Appendix I

I myself have on principle been inclined to obey the law, and give it a fair chance to prove its moral and economic value, though not at all a teetotaler. My reasons for so doing date back many years to an interesting experience in Chicago, in the early 80'S. I was young, and ·then general manager of the Telephone Company there. I became one of the Board of the "Citizens League for the Suppression of the Sale of Liquor to Minors and Inebriates"; whose job was to insure the enforcement of the City Ordi nance, forbidding saloons to sell drinks to boys under eighteen and men already drunk. We employed four detectives, who followed such persons into saloons, and prosecuted those who sold them liquor. The League cost little and did some good. Its head detective once figured out Chicago's drink-bill, and we published it, as a temperance tract. Its rough accuracy was easily verified, for some 5,3°0 saloons then licensed in Chicago, from the following minimum costs per diem per saloon: Rent, $75 per month, per day Fresh keg of beer, daily ...

Liquors and cigars, cost say, daily. Light, heat, and sundries, do. do. . Barkeeper, $75 per month, per day Saloonkeeper and family, cost say, Profit, say 10 per cent., Total per saloon, per day . . $2.50 4.00 1.5° 1.00 2.50 3.50 $15.00 1.50 $16.50 Chicago's drink-bill, then, would total for 5,3°0 saloons, 365 days in the year, at above $16.50, say [4°2 ] The r olstead Act $3 2,000,000. Chicago's City Budget was then some thing over $16,000,000 and its County Budget some thing over $4,000,000; or in all about $21,000,000. for public expenditures against $32,000,000 spent in the saloons! This last amount was paid out by per haps 250,000 adult men, out of a total population then 1.,125,000. These men were thus spending about $125 apiece per annum in the saloons out of an average earning of say $40 per month, or $480. That is, it was costing them over a quarter of all they earned, for an absolute waste· of money and health.

. But few of these men were drunkards; probably not over one per cent. of them. I realized that the saloon was their club, their social centre; and that the workingman has the same right to spend a quar ter of his income for purely social pleasures, for gre gariousness, as his employer has. We all spend that much on our pleasures, while our earnings are mod erate; but as they rise, and we reach the so-called upper class, what we thus waste does not cut so deep into our savings. We can accumulate, notwith standing; and grow a little or much better off each year as our income grows. The very rich can spend but a small portion of their revenues, and are the great accumulators of fixed capital. The working man, on the contrary, if quarter of his income goes to waste, has practically nothing left. That is one reason why at that time, say in 188o, there were only 2,335,000 savings bank depositors, averaging $35 0 each, out·· of over 50,000,000 people in the .United States. In 1920, the record was better. There were over 11,000,000 savings depositors,. averaging $600 apiece, out of 106,000,000 people. Wages to-day more than double those of 188o, while the cost of living is hardly double, and the saving habit has grown. A lot [4°3 ] Appendix of working people,own Liberty Bonds and homes, too.

It may easily be that two, instead of one out of five workingmen, as in 1880, are savers to-day. But at the time I speak of I was appalled at the enormous economic waste of the saloon habit; and at its byproducts, though in comparatively few cases, of crime, pauperism, insanity, full jails, and asylums. The saloons in Chicago, as everywhere, were financed and controlled mainly by the great breweries and distilleries; who used all the machinery of finance, intensive production, distribution, and advertising, to waste the money, and often the life, usefulness, and morality of the workingman. It seemed to me then, and does still, that the community has a right to protect itself against such predatory citizens, who would thus injure their fellowmen, for their own sor did profit. On the other hand, light wines, beer, and even liquors are all natural products; traditional foods, with dietary values, harmful only when used to ex cess. It is to most of us a distinct encroachment on our constitutional individual liberties that the law should forbid reasonable use of any traditional food or drink; a stretching to the breaking-point of the police power, or the power to r~gulate interstate commerce, such as neither history nor good sense ascribe to the intent of the makers of the Constitution of the United States. The true sphere of governmen tal action on the drink-evil seems to me rather that of regulation than of prohibition; of the exercise of the power of the community to prevent organized poison ing of the more ignorant classes, organized demorali zation of politics, organized economic waste, by the manufacturers of alcoholics, in some practical way.

