The doubters of the American Revolution

COREY FORD

The so-called temperance organizations of America are challenged to join the Anti-Speakeasy League

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The Anti-Speakeasy League, whose organization was announced last month in these pages, met with such a huge and instantaneous response that it was forced to open offices in the National Press Building, Washington, D. C., where its national activities hereafter will be in charge of Mrs. E. C. Brant, chief of our Washington bureau. In the present article, Mr. Corey Ford, founder of the League, continues his discussion of the purposes and ideals of the new organization. A coupon will be found on page 99.)

Teacher: "Where does your lap go when you stand up?"

Johnny: "It just runs around behind you, and shows up under an assumed name."

—Old Saw.

Some years ago there was a great deal of hue and cry in this country about an ancient institution of vice and depravity known to those innocent times as The Saloon. Ministers denounced it. Decent-minded citizens agreed that it was very, very wicked. Reformers declared that it must go.

And so—because this cry is always the first refuge of the reformers—'they set about to pass a law. They formed the Anti-Saloon League, a powerful and canny organization whose machinery of lobbying and bullying and espionage surpassed the heyday of the Wilhelmstrasse. They hired an organizer who soon rivaled in power the President of the United States. They induced other worthy organizations to join with them: the Women's Christian Temperance Union; the churches; the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals—this last always to be counted on when there is meddling with other people's business to be done. They worked tirelessly with hatchets, with petitions, with threats and with propaganda; and eventually they succeeded in adding the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

And the Saloon went. That is to say, it ceased to exist as a Saloon. The amiable pub of history, the sawdust floor, the swinging doors, the crepe paper and puffs of cotton pasted onto the great mirror over the bar, all these disappeared. The foaming stein of lager, the free lunch, the singing waiters, the comfortable beer-gardens and other romantic institutions of our forefathers were no more. To all intents and purposes the Anti-Saloon League had achieved its noble purpose. Prohibition was a success.

Unfortunately, in their zeal, they had overlooked one tiny but terrible fact. In their eagerness to stamp out the Saloon, they had neglected to consider that very persistent quantity in us all known as Human Nature. They had secured Prohibition; but they had quite forgotten that the idea of Prohibition has always proved inimical to the idea of Temperance, and Temperance has been the only course that has ever proved ultimately successful, since the world began. Consequently, they had no sooner locked rum behind one door than it burst out the other. The Saloon, which they had worked so zealously to abolish, merely ran around behind them and showed up again under an assumed name. Where there had been a swinging-door, there was now a sliding-panel; in place of the former amicable pub and sawdust floor there was now a basement room, stuffy, overcrowded, coeducational; where there had been foaming steins of lager, there was now whiskey, cornlicker and gin. Under the Eighteenth Amendment, the course of Temperance has taken such tremendous strides that now, eleven years later, we are precisely where we started from.

And so today there is a great deal of hue and cry in this country about a modern institution of vice and depravity known to these sophisticated times as The Speakeasy. Ministers denounce it. Decent-minded citizens agree that it is very, very wicked. Reformers declare that it must go.

And so—because the Anti-Saloon League once succeeded so admirably with this very same method—the Anti-Speakeasy League has been formed.

Its purpose is very simple. Briefly, we desire to rid the country of these vicious and depraved Speakeasies, by uniting to work in every way toward the nullification and repeal of the Volstead Act and the Prohibition Law under which alone they can flourish. Just as our illustrious predecessors were shocked by those old-fashioned dens of iniquity, the Saloons, so we today are equally shocked by their modern prototypes, the far more iniquitous Speakeasies. And just as the AntiSaloon League once found it necessary to pass the Eighteenth Amendment in order to get rid of these Saloons, so we now find it quite as necessary, in order to get rid of these Speakeasies, to nullify the Eighteenth Amendment.

Our ultimate cause is moderation. We are not fanatics. We only seek to fight fire with fire; to weigh down the other side of the scales so that, in the end, we may achieve the final balance of Temperance again. We have seen the Prohibition Law set back our cause a hundred years; and therefore we are roused to fight with the only weapon we have at hand. We shall not battle with hatchets, with lobbying or with ecclesiastic bullying— these customs have more or less gone out of favour with the demise of the Anti-Salooners —but we shall attack the new enemy no less violently at its source. We shall endeavour in every way to fight the Eighteenth Amendment, either to remove it or to render it impotent and useless; for it is only by killing the Volstead Act and the Prohibition Law that the AntiSpeakeasy League can accomplish its single and noble purpose.

And in all sincerity we hereby invite the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, the Federated Council of Churches of Christ in America, the Women's National Committee for Law Enforcement, the Federation of Women's Clubs of America, Bishop Cannon, Clarence True Wilson, Prof. Irving Fisher, Mr. Thomas Edison, Senators Brookhart and Borah and Jones and all the other avowed believers in temperance and sobriety and decency, to join with us in our organization and our Crusade.

I do not happen to see, for example, how the Women's Christian Temperance Union can very well refuse. To do otherwise would be a complete denial of the very name and purpose of their estimable organization. Our cause, we hope, is Christian; we are sure it is Temperate. If they were to ignore our appeal for help in this emergency, and thus by choosing to remain behind the Eighteenth Amendment, were to continue their practical support of the Speakeasy, they would thus acknowledge themselves at once the active enemy of the only course which is tolerant and sane and human; and their stand against Temperance—and Christianity—would stamp their organization instantly as an utter hypocrisy and sham.

Nor do I think I am over-optimistic if I feel that we may count likewise upon the former members of that gallant old war-horse of preProhibition days, the Anti-Saloon League. It should be obvious to the most loyal of its supporters that the organization itself is now defunct. To admit otherwise would be a concession that it had failed; and no Anti-Saloon League member has ever admitted failure. The Saloon is gone; they have accomplished their purpose; and now they should be looking about for new worlds to conquer. Thus I have every hope that their militant members, spying this new common enemy, will unite with us in our fight against the Speakeasy and the Eighteenth Amendment, with just as much zest as they formerly attacked the Saloon. I hope to see them march over en masse to our camp, with their banners and their battlecries, their enthusiasm and hates and holy relics, their unflagging fighting spirit that will admit no quarter. We could use a little fanaticism in our Holy Crusade.

Continued on page 99

Continued from page 43

But if we have high hopes of enlisting these grizzled warriors and these women-at-arms with the armed hosts of Christendom, I am unfortunately a little less sanguine over the possibilities of our securing the cooperation of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals. I fear this group will claim, under their ambiguous title, that they are not only for Prohibition but also for Temnerance— as though^the one were not the exact antonym of the other. For when this church militant declares that it is for Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, it means specifically that it is for Prohibition, and that those two red herrings in their title, "Temperance" and "Public Morals", will be tactfully forgotten once the main purpose has been accomplished.

But the women? Surely they must rush to join our valiant group. Surely those "twelve million wives and mothers" will not hesitate to attack and eliminate the odious Speakeasy, even if they must sacrifice their precious Eighteenth Amendment in order to do so. What is a mere Amendment, after all, in the face of the crime and depravity which are the results of the Speakeasy today? Did a mere respect for the Constitution and the ideal of liberty prevent them once from passing this admittedly anti-Constitutional Amendment, when that old enemy, the Saloon, reared its ugly head?

And the younger generation? Here are the most passionate advocates of Temperance of us all. They, far more than their elders, have seen the evils which the Speakeasy has produced; they have seen it drag down and corrupt more and more recruits from their own circles. Without ulterior motives of religious fanaticism or commercial greed, merely with all the fire of youth and all its courage I am sure we shall see this uprising generation in the van of our Crusade.

Join the Anti-Speakeasy League.