ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
IN THEIR RELATION TO CIVILIZATION 
AND THE ART OF LIVING 
BY 
VICTOR G. VECKI, M.D., 
r*» 
BAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. INTRODUCTION 
The Phrygian King Gordius tied a knot so skil- 
fully that no one was able to untie it. An oracle 
declared that the one who should unloose it would 
become the ruler of all Asia, which at that time was 
considered to be almost the whole world. Alexander 
the Great took his sword and cut the knot in two. 
Real and would-be scientists have tied the alcohol 
question into such a complicated knot that an untying 
seems impossible. By every means of right and of 
wrong an attempt to cut the knot was made in our 
country, but it proved to be a knotfulness, the 
sword was too dull; there was no great Alexander 
behind it, and now we are confronted by a regular 
knotty puzzle. 
To jump into the maelstrom of the present day 
acrimonious discussion of the alcohol question is a 
venturesome undertaking under any circumstance. 
Wise politicians avoid it most cleverly, experienced 
physicians approach it cautiously and apologetically, 
but an almost uncanny number of years of actual 
medical practice may still leave a man in full posses- 
sion of youth’s “ glad inheritance, the inextinguish- 
able love of truth. ’ ’ And thus it happened that this 
little book was conceived and written with the strict 
determination to remain outside of all prejudice, and 
to consider facts only. INTRODUCTION 
Whoever studies the history of the world, and 
mighty little of it is known, must come to the con- 
clusion that the pursuit of happiness by individuals, 
families and later on by nations, was the prime 
motive of all actions. Of course, at all times everyone 
considered his own happiness as paramount. Every 
means to further personal happiness seemed to be 
justified. Then, as individual efforts to obtain all 
happiness in sight, necessarily conflicted, laws were 
made to bring some system into the scramble. And 
laws were made to be broken whenever an individual 
or a nation found that any special law was in the way 
of reaching the coveted happiness, and whenever 
there was the chance and the power to do so. 
In the pursuit of happiness various people, so to 
speak, tumbled upon various substances that were 
and are giving, if not real happiness, at least happy 
moments. There always were philosophers who 
claimed that happy moments are all that mortals can 
obtain. Thus coffee, tea, hashish, alcohol, and many 
other substances became articles of constant and fre- 
quent consumption. 
There is a Jugo-Slav legend which relates how 
in ancient times wanderers, finding a vine, put the 
tender plant into the hollow of a bird’s shin-bone in 
order to be better able to carry it. Afterwards, when 
it began to grow, they were obliged to transfer it, 
first into the hollow of a lion’s thigh-bone, and then, 
when the plant was too big for that, into the skull of 
a jack-ass. When the once so tender plant outgrew INTRODUCTION 
this abode they set it in the ground, and grapes grew 
from it and the people ate them. When the grapes 
became too abundant to be eaten they pressed them 
and drank the juice, later conceiving the idea of stor- 
ing it away for the time of the year when no grapes 
grew. Thus the juice became wine and the people 
drank it. When they drank a little they sang like 
birds, when they drank more they became brave 
as lions, and those who drank still more invari- 
ably acted like jackasses. And thus it is, up to the 
present time. 
Savages, like animals, live haphazardly, enjoying 
the present moment with no thought for the future. 
Civilization soon developed a science which from 
the early name of macrobiotics, gradually developed 
into what we call hygiene. 
The degree to which a person and also a nation 
is civilized might safely be judged by the degree of 
attention they pay to hygiene. 
The main trouble with most scientists who under- 
took to dictate rules for a hygienic mode of living 
in order to prolong life, was that they were too much 
inclined to judge by themselves. They were and are 
guided by personal experience, the big “ I ” always 
being greatly in evidence. Enormous individual dif- 
ferences are seldom considered, while pleasures, fail- 
ings as well as constitutional peculiarities all are 
being forced into one pattern to suit the whole world. 
Then we have all the many and haphazard rules 
and regulations published by interviewers of persons INTRODUCTION 
who have reached an advanced age. An enormous 
quantity of quasi-information was and is being pub- 
lished, regular systems promulgated and adopted 
by the credulous, only to be abandoned shortly 
and forgotten. 
When we undertake the study of histories of the 
lives of most great men we find that, with very few 
exceptions, they enjoyed life in every respect. We 
meet with hardly any bigots of great intelligence, 
and it is almost impossible to contradict Lorand 
when he states that most of our great men had 
private lives that would have rendered them unfit for 
the position of superintendent of an American 
Sunday school. 
There can be no question but that the alcohol 
using nations in every way compare very favorably 
with those whose Mohammedan followers must 
abstain. There can also be no doubt but that the 
nations indulging in alcoholic beverages, even now- 
adays, use too much, yet, as with every question, the 
truth is not with the extreme ends, and there is a 
GOLDEN MIDDLE COURSE. 
The author shall endeavor to show the legitimate 
use as well as the abuse of alcoholic beverages, the 
desirability of temperance, and the abuses in inter- 
pretation of the enforcement of prohibition. On the 
hand of facts it shall be shown what has been accom- 
plished by prohibition so far, who was benefited by 
the drastic enforcement of the enforcement laws, and 
that absolute prohibition cannot be enforced, while INTRODUCTION 
temperance is attainable. In addition, the stand- 
point of the medical profession is made clear, a really 
hygienic manner of living outlined, and the way to 
the solution of all problems indicated. 
It is not new, but always remains true, that all 
commandments that ever were given can be con- 
densed into the one: Be kind! 
V. G. V. 
June 15, 1923. CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAQH 
Introduction iii 
I. Alcholic Beverages 1 
II. One Side op Alcohol 7 
III. The Other Side of Alcohol 15 
IV. Prohibition and Our Constitution 33 
V. Liberty and Prohibition 37 
VI. What Has Prohibition So Far Accomplished in the 
United States? 45 
VII. Who Has Been Benefited by Prohibition So Far?.. 89 
VIII. Can Prohibition Be Enforced? 97 
IX. The Medicial Profession and Prohibition 119 
X. What Should Be Done ? 139 
XI. Longevity 145 
XII. Kindness Versus Brutality 156 ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
CHAPTER I 
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 
When we speak of alcohol we generally mean 
ethyl alcohol, the- active principle of intoxicating 
liquors. It may be made synthetically from its ele- 
ments : carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but invariably 
is made by fermenting solutions containing sugar. 
The chemical formula of ethyl alcohol is C2 H5 0 H. 
The number of alcohol-yielding substances is end- 
less, from sawdust to grapes, and alcohol itself is 
easily made if quality is no object. 
The easiest to produce, but also the most danger- 
ous and poisonous, is methyl alcohol, or commonly 
called wood alcohol. The use of this kind of alcohol 
for adulteration of whiskey is the cause of many 
deaths. Such use is criminal under all circumstances, 
and ignorance but a poor excuse. Cutler,1 who 
thinks that wood alcohol should be called methanol, 
believes that many cases of poisoning escape the 
attention of the medical profession because of lack of 
familiarity with the characteristic features, and 
especially because the symptoms of chronic poison- 
ing are not clearly defined. 
The difference in the action of ethyl alcohol and 
methyl alcohol lies in the difficulty which the organ- 
1 Colman W. Cutleb, New York Medical Journal, April 3, 1920. 
1 2 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
ism experiences in oxidizing the latter. Whereas, 
ethyl alcohol is rapidly split into the harmless end- 
products of carbonic oxide and water, methyl alcohol 
is slowly and only partially oxidized in the body and 
is split into formaldehyde and formic acid, which are 
in themselves more toxic than the methyl alcohol. 
Charles Norris2 also thinks that many a body is 
found, and in place of the right diagnosis, “ chronic 
or acute nephritis ” is written. We know that one 
or two teaspoonfuls of methyl alcohol are sometimes 
sufficient to cause blindness and even death. 
Another product of distillation of spirits is the 
so-called fusel oil. It is less volatile than both 
alcohol and water and thus accumulates in the last 
portions of the distilled liquor. It is more intoxicat- 
ing and more lasting in its effects than alcohol. 
In the composition of fusel oil amongst other 
alcohols, the amyl alcohol predominates, and the 
acids it contains make it valuable as a solvent of 
barks. One can easily imagine what it does to the 
linings of the digestive organs. 
As far as we know, alcohol was first made from 
grapes. Whether people were using intoxicating 
beverages before the deluge can only be guessed, for 
the Bible tells us that Noah was the first wine maker. 
A witty feuilletonist of a Sunday edition of the 
New York Times says amongst other things : “ In 
biblical narrative, drinking, and drinking to excess, 
were certainly begun as early as the tenth generation 
1 Charles Norris. “ The Lesions in Wood Alcohol Poisoning,” 
New York Medical Journal, April 3, 1920. ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 
3 
of the human race. Whether intoxication existed in 
antediluvial times, is a question of fascinating specu- 
lation. There is no hint of it given in Genesis. Yet 
we are told that the whole earth, save only Noah and 
his family, were so completely wicked and corrupt 
that God was sorry he ever made it and determined 
to destroy it. Now, if it was so desperately wicked 
without drink, then drink is not the greatest of all 
evils, for the world was worse before men began 
getting drunk than it has ever been since. More- 
over, if Noah was the inventor of drunkenness, it 
is interesting to observe that this most pernicious 
practice was originated by the one righteous and 
perfect man of his age.” 
However that may be, we know that the making 
of wine is older than real history. Sanskrit, the 
oldest language known to us, calls it draska; the 
Egyptians had it, as did the Hebrews, Hesiod and 
Homer sang of it, the Chinese distilled it in con- 
siderable quantities until prohibition made them con- 
sumers of opium. In the United States the annual 
wine production, before prohibition went into effect, 
was almost forty-two million gallons; some of these 
wines, mainly produced in California, began to be 
famous, competing with old European brands. 
Thomas Jefferson said that “ no nation is 
drunken where wine is cheap.” 
Monin in his work on alcoholism, which was pre- 
sented by the French Temperance Society, and who 
goes so far as to claim that alcohol gives us nothing 4 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
and takes all,3 nevertheless states that sixty-five to 
eighty-five grammes of alcohol a day, equal to one 
bottle of wine, is inoffensive,4 that wine has a nutri- 
tive value and emphasizes the fact that since wine 
became cheap in Algeria, the consumption of alcohol 
has decreased by three-fourths, thus greatly bene- 
fiting public health.5 
We may call wine Nature’s own yield of alcohol 
in diluted and palatable form. Unfortunately, it 
is human to try to improve on Nature, and thus 
primitive science at first, and later, complicated 
scientific experiments, produced sundry concoctions 
that were advertised in various ways and commer- 
cially exploited to the limit. 
