather in battalions around us, sting us, flay us, torture us—until at last the vestige of manhood which is left in us may cause us to turn upon them.

I fear that the law which makes it illegal for a minor to be admitted to a theater or a motion-picture palace is broken every day in every city of our broad and beneficent land. Yet I do not find pickets from Children’s Societies, standing about to see that the letter of the law is obeyed. We pretend to be deeply interested in the welfare of the coming generation—so interested, in fact, that the present generation is forced to give up its harmless toddy, that the children of tomorrow may be robust supermen and superwomen.

The fact is that, to the fanatic, no law is sacred except the Eighteenth Amendment.

The Fifteenth? Oh; why talk of it? The South knows its problems, and can cope with them. Besides ... well ... Ahem!... That’s another matter, and has no bearing upon the issue at hand.

Why hasn’t it? Yet if you ask ten people in the street what the Fifteenth Amendment is the chances are that only one will be able to tell you.

If the negro was enfranchised, he was enfranchised, and should be permitted to vote. That is the law of the land. It is part of our glorious Constitution.

But do you hear anyone raising a row over the fact that no one pays any attention to it in certain parts of the South? Few zealots work for the rights of negro voters—none, I should say. It matters little to us that they are denied that privilege which belongs to every citizen here, whether he is black or white, or what his previous condition of servitude.

Why should we respect one Amendment to the Constitution, and be allowed to hold in contempt another?

Truly, the logic of the fanatic is hard to follow. If one of them reads these words, he will merely smile and pass on, and do nothing at all about it. For just now he is fearfully concerned over Mr. Volstead and the carrying out of his policies. One thing at a time, please.

His interest may keep him busy for so many years to come that he will have the excuse of no free moment to study the Fifteenth Amendment. But all the Amendments should be enforced, or wiped off the books.

Riding in a train once through the sanctified State of Kansas, where long they have refused to let you and me buy a cigarette, I asked for a package in the dining-car.

“Can’t let you have ’em,” was the answer of the steward. “We’re on Kansas soil.”

“Then why don’t you inform passengers before we cross the State line, in order that they may stock up?” I inquired—humanly enough, I thought.

“They should look out for themselves,” was his rather unkind reply.

I thought a moment. I did want a smoke, and I was determined to have one, despite all the laws in Christendom. I told my feelings to the steward. He saw that I was in earnest. In fact, he came to see the justice of my suggestion that passengers, unaccustomed at that time to so many restrictions (this happened in the halcyon, prehistoric days before Prohibition) should be given some hint of the approach of the State line.

He came over and whispered in my ear, first looking about him—as we are all doing nowadays, the while we laugh at Russia and Prussia: “Say, if you’ll drop a quarter on the floor, I’ll pick it up; and there’ll be a package of cigarettes under your napkin in a minute.”

Thus was another holy law disobeyed.

And it is done every day, O proud fanatics, who think you are cleaning us up. And it always will be done. For poor old frail human nature is just what it is; and spiritual reformation can never come, as you would have it, from without, in. We must all work out our own destinies, from within, out. Somehow we like the little battles with our souls. They add a piquancy to life. They give a spice and zest to the level days. Our appetites are our own affairs. The moderate drinker is not a drunkard; and to place restrictions upon him, in order to cure the ne’er-do-well is as unjust as it would be to put the petit larceny prisoner in the death chair along with the murderer.

Gertrude Atherton, who is wise and broad-minded, once wrote an article against Prohibition, which began with these sharp, incisive sentences:

“I am a woman. I never drink. But I am against Prohibition.”

My own sentiments, exactly.

Temperance—yes; but never absolute restrictions. And if we continue to place them upon the people, we shall have nothing but broken, shattered laws all down the line; and finally something else will be broken and shattered.

I mean the dream of this great Republic. I mean the illusion which all of us had that we were not to live under despots. I mean the hope of a race which believed in democracy, and finds itself suddenly in the grasp and under the domination of bitter tyrants, who seek to chain us, and imprison not only our bodies, but our very souls.

CHAPTER IV
TOO MUCH “VERBOTEN”

One hears a great deal about the way the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment were “put over” on the American people. It is true, as I have said, that the legislation came upon us suddenly; but everything was done in a perfectly legal and orderly manner. The people did not realize how far the Anti-Saloon League, and kindred organizations, had gone in their work. Also, deny it as they will, the advocates of Prohibition used the War as an excuse, as a cloak for their propaganda. It was perfectly right for the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy to forbid the sale of liquor to our men in uniform after we got into the conflict. We were at War; and it would have been as foolish for our boys to get drunk as it would be for an actor to go on the stage intoxicated. Moreover, in the heroic glamour of those now happily vanished days, it was so easy for soldiers and sailors to be “entertained” by any and everyone. Better, then, to clamp the lid on tightly. It was a time for efficiency; and no one is so foolish as to contend that the consumption of whiskey in large doses makes for a hardier race. One believes, with St. Paul, in “moderation in all things.” Youth, in a period of stress, needs direction, just as children do. Having arrived at an age of reason, man should be permitted to go his own way. But just as we needed discipline in the ranks—physical discipline—we needed spiritual discipline in wartime. There can be no real argument about this, I think.

But even here we failed, partly. Liquor was sold to men in uniform. And men in uniform wanted it, and found many ways to obtain it. The forbidden apple is always the sweetest; and the more we restrict and preach and restrain, the more eager certain natures will always be to achieve the very thing we decry and withhold.

The war, of course, was responsible for many upheavals. We could not enter such a fiery conflict without feeling its bitter after effects, any more than one can drink immoderately and not feel ill the next morning. That we fought to make a weary world safe for democracy is now nothing but a joke—a Gilbert and Sullivan joke worthy of a deathless lyric. Indeed, a short time ago, had a librettist put into a comic opera some of the happenings between 1914 and 1918—only some of them, mind you—his book would have been hissed off the stage.

There are some things that are true to life, but not true to fiction. For instance, think of the irony of our boys being sent across the seas to shoot guns at the Prussians and begging them to free themselves from an autocratic Kaiser, and, during their necessary absence, being deprived of a glass of beer when they came back home.

It would be the most laughable farce comedy were it not the deepest tragedy. I can conceive of a brilliant first act, wherein some doughboys, parched and thirsty, arrive in a German village and for the first time in their lives taste real Münchner beer—the beer of their enemy—learn to like it, decently enough, get the recipe, and decide to take back to their home town the one good and harmless thing the enemy country gave them. Then, as a climax, they arrive, wounded and depressed, a tatterdemalion battalion, glad that the filthy war is over and done, and ready now to drop back into calm, blissful citizenship, with their young wives and families.

But no, say a delegation of legislators on the pier (a charming comic chorus this!), with palms extended upright,

“You are all wrong, bo,
And you really ought to know,
That we’ve rearranged the show,
And it’s bone-dry you will go,
And though honors we bestow,
Now, alas! no beer will flow!
For we’ve put one over on you—
Pro-hi-bi-tion!”
(Curtain, amid general consternation.)

Now, if a libretto with this plot development had been offered to a Broadway manager six years ago, it would have been turned down at once as impossible. I can see the first reader’s report:

“A great deal of whimsical imagination is shown by the author; but the American people are very sensible, and even Barrie and Gilbert could not be allowed to take such liberties with life as it is. Isn’t it too bad that writers do not know the public better? What a pity it is that they cannot evolve plots that will be a revelation of life as it is, not as it might be in a mad, whirligig world of fancy? This is not good, even as satire, for the situation could not exist, even in a realm of dreams.”

But see what has happened! This plot would have proved a prophecy and made several fortunes for the author and the manager.

“What!” I hear some character saying in the course of the first act, just before the curtain descends, “do you mean to say that the boys who fought for this democracy stuff had no voice in the passing of the law that made it a crime to sip a glass of good beer?” And the answer would be, “Of course not! How behind the times you are! America is a free country, you know. The people who dwell in it boast of their superiority of intellect, and rejoice in their form of self-government—though they abrogate their votes to a pack of politicians who are—well, to put it bluntly, dishonest. For they drink themselves, while they bow to lobbyists who don’t believe in drink—for the other fellow. America, my good sir, is the land of the spree no longer; it is the home of the grave.” (Business of laughter. Solemn music is heard, and the entire chorus of legislators pass with stately steps to the Capitol, dressed in heavy mourning.)

