Light wines don't harm an awful lot of people, for the same reason
that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from
using finger-bowls.
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the day after the prohibition amendment
was adopted by the House of Representatives, "there's a lot of people
going around taking credit for this here prohibition which in reality is
living examples of the terrible effects not drinking schnapps has on the
human race--suppose any one wanted to argue that way--whereas if you was
to put the people wise which is actually responsible for the country
going dry, y'understand, they would be too indignant to call you a liar
before they could hit you with anything that lay most handy behind the
bar from an ice-pick to an empty bottle, understand me."
"I always had an idea myself that what was responsible for prohibition,
Abe, was that the people is sore at booze," Morris Perlmutter retorted.
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the people would be just so sore at
candy if the fellers which runs candy-stores acted the way
saloon-keepers does, which you take a feller like this here Huyler, or
one of the Smiths in the cough-drop business, and we would say his name
is Harris Fine, y'understand, and instead of attending to the store and
poisining people mit candy, he goes to work to get up the Harris Fine
Association and gives all the eighteen-dollar-a-week policemen in the
neighborhood to understand that it's equivalent to ten dollars in their
pockets if they wouldn't take it so particular when members of the
Harris Fine Association commits a little thing like murder or something,
_verstehst du mich_, why the people in the same block which wasn't
members of the Harris Fine Association would begin to think that candy
was getting to have a bad influence on the neighborhood, y'understand.
Then if Harris Fine was to run for alderman and all the loafers of the
eighth ward or whatever ward he was alderman of was to meet in the back
room of his candy-store, Mawruss, the respectable _Leute_ which couldn't
go past Harris Fine's candy-store without hearing somebody talking
rotten language would go home and say that it was a shame and a disgrace
that the eighth ward should got to have candy-stores in it. Afterward
when he has been an alderman for some time, Mawruss, and Harris Fine
begins to make a fortune out of the garbage-removal contracts by not
removing garbage, y'understand, and also as a side line to candy and
ice-cream soda, does an elegant business in asphalt-paving which
contains one-tenth of one per cent. asphalt, y'understand, the bad
reputation which candy has got it in the eighth ward is going to spread
throughout the city, Mawruss, and finally, when the candy feller starts
in to make contracts for state roads, candy gets a black eye in the
state also, and it's only a question of time before the candy-dealer
would go to Washington and put over a rotten deal on the national
government, understand me, and then people like you and me which never
touches so much as a little piece of peanut-brittle, Mawruss, starts
right in and hollers for the national prohibition of all kinds of candy
from gum-drops to mixed chocolates and bum-bums at a dollar and a half a
pound."
"You may be right, Abe," Morris said, "but when it comes right down to
Bright's disease and charoses of the liver, y'understand, politics
'ain't got nothing to do with it, because it doesn't make no difference
to whisky whether a feller voted for Wilson _oder_ Hughes. It would just
as lieve ruin the health and prospects of a Republican as a Democrat."
"Whisky might," Abe admitted, "but how about beer and light wines,
Mawruss, which you know as well as I do, Mawruss, a loafer must got to
drink an awful lot of beer before he gets drunk."
"Well, that's what makes the brewery business good, Abe," Morris said.
"But don't you think in a great number of cases, Mawruss, beer is drunk
to squench thirst?" Abe asked.
"That's the way it's drunk in a great number of cases--twenty-four
bottles to the case," Morris said; "but if the same people was to drink
water the way they drink beer, Abe, instead of thirst you would think it
was goldfish that troubled them, which I can get as thirsty as the next
one, Abe, but I can usually manage to squench it without making an
aquarium out of myself exactly."
"_Aber_ what about light wines?" Abe inquired. "They don't harm an awful
lot of people, Mawruss."
"They don't harm an awful lot of people for the same reason that there
ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using
finger-bowls, Abe," Morris said, "because so far as I could see the
American people feels the same way about light wines as they do about
finger-bowls. They could use 'em and they could let 'em alone, and they
feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're letting 'em alone than
when they're using 'em."
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe said, "I think a great many people
which is prejudiced against light wines on account of heartburn is
laying it to the wine instead of the seventy-five-cent Italian
table-d'hote dinner which goes with it."
"Yes, and it's just as likely to be the cocktail which went before it as
the glass of brandy which came after it, and that's the trouble with
beer and light wine, Abe," Morris declared. "They usually ain't the only
numbers on the program, and the feller which starts in on beer and
light wines, Abe, soon gets such a big repertoire of drinks that he's
performing on the bottle day and night, y'understand, which
saloon-keepers knows better than anybody else, Abe, because if you would
ask a saloon-keeper _oder_ a bartender to have something, y'understand,
it's a hundred-to-one proposition that he takes a cigar and not a glass
beer."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But once a bartender draws a glass beer,
before he could use it again, he's got to mark off so much for
deteriorating that it's practically a total loss, whereas he could
always put a cigar back in the case and sell it to somebody else for
full price in the usual course of business."
