Publishers and authors have become frightened. If the realm of art is to be invaded by reformers who fail to distinguish between beauty and filth, it is self-evident that there will be precious little art in America in the next hundred years. The pictures that we hang upon our walls may be torn down next, and the passion for dreariness may cause the entire United States to become one sad Sahara of utilitarianism, with no gleam of loveliness. The mania for standardizing us is growing; it is strange that the authorities do not pounce upon a play like “R. U. R.,” lest it put false notions into the minds of the simple people. There is a tremendous lesson in that drama. Crush us too much, make too many automatons, and one day the lifeless, bloodless, unimaginative host may rise in sudden might and defeat the very purpose of their masters.
The easy triumph of Prohibition gives the reformer little to do—save to seek other avenues of sadistic expression. If we are to be dictated to as to which books we shall read, we will find a way to discover smut—and nothing but smut—just as we have found synthetic gin. And if the lifting of an elbow—a necessary gesture when one takes an old-fashioned drink—got on a Puritan’s nerves, I cannot think that the smoke curling from your cigarette and mine gives him anything but pain and genuine anguish of mind. Tobacco companies are worried, and some of them have been spending vast sums to offset the crusade against the weed. Meanwhile, the easy-going American says, “Well, of course, they did put Prohibition over on us, but—oh, they would not dare rob us of our cheroots. We simply wouldn’t stand for that.”
But I am afraid that we are as spineless as ever. When meetings are organized to protest against the reformers, they are often ill attended. A dash of rain dampens the ardor of the lackadaisical citizen who prefers his own fireside to speeches that hit hard at this and that false cause. The trouble is that the fanatics have not made things quite hard enough for us. If there were a real lack of liquor; if complete drouth settled down over the land, we might rise in a great body and speak what we inwardly feel. But most of us are too lazy to fight back. Meanwhile, the organized minority gird on their armor, devising ways and means to torture us further. And in slippered comfort we sip our home brew or our dearly bought bootleg toddies, and decide that the effort required to get together is too great. We will let things drift. There must come a change; and after all, so long as Prohibition hasn’t really succeeded, what’s the use of worrying?
The reformer knows this characteristic lethargy of the American people, and he smiles, assembles his cohorts, calls us, in the vernacular of the day, “easy marks,” and proceeds with his reforming.
The return of Blue Laws is not improbable. A few towns have already adopted them, and in these movies are not tolerated on the Sabbath, newspapers are not allowed to be sold, even the trolley cars are stopped. A man may be arrested for painting his roof on Sunday; and as for a game of baseball on that day—it is unthinkable in many a community. One may not walk—except to church. The Puritan spirit is not dead. It lives in many a hamlet, dreary enough under the best conditions. The American people have come to a point where it is a matter of living or existing.
For my own part, I am perfectly willing for the Babbitts of this country to do as they please; all I ask is that they let me alone as I certainly shall let them alone. I have said elsewhere that I firmly believe in local option. That is because, perhaps, I think that contrast is the greatest thing in art and in life. I have never cared for regions of perpetual sunshine, just as I have never cared for localities where it rains, seemingly, forever. Give me a little of each. The Gopher Prairieite must feel an impulse to see a metropolis now and then; just as we who live in tremendous cities feel the urge every so often to seek the stillness of the woods.
It so happens that a few people—nay, a great many—prefer to hive in cities, because there they find a certain amount of culture. They like the opera, and good plays, well acted—the sparkle which city life gives to them. They like dining out in restaurants, and they happen to care for the jeweled beauty of, say, Fifth Avenue or Michigan Avenue on a winter evening. The monotony of the life of a Kansas farmer does not appeal to them. They can scarcely understand that passion for seclusion which he craves. But they find no fault with his mode of living. They even look with a sort of amused tolerance upon those curious beings who sneer at women who smoke cigarettes. They know perfectly well that there are many virtuous women who smoke cigarettes, and it is difficult to understand why everyone cannot be possessed of the same knowledge. But they do not seek to impose their beliefs upon others. They do no proselytizing. They are not anxious to convert people to a way of thinking and reasoning that seems to them simple and natural. They understand that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison; but they do resent being told that what they consume as meat should be labeled poison—by someone who has never tasted it.
The Eighteenth Amendment tells us, practically, that it is wrong to drink. You and I know that it is not wrong to drink. But we do know full well, without being told, that it is very wrong to get drunk.
In Kansas, the people are told that it is wrong to smoke; whereas anyone at all knows that it is in no wise wrong to smoke; but it is exceedingly wrong to over-smoke until one’s nerves become shattered and one’s hands tremble.
The reformer, seeing only the ill effects upon those who overdo anything, and refusing to note the normal lives of those of us who never overdo anything, cannot differentiate. Hence the hullabaloo, the trouble, the mess the world is in today.