AMERICA TODAY
My friend, the Young-Old Philosopher, is worried about America. He
sees a drift toward old-time Puritanism--with the hood of hypocrisy
used as a general covering. He knows a distinguished judge who
recently sentenced a little bootlegger to thirty days in jail, and
excoriated him in the court-room with all the power of language at his
command. Then he dismissed court for the day, as he had an important
social engagement uptown. On the way, he suggested to the Young-Old
Philosopher that they drop in at a smart club. He was very weary after
his heavy day’s work, and needed a bracer. He got it.
On an evening a little later, this same personage--a man greatly
respected in his community, whose utterances on civic affairs are often
quoted in the papers--attended a dinner at one of the big hotels. Many
eminent jurists and publicists were gathered together to do honor to
one of their number. A little bar, with a man in a neat white jacket in
charge, had been set up in a room not too remote from the dining-room;
and thither the Great Men repaired to refresh themselves after the
arduous duty of imposing fines and prison sentences on ruffians who
dispensed alcohol through the city to those who, like the Great Men,
could pay for it. But--“Judge not, lest ye be jugged.”
And the Young-Old Philosopher told me that once he stood in the private
office of a well-known lawyer when the telephone bell rang. He could
not help hearing the conversation, which ran somewhat like this:
“Yes? That you, Pete?... A dozen cases of the same--_you_ know.
Tonight, if possible. Try to get it there. Same price, of course....
Without fail; and I have a friend who wants to see you. Here’s the
address: 000 Sherman. Call him up. He’s all right. Good-bye, Pete.”
The Young-Old Philosopher has himself told me that he has no scruples
about disobeying the liquor law; yet somehow it gave him no little
pain to listen to this monologue, uttered by one whose life is given
to forensic pleadings, whose maledictions pour forth in cataracts of
eloquence when some shuddering nobody stands at the Bar of Justice. It
is as though a priest left the altar to abscond, immediately after a
high-minded sermon on the duties of Christians.
In a far western State my friend saw the Governor take many highballs
during and after a banquet in a public room. He saw the Mayor of the
city do likewise; and he was conscious that a gentleman of the cloth
was slowly but surely growing unconscious as the dinner went on its
merry way. He had never before seen this happen.
He was told by a fellow traveler, whose word he could not doubt, that
all but 25 per cent of the Legislature of another western State went
out and got beastly drunk, after they had voted for Prohibition.
He has heard the jibes that foreigners, seeing what he has seen, fling
at us every day; and he has had no answer to give them.
He has come upon boys trying to open the lockers in country clubs--not
little rowdies, but the sons of influential members--that they might
steal some of the old man’s whiskey. They have boasted of their
attempted and successful thefts.
He has seen flappers disgustingly intoxicated. He has observed them
putting their hands up to the hip-pockets of their boy companions, to
see if a flask was there. Alas! it was.
As limousines and taxis have flashed by him, he has caught glimpses
of youngsters who, five years ago, would not have been allowed to go
out without a chaperone, in such close proximity that for a moment he
thought it was but one strange enigmatic form in the car.
He has seen college boys in groups of three and four disappear into
a small compartment on a train--and emerge ten minutes later with
downcast eyes and sheepish grins, flushed with liquor; and he has seen
the same boys repeat the proceeding ten or a dozen times on a journey
lasting but a couple of hours.
He has seen a woman, injured in the streets of one of our big cities,
lying almost unconscious. A hotel was close by, and a doctor in the
crowd suggested that someone rush to get some brandy. The man who
volunteered to go came back without any--none was available, nor could
the proprietor be induced to send any out, even if he had had it. He
was suspicious of a stranger, making such a request--he was suspicious
of everybody. Police in civilian clothes--oh, they were all too common
these days, that he knew; and no one was going to catch _him_, even
though a wounded woman lay prone and groaning at his door.
