But to get back for a moment to the ladies of the something-or-other temperance society. A brilliant writer, Mr. Edward S. Martin, answered them delightfully in Harper’s Magazine; and with the kind permission of the editors of that periodical, I am privileged to make extracts from his article. Mr. Martin never loses his temper, as the ladies certainly did. He remains, as ever, the tactful, urbane, pitying occupant of the editor’s easy-chair. He does not even frown. He speaks from a long experience, gently but to the point:
“The enforcement of Prohibition meets with some obstacles and furnishes food for thought to two large groups in the community—the people who want it enforced and the people who occasionally want something to drink. Just at the moment it seems as if the people who want a drink are somewhat ahead of the other group in the competition; at any rate, the group that wants enforcement seems to think it necessary to make extra effort. To Harper’s Magazine, as doubtless to hundreds of other periodicals, has come a communication from the Committee for Prohibition Enforcement of a much-respected and powerful organization of women, which announces that the committee has adopted a program, the items of which it communicates. The fifth item is to the effect that all the ministers be urged to preach and teach the necessity for respect for and observance of the law. The sixth item runs, ‘That every theatrical manager, movie manager, and editor, whether of a daily, weekly or monthly publication, be requested to see that all jokes ridiculing Prohibition and its enforcement are eliminated from any production, film, or article coming under his jurisdiction, and that the matter be treated with that seriousness that the subject merits; and that this resolution be thrown on the screen and printed in the different papers and magazines throughout the country.’
“The demand for protection from jokes is often made and always implies that there is something that needs to be joked about. There is a sin called ‘sacrilege.’ If we joke about things that are sacred to enough people, it gives a kind of offense which, even if the law does not punish it, it is not safe to excite. There is a sin of blasphemy, which we suppose the law will still punish if it is gross enough. It will be agreed that the considerate people do not jest about sacred things, nor even about things which, though not sacred to themselves, are sacred to the people they are talking to. Well, then, is Prohibition one of these sacred things we must not talk about? Are amendments of the Constitution and the Volstead law to rank with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount as not being safely subject to derisive comment?
“Something like that seems to be in the minds of the women whose communication we have received, who include item six in their program, but if so, their attitude is wrong. A constitutional amendment is not sacred, much less a Volstead Act. It is the Volstead law that the jokes on Prohibition are aimed at more than the amendment. If we cannot joke about an act of Congress, then indeed things have come to a restricted pass. If a law is bad, one of the ways to beat it is to laugh it out of court. If that is being done about the Volstead law, the ladies who want that law enforced would do well to examine it and see why it is not enforced, rather than try to stop jokers from laughing at it.
“A letter writer to a newspaper says, ‘If it is true that a community gets the kind of government it deserves, it is equally true that a law gets the kind of obedience it deserves.’ His assertion may be disputed, but still, if the Volstead law is not being respected, is it certain that it deserves respect? It is a law in the process of being tried out. If it is good we want it enforced. If it is bad we want it amended, but we do not want to be choked off from discussing it or testing it. There is no power in Congress to say what is right or wrong. The most that Congress can do is to say what is lawful or unlawful. The distinction is important. The practical judge of whether a law is right or wrong is the general community to which the law applies. If that community will not back up the enforcement of the law, it will not be enforced. It is yet to be demonstrated how far the Volstead law, as it stands, is enforceable. If its fruits do not please a majority of the people who live under it, it may have to be modified so that it will stand for something that is near enough to be the popular judgment of what is right to win popular support. There is a great deal of good in the present Prohibition movement. It put the saloons out of business. It checked the brewers and distillers in their over-strenuous efforts to sell their products. It accomplished benefits which probably could not have been accomplished except by the kind of clean sweep that the amendment was. But it was necessarily a rough job—an experiment to be tried out in practice. If its rules need modification, they may get it or they may not, but if not, they may be practically modified in enforcement.
“Who is boss in this country? Is it the President, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, the state authorities, the newspapers, the lawyers, the ministers, the doctors, or possibly the women?
“None of them! Public opinion is the boss. In the long run, what public opinion demands it gets. Laws to be of any worth have to have sanction. That is, there must be something to make people who violate them feel that they are doing wrong. The laws of nature have abundant sanction. If you fool with the law of gravitation, you get bumped. There is no trouble about the enforcement of the law of gravitation. Nobody goes around begging you not to ridicule it. It takes care of itself, and if you flout it you pay the consequences. The Ten Commandments have a sanction of long experience. Some of them are obsolete, but the others are respected, and, though they are not directly enforced by the courts, laws based on them are so enforced. Public opinion hereabouts rests very considerably on the Ten Commandments. They have shaped the habits of thought and deportment of many millions of people, including most of those now living in this country.
“The trouble with the present enforcement of Prohibition is that it has not yet got moral sanction enough to make it effective. Public opinion will back up the law in closing the saloons and restricting and regulating the sale of intoxicants, but it does not follow it, for one thing, in defining a beverage with an alcoholic content of one half of one per cent as intoxicating. When it comes to that, public opinion laughs, because that is contrary to its experience. Furthermore, public opinion shows as yet no particular fervor about achieving a total stoppage of alcoholic supplies from those who want them. No serious stigma attaches to violations of the Volstead law by private buyers. Fines and like embarrassments may result, but not disrepute. A good many fairly decent people seem to buy what they want, and do not conceal it. The people who thought before the law was adopted that it was wicked or inexpedient to drink intoxicants, still think so. The people who thought otherwise continue to think otherwise. Many people drink less than before the law began to operate, but a good many other people drink more, and buy much worse beverages at much higher prices. To some extent Prohibition seems to have made drinking popular by diminishing the individual discouragement of it and putting the responsibility for the maintenance of temperance on a law and the officers who enforce it. That may be only a temporary effect, but if it turns out that the Volstead law, as it is, cannot be enforced at the present time, there may possibly be an effort to tinker it—to put it into such shape that public opinion will stand back of it and give it a sanction. The alternative would be to wait and see what effect time will have on men and habits. There is no one to tell us that we shall be damned if we disobey the Volstead law, and so long as juries refuse to convict persons who violate it, it stands modified in practice....
“The organizations, political, commercial, religious, that seek to shape public opinion all use propaganda. We all know what that means because we have all had such a surfeit of it. During the War we were flooded with it and everyone learned what it was and how to use it. It is put out by speakers, on the movie screens and in print wherever possible. Organization secured Prohibition, but organization is not public opinion and may for a time override it. Organization works on the run with noise and big headlines and meetings and even with threats. Public opinion slowly takes form in the minds of individuals. There comes in Lincoln’s saying about the impossibility of fooling all the people all the time. Propaganda may overwhelm private judgment for a time, but private judgment keeps on working after propaganda ceases. It digests what has been offered to it. The common facts of life continue to appeal to it and impress it. It views what propaganda has accomplished and slowly and deliberately considers whether it is good, and if it concludes that it is not good it ceases to back it and then there has to be something different, something that looks like improvement....”