People who had no grapes in their countries 
invented cider and beer, then science produced 
brandy, whiskey, the various cordials: anisette, bene- 
dictine, alash, chartreuse, Curasao, kuemmel, mara- 
schino, kirschwasser, creme de menthe, sloe gin, 
and vanilla liqueur. In some parts of the Orient 
the milk of cows, mares, asses, and other animals is 
used in making mild alcoholic drinks like koumys 
and kephir, while in some countries com brandy, 
prune brandy, arack, gin, pulque, mezcal, sake, and 
mm were manufactured. Even these did not seem 
to satisfy and it remained for higher civilization 
to produce absinthe which, containing wormwood 
*E. Monin. L’Alcodlisme, Paris, 1917, p. 5. 
4 l.c.y p. 73. 
•l.c., p. 155. ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES 
5 
and other essential oils, is more intoxicating, and 
therefore more dangerous. It has besides a direct 
action upon the higher nerve centres, and therefore 
mainly causes nervous symptoms, such as: excita- 
tion, giddiness, hallucinations, terrifying dreams, 
and convulsions. 
We may be sure that if science, in the same 
manner, forced people to use nicotine and caffeine 
in place of tobacco and coffee, there would soon 
follow a justifiable demand for the prohibition 
of both. 
Everyone must admit that all beverages contain- 
ing a large percentage of alcohol are not fit for 
ordinary consumption, and really should be under 
proper control. If quality is no object alcoholic 
BEVERAGES ARE EASILY MADE, is OUe point that must 
not be lost sight of, and can never be emphasized 
enough. We cannot enter into the details of manu- 
facture, and it is only too well known what a dif- 
ference there is between the raw and poorly made, 
and the finished product. The quantity of oily 
impurities and fusel oils depends entirely upon the 
skill of the distiller, upon his good will, conscience 
and pride. All these qualities are wanting in the 
average moonshiner, who is always in a hurry, has 
no reputation to sustain and only sees one end—the 
dollar, while his simple still cannot produce a 
proper beverage. 
Whiskey, America’s favorite drink, in addition 
to careful distilling, requires aging in wood for at 6 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
least four years in order that the slow oxidation of 
the alcohol and other volatile bodies may take place. 
Finally, one may consider to what manipulation 
the clandestinely made liquor is further exposed 
when passing through the hands of the so-called 
bootlegger, where its dilution with water is the least 
objectionable operation. CHAPTER II 
ONE SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
The physician is surely in the best position to 
judge the damage the abuse of alcohol is capable of. 
Going from home to home and from hospital to 
hospital he has only too frequent occasion to see 
and watch the deleterious effects upon individual 
drunkards and upon their eventual families. This 
side of alcohol has been given a great deal of 
publicity, and “ demon rum ” has been painted in 
the blackest colors until a great many people were 
convinced that it is nothing but a poison! Surely, 
many writers when condemning alcohol uncondition- 
ally, only too often rely upon the ignorance of a 
great many readers. 
We know that a poison is a substance that acts 
upon living tissue so as to impair its function or 
destroy its life. Alcohol is a poison. Ponchet 
determined by experiments that six grams to one 
kilogram of body weight is the single mortal dose.1 
Thus, a single dose of 850 to 900 grams of whiskey 
or brandy would kill a man. No one should drink a 
quart of whiskey in one gulp. 
In order to reinforce the accusations against 
alcohol, a great many more or or less ingenious 
animal experiments were made. The great physi- 
1 Triboulet, Matheu et Mignon. Traite de L’Alcodlism, Paris, 
1905, p. 52. 
7 8 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
ologist Howell simply states that “ the evil effects 
of excessive use of alcohol are so continually demon- 
strated upon men that there is no need for experi- 
mental investigations to establish this fact.”2 
We positively cannot consider experiments on 
animals, or place human beings on a plane with 
rabbits or pigeons. Flea-powder does not kill men. 
Less can we consider experiments where excessive 
doses were used, doses that would in human beings 
answer to single doses of over a pint of whiskey. 
Stockard, for instance, exposed guinea pigs to 
complete intoxication for six consecutive days, and 
then crossed them with normal females. Agnes 
Blum reports in 1921, at the Berlin Congress of 
Inheritance, how she injected into mice large doses 
of twenty per cent, ethyl alcohol in order to find 
out how alcohol influences propagation. It seems 
strange to read in the world’s foremost medical 
paper a solemn report of how polyneuritic pigeons 
could not be cured by beer before the alcohol 
was extracted.3 
One cannot be influenced by the ridiculous experi- 
ments proving that alcohol applied directly to proto- 
plasma, living cells and seeds, is deleterious, because 
the same is true of vinegar, distilled water, sunlight, 
and many other things. It would be just as logical 
to claim that milk is a poison because “ young plants 
* Howell. A Textbook of Physiology, 8th edition, Saunders Co., 
Philadelphia and London, 1922, pp. 928, 929. 
3 Journal A. M. A., Nov. 30, 1918, p. 1829. ONE SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
9 
supplied with milk are slower in growth than those 
supplied with water. ’ ’ 
When we come to consider the real facts it 
becomes evident that alcohol acts as a poison when 
used in overdoses. But in this sense, whatever 
“ goeth into the mouth of man ” is a poison also. 
Tea, coffee, beef-tea, beefsteak, sweets, starches, 
even water, all are poisons. 
As with all other poisons, we must distinguish 
between acute and chronic intoxication, in our case 
acute and chronic alcoholism. Alcohol acts most 
readily upon the upper and anterior part of the 
brain, therefore, the higher nervous centres are first 
affected. First, we have the stimulating, then the 
exciting, and finally, the blunting effect. The various 
stages of acute alcoholism are in the order named— 
animation, exhilaration, excitement, incoordination, 
stupor, sleep and eventually coma. 
The overindulging individual is most dangerous 
to other people, especially to his wife and children, 
when in the stage of excitement, because his powers 
of perception and volition are impaired, but he 
incurs the greatest danger to himself when he keeps 
on drinking until stupor and eventual coma ensue. 
Experience teaches that hot drinks act more 
quickly, sparkling beverages are rapidly absorbed, 
but also rapidly eliminated. Alcohol is more active 
when taken on an empty stomach. The tolerance for 
alcohol is greater in hot weather, hot climates, and 
in some pathologic conditions causing high fever, as 
pneumonia and typhoid. 10 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The animation and exhilaration following a 
moderate consumption of alcohol are caused by a 
dilatation of the cerebral blood vessels. This in- 
creased blood supply to the brain causes the first and 
mild degree of intoxication, while the higher degrees 
are being caused by a direct influence of the alcohol 
upon the brain cells. 
Drunkenness, the lack of mental coherence and 
all self-control induced by alcohol, may be occasional 
or habitual. We know that occasional drunkenness 
is frequently caused by bad example and bad com- 
pany. Information, instruction and education will 
in these cases invariably be helpful. Conditions are 
more serious when drunkenness is the outcome of a 
will impaired by insanity in some form. Then 
drunkenness is, like other vicious habits, the conse- 
quence and not the cause. In such cases alcohol 
only increases the impairment of the will. 
Prolonged and continuous over-indulgence in 
alcohol causes chronic alcoholism with all its 
associated troubles. Loss of appetite, the first char- 
acteristic symptom, heralds the impairment of the 
digestive organs, principally the liver. Later on, 
the kidneys and the organs of circulation suffer. 
Loss of appetite, lack of food, and frequent neg- 
lect of food, weaken the system. The individual 
becomes sleepless, and restless, and from this condi- 
tion delirium tremens is not very far. The onset 
may be sudden or gradual. The patient, and by 
this time he must be acknowledged a patient, begins 
to see and hear things, has all manner of hallucina- ONE SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
11 
tions, suspects everyone, dreads all kinds of things, 
and is most dangerous to himself and others. Such 
a condition lasts from four to seven days, and ends 
in exhaustion, stupor, sleep and recovery, or pos- 
sibly in death, generally due to heart failure. A 
frequent complication is pneumonia, which also may 
be a contributing cause. 
There is a popular belief that a person can sur- 
vive only a certain number of attacks of delirium 
tremens, but in reality the outcome depends entirely 
upon the constitution of the patient and the treat- 
ment given. 
Under all circumstances we must distinguish 
between a drunkard and a dipsomaniac. Dipsomania 
is a form of recurrent insanity manifesting itself by 
a paroxysmal craving for alcohol. The dipsomaniac 
seems perfectly normal between attacks, he has high 
ideals, is a total abstainer, frequently a most ardent 
prohibitionist. He knows that alcohol is his terrible 
enemy, the tyrant under whose lash he suffers most 
cruelly. No wonder he would like to destroy him, 
but alcohol is of easy access for the dipsomaniac. 
Occasional, and even habitual drunkards, are careful 
of what they drink until they are drunk, but the 
dipsomaniac will eagerly swallow any kind of 
alcohol, ethyl, methyl, or amyl, when the irresistible 
craving, caused with or without accidental contact 
with the stuff, seizes the poor victim. It is really 
remarkable that most dipsomaniacs come from tee- 
totaler families. 
With but very few exceptions a drunkard is an 12 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
abnormal to begin with. His progeny will be 
abnormal, drink or no drink. We neither can nor 
wish to question the harmful influence of drunken- 
ness in many directions, but we know, as Sullivan, 
the Superintendent Medical Officer of the Broad- 
moor Asylum, recently stated, that evidence of the 
Avar years offered “ quite convincing proof that for 
the most part alcoholism was a negligible factor in 
the causation of insanity.”4 
Sometimes people are driven to drunkenness by 
misfortune, disappointment, or sorrow. Usually 
they find out that troubles cannot be drowned, 
because they soon learn to swim. Sometimes the 
continued overindulgence causes mental, and moral 
decay and degradation, of a character to make the 
non-successful a permanent failure, although invari- 
ably there is something fundamentally wrong with 
the habitual drunkard. 
And when all kinds of statistics are compiled, it 
should not be overlooked that the defectives and 
the degenerates have a marked intolerance for 
alcohol. When we compare the dried up whiskey 
drinker Avith the bloated and flabby excessive beer 
drinker, we must come to the conclusion that it 
cannot be the alcohol alone that causes such dif- 
ferent conditions. 
The study of the glands of internal secretion may 
explain some phenomena. LeClerc,5 for instance, is 
sure that marked alcoholism must be an important 
4 British Medical Journal, August 5, 1922. 
6 Bulletin de VAcademie de Medicine, December 9, 1919. ONE SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
13 
factor in some cases of defective development of the 
thyroid causing cretinism in the offspring. 