He has heard the social service worker in a New York hospital say
that, while conditions had slightly improved during the first few
months of Prohibition, they were now worse than ever. In the old
days, a workingman spent, say, $2.50 on grog out of his weekly wages,
and was content to let it go at that; now he spends ten and twelve
dollars--he’ll get his liquor at any cost; and the wives and families
of such men are in despair. With the passing of time, the people have
learned how to get drinks, and how to make them, and they are becoming
more expert every day. But they drink poison--anything they can lay
their hands upon--and become all but raving maniacs for a while.
He has seen form letters from bootleggers in New York, giving price
lists, just as though there were no law forbidding such transactions.
Deliveries were promised within the city, at rates commensurately low.
It was even stated that “prices were going down,” and that the best gin
could be obtained, as well as other materials of alcoholic content.
A printed address was given, and the mails were boldly used for this
questionable business.
He has known friends who had been on the water wagon for years to take
to home-brewing as a natural course. Their excuse was that they could
not afford the prices asked by professional bootleggers; and they
were certain that they could not possibly give a dinner party now--of
all times--without offering some stimulant to their guests. In the
old days they would have ventured to do so. Since Prohibition people
expected--and usually received--plenty of wet refreshment. They did not
care to be segregated from their acquaintances; they did not relish
the idea of having their invitations refused. So they gladly became
law-breakers, and swiftly acquired skill in the preparation of all
sorts of wines, gin and beer.
He has seen, in a Southern city, the wife of a leading judge serving
a punch made of apple juice and peach juice--oh, a very heady punch
indeed!--to State officials, who had no qualms about accepting it,
though they were aware that the law was being broken. And he saw young
men made quite tight on this same punch.
He has observed people entering a restaurant in New York with packages
which obviously contained bottles. These, under the eye of a policeman
in uniform, were taken from them by the employees of the hotel. One,
a bottle of champagne, was poured into a great pitcher--the customers
were graciously permitted to watch the process in a private room--and
then served openly, again under the officer’s eye and nose, in the main
dining room. So twisted has become our legal logic, that it seems it
is one thing to drink from a bottle and quite another to drink from a
pitcher. A nation of sophists, as well as hypocrites.
He has seen motors searched on public highways, without a warrant; and
he has known innocent occupants of the car to be told that “they could
go on--the police had nothing on them.”
He entered a small police station in California with a friend who had
lost a valuable cigarette case--a friend of distinction. The officers
instantly recognized him, opened a desk, exposing dozens of quarts of
whiskey, and offered both the Young-Old Philosopher and his friend
a drink. These officers were quite drunk. They laughingly told the
complainant that they had just “pinched” a roadhouse, and were going
to sell to another roadhouse the stock which they did not consume--and
“pinch” the second man in due season, taking the pre-arranged graft
which would come out of his profit.
He remembers the case in the State of New York--no doubt others have
forgotten it, as they forget much that they should remember--of an
innocent farmer driving his motor through the countryside one day at
dusk. He was ordered to stop by an officer who suddenly appeared on
the road, and when he refused to do so he was instantly shot. Senator
Wadsworth aired this frightful incident in the Senate, and the chief
Prohibition enforcement officer of the State announced that it was the
duty of automobilists to halt when they were ordered to do so, or they
might suffer a like fate.
He has seen in many a woman’s club, bottles of liquor smuggled in,
cocktails made by the employees and served in private rooms. Then,
because it was strictly against the rules to drink openly, like cats
who had just stolen the cream, the ladies and their men guests walked
guiltily but airily into the dining room, imagining that there were no
evidences of their wrong-doing. The neat little leather or silver cases
which contained the forbidden alcohol were automatically returned to
their owners, who in turn handed them to their waiting chauffeurs--the
latter, of course, were omitted from the happy function--and were taken
home to be replenished at the next gathering.
He has known an old lady, very ill, who craved, as she had never craved
anything, a single glass of champagne; but even her druggist could not
get it for her, at any price, on a doctor’s prescription. And she was
denied the exhilaration of this simple luxury, in order, so my friend
supposes, that some worthless drunkard who might better be under the
sod, should be saved.