But nothing is being done about anything. The American people, whipped into obedience, as Prussians were never whipped, take their medicine (from which all but one-half of one per cent of alcohol has been extracted—and why this modicum should be permitted to remain is only another joker in the whole stupid business) and obey the law.

Only, they don’t. They go out and break it to bits, as I have shown; and our legislators wonder why they have so many bad children on their hands, and isn’t it a strange world, and why is it that folks won’t be good and do as they are told, and what are laws for, anyhow, and this disrespect of the law is awful and must be punished, and someone has got to go to jail, and why is Bolshevism growing when we are all so happy?

Ah! there is the answer in one word! We are not happy—every one is decidedly, unequivocally, wretchedly, miserably, gloomily, stonily, fearfully, terribly unhappy!

And why? Because one has to fight so hard for his fun nowadays. A lot of laws have been passed, and more are threatened, which blast one’s hopes of the simplest kind of good times. These laws are based on a complete misunderstanding of poor old human nature, which needs, every now and then, say what you will, an escape from the dreariness, the tedium of life. The harmless diversions which in childhood take the form of playing ball and cricket and tennis experience a metamorphosis as we grow older—a perfectly natural metamorphosis; and we crave just a tinge of excitement after the harsh, unyielding day’s work. Most Americans work hard—there is no doubt of that. Except for a Cause. But, seriously, American business is a strenuous, glorious thing—a delightful game, if you will; but it is also a serious note in the scale of our national consciousness.

We need relaxation after eight or nine hours at a desk; and the lights of a great city are the lure that lead us forth—not to get drunk, God knows, but to get just that fillip the weary body and brain need when an honest day’s work is done.

The people who don’t understand this, and who are trying to rule and run America, are in a class with those who fail to understand the psychology of Coney Island, or any other simple pleasure resort; who are unable to distinguish between a happy sobriety and filthy gutter intoxication; who never heard Stevenson’s line about Shelley, “God, give me the young man with brains enough to make a fool of himself.”

How a glass of light wine or beer is going to hurt a fellow is more than I, for the life of me, can see; and if he takes his wife along, as he usually does, or wishes to do, there is precious little danger that one will ever fall over the terrible precipice of intoxication and go down into the bottomless pit of complete disaster.

One might say to the reformers that for the most part our ancestors imbibed a bit; and here we are, thank you, and doing very nicely.

There has never been a particle of evidence presented to prove that teetotalers live longer than moderate drinkers; indeed, one doubts if they live as long. And it is well known that those races which refuse absolutely to drink do not produce anything of importance in the way of art; and surely they contribute nothing to the cause of science. Take the Mohammedans. Name one great artist among them, if you can, known to you and me.

Had Americans been a race of drunkards, I could understand this sudden drastic legislation against booze. But we were far from that. Drink was beautifully taking care of itself. It was infra dig to consume too much; and the young business man who made it a practice to indulge in even one glass of beer at luncheon, lost caste with his employer—yes, and with his fellow workers. He soon discovered the error of his ways, and no longer found it expedient to feel sleepy in the afternoon, when others were alert and thoroughly alive. It was only honest to give to the concern for which he worked the flower of his brain and heart; and so he passed up the casual glass, with little if any reluctance, and joined that great army of temperate men—and women. He did not wish to be left behind in the race for glory; and where he had taken, without a qualm, four cocktails before a dinner-party, now he took only one, and sometimes left a drop or two of that in the glass.

I can recall the time, not so many years ago, when everyone drank like a glutton. Country clubs were but excuses for dissipation, locker-rooms were nothing but bars, with waiters running in and out with trays of refreshing drinks. (Alas! they are worse than that now, thanks to our reformers!) But this brief era passed—through the common sense of the people themselves. We did not require legislation to cause us to see whither we were drifting. Out of our own consciousness we knew—all but a few congenital drunkards—that “that way madness lies.” And so we quit, of our own volition, this heavy and stupid drinking. The “society fellow,” worthless from the beginning, was cut out; the man of sterling qualities and action took his place. The “lounge lizard” became a deservedly abhorrent creature, unfit for the companionship of decent men. We came, as I see it—and I have observed American life in many spheres—to a sense of our own foolishness.

Big Business didn’t want the toper. Big Business scorned the young clerk who followed the gay lights along the gay White Way—the fool who sat up all night, taking chorus-girls to lobster palaces. With that alertness for which the American is famed, our young men realized that, to succeed in the realm of business, they would have to turn over a new leaf.

And they did it. I ask the reformers to deny this if they can. There has been no menace from drink in this country for many and many a year. We never drank as the English laboring man drinks—or even as the Germans consume beer. We were, as the whole world is aware, a race of moderate drinkers—omitting always those few and necessary exceptions which only serve to prove the rule.

Yet, as a nation, we were indicted, held up to ridicule and scorn. We were told that we could not control our appetites, and so our benevolent Government would control them for us. And this in the face of the fact that we had learned to control them.

I can likewise recall the time, not so long ago, when crowds of children would follow some forlorn drunkard being hauled to the station-house. Even though the corner-saloon continued to flourish long after you and I grew up, how many years is it, I ask anyone, since we have seen this sorry spectacle? And as for seeing a man lying prone in the gutter—that seems a prehistoric incident to me. Yet such incidents ceased long before national Prohibition became an outrageous fact.

Taking care of ourselves, still we had to be taken care of! Ah! in our frenzy to become too pure, let us remember the dangers of benevolent autocracies. The State has one definite function, the Church another. The mingling of Church and State—is not that one of the pitfalls we have long sought to avoid? If the former looks after our souls, the latter should be satisfied to see to our bodies—and that would be duty enough.

Let us do a little figuring.

There are, approximately, 110,000,000 people in the United States of America. Of these, let us say that 40,000,000 are men and 40,000,000 women. Of minors there are perhaps 30,000,000 more. Among the last named there would be very little drinking. I imagine that of the male population, a considerable number do not imbibe at all. I would rather err, giving the opposition the benefit of the doubt; and so I will say that 20,000,000 males drink in moderation, and that 10,000,000 females do the same. This gives us, out of a total population of 110,000,000, only 30,000,000 people who care anything at all about liquor. Of that number, how many, do you think, are what might be called immoderate drinkers? Five million? That, it seems to me, would be a fair estimate—more than fair. But let us be generous to a fault.

Of that five million, how many are congenital drunkards? A million? Perhaps; though I doubt that even that number have sunk so low. But let us say that two million have done so.

Then it has become necessary to deprive 30,000,000 people of a simple form of pleasure because 2,000,000 do not know how to manage their souls and bodies. It would be equally ridiculous to put an end to connubial bliss because there are a few libertines in the world.

I remember, as a boy, an unjust teacher who kept the whole class in because one pupil whispered—and she could not discover the culprit. I never could understand her perverted sense of justice. We were guilty along with the disloyal little rascal who had violated a rule. We must suffer because he would not declare himself.

But drunkards cannot conceal their wickedness. We know them. We spot them. They are obvious in any community. “The town drunkard” was as well known as the town pump. It has always been on our statutes that intoxication in public constituted a misdemeanor. The penalty for a misdemeanor is arrest, trial, and, if found guilty, imprisonment or the payment of a fine.

Few would get drunk if they knew they would be arrested. We had that law; we failed to enforce it. Hence the present inelastic laws—heaps of them—which only complicate matters, and make public morals no better than they were before.

No better? Worse. For drunkenness is rampant in the land, as it never has been. Prohibition does everything but prohibit. The very thing it sets out to do it fails to do. That is as self-evident as the misery in crowded tenement districts in great cities. There is no denying it. People who never drank before, drink now—in enormous numbers.

Why is this? Because it is perfectly human to wish to do what one is told not to do. You know the story of the woman who, just before leaving the house, said solemnly to her children, “Now, my dears, while I am gone do not play with the matches.” When she came back the house was on fire.

All the emphasis having been placed on not drinking, people are thinking of nothing but drinking. Public bars have been transferred to public coat-rooms, and we have the spectacle of numerous “souses” before a banquet, premature roisterers who become so tight that they can hardly get through a course dinner. It is disgraceful, but I fear it will never stop. For impositions breed contempt for all law and order.

Passive content finally breeds active rebellion. Our lawmakers should have the wit, the vision, the common sense to realize that. For a whole nation to be forced to be moral by statute and mandate is so ridiculous that it must make the gods laugh—particularly the goddess Hebe when she brings in the flowing bowl. She must almost spill the contents of her famous cup which she has been carrying these many cycles.