Alcohol, however, is being accused of all kinds of 
things which it positively is not guilty of. Bishop6 
states that ‘ ‘ no one has yet been able to prove that 
alcohol, divorced from the usual unhygienic accom- 
paniments of its abuse, has ever led to organic heart 
disease.” “ That it results in arteriosclerosis has 
been disproved. ’ ’ 
Blair,7 the Chief of Bureau of Drug Control, 
Pennsylvania Department of Health, states very 
properly that “ man has a wonderful recuperative 
power, biologically, intellectually, and even spirit- 
ually; he is remarkably adaptive to environment, 
and harmful indulgence leaves less mark upon the 
race than moralists would have us believe.” 
If this were not so, where would the English, the 
French, the German, and the Slavs be by this time! 
Nevertheless, it is perfectly true that “ indulgence 
brings its own punishment.” 
The author wrote in 19108 “ Many are the cases 
of venereal infection due to drunkenness. Under 
the exhilarating influence of alcohol men and women 
become more enterprising, daring, less timid, and 
less prudent. Alcohol before paralyzing, stimulates, 
inflames the passions 
8 “ The Effects of Alcohol on the Heart and Blood Vessels.” 
Medical Record, August 13, 1921. 
7 Therapeutic Gazette, February 15, 1921. 
8Vecki. The Prevention of Sexual Diseases, Critic and Guide 
Co., New York, 1910. 14 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ Under the influence of alcohol, judgment and 
all ethical scruples, which often hold passion in 
check, are subdued 
“ Youth should always be warned against 
drunkenness ” 
Again and again, we are compelled to admire the 
old Latin proverb which claims that wine is milk for 
the old, poison for the young. 
Recently, Capps and Coleman gave a statistical 
report showing “ that if all their patients had been 
restricted to abstinence or to the light usage of 
alcohol, a large number who died would have been 
saved.” We may be sure that a large number of 
them would have been saved if they were given 
alcohol in proper doses at the proper time during the 
course of their sickness. We know only too well that 
alcoholics do not resist infectious diseases unless 
alcohol is not denied to them. There is no doubt 
that under prohibition rule and in the hands of prohi- 
bition physicians the chances of the alcohol user are 
poor in any kind of sickness. CHAPTER III 
THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
The great authority on dietetics, Sir William 
Roberts, expressed the attitude of most physicians 
having a large personal experience, when he said: 
‘ ‘ Alcohol is such an exceedingly bad boy that one is 
afraid of saying a word in his favor, but I am satis- 
fied that there is a good side, as well as a bad side to 
the alcohol question.”1 
Abraham Jacobi, elected president of the Amer- 
ican Medical Association at the age of eighty, and 
who was never afraid to tell the plain truth without 
the slightest attempt at apology, stated repeatedly, 
“ Physicians have always found alcohol a valuable, 
aye, an indispensable, remedy. There is hardly a 
human organism which is not favorably influenced; 
mainly, the aged, feeble, fat, and convalescent, feel 
its benefactions.” In his treatise on diphtheria 
he said: “ My life has been spent among the sick 
and the recovering and the dying. That has been 
so with diphtheria since 1858, when it appeared 
among us, mild and bad. Many thoroughly septic 
cases got well after having been ‘ given up.’ No 
amount of whiskey mil ever lead to intoxication 
when its effect is wanted to combat sepsis.” 
1 Sir James Critchton-Browne. What We Owe to Alcohol, N. Y., 
1919. 
15 16 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Jacobi was not blind to the damages of abuse and 
it was his opinion that “ the very fact that alcohol 
is recognized as a valuable dietetic resource and 
precious remedy in disease has been the cause of its 
being criticised. That should be so. It is natural 
that its frequent use may lead to abuse. That abuse 
is liable to become a danger in individuals and to 
communities. It is true, however, that its legitimate 
employment as a pharmaceutical remedy has not 
caused a visible damage, yet the facility of obtaining 
it for improper uses has caused untold adversaries.” 
In his introduction to Flint’s book on alcohol, 
Jacobi,2 pointedly expressed his opinion by saying: 
“ Disease is liable to lose its strongest ally when 
alcohol allays anxiety and worry.” “ My own 
experience is that in the worst cases of fatal sepsis, 
diphtheria, erysipelas, puerperal fever, alcohol in 
the largest doses furnishes the only salvation.” 
Another man of international reputation, who is 
never afraid to tell the truth as he sees it, is William 
J. Robinson. His opinion is all the more valuable 
because he always was an ardent supporter of 
temperance, and even prohibition, but never ex- 
pected that so little temperance would be shown in 
the application of prohibition. Robinson, in an 
article entitled “ Has Alcohol Any Value? ” says: 
“ Does alcohol possess any value as a thera- 
peutic agent or as a food, or is it altogether worth- 
less? Prohibition has not answered the question. 
Will it ever be answered? We don’t know, but the 
a Flint. The Whole Truth About Alcohol, N. Y., 1919. THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
17 
question is an important one and it will never be 
settled until it is settled right. And before it is 
settled right, it will give rise to many more discus- 
sions. The Section on Therapeutics and Pharma- 
cology of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, has 
recently had the subject up on its program and we 
reprint here an abstract of the discussion from the 
Therapeutic Gazette (September 15, 1920). The 
president of the Society, not being a practising 
physician, admitted that he could discuss the subject 
only from the standpoint of the pharmacologist, and 
he stated that he would leave the consideration of 
the therapeutics of alcohol to those who had practical 
experience. He was skeptical of the importance 
sometimes attributed to the minute traces of ether 
and other constituents of wine and distilled liquors, 
but he announced very positively, that in his opinion 
there was no doubt that alcohol has a value as a food, 
as well as a value as a drug, yielding energy to the 
body practically immediately after its ingestion and 
taking the place of an equivalent of starch or fat in 
this action. He did not go so far as to commit him- 
self to the view that alcohol is a desirable source of 
energy for the body of the healthy person, but in 
certain conditions there is no doubt of its advantage 
since it requires no digestion, is rapidly and com- 
pletely absorbed, and not susceptible, as are corbo- 
hydrates, to fermentation by yeasts and the action of 
bacteria. For these reasons it is able to supply to a 
system which is temporarily unable to obtain it from 
normal sources the minimum of energy necessary to 18 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
enable it to carry on, and tide over, a critical period. 
In connection with its employment as a so-called 
stimulant, Dale admits the correctness of pharma- 
cological research, which indicates that it is not a 
stimulant in the ordinary sense of the term, but that 
it does affect the circulation very materially, dilat- 
ing the superficial vessels and in many instances 
restores the circulatory equilibrium. ’ ’ 
We are interested to note that Dale emphasized 
the importance of differentiating between results 
which are obtained by the ingestion of alcohol on the 
part of normal animals or man, and its employment 
in those who are ill, and that its habitual use in treat- 
ing syncope and collapse is not due to a stimulant 
effect, but to a removal of severe central inhibition. 
This seems to him to be the explanation of its value, 
and in pneumonia he appears to think that abnormal 
reflex irritability of the respiratory centres impairs 
the oxygenation of the blood, and that alcohol, by 
restoring a quiet, deep, effective respiration, ought 
to be of use. 
On the other hand, Dale has no confidence in the 
view that alcohol is a sort of specific against infec- 
tion, particularly influenza. 
Discussing alcohol as a digestive stimulant, 
Hutchinson stated that there was a general agree- 
ment amongst clinicians that alcohol is undoubtedly 
a food of special value, particularly in diabetes and 
prolonged fevers; that it is a digestive stimulant 
often useful in cases of impaired appetite, gastric 
atony, and in convalescence; that it is also useful as THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
19 
a carminative in severe cases of flatulence; that its 
effect in dilating superficial blood vessels is of use in 
combating the effects of a chill, as well as in rigors; 
and that it has value in helping to reduce blood 
pressure during an attack of angina. The drug also 
is of some value because of its narcotic action in 
certain cases of insomnia, especially in old people 
and in delirium and restlessness of acute illness. 
Hutchison believes that its value in acute heart 
failure, as in syncope, depends upon its reflex stim- 
ulating effect. By quieting restlessness it is also 
indirectly of value to circulation. His view is also 
that there is some reason to believe that in septic 
infections, it increases vital resistance, a fact that 
the writer proved some years ago. 
A no less well-known authority than Hale White 
agreed practically with all the views so far ex- 
pressed. A glass of wine taken with a meal he 
thought was advantageous when a patient was weak 
and “ on edge.” It would not only quiet him and 
promote digestion, but do no harm, and he said he 
had never known an alcohol habit formed from 
taking it during convalescence. Using scientific 
terms, he cleverly summed up the views of many 
others when he stated that the chief therapeutic 
value of alcohol was as a pleasant depressant 
peculiarly efficacious in inhibiting peripheral sensa- 
tions, such as slight pain and discomfort, and by its 
slight cerebral depressant effect diminishing the 
trivial worries that bother the sick. Concluding his 
remark, he stated the well-known fact that brandy 20 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
was the best alcoholic preparation in diarrhoea, and 
that old brandy had superior therapeutic effects over 
that recently made. 
Leyton, discussing the value of alcohol in 
diabetes, showed from clinical experience that its 
addition to the diet greatly increased the energy of 
the patient, enabling him to take more exercise and 
to gain weight. 
Langdon Brown expressed a view in accord with 
Leyton, and also said that it was his belief that 
alcohol increased the secretion of the gastric juice, 
besides adding to the patient’s comfort when ill, 
by removing nervous irritation. He agreed with 
Wilcox’s view that the administration of oxygen gas 
passed over brandy contributed to the recovery of 
some cases of pneumonia. 
Esther Harding, in concluding the discussion, 
stated that in the case of children the uses of the 
drug fell under the same headings as in adults. In 
respiratory embarrassment, especially the rapid, 
shallow, inefficient breathing of broncho-pneumonia, 
alcohol quieted the respiration and so made it more 
efficient. It was true that the indication for the use 
of alcohol was commencing failure of the right heart, 
while the effect of the drug was not to flog the already 
overburdened heart, but to relieve it of some of its 
intolerable burden by slowing the respiration and 
improving the oxygenation of the blood. Alcohol 
was, in her opinion, the most valuable sedative and 
hypnotic drug we possessed for infants and children, 
as well as a food in cases where no ordinary diet THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
21 
could be taken. In milk intolerance of marasmic 
infants, she found alcohol would sometimes tide a 
patient over a few days till milk or whey tolerance 
could be reestablished, and in cases of persistent late 
vomiting which causes so many fatalities after 
severe diphtheria. She has kept a child alive on 
more than one occasion under such circumstances, on 
saline, brandy and sugar, given by the stomach, for 
three weeks. 
William Henry Porter, of New .York, who for 
more than forty years- studied the pros and cons of 
alcohol from their scientific and medical aspects, 
declares3 that he cannot accept a dictum from any- 
one that alcohol is not a stimulant, until the laws 
that control the universe are radically changed. 
