As regards the reality of Prohibition, I will say this—Even near the Mexican Border, after a forty-mile ride in the snow, when one would give a good deal for a stiff drink, not a rancher but was a teetotaler.
The little cities of America are now totally devoid of public vice. The prisons of Kansas are empty. In the large cities the police are notably impoverished. It is no use the foreign tourist going to the police and saying, "Show me the vice of your city." There is nothing to show. Go a round of the ice cream parlors. Yonder in a small den loving couples are eating hot tamales. On a corner a youth is surreptitiously lighting a cigarette. The nation is on a high level of morality, and this is reflected in the physique of its children. With all this, I ought perhaps to make a warning—there is almost no religion. Moral fervor stands instead of religion. The note of wonder, of awe, of divine praise, is almost entirely absent.
The upper forty thousand, as I have said, take little heed of this. They believe that they control the springs of action and can make the hundred million do what they want them to do. The party system in politics with no other choice but that of Republican or Democrat seems to facilitate their influence. "Cleaning up" is a passion of the hundred million; very well, it can be harnessed to the designs of the forty thousand. Let them "clean up" Cuba, "clean up" the Central American Republics, "clean up" Mexico.
6
One thing the hundred million will not tolerate in their midst and that is, a foreign point of view in morals. The "dago" will do things no "white man" will stand. So also will the Hun and the "Hunky," the Slav, the "Greaser," the "nigger." An associating of foreigners with unnatural vice is all too common. The fairskinned Anglo-Saxon, despite all admixtures, remains the dominant type. He rejects the melting pot. He alone is the hundred-per-cent American and will not be adulterated. He is opposed to color, to all dark skins, be they Italian or Ethiopian, and he is opposed to European religions which seem to permit low morals. Out of this has arisen on the one hand the spirit of Hearst's newspapers, on the other the new development of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is this movement largely which has shut the door to further immigration from Europe. The idea was obtained during the War that American ideals and standards had become endangered by a too great influx of foreigners into America. The Germans, the Russians, the Irish, all forgot that they were Americans first—all the "hyphenates" waved their flags of origin. This naturally caused the lurid limelight of the Press to be turned upon the foreign elements in the midst, and it was seen how differently the foreigners lived and how much lower were their moral standards.
Even while America seemed to be fighting for Europe, her opinion of Europeans, never high, was suffering a severe depression. It is a national fact to-day that America trusts no foreigners.
7
Provincialism is widely spread. People are not only ill-informed regarding foreign countries, but credulous, and the press reflects their state of mind. A country like Russia might almost be in the moon, to judge by current opinions concerning her. Doubtless it would be absurd to go to America to obtain information about Europe.