There is always a reaction against enforced goodness—against enforced anything. But no sour-visaged sarsaparilla drinker ever realizes that. He puts over his “reform” and imagines that all is well. He cannot hear the shuffling of feet, the movement of armies in the dim distance. If he does, he mistakes it for applause.

The fact that Americans were taking care of themselves, so far as the drink question was concerned, makes the sudden appearance of the fanatics all the more non-understandable. They came upon us with gusto. They are pathological—any doctor will tell you that. And the American people, who believe, I am told, in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, permit themselves to be governed by a pack of pathological cases who, themselves, should be in wards, if not in padded cells.

And they are not content with this initial victory. As the Irishman put it, “If this is Prohibition, why didn’t we have it long ago?” And a visiting Englishman exclaimed, looking our country over, “Prohibition?—When does it start?”

They are going after our tobacco, our golf and motoring on the Sabbath; and they are going to dip into our cellars and rob us of that which we used to keep there, oh, so seldom, but now have in great and wise abundance.

It never occurred to any of us in the old, halcyon days when one could loll on the back platform of a horse-car or trolley with the glorious multitude, and smoke there, to keep a supply of liquor in our homes. If we were giving a dinner, and wished to oil the social wheels just a bit to start the machine going, we may have sent to the corner and bought a bottle of gin and a little vermouth, and perhaps a quart of simple California claret, and let it go at that. No one disgraced himself. It was all very quiet and serene and sane and nice. We hurt no one; we did ourselves no injury (any physician will tell you that; he needs whiskey in his practice, if he is the right kind of physician), and a pleasant time was had by all, as the country newspapers say.

But from that undramatic drinking what, because of Mr. Longface, have we leaped to? To the hip-flask, the sly treating in coat-rooms—and other places I need hardly mention—long before dinner begins, so that one may be sure of a sensation which no decent man should care to experience.

A nervous tension is in the air, putting us all back twenty years. I assure the reader that never once in my life did I carry a flask of brandy, even when I was going on a long and dusty and tedious journey; yet my dear mother was as certain that I should take one as that I should wear rubbers when it rained; and I let her believe I did both, for the sake of her peace of mind.

Was my mother a criminal, for her quiet advice? Not then; but she would be considered so now, with Mr. Volstead’s act on the records of my beloved land. Actually, I am a criminal if I take a sip outside my home—in my club, in my travels. If I transport a little of that whimsical stuff of which poets have sung so beautifully and often, I can be dragged to jail—if I am caught. Boo! What a mockery of personal freedom it all is!

I heard a fine citizen say not long ago—a man of wealth and position, a publicist, a man of affairs (I am using the word in its proper sense!), a man who loved, very definitely, the great America that used to be—that for the first time in his life he had the despicable thought that he would like to withhold something, if he could, on his income tax. He felt little compunction for the base thought. Why should he hand his hard-earned money over to a Government which deprived him of so much of his personal liberty and held over his head the dire threat of further deprivations?

What was this man getting out of America? he asked me. Just a dull time, to be truthful. He was but one more waffle from the great national waffle-iron. When he wanted diversion he must pack up and fare to other lands, where living is still living, crave a passport, swear that he had paid last year’s tax, produce a receipt he had never received, and promise to pay this year’s, and either not stay away too long or see to it that his lawyer attended to it for him.

Everyone is ticketed, docketed, labeled, put in a card-index. This tabulation of citizens—how we smiled at it when the Prussians carried it to the extremes they did! Poor creatures, we said of them, to stand for such arrant nonsense.

A jolly state of affairs! It makes one feel so loving toward one’s Government, doesn’t it? We are all children, and Uncle Sam is no longer a symbolical old figure, but an avuncular autocrat who goes about, nosing everywhere, almost invading the sanctity of our homes (ah! he may do it yet!) in his senseless quest for this and that. But just as Santa Claus could never get down every chimney in the world, one feels certain that Uncle Sam cannot pry into every wine-cellar, and examine, if he had all eternity, every tiny bank balance. Moreover, my friend will not cheat on his income tax. He, at least, is decent.

Let us not delude ourselves that we are living in a democracy any longer. Laws were passed from time to time in the history of our great country, without the people’s vote; but they were laws that served our best interests and did not interfere with our personal liberty. When our rights as citizens were molested, we got up on our hind legs and yelled. “What is this?” we naturally inquired. “Why, it is what has always been done,” came the answer from the bar of injustice. And that was literally true. Only we didn’t know it. “You can’t break the Constitution,” was a further argument. “Once a Federal Amendment, always a Federal Amendment, you know.”

And why, pray? If the good old iron Constitution cannot be tampered with, it is high time that it was. If our forefathers who framed it meant it to be an utterly inelastic document, they didn’t count on the elastic minds of the American people. “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,” said the wise James Russell Lowell once; and nothing is more certain than the fact that the moment has come when the people should be heard, and not a handful of legislators, who rushed madly to lay in a stock of wine and spirits when they saw which way the wind was blowing their straws.

It grieved me, as a good American, to hear an Englishman say the other evening before a lot of my fellow-countrymen that his idea of a complete life would be to spend nine months of the year in England as a British citizen and three months in the United States as an American subject. There was much mirth; but somehow I could not laugh and I hope these Constitutional Amendments, coming so thick and fast, are not causing me to lose my sense of humor.

It was a statement in which so much of truth was compressed that I shuddered; and I thought of all the forms of verboten that have lately been foisted upon us. I recalled how, ten years ago, a friend of mine had returned from Germany and told me, laughingly, how the poor subjects of the Kaiser were eternally forbidden to do this and that. It was verboten, verboten, verboten everywhere the eye turned—in the parks, in restaurants, in the galleries, in the theaters—everywhere. Always some petty restriction, some tyrannical interference with the masses. And he said then how contrary to the broad American spirit was this constant stress on “Thou shalt not.” We both smiled over it, and pitied the much-ruled and controlled Germans. “What a glorious land we live in,” we said, in unison, lifting our glasses, “and how proud we are of our freedom.”

But could we honestly say that now? Do not let us be hypocrites. Before foreigners, we bravely and loyally uphold our form of Government, because one does not like to cleanse his soiled linen in public or reveal a family quarrel; but deep down in our hearts—I hear it discussed everywhere I go—is a feeling of apprehension; and the everlasting question is being asked, “Whither are we, as a people, being led?”

If the political machinery is being clogged with too many foolish and unnecessary laws that are merely jokers and venemous restrictions, why do we not speak out in meeting, call together groups of citizens, as we are privileged to do under the Constitution (unless another Amendment has been added since this was written), and protest against this extravagant misuse of power?

The reason England has always been such a comfortable country to live in is because of the spirit of constructive criticism that has filtered through the nation. If a Londoner does not like the service on the tram roads, he writes to the Times about it, and the matter is adjusted. He has the backing of all his neighbors—and ten to one they have written, too. But how many Americans, insulted in the subway or by some public servant, will sit down and write a letter of complaint?

We stand meekly like droves of cattle behind tapes in motion-picture “palaces,” pressed by eager little ushers endowed with a momentary authority, until released and permitted to fumble our way down dark aisles to such seats as we can find. We allow grand head-waiters to hold us in check when we enter a smart restaurant, not indeed behind tape, but behind a silken cord—which does not mitigate the insult, however; and we humbly beg them to see if they can get us a table—and some of us slip them a greenback to gain their august favor.

We allow ticket speculators to buy up all the best places in our theaters, adding what profit they demand, and say nothing—though there is a statute forbidding such extortion. “Ah, we’re here for a good time, and we don’t care what it costs us,” is the answer of the average visitor to the metropolis when he is asked why he does not protest against such unjust measures. I have known only one rich man to refuse rooms at a fine hotel, simply because he felt it wrong to pay seventeen dollars a day, no matter what his bank balance. It is people like that who help the rest of us to a return to normal conditions. He thinks of someone but himself.

Yet we talk of Prohibition as though we were manfully trying to save the next generation from the perils of drink! We are doing nothing of the sort. We are merely bowing our craven heads to a mandate because we have neither the courage nor the energy to speak loudly against a stupid law foisted upon us by an organized minority. Our altruistic purpose is not apparent, for it never existed.