“ Alcohol is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and 
oxygen, the same as is sugar and fat, but a much less 
complex molecule. Like these substances, it is oxi- 
dized in the body, yielding heat, stimulation, and 
energy, just as do sugars and fats. Hence, like these 
substances, alcohol is a stimulant. 
“ Alcohol has great power for good when the 
system is in a pathological condition or greatly 
debilitated from any cause and cannot secure the 
necessary heat and energy from the ordinary used 
food elements. 
“ Fortunately, because of its less complex mo- 
lecular structure, alcohol can be oxidized within 
'“Alcohol a Nerve Stimulator,” New York Medical Journal, 
April 3, 1920. 22 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
the body at times when sugar and fat cannot be 
so utilized— 
“ Hence the virtue of alcohol as a therapeutic 
stimulating agent in times of dire need. So far as I 
know, there is nothing that can take its place. 
“ My clinical observation proves conclusively 
that many lives have been saved by the proper use 
of alcohol at such times, when without this stimulus 
they inevitably would have been lost. ’ ’ 
Of course, as Porter clearly states, alcohol when 
improperly used is a depressant, but it has been posi- 
tively proved that alcohol can be used so as to secure 
a stimulating effect without developing any of the 
subsequent depressing action. 
Careful experiments which wrere made in Pro- 
fessor Ehrmann’s clinic in Neukoln, Germany, prove 
that half an hour after ingestion of a five per cent, 
alcohol solution on an empty stomach, pure gastric 
juices can be obtained. Chittenden, Mendel and 
Jackson also found that alcohol and alcoholic drinks 
had a marked effect on the empty stomach, increas- 
ing very greatly the flow op gastric juices and the 
content of acids and solids. Haneborg and M. 
Morichan-Beauchant both agree that alcohol could be 
of great service in certain affections of the stomach.4 
Hare stated in 1903 that alcohol in medicinal 
doses combatted infections by increasing the bac- 
teriolytic power of the blood. 11 As is well known, 
the benefits derived from the moderate use of alcohol 
manifest themselves mainly in the direction of 
* Le Monde Medical, 1922, p. 472. THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
23 
recuperation after great fatigue during conval- 
escence from debilitating diseases, or in the debility 
due to old age. ’ ’ 
Sajous,5 one of the greatest authorities on 
endocrinology, states that alcohol “ when employed 
in therapeutic doses as a stimulant, or used daily in 
moderation, promotes the functional activity of 
the adrenals and therefore general oxygenation 
and metabolism. ’ ’ 
The same holds good for the thyroid. Thera- 
peutic or non-toxic doses increase the defensive effi- 
ciency of the body against disease and infection. 
Sajous comes to the conclusion that “ alcohol, in 
keeping with other powerful tonics such as strych- 
nine, stimulates functional activity when adminis- 
tered in therapeutic or moderate doses, and that it 
becomes an active, destructive toxic when taken in 
large doses.” 
Charles Gf. Stockton,6 the eminent physician of 
Buffalo, N. Y., states that alcohol “as a remedy 
probably has been more widely employed than any 
other agent, and until recent times the great import- 
ance of this was unquestioned.” 
“ The arguments advanced against the thera- 
peutic use of alcohol might be raised as justly against 
the employment of any really powerful drug.” 
Stockton emphasizes the importance of alcohol 
as a substitute for food, when other food is not 
8 “ The Effects of Alcohol upon the Endocrines,” Medical Record, 
August 13, 1921. 
8 Medical Record, August 13, 1921. 24 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
tolerated, while ‘1 to omit it approaches criminal 
neglect.” 
“ In diabetes, when it is incumbent to lessen the 
caloric intake of carbohydrates or of fats, or of 
both, ’y nothing else will take the place of alcohol. 
“ In old age, when the organs have undergone 
degeneration from senility there can be no 
doubt of the very great importance of alcohol. 
Used judiciously and with the same care which is 
exercised in the prescription of other drugs, alcohol 
often enables an aged person to live on, not only with 
greater functional power, but with comparative 
satisfaction. Thus the patient is spared misery of 
mind and body. ’ ’ 
Alonzo Clark, whose wisdom in therapeutics no 
one can doubt, published in collaboration with his 
interne, Stephen Smith, a report of the great success 
in the treatment of typhus by the very liberal 
employment of brandy. 
The well-known surgeon of New York, Robert T. 
Morris, when considering the use of alcohol in 
surgery, says:7 “ There appears to be no place in 
which it holds a superior position to other agents 
which may be employed for the purpose for which 
alcohol is employed. Alcohol as a stimulant after 
surgical operation, for the purpose of overcoming 
the effects of shock and for stimulating flagging 
energies into activity, appears to have a place of con- 
siderable importance at times, although a good deal 
of judgment on the part of the surgeon is required 
’“Alcohol in Surgery,” Medical Record, N. Y., August 13, 1921. THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
25 
in order to avoid injurious action. Continuous 
VOMITING AFTER SURGICAL OPERATIONS is Sometimes 
quieted promptly by small doses of champagne, and 
patients who are making slow recovery from the 
shock of operation occasionally make prompt re- 
sponse for the better when alcohol is given in the 
form of, good wine or spirits.” 
Mellanby8 argues that “ if a food be defined as 
that which can supply useful energy to the body, then 
alcohol is a food.” 
Though one cannot accept Mellanby’s classing of 
alcohol as a narcotic, we must agree with his deduc- 
tions that even if we cease to regard alcohol as a 
stimulant, except in so far as it irritates the nerve- 
endings of such organs as the mouth, oesophagus, 
and stomach, we must concede that its effects, 
whether as a beverage or as a medicine, may be no 
less important, even though they are to be explained 
by its narcotic action on the central nervous system. 
Mellanby comes to the conclusion that “ alcohol 
can supply a large amount of energy to the body, 
both in health and disease,” when used as a food 
under proper precautions, frequently in small doses, 
seven to ten cc. every hour. This amount can be 
oxidized in that time, and diluted to about five per 
cent, strength. 
While Mellanby thinks after exposure and star- 
vation alcohol alone would not be sufficient, it surely 
8 “ The Action of Alcohol on the Human Economy,” British 
Medical Journal, August 5, 1922. 26 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
is useful when protein and shelter can be supplied 
immediately after. 
Bishop,0 considering the effect of alcohol on the 
heart and blood vessels, states that ‘ ‘ the great funda- 
mental cause of premature arteriosclerosis in the 
overworked business man is undoubtedly founded on 
the reflex action of worry upon metabolism, and it is 
more than likely that the moderate use of alcohol at 
the proper time of the day and in the proper 
quantity, removing as it does this nervous and mental 
tension and abolishing worry for the time being, 
may be indeed a preventive of arteriosclerosis. * ’ 
Engelen10 found alcohol. to be effective' in 
arhythmia due to non-compensated mitral insuffi- 
ciency, and comes to the conclusion that alcohol may 
correct abnormal irritation of the heart. 
George B. Wallace11 knows that there can be no 
doubt but that alcohol relieves the most dreadful 
ATTACKS OF ANGINA PECTORIS. 
Von Noorden, who certainly needs no introduc- 
tion in the scientific world, orders that in beginning 
diabetic coma no food should be given except 150 to 
200 gm. of brandy in a day.12 
Fuller13 states that the immediate effect of alco- 
hol is to reduce both hyperglycemia and glycosuria 
in most cases of mild or moderate diabetes. The 
9l.c. 
10 Medizinische Klinik. December 4, 1921. 
11 Medical Record, N. Y., January, 1922. 
12 Medizinische Klinik. January 14, 1923. 
13 Journal of Metabolic Research, Morristown, N. J, May, 1922. THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
27 
effect is most pronounced when the alcohol is substi- 
tuted for the caloric equivalent of fat, but is also 
frequently manifest when the alcohol is given as an 
addition to the previous diet. These effects are 
usually lacking in diabetic cases of great severity. 
It is now generally acknowledged that in diabetes, 
alcohol is the most efficient protein sparer.14 
Liebig, one* of the greatest chemists the world has 
ever known, more than half a century ago pro- 
nounced alcohol a food. Many chemists tried to 
contradict him, all kinds of experiments were made, 
but at present it is the consensus of opinions of 
chemists and experienced physicians alike, that 
ALCOHOL IS A FOOD OF SOME VALUE. 
Since 1888, and long before anyone dreamed that 
drastic anti-alcohol laws would be passed anywhere, 
the author was teaching through various publica- 
tions that certain kinds of red wines, like the 
California Burgundy type, French Burgundies, and 
Dalmatian Opolo in small quantities have an aphro- 
disiac effect, that good and real beer is extremely 
useful in some cases of very distressing sexual short- 
comings of men, and that alcoholic beverages are 
positively effective in frigidity of women. 
There was always added the warning that any 
beneficent action could be expected to continue only 
so long as the consumed quantity acted as a stim- 
ulant, and that beyond this a depressing, and event- 
ually paralyzing, influence is invariably exerted, 
14 Journal A. M. A., June 7, 1919, p. 1681. 28 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
while inherent and other individual differences must 
be taken into consideration. 
The final word in judging the value of alcohol 
must be given to the clinician, the physician who is 
in the best position to judge from close observation 
and long experience of what use it is to the sick. 
We cannot but agree with the clinician who said: 
“ I do not care to classify alcohol anywhere. I do 
not contest observations and experiments on either 
healthy or diseased men and on animals One of 
the most profitable laboratories, however, is the 
hospital and the private bedside. And there we find 
that alcohol, when properly used, is a food. It is 
easier to assimilate than any other food and is 
therefore extremely valuable in gaining time in 
exhausting diseases. Alcohol is a stimulant; there 
can be no doubt of its excellent and irreplaceable 
action in several acute diseases of children and in 
critical stages of many diseases of adults, mainly 
pneumonia and influenza, in stages of collapse, in 
typhoid fever, cholera, etc., etc. In chronic diar- 
rhoeas, malaga, port and burgundy wines are at 
times life-saving agents, for which there is no satis- 
factory substitute. There can also be no doubt that 
alcohol has a powerful action as a preventive 
in conditions of exhaustion, chilling, and star- 
vation, that it is a valuable aid in digestion, a 
general tonic in old age, and in certain forms a help 
against insomnia.” 
Fatigue, excitement, anger, and anxiety may im- THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
29 
pair the appetite in spite of the need for food, while 
a drink of alcohol in a pleasant form will counteract 
many baneful influences by creating psychic relax- 
ation. No physician of any experience can deny the 
value of alcohol in cases of depressive psychoses and 
psychasthenias. Even laymen know the value of 
alcohol as a preventive of colds after, but not 
before exposure. 
