It would be amusing to the native American who has travelled throughout the world and watched the growth of really free and sensible governments, were it not so humiliating, to regard this wave of morality that is sweeping the country like a forest fire.
That bewhiskered gentleman in New York, who wielded his scepter of cant from the governor's chair, confessed he had never attended a theatre or seen a horse race. I can well believe it. I presume when he was at college the pantry attracted him more than the foot ball field. He chooses to disfigure his face with a square cut beard. Therefore from his point of view barbers are unnecessary! Why didn't he shut up all the barber shops and revoke the Gillette Safety Razor patent? He has just as much authority, morally, to shut up all the restaurants and bars because he never tasted wine. A good tonsorial spree and a cocktail would benefit this disciple of John Knox, I am sure.
Fancy an ordinance in this free country forbidding wine at restaurants on Sundays unless a meal is ordered and that hot! Can you imagine anything more ludicrous than these psalm singers making arbitrary laws about the temperature of our food? No prize fights are allowed nor even pictures of the manly art of self-defense to be shown. What a rebuke to American manhood! What a future for our sons to contemplate!
Boys in time to come will settle their disputes crocheting and knitting instead of in a good stand up fight as in the days of old.
You won't take your son to witness the pictures of the Jeffries-Johnson fight, but you will accompany your daughter to view an amorous picture.
Gambling of every description is debarred and all the public parks feature "Keep off the Grass!" No wonder we are known as a nation of travellers. How different it is abroad. Frenchmen never leave France, Germans, Germany and the average Londoner seldom gets beyond the sound of Bow Bells. Yet true born Americans will go anywhere to escape the thraldom of the insular laws of this supposedly free country, only returning to gather enough shekels to enable them to buy more freedom.
I learn from a banker of Los Angeles that more than $700,000 was drawn from the city banks one summer in cheques and letters of credit on European houses. Imagine anyone leaving the gorgeous city of Los Angeles. And yet there is a reason—less climate, more freedom.
I predict ere long if the present conditions continue everyone who can afford it and who has red corpuscles flowing through his veins will spend his holidays abroad. Ten times $700,000 will be drawn from the banks of Los Angeles annually unless some live one is put at the helm of that grand ship—Los Angeles.