“Ah, but,” someone whispers, “the majority want this and that; so we must give in to them.”

Even so, why should we give in to them? The majority of people prefer flashy, meaningless movies and Pollyanna and Harold Bell Wright and chewing-gum and cheap jewelry and Gopher Prairie and slapstick humor and loud laughter and a crowded beach on Sunday, and hideous neckties and shirts and summer furs, and a hundred and one other things entirely foreign to my desires; why, then, should I walk in their path, jump over the hurdles that the multitude puts in front of me?

Arnold Bennett once said that the classics were kept alive, not by the man in the street, but by the passionate few. He was dead right. In the words of your beloved majority, he said a mouthful. Now, because my neighbor and my neighbor’s neighbor have a weakness for the best-sellers (not the best cellars), and find a robust pleasure in never thinking of anything beyond baseball, I do not see why I should be forced to indulge in a stupid Pollyanna optimism and forget and neglect my Keats and Shakespeare.

CHAPTER V
MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR DE-MOCKERY-CY

What psychological effect will this constant contempt for the law of the land have upon us as a people? Surely something dire and dreadful is seeping into the national spirit, and we are in grave danger of coming to a human dislike of all laws, in consequence.

We talk of Prohibition as a good thing for the generations to come; but how about disregard for the law as it will affect our children and our children’s children? Drunk, they might not be responsible; sober, to their higher selves they are accountable for their shortcomings in regard to our statutes. A lack of veneration for an orderly carrying out of a mandate is a serious thing. But to hear the young people talking these days about the sanctity of the Eighteenth Amendment is not a heartening experience. They jeer at it, and openly roar with laughter when it is mentioned.

No one wishes danger to overwhelm us; but it will, unless something is done to remedy the present abhorrent conditions, which, I repeat, are making most of us unhappy. We are entangled in too many legal nets; and it is not pleasing and edifying to see an ex-Judge or jurist who came out strong for Prohibition sitting night after night in a certain restaurant, imbibing his cocktail, creating scandal in a more than crowded room. He is not in his cups these days—only in his demi-tasses. I wonder if he knows what an example he sets to the flappers down the room, and with what derision his high-and-mighty public utterances are now greeted whenever he opens his mouth to speak between drinks?

I hear men and women saying all the time, “America is no place to live now. The streets of our large cities at night look like villages in some remote district. Dull, dull, and drab, drab. One more tyrannical law, one shadow of that deep blue which imperils us, and we will go and live abroad—anywhere but here.”

Is that pleasant talk to listen to? Does it make one proud to be an American? It is not well to have such feelings fomenting in the hearts of those who honestly and sincerely love their native land—love it so much that during a terrible war they were proud to offer to die for it, or allow their sons to die for it.

But this is not the time to desert the old Ship of State. Now, as never before, the United States needs its best blood, its best workers, its best citizens, to put the country back where it belongs.

It is because I love America so, that I do not wish to see her make a complete fool of herself—as she is doing every day now. And I say it as loudly as I can, that these pernicious laws, this spirit of verboten, is only making the world safe for De-mockery-cy.

It was Montaigne who said that he was “of the opinion that it would be better for us to have no laws at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.” And that was how long ago? What would he write and think of America if he could live among us today?

And further he said, knowing human nature as few of us know it: “There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”

Yet the silly law-makers go on with their silly codes, piling Pelion on the top of Ossa, till all sight of man’s frailty is lost. “A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.”

Yet the letter of the law must be upheld, and the very men who make our statutes continue to break them.

The joke may go too far. The American people may remember that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” and be willing to watch and wait, lest that most precious of all things be taken away from them.

There can be no disputing the fact that a law that is not enforced is worse than no law at all. Law and order—that is the phrase. But America is a country of law and disorder; and the worst of it all is that the reformers refuse to stop where they have. They are preparing to plunge us into even deeper gloom. Why should they rest, having been so eminently successful already?

We used to laugh tolerantly at the compulsory military service of the Germans, under the Kaiser; but isn’t a compulsory seat upon the water-wagon just about as autocratic?

“Dry Country, ’Tis of Thee,” should be our national anthem—since we are seriously looking for one to take the place of the too-difficult-to-sing “Star-Spangled Banner.” But no; the words would not ring true. For there is a wetness all around us, and the lyric of a national anthem should at least seek to express the ideals and aspirations of a people, in terms of truth.

Yet before Prohibition, who would have thought of picking out America as the wettest of all countries? We were just moderately so. We had no desire to get a reputation for excessive dampness. It is the drys who have given us that reputation—against our will. And the pity of it is that the tag will remain—even after we are sanely and becomingly wet again.

The reformers wish no going back to even a semblance of the old ways and days. They wish us to conform, sedately, forgetting that Emerson once wrote, “Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.”

And somehow I go on believing in Emerson.

There was some wild talk, not so many months ago, that it might become lawful to dispense government-approved beer from the soda-fountains; but sensible people who care for their toddy—delectable word!—were not thrilled. They no more wish beer served from soda-fountains than they wish soda-water served from soda-fountains. They want their toddy. And when they say so, firmly, “Oh, dear!” and “Oh, my!” and “This is awful!” cry the Prohibitionists.

I always somehow get back to that argument of the upholders of the Eighteenth Amendment to the effect that Prohibition is a good thing—particularly for the next generation. I feel like asking them, in absolute seriousness, Then why not look to the soda-fountain?

When I was a lad we used to drink simple little things like vanilla, strawberry and chocolate sodas—at five cents apiece. And we were happy over harmless lemon and cherry phosphates. Yet the other day when I chanced to step into a confectionery shop, I was nonplussed to hear sophisticated flappers (what tautology!) ordering raspberry nut sundaes and banana splits with chocolate sauce, and other concoctions which my bewildered brain refuses to remember. And when I saw the little silver dishes heaped with these vicious sweets, I was horrified. Gluttony, pure and simple. And what of dyspepsia, and indigestion, and complexions, after partaking for a few weeks of such stuff? Does no one care enough for the coming race to do something about it?

I have seen hulking men enter such a shop at nine in the morning, hastily tear off an ice-cream soda, containing I know not what flavoring, and dash out again into the world of business. What must the lining of their stomachs be like? No habitual drunkard could show a worse record, I imagine. And of the two evil-doers, I would prefer the latter. At least he is human. The soda-fiend is a sensualist, knowing nothing of the healthy ecstasy of comradeship. He is a solitary drinker of the worst sort; and though he may not stagger out of the place, he is certainly unfit to begin his day’s work—just as unfit as the fool who makes it a practice to take a nip of Scotch before breakfast.

Seriously, here is work for the reformers. Let them investigate the kind of mixtures that are served to our youngsters at soda-counters. One-half of one per cent of raspberry should be all that is permitted. A solemn bill should be introduced into the next legislature, and carried by an overwhelming majority. It is unthinkable that our youth should be exposed to the evils of sundaes, sold openly all along our avenues and boulevards, in every city and town and hamlet. It is madness to let this traffic go on.

And there are not even any swinging-doors to hide the sundae fiends. Shamelessly they imbibe their drinks with the world passing the unshaded windows, looking in at them. A shocking state of affairs. Yet who is doing anything about it? No wonder little Alice, of the pale face, does not eat much luncheon. Her mother worries over her anemic condition; yet she will not take the time to investigate the child’s daily habits. She never inquires how she spends her allowance. And young Bobby, who formerly was so rosy and plump, deteriorates into a consumptive-looking boy. No, he doesn’t smoke; and as yet he has not acquired the hip-flask habit. What, then, is the matter with him, that he drops out of baseball and has no heart for tennis; that he is backward in his studies, and sleeps restlessly? On his way to school he stops in at the soda-fountain. And on his way home, he stops in once more. Surely the Government should issue cards, and make it a misdemeanor for a clerk to serve more than one soda a week to minors—and grown-ups. The Board of Health should do something about it.

You see, if it isn’t one thing it’s another in this troubled world. No sooner do we mop up the saloon than we find other places in need of mopping. Parents and social workers, here is a job for you. Get at it, at once. Forthwith. Instanter. Immediately. The future welfare of the race is at stake.

If it were only ginger-pop that the children drank! But here again one cannot control the appetites of human beings. We have closed the corner saloon. Is there no way of closing the corner soda-fountain?