Alcohol in moderate doses dilates the blood 
vessels, especially the superficial ones, and increases 
the amplitude of cardiac action; therefore, we know 
it to be valuable in diseases of the circulatory 
apparatus. Again we must emphasize that dosage 
and frequency of intake must be determined by the 
experienced physician. In some cases one large dose 
may be indicated; in others frequent and small ones. 
Jacobi thought that no emperor and no president 
knew more about the management of Jacobi’s 
patients than Jacobi himself, but all this is changed 
since physicians have to obey the frequently chang- 
ing rulings of the bosses of prohibition, while even 
incurables are denied a few moments of euphoria 
before they pass into the Great Unknown. 
The conditions in which alcohol may be of use are 
so numerous as to allow for the mention of only 
a few. 
For instance—claret is a preventive of scurvy. 
The author has seen a great deal of its infallible 
action while physician to a state prison. 
Beer is a galactogogue. 30 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Dr. Beverly Robinson, in answering a prize ques- 
tion, asserts that in insomnia and in many other 
nervous ailments, acute or chronic, alcohol in the 
form of good old brandy or whiskey, given moder- 
ately and diluted, at meals, or at bedtime, or both, is 
decidedly curative with many patients. 
In pulmonary affections of the gravest sort, acute 
or chronic, good brandy or whiskey are at times 
simply without a peer in rapid curative effects. The 
writer states that he has saved not a few patients at 
the point of death in pneumonia by giving frequently 
repeated and sometimes large doses of these stim- 
ulants, when without them death would have surely 
and rapidly occurred. 
In advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, it is posi- 
tively criminal in many instances, not to give an 
ounce or two of diluted whiskey, to the sufferer three 
or four times in twenty-four hours; this treatment 
to be continued for many months. 
In infectious diseases, in septicemic affections, 
good whiskey or brandy is often indispensable in 
treatment. 
For local application in many surgical injuries or 
local infections, there is no remedy equal to alcohol.15 
McCollum and Simmonds have found that the 
water soluble vitamin B can be extracted from divers 
plant and animal sources by the use of alcohol.16 
Alcohol surely cannot be antagonistic in the utiliza- 
tion of vitamines in the body. And in the prepa- 
“ Medical Critic and Guide, September, 1919. 
16 Journal A. M. A., April 6, 1918. THE OTHER SIDE OF ALCOHOL 
31 
ration of the new remedy against diabetes, insulin, 
precipitation and other manipulations with alcohol 
play a most important part. 
As a curio, we may mention that following a club 
banquet in Canton, Ohio, there was an epidemic of 
botulism due to the consumption of some ripe 
olives.17 Seventeen persons ate or tasted of the 
olives; fourteen became definitely ill, seven cases 
ended fatally; three showed no definite symptoms. 
Those who ate the most olives died first, while among 
those who recovered, the severity of illness bore a 
close relation to the number eaten; three who 
developed no symptoms ate the least of all. Two 
diners, who took a relatively large amount and 
recovered, had partaken freely of alcohol during 
the evening. Evidently, the exceedingly poisonous 
botulinus does not like alcohol as subsequent experi- 
ence showed conclusively. 
Finally, we may state with Blair18 that we need 
some rational standardized basis for the therapeutic 
usage of alcohol in place of bureaucratic rulings. 
The medical profession may be trusted, though there 
are perhaps abuses by black sheep. It is, however, 
evident that even such exceptional abuses must stop 
as soon as proper governmental handling of alco- 
holic liquids makes the profits impossible. 
With Sir Cricbton-Browne19 we are sure that 
17 Journal A. M. A., January 10, 1920. 
18 l.c. 
19 l.c. 32 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
alcohol11 will remain with us mainly as an. agreeable 
stimulant, a social cement, and an invaluable remedy 
in states of ill health and disease. ’ ’ 
The author does not hesitate to state that a suc- 
cessful practising of medicine would be seriously 
hampered if alcohol in the shape of various tinctures, 
claret, beer, champagne, and brandy were stricken 
from the list of obtainable remedies. CHAPTER IV 
PROHIBITION AND OUR CONSTITUTION 
Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Colum- 
bia University, N. Y., advises that: “ It would not be 
unbecoming for us to reread at intervals the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and to reflect seriously upon 
its words.”1 
No doubt, Butler was thinking of the “ self- 
evident truth ’ ’ that all men ‘ ‘ are endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 
The father of our country, George Washington, 
estimated justly “ that love of power and proneness 
to abuse it which predominates in the human 
heart ”2 though it surely was not in his own 
golden heart. 
The study of the Declaration of Independence, of 
our Constitution, and of Washington’s wonderful 
Farewell Address, convinced the author that it would 
seem evident and natural that we have no right to 
interfere with a person who does not interfere 
with us. 
Now we are told that after the Supreme Court of 
the United States has passed upon the constitution- 
ality of the Prohibition Amendment, and even the 
Volstead Act, that settles all questions. Evidently it 
1 San Francisco Chronicle. February 4, 1923. 
2 Farewell Address. 
33 34 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
does. But that does not answer questions that 
arise always anew when the effects of these new 
departures from old customs appear in most appall- 
ing, though rather expected forms, and especially 
does not satisfactorily answer the many questions 
that arise when we note the terrible botch made by 
the modus operandi in many parts of the country. 
In all respect to due authority, we must acknowl- 
edge that courts and their decisions are difficult 
to understand, especially to common people with 
common sense. Small wonder that questions arise 
in one’s mind, when we consider that decisions are 
not always unanimous, that often enough a dissent- 
ing opinion sounds more convincing than the real 
decision, and that sometimes judges change their 
opinions over night. 
For example, Taft, one of the most sympathetic 
figures of public life, vetoed the Webb-Kenyon Bill 
forbidding consignment of liquor from any state to 
an individual residing in a prohibition state, on the 
ground that it was unconstitutional and would not be 
supported by the courts. When the Bill was passed 
again in January, 1917, by the necessary veto-over- 
riding majority, the United States Supreme Court 
sustained it, by a seven-to-two vote. Still the big 
corporation lawyers, under the leadership of Eliliu 
Root, did not see the handwriting on the wall, and 
claimed that the Prohibition Amendment and the 
Volstead Act would never pass the Supreme Court. 
George Washington, with the true modesty of a 
truly great man, thought it probable that he may PROHIBITION AND OUR CONSTITUTION 
35 
have committed many errors, and wondered if it 
would be too daring to even think that any expedient 
which is able or even bound to react against indi- 
vidualism and personal liberty is doomed to failure 
and bound to aggravate existing evils. 
A San Francisco physician of national reputa- 
tion, said to the author that the Volstead Act 
deprives the government of the affections of the 
intellectuals and has considerably impaired his own 
civic pride. 
Samuel Gompers, President of the American 
Federation of Labor, in discussing the probable 
relation of prohibition to unrest among the working- 
men in some parts of the country, expressed the 
belief that the foisting of the Volstead Law on the 
United States was a blunder charged with danger 
and loaded with disastrous probabilities. He said: 
“ By adopting prohibition we have chanced the 
wrecking of the social and economic fabric of the 
nation. We have invaded the habits of the working- 
man, and this is what has happened: We have upset 
that man; unsettled him. Uprooting one habit 
uproots another.” 
Gompers asserted the man who formerly was 
satisfied to go home at night to converse and read has 
become discontented and restive. He now goes into 
the streets to meet other men, who are restless and 
unsettled like himself. He said: “ They rub together 
their mutual grievances, arid there are sparks and 
sometimes fire. I believe Bolshevism in Russia began 
in prohibition.’’ 36 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The Universal Service reports3 from St. Louis 
that Judge John C. Pollock, of Topeka, declared that 
“ the States should wake up, otherwise they will 
have everything taken away from them.” Evidently 
this Judge knows that Thomas Jefferson said in 
1801 “ When we consider that this government is 
charged with the external and mutual relations only 
of these States; that the States themselves have 
principal care of our persons, our property, and our 
reputation, constituting the great field of human 
concerns; we may well doubt whether our organiza- 
tion is not too complicated, too expensive, whether 
offices and officers have not been multiplied unneces- 
sarily and sometimes injuriously to the service they 
were meant to promote. ’ ’ 
No wonder Butler thinks that Thomas Jefferson 
would rise in his grave if he could know what is now 
going on in the United States.4 
'November 6, 1919. 
* l.c. CHAPTER V 
LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION 
It was no less a person than Cardinal Gibbons 
who pronounced state-wide prohibition ‘ ‘ a denial of 
self-government, an infringement upon personal 
liberty. ’ * 
Governor Smith of New York said in a tele- 
gram “ Do not forget the time-honored Democratic 
doctrine that the government is most effective which 
governs the least. This precept of Democratic faith 
in the recent past has been grievously and wilfully 
sinned against when, in the name of democracy, 
there was imposed upon 100,000,000 free people, 
without asking their direct consent, a restriction to 
their personal liberty, which Prussia in her palmiest 
days never dreamed of.”1 
The Constitution of the United States says: 
“ The right of the people to be secure in their 
persons, houses, papers, and effects against UN- 
REASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES shall not be 
violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon prob- 
able cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and 
particularly describing the place to be searched and 
the persons or things to be seized.” In face of such 
beautiful and easily understandable words can any- 
one explain how the citizen’s simple mind can grasp 
Judge Van Fleet’s decision that the federal prohi- 
18m Francisco Examiner, February 6, 1920. 
37 38 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
bition agents were justified in searching an auto- 
mobile for liquor. 
He held that a suspicious expression on the face 
of a man driving a car might be sufficient to warrant 
its search, and further that a machine traveling with 
undue speed might also warrant prohibition agents 
in a search for liquor.2 
How can anyone prove that there was no sus- 
picious EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE? 
Then we read that motorists are compelled to act 
to learn the legal status on the road. “ Complaints 
are coming to us to-day from all sides. And this 
association is growing rapidly. That raid last night 
has aroused the people, the very best element of the 
people of this community, to the outrages which are 
being committed in the efforts of these enforcement 
officers.,, Definite action will come out of that 
raid, of a character to unite the solid elements of 
the community.3 
More examples: “ A night of spectacular prohi- 
bition raiding reached its climax early yesterday 
with the arrest of five persons at La Campana Hotel 
and Cafe, 440 Broadway, where women became hys- 
terical and fainted when their names were taken as 
witnesses, after a sensational battle in which black- 
jacks and heavy china were used freely. 
“ The door was broken open by the raiders 
headed by Wheeler, and as the agents came into the 
restaurant, which was packed by dancers and diners, 
1 San Francisco Examiner, May 22, 1923. 
* San Francisco Chronicle, December 4, 1922. LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION 
39 
a woman seated at the second table from the entrance 
made some jesting remark. One of the dry agents 
stepped to her and slapped her. The gentleman 
seated at this table with three ladies arose and 
resented the blow by striking the officer, and he hit 
him pretty hard.”4 
“ Enter the booze-sniffer brigade on the Uni- 
versity of California campus. 
