 Section No. 1 of the Rise and Fall of Prohibition, this is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shashank Jagmola. The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Charles Hansen Towney. 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 a 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 newspaper 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 Afete East. There were districts, we knew, which chose the path of so-called virtue and they were welcome to their sanctuminiasness. 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 sent 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 wrought 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 non-combatants 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 the 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 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 hails 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 lawbreakers rejoicing alike in our secret and open wrongdoings. We are the laughing stock of Europe. We are the jest of Canada and Mexico, our neighbours 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 injustice, we meekly submit. The vile we complained 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 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 realisation of the peril that confronts us through our spirit of lazy fare, we shall deserve, as Plato says, exactly the kind of government we get. With all our recognised 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 grossers and butchers, clerks with little imagination, played out failures and cab drivers and shoppers 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 prize 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 coat room. The Purple Fingers and Morinos and Sarah Kratzer 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 neighbour's house or barn but not our own. The disaster may come to the other fellow, never to us. It can never 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 house-top from Manhattan to go for 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 coated out of his context as a basis for the silly gladness of hordes 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 worthwhile and bidding a 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 overcrowded subway train and still fondly cherish the delusion that we should keep on smiling though a brutal train guard's boot is jammed into a reluctant bag so that we may become one more sardine in the steel box he is so expert in packing. It would be all very amusing but 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. Babbit, 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 common 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 18th 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 and scribe there in letters of fire. End of section number one. Section two of the rise and fall of prohibition. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Shashank Jakhmola The rise and fall of prohibition by Charles Hansen Towney are great unhappiness. Are the American people any worse than other people that they should be put in massay upon the water wagon? Who is it that sets in judgment over them? What unseen Kaiser, Sarr, 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 taskmasters. I have recently been travelling 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 kanker is there. The vermi, the bird 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 insidiously. 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 small-daring discontent and anger is bound to rise in a great tide one of these days. Listen to a lady reformer in Chicago speaking after a church league meeting in September 1922. Evidently, she's out of touch with the world, secured 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 nevertheless effectively enforced, dear lady. You are living in a world of dreams and fancies. You should get about more with the flappers and je ne sais d'horis who could tell you and show you a thing or two. Your absities 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 high balls 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 with loud indenunciation 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 derided and, at the mention of Mr. Wallsteed, sneer and jeer and purchased cocktails in New York restaurants at a dollar a piece 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 Wallsteed 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 disformed of 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 coat 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 OK upon Wall Street Anderson et al. Yet behind closed door he is a Mr. Hyde who takes a fiendish pleasure in his dual nature. I liked him not. The lady in Chicago is at least consistent where I, a WCTU 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 working man 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 added tenement passing the homes of those who possessed well-stocked sellers 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 drought 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 this 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-seller. Mr. Wolstead 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 wardens 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 light 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 claim acquiescence or else they openly disobeyed the law and when they thought of the possible consequences they 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 hodgepodge nation that we are losing sight of all the old ideals our forefathers fought for. The passage of the 18th 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. End of section number two. Section three of the rise and fall of prohibition this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Shashank Jagmola the rise and fall of prohibition by Charles Hansen Towney our endless chain of laws when we sit back in rail at the 18th amendment and the Wall Street Act we lose sight of other laws equally tyrannous which however do not happen to affect us it is 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 caravan series 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 could this 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 caught fearing American citizens do we not? I had in 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 anymore 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 taxpayers 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 rich 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 the same law was openly violated the judge solemnly charged the jury and hastened out to luncheon but the twelve good men and true were only a few moments they brought in a verdict of not guilty how can this be? cried the court in wrath and the council for the people tore his hair metaphorically, if not literally the detective looked blank then the four men arose and said that the jury 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 buffet 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 this made ridiculous it is to love, isn't it? or should one remain serious in the face of such nonsense as of course the reformers would have us too 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 NSLS, 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 ice-tree alas, I fear that the law is not to be trifled with in that way the dignity of our jury prudence must not be disturbed one might be hauled up and arranged for disorderly conduct or for some such trumped up charge but it is a pretty picture, isn't it to see perfectly good taxpayers watched and spied upon while they eat their meals ye God and in a supposedly free country 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 a 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 new 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 busy bodies and the cranks become as thick as flies and locusts in time of pestilence let them gather in battalions around us stingers, flayers, torturers until, at last, the wastage 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 theatre 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 person generation is forced to give up its harmless toady that the children of tomorrow may be ropers, supermen and super-women the fact is that to the fanatic no law is sacred except the 18th amendment the 15th, oh, why talk of it the south knows its problems and can cope with them besides, well... that's another matter and has no bearing upon the issue at hand why hasn't it? yet, if you ask 10 people in the street what the 15th 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 uphold and 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. Wolstead 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 15th 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 just for a package in the dining car can't let you have him was the answer of the steward we are on Kansas soil then why don't