It is curious, in these days when there is so much understanding, even among flappers, of psycho-analysis and complexes, that no one seems to have called attention to the fact that the prohibitionists are the greatest living examples of certain distressing inhibitions.

That the majority of us should find ourselves suddenly dictated to—told, literally, what we should and should not put into our own little private tummies—is beyond belief. What does a man who has never taken a drink know of the psychology of drink? What does he know of good-fellowship, of the poetry of the toast, of the beauties of Brüderschaft? I would as soon think of Dr. Mary Walker telling Romeo and Juliet how to make love.

The set lips of the fanatical reformer are the outward evidence of an interior set of corroding inhibitions. Unable to get relief from the tedium of existence in, say, a town like Gopher Prairie, the subject moves, in his or her later years, to Minneapolis or some other larger city, and is next heard of as a professional reformer of one sort or another.

I remember a young man in my class at school who was impossible as a playboy because he always wanted to rule the roost, to dictate everlastingly the manner in which any game we sought to enjoy should be played. He was never content to be just one of us. Oh, no! He must run things, order us about, be a dictator and a little czar, an autocrat of the most unbending kind. We despised him. He could never fall into line and be boyishly human. He could not yield; he could not adjust himself to the spirit of fun which we others abandoned ourselves to with youthful ease. He was just a common scold.

He disappeared from our school-yard, and from our lives. Years later, when the War broke out, he turned up in a remote town as a shrieking radical. Nothing was right. He had worked out his destiny in the only way such a nature as his could possibly do. He wasn’t a good sport. Worse, he wasn’t even a good citizen. He didn’t amount to a row of pins. He wasn’t even worth interning. He wasn’t interesting enough to get the slightest notoriety—he wasn’t what the newspapers term good copy; and that broke his heart.

I have no doubt that now, with the War over, he is a professional prohibitionist—or do I mean inhibitionist?—with a soft job at some desk. He would never be happy anywhere; but in such a position, interfering with normal people’s happiness, he would be as happy as he could be.

It is exactly men and women like him who have slipped over some of the laws we now have and who are planning statutes against staying away from church on Sunday. But it’s an old story. The intelligent people in every community are forever allowing themselves to be duped by fortune-tellers and ouija-board manipulators, table-tippers, snake doctors and bell-tinkling “mediums.”

A dog-in-the-manger spirit is in the land. “I don’t like a glass of wine—I’ve never tasted the nasty stuff—so I don’t want you to taste it!” This is the cry of the paid reformers who eke out a living by taking up some fad, and, having nothing interesting of their own to reveal, peep and eavesdrop and reveal the interesting traits of their innocently jovial and erstwhile happy brothers.

We have enough complexities in our modern life without having the complexes of these would-be and self-constituted evangelists made public day by day. Of course, the natural human being is he who indulges in everything—in moderation. Show me the man who constantly denies himself something, and I will show you an abnormal man. He becomes obsessed with his “goodness,” as he dares to call it; and he cannot talk ten minutes without mentioning his idée fixe. He revels in it. He gloats over it. He delights in it, just as the monks of old delighted in the hair-shirt and self-flagellation. He thinks he is better than we are. Soon he begins to preach. He is like the old woman who committed a sin in her early youth and still loves to talk about it. He does not know how boring he is. He does not know how little a part he plays in society. He is just a bit “off,” a trifle queer.

The next step in this form of madness is to try to impose one’s own ideas upon one’s neighbors. Soon proselytizing must be done. The pent-up energy of years must be released in middle age. Steam must be let off. Blood pressure must be reduced. If these “cases” would only lock themselves up in cells and flagellate themselves, they would find comfort and release from their agony of mind, and a weary world would be grateful. But no! they must stalk through the land, imposing their so-called moral rectitude upon the rest of us.

Good-naturedly we have, up to now, humored them, smiled tolerantly at them, secretly pitied them. But with shrewdness and cruelty they have plotted and planned for years, quietly banded together, until now they are joined in a great brotherhood; and instead of locking themselves up, they have locked us up—and maliciously, gleefully thrown away the key. We should have been their keepers. Instead, they are ours.

An occasional little spree, as a wise Frenchman once said, never hurt anybody. It is necessary for people of imagination to romp and play once in a while. What form that romping and playing takes is their own affair—so long as they do not injure their neighbors. They may express themselves in terms of smoking, of flirting, or sitting up all night and talking their heads off; or they may take a long walk in the rain; or go to the movies for several hours; or read an exciting but impossible detective story—which is by no means a waste of time; or dance; or go fishing; or attend an Elks picnic; or buy their wives a diamond bracelet; or indulge in an after-dinner speech; or see a foolish musical comedy. There are a thousand and one ways to let off steam. They come back from any one of these “dissipations” a hundred per cent better in mind and body, and plunge into the serious business of life with a fresh stimulus, a new zest.

But the prohibitionist—what form do his inhibitions take? His orgy is one of complete surrender to an orgy of holding in, forever. He never lets go—never—not for one second. And just as the hermit enjoys his self-imposed solitude, he revels in his self-inflicted punishment; and, without wishing to be cynical, I say that he gets a certain drab satisfaction in this stupid disciplining of himself. The remorse of the morning-after is unknown to him. But without realizing it, every morning he experiences a mental hang-over. He has never lived through one normal day. The pendulum, for him, swings completely in the other direction; and he is happy only when he is unhappy. But—and here’s where you and I come in—he is not content with this exquisite unhappiness. He wants us to be unhappy, too!

Pathological, you see. Heretofore, the temperance people looked upon all drinkers, heavy or light, as wounded souls—medical cases. But we who drink and smoke and laugh in moderation are the normal people of the world. The others are those who are in need of treatment. The tables have been turned, thanks to psycho-analysis, and Freud, and the open door that leads to the light of medical science. A bunch of sour grapes have robbed us of our sweet grapes. Why? Because they could not stand the thought of Joy being in the world. They want everyone to be as miserable as they are.

Having succeeded so easily in taking away one of our joys, do you think these fanatics are content? If so, you know them not. Their victory has been accomplished so simply that, of course, they are now looking about for new worlds to conquer. They set their mouths, grit their teeth, look us over, impale us on a pin and see where next they can turn on the screws. They take a fiendish delight in inflicting punishment. That is part of their disease. Their suppressed desires find expression in robbing us of our natural pleasure. They are cunning and keen and wise, with the curious and dangerous wisdom of the insane. They think they are sent into the world to redeem it. They have the Messiah complex. They have the delusion of greatness. And when we venture to question their methods and motives, they hurl invectives back at us and cry, “You are persecuting us!” They have paranoia, you see. They would kill us, actually, rather than give us one sip of beer.

And these are the people who have, temporarily, gained the upper hand! Mad on one subject, they appear perfectly balanced while lobbying in the legislatures of the land. Obsessed with one idea, they can talk intelligently on every other subject; but sooner or later they will switch the conversation to their pet theory—and then I ask you to note the gleam in their eyes, see their lips twitch, watch how nervous they become! Yes, pathological cases, every one of them!

When will the hard-shelled prohibitionists understand that it is not drink per se that thinking people are fighting for? The people are roused to action and alarm because of the dangerous precedent that has been set. If we, as a nation, are to be deprived of legitimate and friendly egg-nog (lovely word again!) when New Year comes round, why, in the name of heaven, can we not be deprived of eggs? They make one bilious, I am told. And biliousness is bad for one. Come, let us correct it.

But, having taken away the dangerous egg, let us poke about and see what else one can remove. Ah! there it is, of course! Coffee! Coffee makes one nervous. Nervousness is awful. Coffee keeps one awake. But why remain awake in a world that has lost its glamour? Remove our coffee, then! Gladly we permit you to take it; for then we can go blissfully to sleep and forget our worries and cares.

It has been loudly denied that lobbying is being done to bring about the passage of further drastic laws; but the busybodies are secretly working, night and day. The deadly work goes on, unabated. Of course they are not crying their methods from the housetops. Sinister forces are burrowing deep, and frightened legislators will be forced to follow the path they took before the Eighteenth Amendment went through.

You remember that wonderfully satirical story of Mark Twain’s, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” don’t you, and what happened to a town that imposed righteousness upon the inhabitants? All temptation having been beneficently removed, when one little chance came to misbehave, the entire village leaped at it and was thoroughly corrupted.

There is some fun in passing a saloon, in going voluntarily on the water-wagon, in refusing that extra cocktail; there is none whatever in having someone else do it for you.