“ A student, between dances, is approached by 
a total stranger who displays marked affection to 
get a close-up sniff. If the evidences of intoxicants 
are on the suspect’s breath, his identity is obtained. 
A summons before the Student Affairs Committee 
is the outgrowth, with summary action of expulsion 
should the sniffer’s testimony be upheld.”5 
Police Captain Morgan Collins, of Chicago, 
issued an order on December 30, 1919, stationing 
policemen in all hotels and cafes on New Year’s Eve 
to greet each patron with the request that he stand 
and deliver any liquor he may have. 
The State Search and Seizure Law gives the 
police that right—and the law was recently upheld 
by the Supreme Court.6 
The appetite comes with the eating, and we 
may expect further activities of the advocates for 
the Eleventh Commandment: “ thou shalt not 
commit enjoyment.” We read already the dictum 
of the Anti-Tobacco League that: “ He who smokes 
4 San Francisco Chronicle, December 4, 1922. 
* San Francisco Examiner, April 12, 1922. 
* San Francisco Examiner, December 31, 1919. 40 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
perishes.”7 and notice that at Salt Lake City there 
was a meeting of prominent citizens, at which the 
Freeman’s League of Utah was organized for the 
purpose of repealing all so-called Utah blue laws.8 
Though not popular at the present time to pro- 
test against the roughriding of so many so-called 
enforcement officers, there are still some people who 
have the courage to do so. 
“We can fritter away the constitutional 
RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE LITTLE BY LITTLE, Until finally 
citizens will not be safe in their homes.” said Police 
Judge Daniel S. O’Brien yesterday in dismissing the 
case of Pierce Powers, arrested on a charge of pos- 
session of liquor in violation of the Wright Law. 
The Judge said he was “ jealous of the rights of 
citizens in their homes from seizure and search.”9 
Sajous states that “ we showed an attitude of 
mind which is bidding fair to annul and degrade for 
the future any effort in favor of true temperance, 
the only line of conduct compatible with the rights 
and best interests of a free people.” By this he 
means temperance in all things, just as much in 
carrying out prohibitive laws as in the use of 
alcohol itself. 
President Butler of Columbia University surely 
knew what he was talking about, and those with a 
knowledge of the world will bear him out, when he 
said: “ It is not so many years ago that America 
7 Han Francisco Chronicle, November II, 1919. 
8 Han Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 1923. 
" Han Francisco Examiner, March 28, 1923. LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION 
41 
used to laugh at the Prussian bureaucracy and to 
point with scorn at the ‘ verboten ’ signs that were 
to be seen on every hand in Prussia. Our bureau- 
cracy is quite as bad as that of Prussia ever was, 
iwithout being so efficient, and now we have a dozen 
* verboten ’ signs in the United States to every one 
that Prussia can show.” Further: “ It needs no 
argument to prove that we are tending to lose sight 
of fundamental principles and to try all over again, 
although in new forms, the world-old experiment 
of tyranny and despotism and interference with 
personal life and private conduct.” 
Butler emphasizes the fact that men and women 
of intelligence and moral sensitiveness dissent 
entirely from the grounds upon which the case for 
the Eighteenth Amendment was rested, and regard 
its provisions and those of the statutes based upon 
it as a forcible, immoral and tryannical invasion of 
their private life and personal conduct.10 
California State Senator W. F. Gates states that 
‘ ‘ The people are burdened now with so many laws 
that they don’t know where to turn, and, as a result, 
many of them are never obeyed.”11 
The 1922 San Francisco Grand Jury finding that 
“ the strict and relentless Volstead Act has been 
most detrimental, oppressive and undemocratic in 
countless ways ” resolved, 11 as its last official act, 
done in the spirit of true Americanism and with the 
thought of bettering most deplorable conditions now 
10 l.c. 
11 San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, 1923. 42 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
existing, urge to the utmost that our delegation 
from California to Congress have the Volstead 
Act amended ” 
Tumulty proves conclusively that President 
Wilson was neutral on Prohibition, but opposed to 
the Volstead Law and says: “While he was an 
ardent advocate of temperance, he felt that Congress 
in enforcing the amendment by the passage of the 
Volstead Act, so extreme and unreasonable in char- 
acter, had gone a long way toward alienating the 
support of every temperance-loving citizen in the 
country, and that certain of its provisions had struck 
at the foundation of our government by its arbitrary 
interference with personal liberty and freedom.”12 
Further: “ Time and time again, when we dis- 
cussed the Volstead Enforcement Act, he would say: 
‘ THE WRONG WAY OF DOING THE RIGHT THING.* You 
cannot regulate the morals and habits of a great 
cosmopolitan people by placing unreasonable restric- 
tions upon their liberty and freedom. All such 
attempts can only end in failure and disappointment. 
In the last analysis, in these matters that seek to 
regulate personal habits and customs, public opinion 
is the great regulator.”13 
Governor Stephens, of California, who was 
defeated at the 1922 election, took what he called 
“ a poll of citizens,” while standing by the pulpit at 
A CHURCH FEDERATION MEETING IN CELEBRATION OF 
the first anniversary of the ratification of the 
12 San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 1922. 
33 San Francisco Chronicle, January 2, 1922. LIBERTY AND PROHIBITION 
43 
eighteenth amendment. He asked all who favored 
the reenactment of the Harris Bill (a very drastic 
prohibition bill) to stand. Of course, the audience 
rose as one. “ Thank you,” said the Governor. 
“ Now, if the Harris Bill should come to my desk 
for signature, I will know how so many of my fellow 
citizens stand on the matter of its adoption.”14 
This is a fair example of how those who do not 
wish to see get their information about public 
opinion. 
There was another expression of public oinnion 
in New York on an occasion when an effort was made 
to select a grand jury for the extraordinary term of 
the Supreme Court to hear cases of violation of the 
State Enforcement Law. Talesmen vigorously de- 
nounced the law and the methods of its enforcement 
when questioned by Justice Borst, until the court- 
room resembled an indignation meeting. 
Instead of answering the stereotyped questions, 
the talesmen attacked the police methods of search- 
ing pedestrians and automobiles and even illegally 
entering and searching houses. Although a few 
qualified to serve, it was necessary to summon an 
additional panel in the hope of getting the required 
twenty-three jurors. 1 
Governor Stephens never thought of asking for a 
vote of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce 
nor the Board of Supervisors. 
The average citizen, no matter what he may think 
of alcoholic beverages and prohibition, positively 
u Special Cable to the Herald. 44 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
cannot believe that the actions of the enforcers of the 
Volstead Law mean liberty or freedom. A most sub- 
stantial citizen explained the basis for the almost 
universal breaking of the Volstead Law by saying: 
“ I do not care what it does or does not do for 
humanity itself, but as soon as it tries to make a 
slave of me I shall resist. If anyone has the cruelty 
and the power to till the jails with people who do not 
belong in jail, they may make me a prisoner, they 
may even kill me, but a slave I shall never be. ’ ’ 
While this individual takes it somewhat tragi- 
cally, the enormous majority, including many of the 
most ardent advocates and enforcers of Prohibition, 
consider it a great joke to break the Volstead Law. 
The real tragedy lies in the creation of this most 
dangerous precedent, and Charles Hanson Towne is 
not mistaken when he says15 ‘ ‘ I think it is a far more 
serious matter to have practically all of us law- 
breakers than to have one-half of one per cent, of 
us drunkards.” 
15 Nonsensorship, N. Y. and London, 1922, p. 142. CHAPTER VI 
WHAT HAS PROHIBITION SO FAR 
ACCOMPLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES? 
A number of prophets preaching prohibition pre- 
dicted that the next generation will not know alco- 
hol and therefore will be free from the craving for 
it. How that prophecy is materializing we can judge 
when we examine a few news items. For instance, 
The San Francisco Examiner, January 19,1923, said 
that there has been “ an alarming increase in 
intemperance ” during the past year, according to 
the annual report of the California Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to* Children, which was made 
public yesterday by Secretary M. J. White.” 
The same paper published July 1, 1922, a report 
from Sacramento : “ Coming as the climax to sensa- 
tional disclosures relative to the sale of liquor to 
California high school students, Will C. Wood, State 
Superintendent, of Public Instruction, to-day called 
upon all state and local school authorities to act as 
law enforcement bodies in breaking up the boot- 
legging rings catering to children of school age. 
“ The State Superintendent prefaced his demand 
for prosecution of the bootleggers by stating that 
numerous reports have come to his attention during 
the past few weeks, in which complaints were made 
that boys had entered their classes in a semi-intoxi- 
cated condition after drinking cheap liquor pro- 
45 46 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
vided by pool-hall proprietors and the managers of 
roadhouses. 
“ Wood declared that one arrest had already 
been made in connection with the campaign to break 
up the traffic where it affects school children. 
‘ ‘ This prosecution, he stated, was brought to the 
attention of the local school authorities in Arroyo 
Grande, San Luis Obispo County, where three 
students appeared in the high school class rooms 
intoxicated. Confessions showing where the liquor 
was bought were obtained from the students, and the 
local school teachers secured the arrest of the 
guilty person. 
“ Wood complimented H. A. Sawyer, a. teacher in 
the Arroyo Grande High School, for his success in 
securing the arrest of the alleged bootlegger. The 
students of the Arroyo Grande School are said to 
have obtained bootleg at Pismo, paying as high as 
eight dollars for half a pint of ‘ jackass ’ brandy. 
“ Superintendent Wood declared he had received 
reports of the sale of liquor to school children from 
many sections of the state.” 
The same paper published on November 28,1922, 
a telegram from Washington, November 27th, by 
Universal Service. “ Flappers of the exaggerated 
type, bootleggers and unrestricted liberty have com- 
bined to bring a minority of the midshipmen at the 
Naval Academy into inexcusable disgrace, Secretary 
of the Navy Denby declared to-day. 
“ Returning from the Army-Navy football game 
at Philadelphia, where he was an eye witness to what WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
47 
lie termed a ‘ drunken orgy,’ he immediately ap- 
pointed a special board of inquiry with orders to 
place full responsibility and make the proper disci- 
plinary recommendations. 
“ About the specific incidents, Secretary Denby 
was not inclined to go into details. He said that he 
did not have the names of the offenders and would 
have to content himself with placing the responsi- 
bility upon the officers in charge of the midshipmen, 
who permitted them to get beyond control. 
‘ ‘ Secretary Denby said that at the game he saw 
nothing improper, but at the Navy ball, given that 
night, many of the middies were disgracefully drunk. 
