The Human Side of What the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act Have Done to the United States" From Chapter 1: "The strange phenomenon of Prohibition, after an appearance amongst us of over three years, is still non-understandable to the majority of a great, and so-called free, people. It is one of the most astonishing manifestations the world has ever witnessed. It came upon us like a phantom, swiftly; like a thief in the night, taking us by surprise. Yet the Prohibitionists will tell you that no one should be amazed, since for years—for almost a century—quiet forces have been at work to bring about this very thing.
By : Charles Hanson Towne (1877 - 1949)
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The Phenomenon of Prohibition
The strange phenomenon of Prohibition, after an appearance amongst us of over three years, is still non-understandable to the majority of a great, and so-called free, people. It is one of the most astonishing manifestations the world has ever witnessed. It came upon us like a phantom, swiftly; like a thief in the night, taking us by surprise. Yet the Prohibitionists will tell you that no one should be amazed, since for years—for almost a century—quiet forces have been at work to bring about this very thing.
Most of us can remember how, not so many years ago, when we wished to throw away our vote, we cast it for the Prohibition ticket. Some unknown “crank” was running for office on a dry platform. “What a joke,” we said, “to give him the weight of our affirmation, to enlarge his pitiful handful of white ballots! It will be a good way to get even with the arrogant Mr. So-and-So.”
And into the box we laughingly dropped the bit of paper which might cause a mention to be made of the crank in the next morning’s news columns. Delightful, insincere flattery, which could not possibly do any harm. How well, how thoroughly, how consistently we gave it, never dreaming that the solemn hour would strike when our gesture would no longer be a joke.
The morning came when the headlines in our newspapers proclaimed the fact that State after State was following the road of Kansas, Washington, Maine and Oregon, to mention only a few States which for some time had elected to make laws that were almost blue. Local option—yes, we had heard of it in the effete East. There were districts, we knew, which chose the path of so-called virtue; and they were welcome to their sanctimoniousness. In our hearts we rather approved of them for the stand which they had taken—particularly when we learned, on an occasional visit, that it was mighty easy to give a dinner-party with plenty of liquid refreshment. All one had to do, it seemed, was to lift the telephone receiver in Bangor, and ask that Boston send over a supply of whatever one desired. There were no restrictions against the transportation of liquor over the State line, though it was impossible to purchase wines and spirits in the holy community itself.
Our national insincerity began right there. The hiding of the ostrich’s head in the sands—that is what it amounted to; and we all smiled and laughed, and went on having a perfectly good time, and we told one another, if we discussed the matter at all, that of course the worst could never, never occur. What rot even to think of it; what idiocy to take seriously a state of affairs so nebulous and remote. It was like predicting a world war—which eventually came about; it was like dreaming of the inconvenience of a personal income tax—which also came about; it was like imagining that man would be so uncivilized as to break all international law—which, only a few years later, he did. Who foresaw the use of poisonous gas in the most frightful conflict of history? Who had vision enough to tell us that noncombatants would be killed, as they were in Belgium, though treaties had been signed which forbade such wanton cruelty? Who could foretell the bombing of cities far beyond the firing line? Yet these atrocities occurred with singular regularity once the world entered upon that stupendous struggle which began in August, 1914. We came to take such happenings for granted. We grew accustomed to terror, as one grows used to pain; and all that we had built and dreamed went crashing to dust and ashes.
Prohibition, I venture to say, was the last thing in the world the American people expected to have come upon them. Though temperance advocates were thick through the country, the brilliant bar-rooms held their own; and we came to look upon them as an essential part of the pageant of life, especially in cosmopolitan cities, with Salvation Army lassies entering them to pass the tambourine. Men in their cups gave generously; and I often wonder if the revenue of pious organizations has not seriously diminished, now that there are no haunts of vice for holy workers to penetrate. Surely they must miss this casual liberality—the coin or the bill cast with a grand and forgotten gesture into the extended hand.
But do not imagine I am holding a brief for the corner saloon. The sins of an enforced Prohibition are many, as I shall seek to prove; but the passing of the common drinking-place cannot be deprecated. No sane, thinking citizen wishes to see a return of promiscuous debauchery. A glimpse now of the London “pubs” in the poorer districts of the English capital is enough to convince any American that he should thank his stars—if not his three-stars—that one phase of our social consciousness has vanished forever. If we could have sensibly rid ourselves of these rum-hells, without punishing a vast multitude of us who knew how to drink wisely, much good would have been accomplished. But, American-like, we had to go the whole gamut; we had to make ourselves ridiculous before the rest of the world, in order to bring about a check upon the gross appetites of a scattered few.