Our prayers may be dictated to us next. But something tells us that if prohibitionists formulate them, they have no more chance than ours of being heard in heaven. A world made safe for us by reformers is the last kind of world we care to dwell in. For reformers are the kind of people who paint heaven as a stupid city of golden streets and pearly gates, and incessant singing and playing of harps. Well, as Omar said, “thy heaven is not mine.”

Prohibitionists, I am genuinely sorry for you. You need not pity me, for I shall go on doing as I please, despite you. And so will millions of other good Americans. Does that make you frantically desperate? Does that make you have another attack of your symptoms? Do you puff up with rage and despair when you hear me say such things in open defiance of you?

Keeper, bring in the straitjacket, and sweep out, as Goldberg says, padded cell No. 7,894,502,431. For the pathological ward is overcrowded today. They have just brought in a frightfully red-faced man who believes in the Blue Laws; and he must have gone quite mad, for he is singing what he claims is the new national anthem, “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blues!”

CHAPTER VI
THE INFAMOUS VOLSTEAD ACT

There are seven Articles in the original Constitution of the United States of America.

There are nineteen Amendments (to date).

The Fifteenth Amendment has never been taken seriously in certain of the Southern States; and the Eighteenth Amendment has caused more dissension than any law ever placed upon our statutes. The Volstead Act, which is but an enforcing act of the Amendment, is highly unpopular. After three years of trying to coerce the people into obeying a mandate in which millions of them do not believe, are we to continue to do so, or are we, sensibly, to wipe it out?

The money consumed by the Government in attempting to have this vicious law obeyed and respected should cause every American to blush. We are gradually—nay, swiftly—getting to a point where practically every citizen will be watched and guarded by another. One’s daily habits will be observed—perhaps by one’s next-door neighbor, or the janitor in one’s basement. There is no telling who is a detective nowadays. And there is no telling who is a bootlegger. Maybe one is the other.

How far away we have wandered from those early principles of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the makers of the Constitution! “O Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!” cried Madame Roland; and Bertrand Barère exclaimed, “The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants.”

The Volstead Act is the most tyrannous document a people have ever had thrust upon them. I wonder how many Americans have read it, studied it, pondered over it? I wish we might read the thoughts of all the men who cast their votes for this infamous piece of legislation. I wish we might search their consciences, know of their secret emotions when they assented to its restricting sections.

It would be folly to reproduce the entire document here, with its tangle of legal verbiage, its intricate twists and turns, its complicated sentences which, to the layman, mean so little, but to the law-makers mean so much! Through a thick underbrush of paragraphs the legal mind wanders at will, delightfully and miraculously at home, and finally imagines that it emerges into the sunlight of knowledge and wisdom. Plain folk like you and me find it difficult to follow the gypsy patteran and patter; yet somehow we get the sense of this appalling mass of words—words that seem to have handcuffs attached to them; words that hint of prison cells and donjonkeeps; words that mystify and frighten us. We feel so guilty as we traverse them; and remembering the violations of this sacrosanct paper which we have witnessed since its solemn passage, we marvel at the energy expended to make us all good and holy—citizens, I was going to say; but I think, with the Englishman, subjects would be nearer the truth.

For a high and mighty absolute monarchy never weighed its people down with heavier bonds. No Kaiser-ridden land ever knew more complete and devastating tyranny. The burdens heaped upon the shoulders of the already weary tax-payers so that the “dignity” of this Act may be upheld—ah! few of us ever consider these. We have grown so used to added packs that one more dollar seems to make little difference. But it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back; and who knows how much longer we can stand these accumulating and distressing burdens?

Section 7, of Title 2, reads as follows:

“No one but a physician holding a permit to prescribe liquor shall issue any prescription for liquor. And no physician shall prescribe liquor unless after careful physical examination of the person for whose use such prescription is sought, or if such examination is found impracticable, then upon the best information obtainable, he in good faith believes that the use of such liquor as a medicine by such person is necessary and will afford relief to him from some known ailment. Not more than a pint of spirituous liquor to be taken internally shall be prescribed for use by the same person within any period of ten days and no prescription shall be filled more than once. Any pharmacist filling a prescription shall at the time indorse upon it over his own signature the word ‘canceled,’ together with the date when the liquor was delivered, and then make the same a part of the record that he is required to keep as herein provided.

“Every physician who issues a prescription for liquor shall keep a record, alphabetically arranged in a book prescribed by the commissioner, which shall show the date of issue, amount prescribed, to whom issued, the purpose or ailment for which it is to be used and directions for use, stating the amount and frequency of the dose.”

This would be ludicrous were it not so serious. But let us pass on to Section 12:

“All persons manufacturing liquor for sale under the provisions of this title shall securely and permanently attach to every container thereof, as the same is manufactured, a label stating name of manufacturer, kind and quantity of liquor contained therein, and the date of its manufacture, together with the number of the permit authorizing the manufacture thereof; and all persons possessing such liquor in wholesale quantities shall securely keep and maintain such label thereon; and all persons selling at wholesale shall attach to every package of liquor, when sold, a label setting forth the kind and quantity of liquor contained therein, by whom manufactured, the date of sale, and the person to whom sold; which label shall likewise be kept and maintained thereon until the liquor is used for the purpose for which such sale was authorized.”

And Section 13 specifies again about records—I wonder if these are carefully kept, as the law provides!—

“It shall be the duty of every carrier to make a record at the place of shipment of the receipt of any liquor transported, and he shall deliver liquor only to persons who present to the carrier a verified copy of a permit to purchase which shall be made a part of the carrier’s permanent record at the office from which delivery is made.

“The agent of the common carrier is hereby authorized to administer the oath to the consignee in verification of the copy of the permit presented, who, if not personally known to the agent, shall be identified before the delivery of the liquor to him. The name and address of the person identifying the consignee shall be included in the record.”

“Section 14. It shall be unlawful for a person to use or induce any carrier, or any agent or employee thereof, to carry or ship any package or receptacle containing liquor without notifying the carrier of the true nature and character of the shipment. No carrier shall transport nor shall any person receive liquor from a carrier unless there appears on the outside of the package containing such liquor the following information:

“Name and address of the consignor or seller, name and address of the consignee, kind and quality of liquor contained therein, and number of the permit to purchase or ship the same, together with the name and address of the person using the permit.”

How simple they make it for us! And of course free speech on the billboards has been squashed. For Section 17 has this to say:

“It shall be unlawful to advertise anywhere, or by any means or method, liquor, or the manufacture, sale, keeping for sale or furnishing of the same, or where, how, from whom, or at what price the same may be obtained. No one shall permit any sign or billboard containing such advertisement to remain upon one’s premises.”

“Section 18. It shall be unlawful to advertise, manufacture, sell, or possess for sale any utensil, contrivance, machine, preparation, compound, tablet, substance, formula, direction, or recipe advertised, designed, or intended for use in the unlawful manufacture of intoxicating liquor.”

How the very stills themselves must tremble at these ominous words!

But I think for its far-reaching effects, Section 20 takes the palm:

“Any person who shall be injured in person, property, means of support, or otherwise by any intoxicated person, or by reason of the intoxication of any person” (though we thought intoxication was to be wiped out with the passage of the Volstead Act!) “whether resulting in his death or not, shall have a right of action against any person who shall, by unlawfully selling to or unlawfully assisting in procuring liquor for such intoxicated person, have caused or contributed to such intoxication, and in any such action such person shall have a right to recover actual and exemplary damages.” (Yet it is not quite clear how a dead man can bring an action in the courts!) “In case of the death of either party, the action or right of action given by this section shall survive to or against his or her executor or administrator, and the amount so recovered by either wife or child shall be his or her sole and separate property. Such action may be brought in any court of competent jurisdiction. In any case where parents shall be entitled to such damages, either the father or mother may sue alone therefor, but recovery by one of such parties shall be a bar to suit brought by the other.”

So Mr. Volstead anticipates trouble for years to come—as long as it would take to settle an action for damages in our already-clogged courts. We make laws, it seems, which we expect to be broken. Deep down in his heart, then, Mr. Volstead feared that people would go on being—just people. Drunkenness is rampant in the land; and I suppose drunkenness will always be rampant in the land. Even Mr. Volstead cannot stop it. What a pity!