They were dancing in an offensive manner; the 
women were smoking cigarettes, it is charged. 
“ The Secretary wished to remonstrate, he de- 
clared, but could find no proper officer in charge of 
the students to whom he could issue an order. At 
one time a midshipman tendered his flask to the 
Secretary and asked him to ‘ imbibe,’ it is reported. 
“ Secretary of War Weeks was a guest at the 
same hotel and complained to the management about 
the disorder, saying that it was impossible for him 
to rest on account of the overflow parties and the 
noise from the ballroom.” 
The same paper had the following news tele- 
graphed from Detroit, February 10,1923: “ Pitiless 
publicity will be resorted to by Sheriff George A. 
Walters to stamp out wild drinking parties staged 
by boys and girls of high school age at roadhouses 
near Detroit. 48 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ Fatherly advice having met with a toss of a 
pretty bobbed head, the sheriff announces that all 
persons caught in liquor raids will be subpoenaed to 
testify against proprietors of such places, where, he 
charges, shocking conditions exist. 
‘ ‘ Parents of ‘ youngsters ’ will also be notified of 
the children’s actions, the sheriff asserts. 
“ 1 One of the worst features of the roadhouse is 
that the young people flock there as much, if not 
more, than older people,’ says the sheriff. ‘ We are 
going to take the names of everyone found in the 
place we raid and where the persons seem young we 
are going to notify their parents. 
“ ‘ I am impressed by the vouthfulness of the 
crowds we find at these places,’ says Walters. ‘ At 
one roadhouse boys and girls of high school 
and college age, perhaps two hundred of them, sat 
at tables. 
“ ‘ Liquor was being poured with no more at- 
tempt at privacy than if there was, no law against it. 
“ 1 Young girls, startled by the raid, rose un- 
steadily to their feet, staggering around, plainly 
intoxicated. 
“ ‘ One of the worst features of the whole thing is 
the way these “ kids ” increase the traffic accident 
toll. These boys drive their cars home while drunk 
and commit all sorts of reckless acts in that condi- 
tion. It is a thing that must stop.’ ” 
The same paper published in its April 15, 1923 
issue a report from Sacramento characterizing 
* booze sheiks 9 as a new and serious menace to WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
49 
morality among boys and girls of high school age in 
the larger communities of California. “ Police Chief 
Bernard McShane has allotted a special squad of 
officers to the Sacramento Wright Act enforcement 
detail and charged them with the task of stamping 
out distribution of contraband liquors among young 
girls at high school dances and social functions. 
‘ ‘ Within the last week, Chief McShane’s war on 
the ‘ booze sheik ’ has resulted in a police visit to the 
Puritan Club, a high school girls’ dancing society; 
in raids on two other social clubs and in the arrest of 
several young men alleged to have had quantities of 
liquor in their possession. 
“ The ‘ booze sheik ’ is a product of the last two 
years, during which, according to the police, a 
tendency toward a certain pride in possession of 
illicit liquor has developed not infrequently among 
high school boys and college undergraduates. 
“ An ability to secure contraband wine and 
brandy, despite the prohibition law, is said to have 
become a mark of distinction among a limited class 
of students. These young men ply their companions 
of both sexes with liquor, the police assert, more to 
enhance their unique popularity than for any more 
serious purpose. 
“ The ‘ booze sheik ’ accordingly, accepting the 
police definition, is a vain youth of undeveloped 
mentality who frequents dances and other social 
functions, bearing with him a silver flask of liquor 
from which he gives to other youths lavishly with 50 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
a debonair air of comradeship, but with menac- 
ing possibilities. 
“ Police investigation discloses that young girls, 
less than seventeen years old, in this city are obtain- 
ing liquor through this medium, and prompt eradi- 
cation of the ‘ booze sheik ’ has been ordered by 
Chief McShane. ’ ’ 
He says: “ ‘ Investigation substantiates the 
numerous complaints I have received that young 
girls are being supplied with liquor at dances and 
other social affairs in Sacramento. This is a most 
serious situation when one considers what might 
result from such practices. 
“ * This condition must be stamped out and I 
have taken adequate steps to bring about its im- 
mediate eradication. ’ ” 
The same paper published on January 23, 1923, 
a report from Fresno. “ Following the arrest of a 
pupil of the Fresno Technical High. School for 
having liquor in his possession, and the suspension 
of five others for being under the influence of liquor 
at a rehearsal of a school play at the Fresno High 
School last Wednesday, Principal Delbert Bronson 
is conducting an investigation, whose object is the 
determined suppression of drinking among students. 
“ Cooperating with Bronson are District At- 
torney Love joy and the staff of the sheriff’s office. 
‘ ‘ The students against whom action already has 
been taken are sons of wealthy parents.” The 
report giving the name of a boy of sixteen says that 
he was arrested several days before after a bottle of WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
51 
liquor had been found in his desk at the Technical 
Training School by Principal P. H. Sutton. 
Almost simultaneously Principal Bronson of the 
High School suspended the five other students. 
Their names have been withheld. 
The San Francisco Chronicle published May 13, 
1923, a telegram from Gambier, Ohio: “ President 
Walter Pierce of Kenyon College and nine students 
were taken to police court in a patrol wagon to-day, 
after a raid by State prohibition agents on the 
college’s annual ‘ spring prom.’ 
“ Pierce was not placed under arrest. He was 
ordered to ‘ come along,’ agents said, when he 
attempted to interfere with the raid. The students, 
all men, were charged with violating the dry law. 
“ Eight of the students entered pleas of guilty 
and paid fines of one hundred dollars each.” 
During 1921 and 1922 the author investigated 
conditions in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver 
and Los Angeles, and found the gilded youth every- 
where under the influence of an almost uncanny 
craving, not so much for liquor, but for the breaking 
of the Volstead Law. Young boys and girls con- 
sider it smart to show their influence and ability to 
procure intoxicating beverages. Exceedingly high 
prices add lustre to the lure, and inexperience to 
judge the quality of what they drink very quickly 
helps in the forming erf a taste for vile stuff, while 
the immediate effects of even moderate indulgence 
are disgusting. 52 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The owner of one of San Francisco’s most 
famous restaurants told the author that before the 
Volstead Act wrent into force, he never had any 
trouble at the numerous fraternity banquets held at 
his place; while he is now frequently compelled to 
eject crowds even before serving them with the 
dessert. No matter how strict his rules may be, all 
kinds of strong alcoholic drinks come forth from 
various pockets, and surreptitious drinking begins, 
with the result that intolerable, noisy conduct soon 
follows. Evidently, the fraternity boys agree with 
Maeterlinck when he sighed: “ What is a function? 
A speech and a pitcher of water. ’n 
In Europe the people have exaggerated ideas 
about the effects of prohibition. A characteristic 
example may be cited in a speech delivered by Lieu- 
tenant Colonel Cuthbert James, M. P., at a meeting 
held at the official residence of London’s Lord 
Mayor. He said: * * Young people who before prohi- 
bition did not tend to alcoholic excess, now drink 
cocktails out of soup plates and are doing all they 
can to evade the law. Outside the pharmacists’ 
shops in the great cities, queues wait to get their 
doses of alcohol,” etc.2 
If he had said coffee cups instead of soup plates 
he would have been nearer the truth. Surely we 
must agree with the wit who said in the bulletin of 
a St. Lonis chemical company: “ Human nature 
does not change. Forbidden fruit always allures. 
1 San Francisco Examiner, February 14, 1920. 
3 Journal Am. Med. Assn., April 7, 1923, p. 1016. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
53 
In Eden it was an apple, to-day it is popularly known 
as * hooch \” 
Whoever investigates can see, if he wishes to see, 
that drinking and drunkenness are on the increase. 
The home manufacture of all kinds of alcoholic 
beverages is enormous. The stuff produced may not 
be of fine quality but it is plentiful and cheap. The 
person with a full cellar is very popular with friends 
and neighbors, as is the man with a good recipe. 
The San Francisco Examiner published, Decem- 
ber 27, 1922, a telegram from the A-l prohibition 
state, Georgia., reading: 
“Atlanta, Ga., December 26: Records for the 
last six months of 1922 show that the number of 
violations of the national prohibition law in the 
northern district of Georgia to be far in excess of 
any previous half year in the history of the district, 
according to a report made to-day to Attorney 
General Daugherty by Clint W. Hager, Federal 
District Attorney. The report disclosed that ap- 
proximately eight hundred cases of liquor law viola- 
tions are on the docket for the Federal courts term 
beginning January 8, next.” 
The San Francisco Chronicle reported December 
27,1922, that “ despite the fact that since Christmas, 
1921, National prohibition is one year older, and 
despite the fact that since then the new Wright 
Enforcement Act is in effect, there were four more 
drunks booked at the city prison over this Christmas 
week-end than last year.” 
Was Ben Hecht telling the truth when he said: 54 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ ‘ Abstinence and sobriety are an economic and 
spiritual necessity,’ bellows Sir Frankenstein. 
Whereupon the male contingent votes the land dry 
and gets drunk.”3 
The author knows that this applies also to a 
number of the female contingent, because he was 
repeatedly compelled to refuse whiskey prescrip- 
tions to ardent prohibition advocatresses. 
The miserable complications of the present situ- 
ation are that the various beverages must be bought 
in bulk, a high price generally paid, while there 
always remains the fear of discovery, confiscation, 
and punishment. One must understand that the stuff, 
frequently of dubious quality, is mostly being gulped 
down quickly and secretly, with the result that many 
drunken sprees remain hidden from the rest of 
the world. 
The ‘ treating habit ’ of the old saloon has become 
to-day’s solitary and secret drinking. 
No one can deny that an enormous amount of 
vile and hurtful stuff is being consumed in the 
United States. 
Reports from Russia inform us that after prohi- 
bition was imposed, the fiery vodka was replaced by 
methylated spirits and that the mortality from alco- 
hol actually increased. Tout comme cliez nous! 
The Chicago coroner’s office stated as early as 
1919,4 “ that fourteen deaths from the use of 
denatured alcohol as a substitute for whiskey, have 
* Nonsensorship, N. Y., 1922, p. 25. 
4 Journal Am. Med. Assn., November 20, 1919. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
55 
been reported since September 15. Many cases of 
blindness have also been reported, which are 
attributed to the use of denatured alcohol as 
a beverage.” 