Indeed, he has known many an invalid who might have gone to his grave a
bit happier for some momentary stimulant which stupid reformers saw fit
to withhold.
He was told by the proprietor of several supper places in one of our
great cities--and he cannot doubt his word, since he has known him for
a long, long time--that one of the federal Prohibition officers who
live on graft receives not less than five dollars for every case of
wine which passes the Customs. Very swiftly this official is growing
unbelievably rich; he does not wish, naturally, to see a return to
what might now be considered the old, calm days. Not long ago, this
grafter decided that it was about time to make a spectacular “raid”
and close up, for a while, the cabarets along the route where he
acted as supreme czar. For Washington might take his long inaction
as neglect of duty. Therefore he set a night when he visited various
restaurants in a limousine, warning the proprietors that they must shut
down. But he added, in the ear of each, “Don’t worry! this is only a
bluff--a spectacular gesture. You’ll all be free to sell stuff in a
little while.” He meant that phrase, “a little while,” for, of course,
his graft ceased during the interval of grayness. But the federal
government, getting his report, seemed pleased at his attention to
his duties, and all was serene for him. Champagne was purchased soon
afterwards in all these cabarets, and the jazz struck up a livelier
tune, and everybody was happy.
He has read with astonishment that the student-governing body in
several of our colleges has found it necessary to take formal action
for the suppression of intoxication among under-graduates. Was this
ever done in “the good old days”? Think of it! Your boy, whom the
Volstead Act was to protect from the scandal of drunkenness, must have
what is comparable to the Mullan-Gage Act and the Hobert Act pressed
upon him in his college, so that he may be made to see the dangers that
lurk in alcohol. The great and holy Government cannot control him; a
minor form of tyranny and suppression must come into existence to aid
the already heavy machinery of the law to run smoothly.
He has known of an exalted judge who purchased liquor from a police
officer, had it delivered at his door in a patrol wagon; and that wagon
was guarded by a man in uniform.
He has known another minion of the law who admitted that, though he had
not violated the Volstead Act, for conscientious reasons, had never so
much as had a case of bought-and-paid-for whiskey or beer carted to his
door, he had somehow “found” a bottle or two in his home, left there by
sympathetic friends, he supposed; yet he did not inquire. “Conscience
doth make cowards of us all,” as _Hamlet_ said; but how one absolves
himself is a matter of private concern. Rationalism could go no further
than this minion’s processes of reasoning. Strange indeed are the
ways of powerful public officials, obeying one law to the letter, and
letting their ethics slip and slide when it comes to some other law
which they do not really wish to keep, and do not really wish to break.
He has heard a dapper young society man in Massachusetts glibly state
that the best bootlegger in his town is a federal Prohibition officer,
who can “get him anything he wants from beer to whiskey and liqueurs.”
And the dapper young man thought this was “perfectly all right, and
rather good to know in these arid days.” Moreover, one was perfectly
certain that what one purchased from this scoundrel was the real
thing--no chance of wood-alcohol blindness, or anything of that sort.
You will notice that what the Young-Old Philosopher has seen is
not confined to any one section of the country. He has traveled
considerably to make his observations.
This is the America of today, as the Young-Old Philosopher sees it. He
says he is not so worried about the present generation as about the
generation that may come after it. Surely the potential mothers and
fathers of children a decade hence are not fit to take upon themselves
the responsibilities and burdens of parenthood. What kind of offspring
will they produce? So long as we are looking ahead, providing for
the welfare of the race to be, let us wisely look far enough ahead so
that our eugenics may mean something. It is folly to pretend to be
altruistic, to dip into the immediate future, at the expense of the
present. We will produce a decadent race if we are not careful.
Do you like this America of today? The Young-Old Philosopher says
frankly that he does not.
Neither do I. And neither do you--if you are a good American.
And what about the America of tomorrow?