There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a reaction. The pendulum has swung too far, as any observer must admit. The present conditions throughout the country are so disgraceful that something must be done to remedy them. Our personal habits became a matter for federal investigation; our daily conduct is now given to the scrutiny of the authorities—to our everlasting discredit. We are a nation of self-appointed law-breakers, rejoicing alike in our secret and open wrong-doing. We are the laughing-stock of Europe; we are the jest of Canada and Mexico, our neighbors, and decent Americans feel that a stigma has been put upon them. We stammer explanations to visiting foreigners, who, confused and confounded, ask us what it all means; we are confused ourselves at the muddle our Government is making of the whole wretched business; and yet, being Americans who tolerate all kinds of injustices, we meekly submit, the while we complain, and are too lazy, most of us, to lift up our voices, to utter one word publicly in derision of this monstrous foolishness.
What is to happen to us? Are we to become a race of machines, supinely submitting to autocratic mandates? We have always allowed ruffians to rule us in our civic politics; and though once in a while we bitterly cry out, the ruffians, knowing our weaknesses only too well, pay no attention. We are like the worm that turns; but who cares, since no change is evident when the worm shows its other side?
One of the great troubles with America is that only in rare instances will the finer type of young manhood enter politics. We leave the high business of running the Government to men of inferior caliber, whereas in a land like England, a political career is a distinction, as much to be chosen and sought as the Church. Until we come to a realization of the peril that confronts us through our spirit of laissez-faire we shall deserve, as Plato says, exactly the kind of Government we get.
With all our recognized national gusto and verve, there can be no denial of the tragic fact that we are mentally indolent when a political cause is in the balance. I have known men of worth in the professions and in the world of business to neglect the polls on Election Day in order to indulge in a game of golf; yet these are the first to cry out when the low-brow politicians triumph. We permit our jury-boxes to be filled by incompetent German-American grocers and butchers, clerks with little imagination, played-out failures and cab drivers and chauffeurs who are morons. Even the women, who were so anxious for equal suffrage, find, in many cases, that civic duties are a burden, and avoid their obvious responsibilities. We let George do everything which we find in the least unpleasant.
Well, there is a price for such lethargy. It is terrifying to read over the names of the judges and magistrates on the American Bench, and see how many are of foreign origin. Listen to the roll-call in any court-room. The Poppelfingers and Morinos and Sauerkrautzers predominate. Where are our first American families? It might be well to ask, indeed, where they will be in another generation or two.
You and I walk along the streets and see a man suddenly stricken. A crowd quickly gathers about his pitiful form, stares into his countenance. A policeman calls an ambulance. A gong rings, and he is carried off to a hospital. You and I go our way, with perhaps a momentary tug at our heart. But it never occurs to us that the man in the street might have been ourselves. Such things happen to others—no, they could never, never happen to us. The lightning may strike a neighbor’s house or barn—but not our own. Death or disaster may come to the other fellow—never to us.
“It never can happen” might be our national slogan. Thus has a stupid Pollyanna optimism penetrated our civic thought, our political consciousness, our spiritual being; and the false doctrine is screamed from every housetop from Manhattan to Gopher Prairie. Pretty little poems, printed in neat frames, greet us wherever we turn. They urge us to cheer up, that it is not raining rain, but only flowers, and that God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world—forgetting that Browning, when he penned his immortal line, referred to a particular morning for a particular man of vision, and by no means intended to be quoted out of his context, as a basis for the silly “gladness” of hoards of people who think they think. Our music-halls are crammed with comedians who sing, in loud voices, something about what’s the use of worrying, it never was worth while, and bidding us smile, smile, smile. And we clap and giggle and stamp our easy-going feet, and go out into the night, and are shoved and pushed into an over-crowded subway train, and still fondly cherish the delusion that we should keep on smiling, though a brutal train-guard’s boot is jammed into our reluctant back, so that we may become one more sardine in the steel box he is so expert in packing.
It would all be very amusing were it not so serious. Sinclair Lewis, who is becoming the best photographer this country ever produced, has not given us a false picture of our towns and cities. He tells the brutal truth, bravely. But we read him, smile, and say that of course it’s all very well, and such localities may exist, but they are not those in which we dwell. And all the while, about us, are the very folk his deft pen has drawn. Babbitt—what a stupid old fool he is, and we may have seen him in smoking-compartments; but we never will admit that he is our next-door neighbor.
The day may come when we will have to admit that he is our very self. We have the superiority complex. Which of course is nothing but a confession that we are inferior. And in allowing restriction after restriction to be put upon us, how, in the name of common sense and in the words of the man in the street, do we get that way? We are the most governed people in the world today. There are plenty of laws, but little order; and the millennium that the Prohibitionists promised with the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment is farther away than ever.
Let us wake up, and face conditions as they are. Let us not try to delude ourselves into a state of false happiness, when, at heart, we are the most unhappy nation now breathing the celebrated air. It is high time we did some solemn thinking. The writing is on the wall. It is our business to read the words inscribed there in letters of fire.
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