"Well, that's what makes the saloon business a swindle and not a
business, Abe," Morris said. "Just imagine, Abe, if you and me, as
women's outer-garment manufacturers, was to lay in a line of ready-made
men's overcoats in the expectation that after a customer has bought from
us a big order he is going to blow me to a forty regular and you to a
forty-four stout which we would put right back in stock as soon as his
back is turned."
"But even if the liquor business would be a dirty business, Mawruss,"
Abe said, "you've got to consider that there's a whole lot of people
which is making a living out of it, like bartenders and fellers working
in distilleries, and if they get thrown out of work, y'understand, their
wives and children is going to be just as hungry as if the fellers lost
their jobs in a respectable business like pants or plumbers' supplies."
"Say," Morris exclaimed, "if you're going to have sympathy for people
which would get thrown out of jobs by prohibition, Abe, don't use it all
up on bartenders and fellers working in distilleries, because there's a
whole lot of other crooks whose families are going to be short of
spending-money when liquor-selling stops. Take them boys which is
running poker-rooms, faro-games, and roulette-wheels, and alcohol is
just as necessary to their operation as ether is to a stomach
specialist's, because the human bank-roll is the same as the human
appendix, Abe: the success of removing it entirely depends on the giving
of the anesthetic. Then there is the lawyers--criminal, accident, and
divorce--and it don't make no difference how their clients fell or what
they fell from--positions in banks, moving street-cars, or as nice a
little woman as any one could wish for, y'understand--schnapps done it,
Abe, and when schnapps goes, Abe, the practice of them lawyers goes with
it."
"Well, they still got their diplomas, Mawruss," Abe said. "And even
though schnapps is prohibited, Mawruss, there will be enough people left
with the real-estate habit to give them shysters a living, anyhow, but
you take them fellers which has got millions of dollars invested in
machinery for the manufacture of headache medicine, Mawruss, and before
they will be able to figure out how they can use their plants for the
manufacture of war supplies they're going to be their own best
customers, which little did them fellers think when they put on their
bottles,
* * * KEEP IN A DRY PLACE WELL CORKED * * *
that people was going to take them so seriously as to put 'em right out
of business, y'understand."
"But there's also a large number of people which is going to lose their
jobs on account of this here prohibition, Abe, and if they get the
sympathy of these American sitsons which is laying awake nights worrying
about how the Czar is getting along, Abe, it would be big already. I am
talking about the temperance lecturers," Morris declared, "which if it
wouldn't be for them fellers pretty near convincing everybody that no
one could be happy and sober at the same time, Abe, it's my idee that we
would of had this here prohibition _sohon_ long since ago already,
because those temperance lecturers got their arguments against drinking
schnapps so mixed up with Sunday baseball, playing billiards, and going
to theayters, picture-galleries, and libraries on Sunday, Abe, that some
people which visits New York from small towns in the Middle West still
hesitates about going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for fear of
getting a hobnailed liver or something."
"At that, Mawruss, this here prohibition is going to hurt some
businesses like the jewelry business," Abe said, "which not counting the
millions of carats that fellers has bought to square themselves for
coming home at all hours of the night, y'understand, there's many a bar
pin which would still be in stock if the customer hadn't nerved himself
to buying it with a couple of cocktails, understand me. Automobiles is
the same way, Mawruss, and if the engineering department of the big
automobile concerns is now busy on the problem of making alcohol a
substitute for gasolene, Mawruss, you can bet your life that the sales
department is just as busy trying to find out something which will be a
substitute for alcohol, because when a feller has made up his mind to
buy a five-passenger touring-car, Mawruss, there ain't many automobile
salesmen which could wish a seven-passenger limousine on him by working
him with a couple of cups coffee, y'understand."
"Then there is the show business," Morris observed, "and while I don't
mean to say that this here prohibition is going to have any effect on
them miserable plays where the girl saves the family at eight-forty-five
by marrying the millionaire and discovers at ten-forty-five that she
loves him just as much as if he hadn't any rating, so that the show can
get out at eleven-five, y'understand, but when enough states has adopted
the prohibition amendment to pull it into effect, Abe, the Midnight
Follies as a business proposition will be in a class with bar fixtures
and mass-kerseno cherries."
"Well, so far as I'm concerned, any show that starts in at twelve
o'clock would always have to get along without _my_ trade, prohibition
or no prohibition," Abe commented, "even though I could enjoy it on
nothing stronger than malted milk."
"Which you couldn't," Morris added, "and there's why the Midnight
Follies wouldn't last, because not only is this here prohibition going
to kill schnapps, Abe, but it is also going to drive off the market for
all articles the demand for which contains more than one per cent.
alcohol."
"And believe me, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "no decent, respectable man is
going to miss such articles, neither."