The Clinton chronicle. (Clinton, S.C.) 1901-current, August 04, 1932, Image 6
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THE CLINTON CHRONICLE. CLINTON. S. C.
THURSDAY. AUGUST 4. 1332
LETS REFRESH OUR MINDS ON
THE UQUOR QUESTION
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scEvation
opposite wouW
Amefica, at present, U drinkinfr, in
large part, belcauae Amei^cans have
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■-4 J^n caught in that world^wide move-
* i-fwanl
By Stanley Hijfh, Ccntribuling Editor '
In the AuRUst Issue of the Christian Herald
I am a prohibitionist. But not a'the jobless workers of Detroit, *1 did
Divine Right prohibitionist. That is, I not see.” he said, “a single workman
do not believe thatXthe Eighteen In
Amendment is sTpart of the faith once
under the influent e of liquor. 1*. is un
tninkable tliat that would be the- case
ment of social unrestraint which has
altered the post-war attitude of peo
ple toward a good many things, of
which liquor is only one. The wets de
clare, for example that women didn’t
drink before prohibition. Well, neither,
for that matter, did they smoke.
Moreover, if it*s prohibition that
has made people drink more in the
deivered. to the saints. It is, rather, a
piece-of legislative ' machinery which
deserves support only so long.^s^it ts
producing what it w’as desigried for
and no longer. The American' people
are not morally bound to believe in
the desirability of the Eighteenth
Amendment. But in so- far as they
back in the days of the saloon.” Last I United Siates, w’hat is it that is mak-
month the Salvation .Army made a re- J|*^? them drink more in Canada? Back
port on its lodging houses in Chicago.'i^ the prohibition period the Canadian*
In 16 months. 1,100,000 lodgings had | wets argued just as our wets argue.|
"been provided and among that nnm-( Nobody wants to drink, they said. Wei
ber there were only 75 cases of drunk- a-ce just drinking because we can’t.
enness. The same report points out
that whereas under pre-prohibi don
Therefore, in the interests of wet tem
perance, these arguments were lis-
are
civilized, the American, people arc i conditions of state control ninety ]tr,tcned to. Prohibition was done away
morally bound to believe in the de- ctni of the needy families visited'were
sirability of reducing and eventually in need because 6f the liquor evil, to-
eliminating the drink evil. day, with prohibition, the percentage
It is comforting to note that both 'ad been reduced to the vanishing
the wets and drys agree on that—par Point- >*»»» Evangeline Booth declar-
ticularly the wets. In fact, it is litt!-:. <*d. recently, that in New York City,
short of miraculous how widely prohi- u^’der the old system, from 1,200 to
bition has-aroused a social conscience drunks were brought into the
on the drink evil in ceitain socially Army’s homes every night. Today,
distingushed quarUrs where, before with prohibition, the number does notj
prohbition, such a conscience was not- average more than reven. j
ably lacking. The orthodox wet and i It will be easy, I suppose, for some
the orthodox dry start, therefore, on I people to ignore that kind of testi-
common "ground. They are bothj mony. But it is not easy to descredit
against liquor whenever and wher-|it. .Meanwhile, I have often wondered
ever it is an evil. | why the wets, while they are making
Thev go. 1 think, a bit further on; many converts at the upper end of
common groundr I have listened to! the social scale, didn’t underUke a lit-
manv recent and eloquent wet pot-' tie of their missionary work among
trayks of conditions as they are. and, the nation’s settlement workers; or
I am no more satisfied with them than | the officers, let s say, of the
peopl
position to provide leadership for the
settling of this i.-sue.
But those points, 1 should say, just
abou\ maik the limits of wet-dry
agreement. Th<‘ wets, with much per-
■suasiverM's.'. W(juld lead us to believe
that these had ctinditions are directly,
due. to prohibition; that they are
wor.-H* than they were Indore prohi
bition; and that, in cons<*<|uence, the
1 hey have to demon.strale to .Miss
Booth, for example, how a legalized
liquetr traffic that in liM7 s<*nt 1,200
drunks into the Army’s homes every
night will work better.in 10H2 to re
duce the drink evil than the prohibi
tion system that ha.s reduced that
numlH'r to seven.
. Or, if you don’t like life at that so
cial level, let’s look at the youth of
(»bvious way to corrcH t them is to re- j the nation. They are being debauched,
tiiin to our pre-prohibition situation. I the wets, by prohibition. Well, it
.Now. it sicms to me de.-irable to re-1 » vgr>' cheering to observe how^the
call what it is, just now. that the wets long-kanding problem of liquor and
are fighting for. They have passed.