The conundrum seems to me one of ways and means, rather than of principles; namely, how to [4°4 ] The Polstead Act array the mass of the people against intemperance, rather than to build up an already formidable mi nority against arbitrary prohibition and the gov ernment that would enforce it; as is the lamentable situation to-day. It seemed to me years ago, and it does still, that the foundation of the difficulty lies in that· gregarious instinct which makes a man love hospitality and the company oEhis friends. Be fore Volstead days the workingman enjoyed ,his pet saloon as the rich man his club; with one essential difference between saloon and club. It was the saloonkeeper's business, the foundation· of his profit, to sell his customers as many drinks as their slender purses could pay for; hence the "American~' custom of "treating the crowd," carefully fostered by the etiquette of the saloon in this country.

The rich man's club, on the contrary, was not run for profit, but for the common pleasure of its mem bers. Excessive drinking ,seriously marred that pleasure; and long before the Volstead Act had led to the practice of empowering the governing com mittees of clubs to refuse to serve drunken members, to discipline, and if need be expel them, for the com fort of fellow members generally. In :tJlost such clubs grew up a public opinion strongly opposed to excessive use of liquor; with standards of quality, quantity, and appropriateness, that with rare excep tions did away with intemperance and its whole train of evils. The rich man's club, in my own ob servation, has been on the whole a distinct elevat or of social standards in American life, both in city and country; that is, up to the present time of the enforcement of the Volstead Act. To-day, it is not too much to say, I think, that, while the clubs themselves almost without exception officially observe the letter of the law, a very large [4°5 ] Appendix proportion, perhaps a majority, of that trained and temperate membership of well-off' men which they had produced is now unhesitatingly and unashamedly hand-in-glove with the. boot legging fraternity; is unconvinced of the wisdom of prohibition, entirely sceptical of its success, and candidly, if secretly, defiant of the law. If these men, leaders in educa tion, finance, industry, charity, and public spirit ofttimes, whose well-stocked cellars tide many of them over the bar of crooked buying of things to drink, thus ignore moral responsibility, what can we expect of the poor fellow who no longer can go to the corner for his glass of beer?

Now that three years' time has permitted comple tion of that vast organization for boot legging which a fantastic profit was bound to call into being, and the utter demoralization of the manufacture of pure wines and liquors, we are beginning to recognize another case of "Too Much Government"; one more attempt of· our collectivists to bite off more than they can masticate; one more failure to change human nature by law. The decrease of crime and the emptying of jails and asylums which was greeted with joy at the outset, before the trade of rum-run" ning could be put into working order, is said (though I have not seen verified statistics yet) to be on the wane. On the other hand, the bureaucracy indis pensable for enforcement of the law is already too small; and must enormously increase. The Presi dent has just confessed to Congress his doubts of the possibility of keeping the United States, with our immense frontier and coast line, even reasonably "dry." Smuggling is a trade as old as history and wide as the world; while never in human experience has there been hung up so vast and immediate a re ward for breaking the law as is offered by the VoI[ 406 ] The Volstead Act stead Act. Its worst consequence is bound to be political; in the inevitable wholesale corruption not only of the integrity of the revenue officers on guard . but of the morality of that important, almost domi nating upper class, which reads and thinks, and or ganizes the life and industries of the nation. That such men should openly despise· and secretly and successfully disobey the law, is to instil the worst conceivable poison into government of, by, and for the people. Only the saving consolation remains, that the same men are likely faithfully to obey every law that they do not despise. But how about their less educated imitators? Will they, too, discriminate between law and law?