you inform passengers before we cross the state line in order that they may talk up I inquired humanly enough I thought they should look out for themselves was his rather unkind reply I thought to a moment I did want a smoke and I was determined to have one to the steward he saw that I was an 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 will be a package of cigarettes under your napkin in a minute this was another holy law disobeyed and it is done every day hope-route 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 frequency to life they give a spice and zest to the level days our appetites are our own affair the moderate drinker is not a drunkard and to place restrictions upon him in order to cure the near do well is as unjust as it would be to put the petty larceny prisoner in the dutcher 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 Part 3 Section 4 of the Rise and Fall of Prohibition this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by scientific Methodist The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Charles Hanson Town too much for Bowton Part 1 One hears a great deal about the way the Volstead Act and the 18th 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 than 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 heartier race one believes with Saint 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 not the deepest tragedy I can conceive of a brilliant first act wherein some do-boys parched and thirsty arrive in a German village and for the first time in their lives taste real munchner beer the beer of their enemy learn to like it decently enough get the recipe and decide to take back to their hometown the one good and harmless thing the enemy country gave them then as a climax they arrive wounded and depressed a tattered amelian 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 family 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 prohibition 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 quote a great deal of whimsical imagination is shown by the author but the American people are very sensible and even Barry 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 a satire for the situation could not exist even in a realm of dreams end quote 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 characters 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 capital 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 percent 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 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 everyone is decidedly unequivocally wretchedly miserably gloomily stonely fearfully terribly unhappy and why because one has to fight so hard for his fun a lot of laws have been passed and more are threatened which blast ones 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 and 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 8 or 9 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 philip 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 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 in 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 the booze but we were far from that drunk was beautifully taking care of itself it was infradig to consume too much and the young businessman who made it a practice to indulge in even one glass of beer at luncheon lost cast 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 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 that 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 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 whether 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 topper 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 drinking 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 served 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 while 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 incident ceased long before national prohibition became an outrageous fact taking care of ourselves still we had to be taken care of ah and 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 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 million people in the united states of America of these let us say that 40 million are men and 40 million women of minors there are perhaps 30 million more among the last names there would be very little drinking I imagine that of the male population a considerable number do not imbibe at all I would rather air giving the opposition the benefit of the doubt and so I will say that 20 million males drink in moderation and that 10 million females do the same this gives us out of a total population of 110 million only 30 million people who care anything at all about liquor of that number how many do you think are what might be called the moderate drinkers 5 million that it seems to me would be a fair estimate more than fair but let us be generous to a fault of that 5 million how many are congenital drunkards a million perhaps though I doubt that even that number have sunk so low but let us say 2 million have done so then it has become necessary to deprive 30 million people of a simple form of pleasure because 2 million do not know how to manage their souls and bodies it's really ridiculous to put an end to cannubial bliss because there are a few libertines in the world end of section 4 recording by scientific methodist section 5 of the rise and fall of prohibition this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by scientific methodist the rise and fall of prohibition by Charles Hansen Town too much verboten part 2 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 payment of a fine few would get drunk if they knew they would be arrested we had that law and it 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 and crowded tenement districts in great cities there is no denying it we have 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 imposition's 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 it must make the gods laugh particularly the goddess heebie 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 sellers 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 lull 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 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 leapt to to the hip flask the sly treating in coat rooms and other places I need hardly mention 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 is there 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 at 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 pulled 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 promised to pay this years and either not stay away too long 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 smile at it when the Prussians carried it to the extremes they did poor creatures we said of them to stand for such aren't 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 crat who goes about nosing everywhere almost invading the sanctity of our homes 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 there 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 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's 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 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 shuttered 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 with or 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 venomous 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 the 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 10 to 1 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 from 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 silk and 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 green back 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 but 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 $17 a day no matter what his bank balance it is people like that who helped 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 this 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 we should not 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 right 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 101 other things entirely foreign to my desires why then should I walk in their path 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 sellers and find a robust pleasure in never thinking of anything beyond baseball I do not see why I should be forced out of optimism and forget and neglect my Keats and Shakespeare End of Section 5 Recording by Scientific Methodist Section 6 of The Rise and Fall of Prohibition This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Charles Hansen Town Making the World Safe for Demakari Sea 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 18th 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 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 demotasses 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 all 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 only making the world safe for democracy 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 end quote yet the silly lawmakers go on