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 had 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 Legislative 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.
CHAPTER III
OUR ENDLESS CHAIN OF LAWS
When we sit back and rail at the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, we lose sight of other laws equally tyrannous which, however, do not happen to affect us.