I am not saying this with any intention of approval. I am merely stating conditions as I have observed them. Those who shut their eyes to the facts and go blandly on their way, announcing that the country is bone dry when it is nothing of the sort, do immeasurable damage.
I remember when the Volstead Act first went into effect that I had a serious talk with myself. I came to the conclusion that nothing was more dangerous to this land of ours than a state of things which made it possible for the rich to drink continuously and the poor to be able to obtain nothing. I felt that I could not, with a clear conscience, go on having an occasional cocktail, if the laboring man down the street was deprived of his grog. For a month I absolutely followed the whisperings of that Inner Voice. Then I happened to go to a manufacturing town near Boston, and the work I was doing brought me into contact with the men in the shops there. Somehow the subject came up—I forget in just what way; and when my plan became known, a laugh greeted my ears.
“Don’t be such a jackass!” one of the fellows cried. “Why, we’re getting all we want, in spite of Mr. Volstead—we’re making it ourselves!”
My self-inflicted martyrdom ceased from that moment; and I must confess that I felt a bit foolish.
More people are drinking heavily now than in the old days—and, drinking inferior stuff, they are suffering more in consequence. The results of this have been put into a delightful rhyme by the clever James J. Montague who, in his way, is a genius. He turns out happy and technically fine verses every day for a syndicate, until one is amazed at his cleverness and seemingly endless chain of ideas. Listen to him:
THE ELUSIVE MORAL
Before there was a Volstead law
The village gossips used to mutter
In pitying accents when they saw
A friend and neighbor in the gutter:
“How dreadful was the fellow’s fall!
How terrible is his condition!
He wouldn’t be that way at all
If only we had prohibition!”
They knew the drunkards all by name,
And when they came around with edges
Some elderly and kindly dame
Would get their signatures to pledges.
And if they all appeared next day
Still far too merry and seraphic,
The troubled townsfolk used to say
Hard things about the liquor traffic.
To-day, when some good man goes wrong,
The villagers with whom he’s mingled
Observe his frequent bursts of song
And thus discover he is jingled.
“Too bad about that chap,” they cry,
“He might have kept his high position
If Volstead hadn’t made us dry—
What ruined him is prohibition!”
There is some moral in this tale—
I fancied so when I designed it—
But I have searched without avail
For nearly half an hour to find it!