Again I held my tongue; not asking how they could afford it, but remembering the shorter hours, the larger incomes, the more universal education.
We got back to Yonkers, put up the car—these things could be hired, I found, for twenty-five cents an hour—and had lunch in a little eating place which bore out Hallie's statement as to the high standard of food everywhere. Our meal was twenty-five cents for each of us. I saw Owen smile at me, but I refused to be surprised. We settled down in our boat again, and pushed smoothly up the river.
"I wish you'd get one thing clear in my mind," I said at last. "Just how did you tackle the liquor question. I haven't seen a saloon—or a drunken man. Nellie said something about people's not wanting to drink any more—but there were several millions who did want to, thirty years ago, and plenty of people who wanted them to. What were your steps?"
"The first step was to eliminate the self-interest of the dealer—the big business pressure that had to make drunkards. That was done in state after state, within a few years, by introducing government ownership and management. With that went an absolute government guarantee of purity. In five or six years there was no bad liquor sold, and no public drinking places except government ones.
"But that wasn't enough—not by a long way. It wasn't the love of liquor that supported the public house—it was the need of the public house itself."
I stared rather uncertainly.
"The meeting place," he went on. "Men have to get together. We have had public houses as long as we have had private ones, almost. It is a social need."
"A social need with a pretty bad result, it seems to me," I said. "Taking men away from their families, leading to all manner of vicious indulgence."
"Yes, they used to; but that was because only men used them. I said a social need, not a masculine one. We have met it in this way. Whenever we build private houses—if it is the lowest country unit, or the highest city block, we build accommodations for living together.
"Every little village has its Town House, with club rooms of all sorts; the people flock together freely, for games, for talk, for lectures, and plays, and dances, and sermons—it is universal. And in the city—you don't see a saloon on every corner, but you do see almost as many places where you can 'meet a man' and talk with him on equal ground."