Is that ancient and honorable institution, the New York Chamber of
Commerce, becoming frisky and convivial in its old age? Will it in its
ripe judgment recommend that the proper course for one to pursue is to
tread the perfumed paths of Bacchus? Does the Chamber, as a body, indorse
the able and thoughtful article in the October _Forum_, by Mr. Louis
Windmuller, one of its honored members, in which that gentleman makes a
strong plea for inebriety and drunkenness? Mr. Windmuller is certain that
the policy of Mr. Roosevelt toward the liquor interests in New York will
sap the lifeblood of our institutions, and he sends up a cry of alarm. It
may be gathered from Mr. Windmuller’s well considered paper that there
can be no true happiness in this life without strong drink, and plenty of
it. Contentment and peace of mind will slink under the bed unless there
be a flagon on the table. Domestic felicity will be a hollow mockery, a
failure and a fraud if there be not a keg in the cellar and a case of
Culmbacher on the ice.
Our gifted author does not say it in so many words, but it is clearly his
view that man’s faculties are at their best only when the gentle glow of
intoxication steals over the brain and articulation thickens and halts by
the way. He goes even further. He firmly believes that ours is a land to
hastening ills a prey, unless we speedily go to Bavaria for our excise
laws and fling Roosevelt over the Battery wall.
Only a lack of space prevented Mr. Windmuller from giving the Sunday
schools a side wipe, and he comes very near it as it is. Evidently he
looks upon them as a blot or something equally unpleasant. They have no
bars, and, moreover, their teaching is all the other way. This makes our
author a prey to melancholy and his brow is sicklied o’er with the pale
cast of thought.
But what the Philistines are anxious to know is, does the ancient and
honorable New York Chamber of Commerce believe that man reaches his best
estate only when he has a jag on?