But do not think for a moment I am putting in a plea for drunkenness. I am bitterly opposed to drunkenness. Prohibition has not cured it. We have had it long enough now to see its terrible errors. The lions have heard the crack of the whip, but instead of being overcome, overpowered, cowering in corners, we have the spectacle of a determination to pay no attention to the lashings of the law. Half of us willfully disobey this iniquitous legislation—and are proud of our disobedience. What is to be done about it? The more teeth that are put into the Volstead Act, the more teeth the lions show. They growl and fight. They will not be mastered.

Read Section 23.

“Any person who shall, with intent to effect a sale of liquor, by himself, his employee, servant or agent, for himself or any person, company or corporation, keep or carry around on his person, or in a vehicle, or other conveyance whatever, or leave in a place for another to secure, any liquor, or who shall travel to solicit, or solicit, or take, or accept orders for the sale, shipment, or delivery of liquor in violation of this title is guilty of a nuisance and may be restrained by injunction, temporary and permanent, from doing or continuing to do any of said acts or things.”

Have our army of bootleggers read this Section? But they are worth a whole chapter to themselves, so important a part have they become of our national life.

“Section 26. When the commissioner, his assistants, inspectors, or any officer of the law shall discover any person in the act of transporting in violation of the law, intoxicating liquors in any wagon, buggy, automobile, water or air craft, or other vehicle, it shall be his duty to seize any and all intoxicating liquors found therein being transported contrary to law. Whenever intoxicating liquors transported or possessed illegally shall be seized by an officer he shall take possession of the vehicle and team or automobile, boat, air or water craft, or any other conveyance, and shall arrest any person in charge thereof. Such officer shall at once proceed against the person arrested under the provisions of this title in any court having competent jurisdiction; but the said vehicle or conveyance shall be returned to the owner upon execution by him of a good and valid bond, with sufficient sureties, in a sum double the value of the property, which said bond shall be approved by said officer and shall be conditioned to return said property to the custody of said officer on the day of trial to abide the judgment of the court. The court upon conviction of the person so arrested shall order the liquor destroyed, and unless good cause to the contrary is shown by the owner, shall order a sale by public auction of the property seized, and the officer making the sale, after deducting the expenses of keeping the property, the fee for the seizure, and the cost of the sale, shall pay all liens, according to their priorities, which are established, by intervention or otherwise at said hearing or in other proceeding brought for said purpose, as being bona fide and as having been created without the lienor having any notice that the carrying vehicle was being used or was to be used for illegal transportation of liquor, and shall pay the balance of the proceeds into the Treasury of the United States as miscellaneous receipts. All liens against property sold under the provisions of this section shall be transferred from the property to the proceeds of the sale of the property. If, however, no one shall be found claiming the team, vehicle, water or air craft, or automobile, the taking of the same, with a description thereof, shall be advertised in some newspaper published in the city or county where taken, or if there be no newspaper published, in said city or county, in a newspaper having circulation in the county, once a week for two weeks and by hand-bills posted in three public places near the place of seizure, and if no claimant shall appear within ten days after the last publication of the advertisement, the property shall be sold and the proceeds after deducting the expenses and costs shall be paid into the Treasury of the United States as miscellaneous receipts.”

“Section 27. In all cases in which intoxicating liquors may be subject to be destroyed under the provisions of this Act the court shall have jurisdiction upon the application of the United States attorney to order them delivered to any department or agency of the United States Government for medicinal, mechanical, or scientific uses, or to order the same sold at private sale for such purposes to any person having a permit to purchase liquor, the proceeds to be covered into the Treasury of the United States to the credit of miscellaneous receipts, and all liquor heretofore seized in any suit or proceeding brought for violation of law may likewise be so disposed of, if not claimed within sixty days from the date this section takes effect.”

One is happy to realize that the Government may, even while the Volstead Act is in force, receive some small emolument and revenue from John Barleycorn.

Section 37—or a part of it—reads as follows:

“A manufacturer of any beverage containing less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume may, on making application and giving such bond as the commissioner shall prescribe, be given a permit to develop in the manufacture thereof, by the usual methods of fermentation and fortification or otherwise a liquid such as beer, ale, porter, or wine, containing more than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume, but before any such liquid is withdrawn from the factory or otherwise disposed of, the alcoholic contents thereof shall under such rules and regulations as the commissioner may prescribe be reduced below such one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol: Provided, That such liquid may be removed and transported, under bond and under such regulations as the commissioner may prescribe, from one bonded plant or warehouse to another for the purpose of having the alcohol extracted therefrom. And such liquids may be developed, under permit, by persons other than the manufacturers of beverages containing less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume, and sold to such manufacturers for conversion into such beverages. The alcohol removed from such liquid, if evaporated and not condensed and saved, shall not be subject to tax; if saved, it shall be subject to the same law as other alcoholic liquors. Credit shall be allowed on the tax due on any alcohol so saved to the amount of any tax paid upon distilled spirits or brandy used in the fortification of the liquor from which the same is saved.”

Don Marquis’s Old Soak must rejoice when he reads such stipulations! And, being a tax-payer, like the rest of us, Section 38 must fill him with added delight:

“The Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the Attorney General of the United States are hereby respectively authorized to appoint and employ such assistants, experts, clerks, and other employees in the District of Columbia or elsewhere, and purchase such supplies and equipment as they may deem necessary for the enforcement of the provisions of this Act, but such assistants, experts, clerks, and other employees, except such executive officers as may be appointed by the Commissioner or the Attorney General to have immediate direction of the enforcement of the provisions of this Act, and persons authorized to issue permits, and agents and inspectors in the field service, shall be appointed under the rules and regulations prescribed by the Civil Service Act: Provided, That the Commissioner and Attorney General in making such appointments shall give preference to those who have served in the military or naval service in the recent war, if otherwise qualified, and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such sum as may be required for the enforcement of this Act including personal services in the District of Columbia, and for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1920, there is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $2,000,000 for the use of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and $100,000 for the use of the Department of Justice for the enforcement of the provisions of this Act, including personal services in the District of Columbia and necessary printing and binding.”

And how is the law enforced?

Our journals do not make pleasant reading for good Americans these days. They are filled with headlines, which concern the Prohibition law, morning after morning. Not long ago I picked up my newspaper and found no less than seventeen columns devoted to stories of what the police in New York City alone were doing, or trying to do, to make the Volstead Act anything but a huge joke.

Up the State, where farmers are paying good taxes, I found a delicious item in a newspaper, to prove the sincerity of the Federal authorities. It seems that in a small town near Utica, an Italian was suspected of having some whiskey on his premises; and three stalwart officers, in plain clothes, pounced down upon his shop (it was not a rum shop) to see what they could find. The man was out; but his wife was at home, and a careful search of the pitiful premises revealed a quart of Scotch, which may or may not have been on sale.

It took three husky men three hours to make this startling discovery. And how much of the taxpayers’ money, I wonder? It was all-important that an arrest should take place, but there was no evidence, and nothing further was ever heard of the matter.

And this which sounds as though it had occurred in benighted Russia, greeted my eyes at breakfast one morning, in the New York Times:

“ACCUSE JERSEY POLICE OF BRUTAL DRY RAID

“Formed Way into Women’s Rooms and Insulted Them, Resort Residents Charge.

“The conduct of eighteen of the New Jersey State Police who participated with Federal prohibition agents in liquor raids on hotels and other places in Lake Hopatcong, N. J., Tuesday night, was such that indignant residents threatened yesterday to complain to Governor Edwards.

“At the Great Cove Hotel at Nolan’s Point, the police are alleged to have gone to the room of a waiter and his wife and demanded that they show their marriage certificate. It is also charged that they went to the room of two girls, one of whom was praying, and insisted that they open the door. The police searched the belongings of the girls for whiskey.

“It is charged that at the Espanol Hotel, Nolan’s Point, the police went to the room of a mother and her three children, awakened her and charged there was a man in her room. She was compelled to open her door.

“Rented cottages, it is charged, also were visited and searched. It is charged by the complainants that the State police drank the beer and whiskey they seized.”

But of course this is all right—to a prohibitionist. The law must be enforced. It makes no difference how enforcement is accomplished.

If the police were honest, if they themselves approved of the Eighteenth Amendment, the country could be made bone dry tomorrow. But when the politicians who voted for Prohibition have no respect for the law they put upon our statutes, why should we expect integrity and honesty down the line?