young people has, so vt^ry recently,
in their campaign, through a variety aroused such great concern in circles
of stages. They have .stood^from time I which were notably unconcerned be-
to time, for beer, for light wines andjfmf. One can only hope that these
beer, and for other substitutes for the. wholesale conversions are dictated by
present system too numerous to men-1 anti-liquor conviction rather than by
tion. At present, however^, wet opinion j anti-prohibition .strategy,
seems to be converging on the idea of| Now, I am not seeking to deny the
state control. And state control, itjcuirent drink evil among young peo-
should be pointed out, is our own pre-1 pit*. I know that in many places there
prohibition system all over , again, are speakeasies accessible to the col-
However dexterou.sly it is dressed up lege campu.s and bootleggers that
and perfumed it can not be passed off specialize in the college trade. -And I
as anything else. j have observed that they do a particu-
Now, l)efore we are hustled back lary thriving business at those sea-
into a state control regime we need sons of the year when tin* old grads
first (»f all to In* convinced that whatl return to the campus for reunion. But
■we’ve got is worse than what yi'c had ;| they do too good a busines.s at othe
and that the drink evil under pnthi-j time.s; u business that, for the sal^
bition is worse than the drink «‘vil be- of young people, ought to be cut j/ilf.
fore 1)1 ohil)ition. It
conviction that the
with. The liquor interests began their
inevitable cahnpaign to humanize and
popularize ^eir produiict- ’The news
papers put back their liquor adver-i
tisements. And the -wet panacea work-|
ed—for the wets. Tbe .consumption of i
liquor in the Dominion promptly in-1
creased, between 1923 and 1928, byi^
149 per cent.
Our wet friends, doubtless, would
blame that on the irritating proximity
of these prohibition. United States.
W’ell./We can move’off a bit. We can
take Enkand. If it is prohibition th^j
accounts for the increased popularity
of liquor in American society, how arej
we to account for its increased popu-j
larity in British society? How is it|
that, without prohibition. Great Brit-j
ain, in the last five years has been i
confronted with a constantly increas-1
ing problem of hard-liquor excesses
CfK-ktail
turbing a
British I
wetl
America.
No, it is just too simple to say that
America i.s drinking because .America
has prohibition. We are the victims,
here, of the sanoe social, forces which,
since the war. have infreased the li-
(juor evil everywhere.
But we are the viclin s of more
than that. We are the victims of prop
aganda which 'or a decade, ha« been
deliberately at the business of piipu-
larizing Liquor. That undoubtedly ha.s
been .sound wet tactics. If the law
were to be destroyed it had, first, to>
be proved a failure. If it were to b<^i
proved a failure it had. first,
widely broken. It couldn’t be broken,
in any w’holesale fashion, unle^-.s indi
viduals in wholesale fashion were per
suaded to drink. And that precisely is
what happened. For ten years the
harmless delights of drinking have
been preached by movies, newspapers,
magazines and by the aggressive ex-*
ample of large numbers of people, un
til liquor has become a virtue ami I
cocktails the necessary prerequisite toi
entrance into certain so-raH^ select*
circles of s<H‘iety.
And many imliriduals have l*egun
to /drink, not because they couldn’t'
Jt ^t along without it or. hecaus«* even 1
-r/lhey are {particularly fond of liquor,
but IxH-ause.they are just Uhp weak to |
resist the stn-ial pressure. They
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preri.vfly that j Ht.wever, it is a long and prec^ious, .scK'iety’s ittle “yec-yes” pe.pple. Their
wet.s jir<-
out to jump from that assertion to
fix in out: ijuiuls.. .1- iuiar .ei'cry day»- txoit wet Trmrlusib-tfthat yo
te cur-
drihks
that then* is more diinking no'v\’ than more than before prohibitiitn.
before pi ihibition. The unsupiiorted! After all, who says sir^ The same
j'liimess with which that remark is' folks say so who .say that drinking
parsed around remind.s me of the fa-j generally is greater, and they .say it
mous advertising slogan, “you can i with just as much glibnes.s and as few
t< a. h a parrot to say just as good, j fact
b-al he won’t know what he’s talking I years ago, the "Literary Dige.st" made
about.’’ la survey of the heads of the 213 lead-
.\ow ju. t what was this pre-prohi-! ing colleges and universities of the
precarious social j»qsitiq;:](._ih.ey- hope,
win \>e strengtiu't ed if they are al
ways ready With a cockstail or always
handy with a cocktail shaker. !t isn’t
a new law that th«*se pe«»p!e ne«*d, bul^
a new backbone.
.Meanwhile, if our wets and our wet
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There are some fact.*’, ..A few new.'-paivers sjrent half the energy dis- ITI
credtiing liquor that they now spend ' [I
discrediting prohibition, wt would “
probably be well on our way to the
bition .situation to which we are being j country. The overwhelming results led ! temperance ideal for which they have
uiged to return? You might;think, to j the "Digest” to sum it up in these
hear it described, that it wa.<< alliword.s: “there are actually' fewer
drinkers in the colk'ges now than in
the
sweetness and ligljt. Well, it wasn’t.
