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Show THE CITIZEN 6 Looking Backward at The Booze Frank It. Pingry. By One cold, dreary morning in Janu- ary, 19191 havent consulted the weather bureau records, but I am sure I must have been cold and dreary Archie Manhattan, Pat OManhattan, Pasquale Manhattan, and' Isidor hattanstein had the shock of their lives. As they glanced over the headlines on the first page of their morning papers, preparatory to a thorough perusal of the sporting page and the comic section, they saw that, as the thirty-sixtstate had ratified the Eighteenth Amendment, nation wide prohibition was now a part of the organic law of the land. Prohibition! What was the world coming to! Of course these minute young men had never heard that Congress had adopted the Eighteen Amendment, or that the other thirty-fivStates had ratified the amendment; they were too absorbed in the really important things going on in New York City to notice what was going on in the outlying rural regions. They had a. vague notion that such regions existed, to be sure; back on election night, 1916, they had gone to bed knowing that Hughes, with his sweeping victory in New York, had been elected president, only to learn next day that these remote districts had put Wilson back for another four years; but so many things had happened since the war, the draft act, the American victories, the armistice, the flu epidemic that this incident was practically forgotten. Little old New York was supreme yet something had been put over on the good old town. How was it done? On talking about the outrage, they learned of the existence of an organization known as the League. What was it and what sort of people were in it? Of course, anybody knows that those people wrho never take their drink never have any fun anyhow, and they hate to see anybody else have any fun either. They are a solemn, doleful, dyspeptic lot, with long hair, who go about wearing hats and rusty antiquated stove-pipfrock coats, and wagging their heads in profound melancholy if anybody so much as smiles. This dreary crew, by some magic arts, turned the spines of senators, congressmen and state legislators to jelly and forced them to do their bidding, so that henceforth Gloom might reign forever throughout the land, even perish the thought! in little old New York. And, to cap they did it while two lion were overseas fighting for the liberties of the world! h up-to-t- 1 he e Anti-Saloo- n e the-ciima-x, he-me- n Having thus solved the problem to their satisfaction, Archie, Pat, Pasquale and Isidor settled down to figure out how to get around the new law they took up home-breand numerous other subterfuges which appealed to ultra-livboys . w, hip-totin- g e Question cursing, from time to time, the longhaired fanatics who interfered with a fellows pleasure. But now let us consider a few facts as to how it really came about. Aroused by the growing lawlessness and insolence of the liquor traffic, the League came into existence, and, by publicity as to the wet and dry sympathies of legislative candidates, with the backing of the voters, it secured the adoption, in state after state, of a series of laws first, local option, under which nearly all the small communities voted dry Anti-Saloo- n then, county option, extending the voting area to county limits and, finally, state-wid-e prohibition, which, before the declaration of war, applied to a majority of the states. Of course, agitators of the type of Brothers Obadiah Sourmouth and conjured up in the fertile imaginations 'of Archie, Pat, Pasquale, and Isidor, would have been highly useful in bringing about this result; they would have been so successful in convincing voters! But these dreary apostles of gloom were replaced by alert, witty, and businesslike speakers, who could entertain and, at the same time, convince their audiences of the reasonableness of their n cause. I have even heard of one Pain-in-the-Fa- Cold-wate- r, ce r wide-awak- e, Anti-Saloo- Leaguer who, at a farewell dinner of legislators and lobbyists, sang with the chief liquor lobbyist a duet, Its always fair weather when good The program fellows get together. called for The Brewers Big Horse Cant Roll Over Me, but neither of them knew that famous Billy Sunday song. oases in the neighborhood of dry states always hindered law enforcement, so now came the move for the next step nation-wid- e prohibition The by constitutional amendment. same congress which issued the declaration of war voted for this amendment, and presented it to the legislatures of the states for ratification, with the results that became known, as described, to our New York friends on that sad January day. The Meantime, how had the liquor interests been behaving in the face of this advancing wave of dryness? Had they, taking warning at the fate of their brothers who fell first, made an effort to