with their silly codes piling Pellion on top of OSA till all sight of man's frailty is lost quote a little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity end quote 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 quote eternal vigilance is the price of liberty end quote 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 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 dries who have given us that reputation against our will the key 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 who so would be a man must be a non-conformist and somehow I go on believing in Emerson 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 18th 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 none plus 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 evildoers 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 a work for the reformers let them investigate the kind of mixtures that are served to our youngsters at soda counters one half of one percent 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 Sundays sold openly all along our avenues and boulevards in every city and town in Hamlet it is madness to let this traffic go on and there are not even any swinging doors to hide the Sunday 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 yet 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 instant-er immediately the future welfare of the race is at stake if it were only ginger-pop that the children drank 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 psychoanalysis 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 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 Bruder Schaft 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 schoolyard 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 doctors and bell tinkling mediums a dog in the manger spirit is in the land I don't like a glass of wine I 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 e day feaks 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 apart 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 stock 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 of 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 elk's 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 percent 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 the stupid disciplining of himself the remorse of the morning after is unknown to him but without realizing it every morning he experiences a mental hangover 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 here to for 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 psychoanalysis 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 have 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 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 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 busy bodies are secretly working night and day the deadly work goes on unabated of course they are not crying their methods from the house tops sinister voices are burrowing deep and frightened legislators will be forced to follow the path they took before the 18th amendment went through you remember that wonderfully satirical story of Mark Twain's the man that corrupted Hadley Berg 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 generally 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 straight jacket and sweep out as Goldberg says padded cell number seven eight nine four five zero two four three one 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 and of section six section seven of the rise and fall of prohibition this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Melanie Young the rise and fall of prohibition by Charles Hansen Town section seven the infamous Volstead Act part one chapter six 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 and attempting to have this vicious law obeyed and respected should cause every American to blush we are gradually may swiftly getting to a point where practically every citizen will be watched and guarded by another once 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 wondered from those early principles of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the makers of the Constitution oh Liberty Liberty how many crimes are committed in thy name cried Madame Roland and Bertrand Barrere 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 it's complicated sentences which to the layman means so little but to the lawmakers means so much through a thick underbrush of paragraphs the little 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 pattern and pattern 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 donjon keeps 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 taxpayers 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 they broke the camel's back and who knows how much longer we can stand these accumulating and distressing burdens section seven of title two 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 element not more than a pint of spiritualist 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 endorse 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 here and provided every physician who issues a prescription for liquor shall keep a record alphabetically arranged and 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 twelve all persons manufacturing liquor for sale under the provisions of this title shall securely and permanently attached to every container thereof as the same as manufactured a label stating name of manufacturer kind and quantity of liquor contained therein and the date of its manufacturer together with the number of the permit authorizing the manufacturer thereof and all persons possessing such liquor and wholesale quantities shall securely keep and maintain such label thereon and all persons sailing 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 thirteen 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 carriers 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 and 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 on the record section fourteen 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 consignee or seller name and address of the consignee kind in 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 seventeen has this to say it shall be unlawful to advertise anywhere or by any means or method liquor or the manufacturer 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 eighteen it shall be unlawful to advertise manufacturer sale or possessed for sale any utensil contrivance machine preparation compound tablet substance formula direction or recipe advertised designed or intended for use in the unlawful manufacturer of intoxicating liquor how the very stills themselves must tremble at these ominous words but I think for its far-reaching effects section twenty 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 soul 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 therefore 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 and are already clogged courts we make laws it seems which we expect to be broken deep down 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 affect 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 any vehicle or other conveyance whatever or leave any 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 and 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 bootleckers 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 and violation of the law intoxicating liquors and any wagon buggy automobile water or aircraft 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 watercraft 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 and 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 arrested shall order the liquor destroy 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 leans according to their priorities which are established by intervention or otherwise at said hearing or in other proceeding brought for said purpose as being bonafide and as having been created without the leaner 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 leans 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 aircraft 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 handbills posted in three public places near the place of seizure and if no claimant shall appear within 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 disposed of if not claimed within 60 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 Barley corn section 37 or a part of it reads as follows a manufacturer of any beverage containing less than one half of one percent 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 manufacturer 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 one percent 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 one percent 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 there from and such liquids may be developed under permit by persons other than the manufacturers of beverages containing less than one half of one percent 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. End of section 7 Recording by Melanie Young