You might think that the li«juor traf
fic was well-behaved and the liquor
interests lincil up overwhelmingly on dents,” Tw6 laU*r similar surveys
the side of decency. Well, it wasn’t i brought the same results,
and the y -weren’t. Pre-prt)hibition j Or, take the high schools. Two
America wasn’t ridding herself of the years ago the National Education As-
drink evil. Far from it. From 1900 to j sociation, composed of 160,000 school
the^eve.qf the World War, the con-1 teachers, made an official study of
sumption of alcoholic liquors in the'drinking among 1,000,000 high school
Unfted States steadily increased year studenLs and found out two things:
after year. By 1911 it had reached the, first, that drinking now was le«s than
point where our drinks, annually, j before prohibition, and, second, that
amounted to 22.4:i gallons for every such drinking as there was was sU-ad-
man, woman and child in the United ! ily decreasing. While this was being
StaU s. .Nobody knows exactly how j written. Dr. Alfred Worcester, health
much is drunk today. But the United J sui)ervi8or of the students at Har-
States Bureau-of I’robrbitkm prc^)ably,|va«i Univerrity, made tha-publk dec--,
knows as nearly as can be found out. laration that drinking among Har-'
lately become so zealous. Until they
do, one can be pardoned a few doubts
about the anti-liquor convictions of
days when there were only one- {the anti-prohibitionists. The real test
third the present number of stu- of their dependability is not what they
do, eventually, to get rid of prohibi-
tion, but what they are doing, mean
while to get rid of liquor.
And the Bureau’s estimate for 1930
was that the average per capita con
sumption, including homerbrew, was
But the wets not only want to
rid of prohibition because they want
to get rid of liquor but because they
want, ^also, to get rid of liquor law
lessness. They insist that it is prohi
bition that has made liquor lawless.
That is a naive assumption that will
only be acceptable to people wnth
.«hort memories. Bootleggers and
speakeasies are not prohibitionrmade
expressions and liquor lawnessness is;
-nutZ a... .prnhihitinndMoed. .phenomenon,
I Quite the contrary. Liquor has been,
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slightly more than seven gallons.^ i'heard precisely that opinion expressed
vard undergraduates had just now | uniformly and invariably lawless
reached the lowest level in the past; And yet the wets would have us be-
two or three years. I have recently j lieve that it is prohibition that has
Even our current wet eloquence can
hardly expand those seven gallons tojin two other universities in the
look like twenty-two. ' Fast.
bv men in somewhat similar positions
wet”
And how do our wet friends pro
pose to demonstrate that a pre-prohi
bition system that increased our
made the liquor business bad. It is
one thing to agree that there are, to- j
day, too many speakeasies and boot-1
leggers. It is quite another thing to;
agree that — contrary to seventy-five
Now all this is not hearsay. It is
not parrotism. It is eNndence. And yet:years of painful experience—we would
it is safe to say that the very per.son- get rid of them if we got rid of pro
drinking m that fashion would, today.i^We young ladies who, in the name of I hibkion.
better to destroy the drink < j(|^Ying the younger generation from| Of course liquor, we are told, fi-lWl
Til than a prohibition—system that;the drink evil, tried to sell repeal nances, the rackets. Certainly, it fi-i ^
has so materially reduced that drinic- i plates for my automobile a few days nances ntany of then—and did before
mgi
ago, are still out repeating their tai-1 the Eighteenth .Amendment. But that
_ But it is not necessary to use gov- ]or-made conclusions. For ten years,
ernment sUtistics. There is other evi- i j y,ave heard this debauchery of youth
deoce. Let’s look, for example, at eon- i refrain. But in all that time I have
ditiona at the bottom of the social j ^ever heard that a single wet organi-|into such a system. weAi^ to refresh
•*•1*—• good place, I should say, forj^a^iyp much as raided a little fin-'our memories a bit as t^.what it is
it is prohibitiM^ that has made the
gangsters is a dw^iable question.
Before we hurry bark, therefore.
some of our wet friends to do some,g^r jjy ^ survey process,
kwking. It the pre-prohibition system; whether the facts justified the iCsser-
a better answer to the liquor evil I tion. The only possible explanation of
among the poor man than the probi- j that neglect seems to be that there is
bition system, or isn’t it. The wets | n widespread wet conviction that the
say that it Is. Well, there ^ey are facts wouldn’t justify the assertion.
in mnflict with the experts. The Na
tional Federation of Settlement!
But there is more to the wet argu-
ment than this generality about in-
wanted to answer ttot question, sold eased drinking. The weU tell us
they made a nation-wide survey which
led te the conclosion, to quote them.
**tiw.t prohibition has help^ the low
er wage' group ererywhere.” Or here
is Whitinr WiKiams, one of Ameri-^
ea’a'leading indnstrfasi inyestigators,
whe reported to a Senate Commitl^'e
weeks he had tpenk a
Uut summ» disguised. smong
AL -
tfiat we ought to get rid of prohibi
tion, nbt only because there is more
drinking, but ^ause it is prohibition
that makes us drink. People drink, in
other words, not because they like
liquor but because they don't like the
law.
That is easy to say, of course, but
hard to prove. In fact, if personal ob-
that we are hurrying backxto; we
need to furnish our miiKls a bit with
the facts of what has been accompish-! g
ed; and we need to hare something ||
more definite than vehement generali
ties to indicate how what has been
accompished could, without prohibi
tion, be accomplished better. Until
there is an answer to those questions
we would do well to keep oar present
system, not because pvohibitkMi is al
together good, but bceaasie there is so
little concrete evidence, cither in our
own experience or in that of other na
tions, to indicate that the heat of wet
Substitutes offers anything better.
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