How can there be any respect for a law which the minions of the law disobey, repeatedly? In a great city like New York, in the Autumn of 1922, innumerable policemen were found drunk while on duty—so much drunkenness had occurred that it was said on reliable authority that a murder a week occurred.

“POLICE MUST TELL HOW THEY GOT RUM”

was the heading in the New York Times on October 16th. “Drastic regulations for dealing with policemen who drink” have been framed, and have been circulated in the Police Department. This is the text of the orders. Think of their being necessary!

“1. To the commanding officers:

“The following memorandum from the Police Commissioner is for your information and guidance.

“In Mount Vernon any person found publicly intoxicated is arrested and required to make an affidavit stating where he obtained the liquor causing the intoxication. This affidavit is made the basis of a search warrant, directing a search of the place selling the liquor.

“This is but one of the many means which might be employed to put an end to violation of the Prohibition law. The plan seems to work out successfully in Mount Vernon.

“2. Intoxicated members of the force:

“Hereafter when members of the force are found to be suffering from alcoholism to such an extent as to warrant charges signifying the liquor has been obtained from persons who are violating the State prohibition law, request the officers to make an affidavit stating where they obtained this liquor. Take appropriate action in the premises. If it is found that the officers have failed to take proper action where the law has been violated additional charges should be preferred against them and if the case is a serious one they should be suspended from duty.

“3. Cabarets and dance halls:

“Cabarets and dance halls having resumed business for the Fall and Winter season will be carefully inspected from time to time and properly regulated. The majority of these places disregard provisions of the prohibition law and should be given rigid supervision.

“Commanding officers will see that music and dancing at these places is stopped at 1 A.M., and that these places do not harbor an undesirable element after that hour.”

I have spoken of uniformed men standing guard over a roomful of citizens in New York restaurants and cabarets. Alas! it is shockingly true. It is as though no other law existed, as I have said. To one who loves his country, his city, it is disgusting. The people writhe under the presence of the officer—but do nothing about it. What can they do? Could they not request the Mayor, or the Police Commissioner to stop such nonsense? And if the thing occurs in one restaurant, why not in all of them?

With my own eyes I have seen this petty exhibition. It is outrageous. Only one officer was in the place I visited. Yet I could not believe I was in free America.

The room was filled with beautifully dressed men and women. The dance floor was crowded. Upon every table, directly under the eye of the officer, was a drink. I am not saying that in each tumbler there was an alcoholic beverage—and probably the man in uniform did not wish to think so, either. But I wonder how any intelligent being could imagine that a lot of sophisticated Manhattanites would go out of an evening to a gay cabaret, and order lime-juice—unless they intended to mix something with it? Such folk are not plain ginger-ale consumers, as a rule—they purchase it to mingle with gin. White Rock is not their favorite beverage; neither is Clysmic. Yet bottles of these were evident everywhere. Anyone save a moron would have known why.

Yet solemnly up and down that room the officer walked, glancing here and there, hobnobbing now and again with a friendly waiter—who seemed to be on excellent terms with him. His journeys were rhythmically conceived and executed. For a moment or two he would stand glaring about him, his arms folded, after the manner of a soldier in the late War standing guard over military prisoners. Then he would amble, almost to the time of the music, to the farther side of the room. Instantly two hundred hands would slip under the tables, and flasks would be drawn forth, and a liquid that was certainly not water would be poured swiftly and deftly into various goblets. Then, when the officer swung back again on his rounds, the folk at the other side of the room would go through the same unbelievable performance. The man in uniform had eyes, but he saw not.

You see, the authorities had come out with a statement not long before, to the effect that it was not the man with the hip-flask whom they were after—only the citizen foolish and daring enough to slam his flask down openly upon a cabaret table. In other words, so delicate are the nuances of the law, that it is not an offense to drink behind your napkin, or behind a closed door; but it is a very terrible crime to reveal the fact that you have a container of alcohol on your person. Think of seriously pronouncing such a ukase, with the Mullan-Gage law still upon the records. I do not understand how City Magistrates, in New York, know how to interpret the law.

I was told that almost every evening an arrest or two is made in these hitherto happy cabarets; but generally the case is dismissed. The proprietor bails his patron out, and then the merry-go-round starts again next evening. Since this was written, the police have been withdrawn from New York cabarets—another confession of the failure to enforce the law.

But New York is full of insincerities. Conventions take place there, and we read a sanctimonious announcement in the papers that of course nothing alcoholic will be served at the banquets—that goes without saying. But up in Eddie’s room, on the eighteenth floor, a lot of grown-up men, in the city to discuss solemn business problems, find that sustenance which they desire and demand. The authorities, alarmed at the influx of so many virtuous men, give out the statement that it is well that they are so virtuous, and not the kind of fellows who crave a drink; for the hootch in New York is notoriously foul (of course it isn’t, but that makes no difference to a Prohibition officer) and it would be unsafe to consume any of it. Many of these safe and sound business men, from all parts of the country, came out strong for the Eighteenth Amendment. They were Puritans—when it came to the other fellow’s habits. The little clerk would never rise to a position of importance—like theirs—if he took so much as a glass of beer. They forgot that they, in their youth—and ever since—had taken a daily nip. I am not saying that they are any the worse for it. I do know, however, that they are none the better, judging by their public utterances and their private behavior.

If there is one kind of human animal I have a supreme contempt for it is the so-called man who believes in Prohibition for you and me—but not for himself. I have heard bankers and Wall Street potentates hold forth with fervor on the salutary effects of the Volstead Act, since it has forced the poor laboring man to give up his ale and beer. He gets to work early now—there’s no need to worry about Monday morning in the factories throughout the land. There is no Saturday-night debauchery; and the bulging pay-envelope is taken home to the wife and children, with no extractions on the way at the corner saloon. Happiness reigns where penury and travail abided before. Production is mounting; there are no strikes to speak of, the prisons are emptying, crime has diminished, wife-beating is unheard of, and so on, ad infinitum.

Which would be delightful if it were true. Home brew goes rapturously on; and if Tim doesn’t bother to make it himself, he has a pal who does, and he purchases all the gin and beer he needs.

I am not saying this with any intention of approval. I am merely stating conditions as I have observed them. Those who shut their eyes to the facts and go blandly on their way, announcing that the country is bone dry when it is nothing of the sort, do immeasurable damage.

I remember when the Volstead Act first went into effect that I had a serious talk with myself. I came to the conclusion that nothing was more dangerous to this land of ours than a state of things which made it possible for the rich to drink continuously and the poor to be able to obtain nothing. I felt that I could not, with a clear conscience, go on having an occasional cocktail, if the laboring man down the street was deprived of his grog. For a month I absolutely followed the whisperings of that Inner Voice. Then I happened to go to a manufacturing town near Boston, and the work I was doing brought me into contact with the men in the shops there. Somehow the subject came up—I forget in just what way; and when my plan became known, a laugh greeted my ears.

“Don’t be such a jackass!” one of the fellows cried. “Why, we’re getting all we want, in spite of Mr. Volstead—we’re making it ourselves!”

My self-inflicted martyrdom ceased from that moment; and I must confess that I felt a bit foolish.

More people are drinking heavily now than in the old days—and, drinking inferior stuff, they are suffering more in consequence. The results of this have been put into a delightful rhyme by the clever James J. Montague who, in his way, is a genius. He turns out happy and technically fine verses every day for a syndicate, until one is amazed at his cleverness and seemingly endless chain of ideas. Listen to him:

THE ELUSIVE MORAL

Before there was a Volstead law
The village gossips used to mutter
In pitying accents when they saw
A friend and neighbor in the gutter:
“How dreadful was the fellow’s fall!
How terrible is his condition!
He wouldn’t be that way at all
If only we had prohibition!”

They knew the drunkards all by name,
And when they came around with edges
Some elderly and kindly dame
Would get their signatures to pledges.
And if they all appeared next day
Still far too merry and seraphic,
The troubled townsfolk used to say
Hard things about the liquor traffic.

To-day, when some good man goes wrong,
The villagers with whom he’s mingled
Observe his frequent bursts of song
And thus discover he is jingled.
“Too bad about that chap,” they cry,
“He might have kept his high position
If Volstead hadn’t made us dry—
What ruined him is prohibition!”

There is some moral in this tale—
I fancied so when I designed it—
But I have searched without avail
For nearly half an hour to find it!