To repeat what my friend in Omaha said:
“Prohibition was all right—until we got it!”
CHAPTER XVI
LITERATURE AND PROHIBITION
The Young-Old Philosopher has recently been traveling over the country as far west as the Coast. He had heard that conditions, so far as Prohibition was concerned, were excellent out there; but he wished to observe for himself.
He found them quite the contrary. In states like Oregon and Washington, which went dry long before national Prohibition became an established fact, the people were obtaining anything they desired. Close to the border, there is plenty of bootlegging, endless daring adventuring in the liquor traffic, many a bold plunge over the line to bring whiskey and gin into United States territory.
And they certainly bring it. Meanwhile, the propaganda of the Puritans goes on—or, rather, the impropaganda; for it is not true that people are behaving themselves. There is just as much discontent and disorder among westerners as among easterners, so the Young-Old Philosopher observed.
But in cities like Omaha, which is about in the center of the country, there is a dryness which is depressing. Passing through a hotel corridor one day at noon, the Young-Old Philosopher heard male voices, chanting in unison. He stepped to the open door of a private dining-room, and was much amused to see a group of forty or fifty solid business men, all wearing little badges proclaiming their allegiance to some organization or other, standing about the tables, lifting high their glasses of water, and shouting these words:
“With the feed on the ta-bull,
And a good song ring-ing clear!”