clean house and submit to the very reasonable regulations on the statute books of most of the states? No, even though, toward the last, the brewers and distillers issued frantic appeals to clean house before it was too late, the retail dealers continued their lawless ways, especially in the larger cities of the east. Reform? Not much! Werent they perfectly safe? When it came to a showdown between good government and unregulated saloons, didnt Archie and Pat and Pasquale and Isidor and all the rest of the boys always vot$ on their side? No danger of prohibition in theise diggings! But then came the war! Our. little old New York quartet and their pals are firmly convinced that two million boys overseas would have turned the tide from dry to wet by a unanimous vote; those were their sentiments, so, of course, they were the sentiments of all fellows everywhere! But, really, how about it? Leaving put a large number between 18 and 21 years of age, and consequently ineligible to vote even if they were at home, and another large lumber from dry territory who had consistently supported the dry movement when they were at home, we may be sure that most of the rest of them would have voted just about as those who stayed at home voted; in fact, that is the way it turned out where their votes were received. So those two million need no more sympathy than the rest of our citizens on that point. But one thing really hastened the advancing hosts of dryness; that was behavior of the wet cothe horts. It is quite clear that the list of brewers would sound much like the of a company of the boys in of course, many of them were patriotic, but several, who were in Europe in the early days of the war, settled down in Berlin and became enthusiastic supporters of the And then there was our star slacker, Bergdoll, whose pot of gold and other items of wealth were deWhile rived from brewery profits. Hoover was calling on us to conserve all the grain we could, for the sake of Europe, there was no diminution in brewer outputs; and when railroad transportation was demoralized and many industries were short of coal and essential raw materials, the brewery fast freights were running on regular schedule. When war was declared, government orders were issued forbidding the sale of liquor to men in uniform, but this little item made no difference to the liquor dealers unless the enforcement officials wrere right on their trail; soldiers and' sailors were welcome customers, just as minors were in other days and locations. The cafe keepers opposite the old German line war-tim- e roll-cal- l, feld-gra- u; All-Highe- st. docks at Hoboken were espe, torious in their violation ofj but when threatened by cials with the closing of theft of business they promised to ft and sell only to civilians. ise they kept just as well as th$ patriots across the water kej promise to Belgium, and the soon forced to close an unconditii Another instance of the enW' patriotism of the saloon keep curred at the. time of the gr epidemic, in many cities orders issued closing schools, churches saloons and atres, movies, places where numbers of. people .gather; these orders wereobejjj ingly and cheerfully except by ' loons. Where they, could." with it their motto was busi usual. Is it any wonder that, with facts fresh before them, thir states, and nine more for good ure, ' ratified the Eighteenth i ment, and that' when this vast plished Congress proceeded, ft '& the Volstead act, with the exte a tion of the business, root and k not trusting those who were in gP of the liquor traffic with even cafes for the sale of light wint beer so highly praised by the ed wets? The truth is that if Archie at i p and Pasquale and Isidor win aside from their preconceived q and look the facts squarely in fe they will discover that the mat put prohibition over on them & ah ; . i that long-haire- d, ocrite that red-face- wrho long, faced, pios: they have pictured, V. saloon rough-necke- d d, .. is to them the goodfellowship. fc personifirat New York ;lj Time In Green Elm, Kansas, a fei days ago, during the Sunday1 drive, a hunted coyote rushed if church in the midst of the servfc sought shelter in a corner behit organ. The pastor suggested coyote be church-goin- g given tion. The congregation appr That evening a deacon opened x door, and the befriended animal (jy ished into the darkness. Poorte q he probably had never heard o!? ing for safety to lay hold of the h of the altar. j.'ifiii:iiiiiiiiiii:iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiitiiniiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiii(iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiitifHa Hold Your Bingham Galena Stock and Buy More It Hu! This Is 1 Buying Time Co: dai rei Hi Pingree-PIatso- n Co. U da W Incorporated 23 Stock Exchange Bldg Salt Lake City, Utah he 8i t t llllllllllllllllllllllllfltllll;l,ll,,l,l,IllllllllM1 Jri |