OCR Text |
Show Published Every Saturday GOODWINS WEEKLY PUBLISHING CO., INC. A. W. RAYBOULD, Business Manager ALLAGHER, Editor. 8UB8CRIPTION PRICE: eluding postage in the United States, Canada and Mexico, $2.50 per year, or six months; Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal BY ;:;1 $4.50 per year. 8ingle copies, 10 cents. Payments should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, payable to The Citizen. Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postoffice at Salt Lake under of Act March 3, 1879. the Utah, City, Phone Wasatch 5409. Ness Bldg. 8alt Lake City, Utah. 311-12-- 13 BOOTLEGGING WORKS HA VOC AMONG OUR YOUTH t is becoming painfully and scandalously apparent that alcohol-- s increasing among our young people. What with the prevalence ime brews, the ubiquity of whiskey peddlers and the bold retail less of saloons, the youth of our city are being corrupted. Are have on our statute books a prohibition law which we tell even We tell it with an air of Ijworld is bone dry. fitful virtue as if we had accomplished a stupendous work for self-satisfie- d, eousness. IjPerhaps outsiders are impressed and believe in our pretenses, inly we do not believe in ourselves unless we lack normal rs of observation and close our eyes and ears to information. Much of the home brew is almost as poisonous as the stuff the ileggers sell. It is ruinous to the stomachs. Doctors tell us in a few years there will be an appalling amount of chronic lach trouble due to home brew, without taking into account the ble caused by bad whiskey and fiery alcohols. Everyone should know that in distilled alcoholic beverages there S i active, though slow poison, known as fusel oil. It is this lethal tance which is taken out of whiskey by the ageing in barrels. M: ;1 or fusel oil is a bitter, oily liquid of unpleasant odor. It con-- f of several higher alcohols, fatty acids, etc., but chiefly of Janhfl alcohol. Fusel oil was to be found in some of the whiskey sold before jpro libition times; today it is in all the moonshine whiskey and much of me stuff that is sold as bonded whiskey. J Prior to prohibition, and as the fight for it became intense, courses iWefe introduced into our schools to show the effects of alcohol on Ahel human system. The lessons should have been terrifying and, jno doubt, sensitive minds among the pupils were duly and lastingly impressed. But by most of the pupils the lessons were soon j j- t rate the rising generation is sufficiently daring in its experimentation to swallow alcoholic drinks more poisonous than ail :! At any Many of the old dogs the bootwho were wont to frequent the licensed saloons avoid leggers and the secret saloons as they would avoid opium peddlers introduced demon 4n opium dens. They know that prohibition has in the alluring initns more infernal than any thrust across the bar this proudl iCUtjglass of the legalized saloons. But boys and girls of pious prohibition period fondle fusel oil more airily than Cleopatra fortdled the serpent with which she slew herself. t Moonshine whiskey and other deadly beverages arc appearing in ssntity at public dancing parties and entertainments. Almost cquall) home brews, as well as bootleg whiskey, are beginning to that were sold by the vitners of other days. saturate private parties attended by young people. Always there are leaders among the young who know how easily alcohol can be obtained and they make it their business to obtain it and distribute it among their companions. We are not making these statements with the mere academic purpose of proving the defects of prohibition. We believe that something can be done to blot out the evil. We believe that the law can be made to operate more effectively. For several years the manufacture and sale of substitute extracts thrived in Utah. The state was flooded with fake extracts which were nothing more or less than alcohol with fruit flavors. The ease with which alcohol could be obtained from the state prompted many to go into the business of making extracts and some of them amassed fortunes. The Citizen began a determined warfare on the abuse about a year ago. Today it has been reduced to small proportions. The present federal prohibition director seems to have made considerable headway in stamping out the evil. His success in fighting the bootleggers and the saloons is not so apparent. Why is it that the police show such indifference? Why is it that dozens of saloons are being permitted to exist in the heart of the city? No doubt the police will say that it is difficult to obtain evidence. If it is as difficult to obtain evidence as the police say then prohibition is a fizzle. But wc put little faith in the excuse. nights ago a party of young men left the Hotel Utah to go to a meeting. When they had walked a block one of them proposed a drink. It was obtained without difficult. By the time the party had reached Fourth South and State streets they had visited eight saloons and in each of them had bought whiskey, containing the deleterious amyl alcohol, at 50 cents a drink. Had there been ten persons in the party instead of five there would have been sufficient information among them to lead them to sixteen or, perhaps, twenty saloons. One of the objections to prohibition was that it would not prohibit. Another was that it would introduce vast quantities of bad whiskey. Both objections were valid. Prohibition does not prohibit as we had hoped and bad whiskey is being distilled and vended bv the thousands of gallons in our state. But when we say prohibition does not prohibit we must not rest content with philosophic resignation. Perhaps prohibition can be made to prohibit. At all events it is rather early to quit trying. Those who were so strenuous, one might say violent, in their efforts to secure a prohibition law ought to pipe in a weak, small voice, now A few . |