It seems tome, pondering these .things, that ab.... solute prohibition-though for my own part· I would endure it for the sake of the crowd, if valid-must al ways be a matter of "Too Much Government," if indeed practicable at all; while, on the other hand, temperance and thrift, which all of us, even the in temperate and thriftless, cordially desire, are largely matters of habit or fashion in the crowd to which each man belongs. He does as his friends do, us ually. In 1880 I discussed with friends at Chicago a project, never attempted to my knowledge, but which seemed to us to have merit; namely, that Neighborhood Clubs, or Social Centres, enough in number to serve the whole working population, should gradually be built (perhaps by philanthropic or proprietary investors at first-perhaps eventually by the municipality as public properties, as might prove practicable in each case), located at central points, on streetcar lines, and fitted up for social rec reation in leisure hours; with cafe, bar, smoking room, music room, dance Hoor, movie stage, reading, writing, and card rooms, to be operated at cost plus [4°7 ] Appendix a profit sufficient to provide for rent, upkeep, and improvement; for the common benefit of all reputable residents of the neighborhood, under direct control of a Board of Managers chosen annually by the membership, empowered to make house rules and enforce discipline by expulsion or suspension, as in private clubs. Membership to be open to all neighborhood residents, on payment of dues, subject to discipline or expulsion by the Board, for cause.

Such clubs, if now organized (and the Volstead Act repealed, or its definitions modified so as to permit of light wines, beer, etc.), might be made, each for its own territory, the sole agencies for the sale of such intoxicants as might be thus legalized; their Boards of Managers to be charged with personal responsi bility for the establishmen,t and maintenance of reasonable restrictions upon sale of alcoholics, and for the inculcation of thrift. If properly managed, and made attractive, as they easily could be, they should be profitable from the outset, and earn a surplus available only for and by the clubs them selves, for their own continuous improvement and enlargement, or for the reduction of cost of admis sions, service, etc.; so that every member would be zealous to protect the business of the club, as his own, and see to it that bootleggers should not estab lish surreptitious competition with it.

It would, of course, ... be necessary to tryout this club method of controlling the sale of intoxicants by providing and operating a few clubs long enough to work up equipment and regime meeting actual popular need and approval. My Chicago experience above referred to long antedated the great modern Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. establishments and the social side of modern church work. It was then hard to get the average young man into quasi-religious [408 ] The PolsteadAct social organizations; and the young woman was hot taken into account at all. Then as now, however, the little homes of the working classes· did not offer much attraction to the father, or the children oVer fifteen, after working hours. He went off to his pet saloon while the wife washed up the dishes and put the young ones to bed; and the older boys and girls went out into the streets for each others' company. Now the dance halls and the movies gather in the latter, and a good many of their fathers and mothers in due time.

My theory is, that ample and agreeable clubs, common meeting-places for social life, .analogous to the German beer-garden-where both sexes, whole families, young and old, of the same neighborhood, might conveniently gather during play hours; offer ing standard refreshments and amusements at rea sonable cost and of good quality, under the restraint of dissipation and wastefulness by publicity and the force of neighborhood opinion, rather than by the rude and prying coercion of the policeman. and the spy-such clubs ought to be popular and prosperous. They should constitute a. far more effective check upon the liquor evil than our present huge pro hibition machinery, according to common sense and the President, is likely to prove itself. For membership of the clubs would certainly in clude the large majority of the population, and fur thermore it would be to the direct personal interest of every member to develop his own club, and shut out competition in its territory. If such should prove to be the case, it would he very hard for surreptitious "joints" to start or live off the non-members. A healthy competition would be pretty sure to develop I between the hoards of managers of clubs in neigh boring districts or towns, in developing the most [4°9 ] Appendix beautiful and attractive establishments. At first it would be well that planning of buildings and organ ization of. service should be under friendly advice of men and women experienced in private or rich men's clubs; but they should be turned over at the earliest moment to entire control of the best neighbor hood board of managers that the membership can offer.

In brief, the essence of this slight study of the great temperance question is consistent with the whole drift of my convictions-toward DECENTRALIZATION, voluntary popular action, absence of coercion; and as always I am solidly, absolutely against our country's besetting evil of TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT.