are the american people any worse than other people, that they should be put en masse upon the water-wagon? who is it that sits in judgment over them? what unseen kaiser, czar, autocrat passes sentence upon their morals? we fought a war to get rid of such leaders and rulers; and now, ironically enough, we find ourselves under the domination of far stronger task-masters.
i have recently been traveling through a great portion of this great country. everywhere i found a curious unhappiness. people may not be articulate about their sorrows, just as the poor may not speak of their poverty; yet the canker is there, the worm i’ the bud is eating away the heart of the flower. perhaps i should use the word discontent rather than unhappiness. or restlessness. or resentment. at any rate, the feeling, whatever it is, exists; and there is a new menace over our days. the placid reformers, resting between reforms, smack their lips in sadistic glee. in the face of repeated and open violations of the law, they give out interviews to the effect that all is moving serenely; that the people are under beautiful control—though they have to admit11 that they squirm once in a while. here again it is a case of stupid optimism. they want all to be well, and they fondly imagine that all is well. they will have a great awakening; for this smoldering discontent and anger is bound to rise in a great tide one of these days.
at the trial, the package in evidence was placed on a large green-covered table, in the presence of the jury and the court. the prosecuting attorney worked himself into a fine fury of eloquence. the majesty of the law must be upheld.
listen to a lady reformer in chicago, speaking after a church league meeting, in september, 1922. evidently she is out of touch with the world, secure in the sanctity of a liquorless home. she has never attended a real dinner-party, poor dear; and somehow my heart goes out to her.
“the law is being enforced, and the results are more than satisfactory. the brewers are skulking opponents. what are they doing now?” she inquired blandly of her audience. “some are making candies, some soft drinks, some other things; but they are all making money, and are happy. prohibition is a wonderful thing, and i am proud to be a citizen of the country that has adopted it.”
how sweet and cheerful! but as she spoke, i wonder if she knew that almost around the corner real beer and whiskey were easily procurable. that as she uttered her oracular words, men with hip-flasks passed the door behind which she was speaking, on their way to joyful occasions.
the law was never less effectively enforced, dear lady. you are living in a world of dreams and fancies. you should get about more, and meet the flappers and jeunesse dorée, who could tell you and12 show you a thing or two. your rhapsodies are all very well; but your smug delight in conditions has a note of pathos to one who has observed the country as it is, and not as you would have it. alas! you are but deluding yourself, and my heart goes out to you in your simplicity.
is the law being upheld when, at a dinner-party at a certain country club, two policemen in uniform were sent by the local authorities to “guard the place” while much liquor was poured? these minions of the sacred law were openly served with highballs, and they laughed at the constitution of the united states. i saw them and heard them myself. they came to get drunk—and certainly succeeded. everyone at that party deplored the company’s behavior, was loud in denunciation of prohibition and what has come in its wake; yet went on eating and drinking and dancing with the casual remark that it was of no consequence whether or not they broke the law, since everyone was doing it.
is there any veneration for the law of the land when advocates of the eighteenth amendment, men who sponsored it publicly, in private deride it, and, at the mention of mr. volstead, sneer and jeer, and purchase cocktails in new york restaurants at a dollar apiece, gulping them down openly?
i asked such an advocate—a politician who would like to be called a statesman—why it was that, if he believed in the volstead act, he continued to consume his daily quota of scotch. i don’t believe anybody13 had ever ventured to put such a frank question to him. his wife, on my left, blanched—she, by the way, never touches a drop; but her exalted husband is fond of the cup that cheers—and inebriates. he has held high office, and has been loud in his advocacy of prohibition—for the other fellow. he glared at me when i rashly put my question to him, lifted his glass high and cried out, intending to be witty (i thought him merely disgraceful, and drunk, as usual), “i drink as much and as often as i can, in order to lessen the supply!” and then he had the effrontery to add: “of course i mean to see to it that the law is upheld, when liquor cases come up before me.”
yet i had read a statement of his in the newspapers when he was running for office, declaring that wine was a mocker, and that whosoever was deceived thereby was not wise. oh, yes, he could quote scripture with a vengeance, this minion of the law. my lady friend in chicago, seeing him on the street, would count him as among the holy band who have put their o. k. upon volstead, anderson, et al. yet behind closed doors he is a mr. hyde who takes a fiendish pleasure in his dual nature. i like him not. the lady in chicago is at least consistent. were i a w. c. t. u. worker or an anti-saloon member—or even a judge who tried bootleggers—i think i should strive for a similar state of holiness, and always be willing to let my left hand know what my right hand was doing.
14 the truth is that laws of intolerance defeat their own ends. the instant you tell people not to do something, they have an irresistible desire to do it. there cannot be laws greater than the people themselves. and that law is the most insidious and dangerous of all which discriminates between the rich and poor.
i am, by temperament and training, a conservative; yet i confess that were i a workingman deprived of my beer, i would find it hard to remain calm, when, returning from my day’s labor, i was forced to go to an arid tenement, passing the homes of those who possessed well-stocked cellars—and who replenished them at will.
those who labor ceaselessly for the cause of prohibition will tell you that it will not always be possible to obtain liquor; that the rich, too, will come to a state of drouth; and i have even heard some of them say that, after all, there are many things the rich have always had which the poor could not possess, and drink is but another symbol.
for such light arguments i have no use. i could only say to so profound a student of human nature and the humanities that he, along with his kind, is sowing the wind, and will reap the whirlwind. with money, we seem to be able to purchase anything we desire in this land of lost liberty. one of them is a wine-cellar. mr. volstead did not quite dare to make it illegal to drink in one’s home. there might have been a serious exodus from the country had15 such a drastic law been passed—or even seriously considered. since magna charta a man’s house has been his castle; and an invasion of the sacred precincts would cause unlimited chaos. yet in certain of our states, john doe search-warrants may now be obtained, and officials may enter one’s dining-room to ascertain if drinking is going on. it is unthinkable, but it is so. but, then, there are many foolish legislative blunders made from year to year, and a placid and long-suffering people pay little attention to them. i have heard men complain of the laws in their community, who would not lift a finger to see that they were changed.
in the far west recently, learning of a certain intolerable mandate, i could not resist asking a lawyer why his state stood for it. his only reply was that they gave it little thought—until someone from outside, like myself, came along and drew its horrors to their attention. then, with the going of the stranger from their midst, they settled down once more to calm acquiescence; or else they openly disobeyed the law, and, when they thought of the possible consequences, roared with laughter. for no one had ever been put in prison for a violation of the statute—and of course no one ever would be. then why have it on the books? oh, well, what difference did it make? the women wanted it there, but of course they didn’t mean it, and it was a joke anyhow, and it wasn’t worth worrying over, when you came to think of it, and maybe the legislative16 body had to earn its salary, and how about a little game of golf to forget it?
i suppose we have come to be such a hodge-podge nation that we are losing sight of all the old ideals our forefathers fought for. the passage of the eighteenth amendment may have been the best thing that could have happened to us, since it has, in a sense, aroused us to the point of anger, whereas piffling restrictions put upon our liberty have left us cold and indifferent. but here, at last, is something big enough to cause most of us inconvenience—and the american people do dislike to be inconvenienced. we could get together on this burning subject, where we would fail to dovetail on lesser questions. our heterogeneous citizenry is inflamed, as one man; for the german-american wants his beer, the italian-american his red wine, the irish-american his grog, the english-american his ale and port, the russian-american his vodka, the swedish-american his punch, the french-american his champagne and light wine, and so on down the line and through the maze of races that go to form our vast republic.
is it too late to get together? here again we may fail to act in concert; for the foreigner within our gates, feeling the contagion of our national slothfulness in a cause, and waiting to get his cue from us, sits back and wonders why we do not act.
and many an american waits and wonders too.