The Journal of the American Medical Associa- 
tion5 reported that “ Figures published by the 
National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness 
show that, during the first half of 1922, wood alcohol 
caused one hundred and thirty deaths and twenty- 
two cases of blindness. These figures, however, do 
not by any means cover the total loss of life or 
sight through the drinking of bootlegger’s whiskey, 
since this cause of death is frequently concealed by 
relatives and friends of the victim. More than one- 
half of the fatal cases of wood alcohol poisoning 
brought to the attention of the Committee during 
the first six months of 1922 occurred in New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Five deaths were 
reported in Texas and four each in Connecticut, 
Massachusetts, Ohio, and Missouri. Only three or 
four deaths per year from wood alcohol poisoning 
were reported in New York State prior to 1919, 
while more than eighty deaths from this cause have 
been reported within the last three years. ’ ’ 
The Sail Francisco ,Examiner reported August 
24, 1922, that “ after partaking of bootleg liquor in 
a dive near the Presidio, Private John J. Murphy, 
reported yesterday to Letterman Hospital complain- 
ing, in writing, that he had lost his voice. 
8 September 2, 1922. 56 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ With more than twenty soldiers rendered blind 
by bootleg whiskey, made of wood alcohol, in the 
hospital wards, Letterman Hospital officials declared 
Murphy’s ailment is due to some other kind of poison 
sold to him in the guise of whiskey.” 
Brisbane6 states that “ according to the chief 
medical examiner in New York State, the deaths 
caused by alcohol are eighty-nine per cent, above 
1920, twenty-seven per cent, above 1921, thus far. 
The whiskey sold is even more poisonous than it was 
before prohibition. It kills quickly instead of slowly. 
Hundreds are dying. Thousands will drink whiskey 
‘ colored and flavored with iodine.’ 
“ A first-class investment in the United States 
to-day is stock in a good cemetery company.” 
The San Francisco Grand Jury has found that a 
shameful number of deaths have resulted from the 
sale and use of cheap and poisonous liquor of the 
bootleg variety, and that there has been an undeni- 
able increase in the gravest and most unheard of 
crimes growing out of the same cause. Furthermore, 
this Grand Jury has the records of the hospitals and 
courts of this City and County to show that youths 
who never before tasted liquor have become habitual 
drinkers, to their detriment and delinquency. 
John H. Moss, of Milwaukee, Chairman of the 
Board of Governors of Kiwanis International, told 
the truth when he said: 11 Prohibition has not, as 
yet, prohibited. Some claim the use of intoxicants 
is more extensive than ever. Prohibition has 
6 San Francisco Examiner, July 25, 1922. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
57 
deteriorated intoxicants and bestialized the intoxi- 
cated. According to some, prohibition has increased 
rather than decreased the crime and criminals. 
What will be the outcome? Time alone will tell.” 
The San Francisco Examiner of December 21, 
1922, reported that after a blast, four stills and 
seven fifty-gallon barrels of mash were found in 
a basement. 
The same paper reports April 19, 1923, that ‘ ‘ a 
moonshine still, capable of turning out $100,000 
worth of com whiskey per month, was seized early 
yesterday by Federal prohibition agents on the old 
Nathanial Brittain ranch near San Carlos, San 
Mateo County. 
“ The distillery was found in a barn with five 
tons of sugar, one thousand gallons of mash and a 
delivery automobile.” One is led to wonder, how 
many more distilleries of a like character have, do, 
and will turn out huge quantities of more or less 
poisonous moonshine? 
The San Francisco Examiner reports March 18, 
1923, that “ a smuggling ring, made up of petty 
officers of the Navy, was broken up yesterday when 
wholesale transfers of the suspected members of 
the ring were made and others were threatened 
with courtmartial. 
“ The operations of the ring here were brought 
to light through the beating up of four petty officers 
of the naval transport Newport News in Honolulu 
a week ago. The four men were attacked and robbed 
of their smuggled booze by what have come to be 58 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
known as ‘ highjackers,’ the term used to character- 
ize bootleggers who prey upon other bootleggers. 
‘ ‘ At first it was intended to courtmartial all the 
men known to be implicated in the booze smuggling 
operations, but high naval officers of the Twelfth 
Naval District came to the conclusion that such 
action would not tend to entirely stamp out the ring. 
‘ ‘ Known members of the ring will be kept under 
strict surveillance. ’ ’ 
The San Francisco Chronicle reported April 28, 
1923, that sixteen hundred quarts of ‘ ‘ choice Scotch 
whiskey ” seized on a truck by a patrolman 
Thursday night, «yesterday according to Police 
Captain Arthur D. Layne, proved to be the ‘ ‘ rankest 
kind of moonshine with fancy labels.” * 
The same paper reported on August 2, 1922 that 
“ poor quality moonshine liquor being dispensed 
nowadays, and increased activity on the part of 
the Police Department, are given by Prohibition 
Director S. F. Rutter as the reason for the large 
number of arrests for drunkenness in San Francisco. 
The annual report of the Police Department for the 
fiscal year ending June 30 showed that twice as many 
persons were arrested for drunkenness during the 
year just closed as in the preceding twelve months. 
“ ‘ A year ago,’ said Director Rutter yesterday, 
‘ there were still on hand considerable quantities of 
good liquor left over from prohibition days. This 
is about all used up. The stuff which bootleggers 
are selling these days has in many instances nearly 
twice as much alcohol and a hundred times as much WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
59 
poison. Consequently, a drink or two of present day 
liquor will produce as much intoxication as a pint or 
more of pure liquor. 
‘ Drunken men are more of a novelty on the street 
than they used to be. The poison which they imbibe 
makes their actions conspicuous.’ ” 
The San Francisco Chronicle reported August 2, 
1922, that at Honolulu, April 18, the territorial 
blouse of Representatives adopted a concurrent reso- 
lution requesting Congress to amend the Volstead 
Act. The resolution was adopted by a vote of eigh- 
teen to ten after the judiciary committee had recom- 
mended that it be tabled. Representative Cudlia 
declared it would “ be better for the people of 
Hawaii to have light wines and beer than to drink 
okolehao, as they are doing at present. Okolehao 
is a native liquor of strong alcoholic content dis- 
tilled from the roots of the ti plant.” 
The same paper stated, March 2, 1920, that 
‘ ‘ when Federal prohibition put the lock on the wine 
cellars and abolished corner groggeries, it created a 
demand for a Mexican importation known in botany 
as Canniva Viscius, to the talent as ‘ mariahuena,’ 
and to the uninitiated as ‘loco weed.’ 
“ Canniva Viscius gives much more satisfaction 
than old time waterfront whiskey and the kick it 
registers is many times greater than the cheapest 
wane or beerkeg dregs. You can get delightfully 
drunk for one dollar. That is, you can smoke three 
cigarettes composed of the weed which retails for the 
dollar and there comes over you an exhilaration that 60 
ALCOHQL AND PROHIBITION 
lasts for a week. In the early stages of the jag 
sundry acts of violence are likely to occur, but along 
about the fourth or fifth day a condition ensues 
when it is possible to remove the hilarious one from 
a padded cell. 
“ The detectives for the State Board of Phar- 
macy last night raided a pool hall at 625 Pacific 
Street and took to police headquarters over $5,000 
worth of the weed. According to Charmak it was 
being distributed by an employee of the place, who 
was charged with a violation of the drug act. 
“ The demand for the weed has increased many 
fold since the first of the year. The police say 
that the many Mexicans, Spaniards, and Italians 
who have been deprived of accustomed liquor have 
been induced to seek a substitution in the Mexican 
herb and that the constantly growing list of victims 
has been the subject of many complaints to 
the authorities.” 
The late San Francisco Chief of Police D. A. 
White, one of the most efficient men the City’s police 
department ever had, expressed the opinion as early 
as September, 1920, that, “ Prohibition, the records 
of this department show, has served to reduce crime, 
but has unquestionably caused the increase of a 
greater evil, the use of narcotics. The drug habit 
is spreading like wildfire in San Francisco, and I 
suppose in other cities as well. The drug evil will 
make more crime than liquor ever has and is twice 
as deadly.”7 
7 San Francisco Chronicle, September 23, 1920. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
61 
S. Dana Hubbard asked a question in 1920 which 
is being answered more and more emphatically by 
most appalling reports from all parts of the United 
States. When reporting on wood alcohol poisoning8 
he said “ whether the substitute will be drugs or 
some other ‘ spiritual ’ indulgence, we do not know.” 
There were many people who knew and feared 
what was coming. For instance, Bear Admiral 
Bradley A. Fiske, in his letter to the Secretary of 
the Navy made public April 16, 1916, protesting 
against the prohibition of wine and beer on ships at 
naval stations, said : 
“ Another effect would be the increased tempta- 
tion to officers to secrete whiskey in their rooms and 
to drink whiskey (a most dangerous thing) instead 
of wine or beer. Another effect would be an increased 
temptation to use cocaine and other drugs. 
“ This danger is real, not imaginary. Many 
people crave stimulants of some sort, and if they can- 
not get what they prefer will take anything they can 
get. Cocaine takes up little space and is very con- 
venient. Its use among enlisted men has increased 
since they were prohibited the daily bottle of beer.” 
The San Francisco Examiner stated December 
31, 1919 that: “ Investigations made yesterday at 
Mare Island to find the persons who broke into the 
$5,000 compass of the U. S. S. Nebraska to obtain 
four gallons of alcohol, failed to place the blame for 
the act. No arrests have been made. 
“ A report was sent to Vice Admiral Williams by 
8 New York Medical Journal, January 3, 1920. 62 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Lieutenant Commander V. N. Waddell, executive 
officer of the Nebraska. 
‘ ‘ Several members of the crew were examined by 
a board of officers, but each man denied a knowledge 
of the theft. 
‘ ‘ Within three months several lockers have been 
robbed of alcohol and the reports show that alcohol 
was taken from the gun coils in the turrets. 
“ The compass was broken Christmas Eve.” 
Sir James Barr, of Liverpool, said that, “ The 
murderers and cut-throats in Ireland, Russia and 
elsewhere were very largely teetotalers. ’ ’ He would 
be very sorry to see moderate use of alcohol 
abolished in England.9 
Charles Taber Stout10 summarizes the facts by 
saying, “ The enforcement law has brought with it a 
lawlessness on the part of the people never before 
known in the annals of the nation.” Stout cites 
William H. Moran, Chief of the Secret Service 
Bureau, who, testifying before the Appropriations 
Committee of the House of Representatives, stated 
that the year 1920 was the greatest criminal year in 
the history of secret service. 
Stout states further that ‘ ‘ as a breeder of nation- 
wide corruption no previous legislation has ever 
equalled the Volstead Act.” 
Many states of the Union have passed various 
enforcement laws of their own. As a result their 
police force was, and is largely being used for prohi- 
0 British Medical Journal, August 5, 1922. 
“ The Eighteenth Amendment, N. Y., 1921, p. 171-172. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
63 
bition purposes, and thus diverted from their legiti- 
mate and real purposes. Hunting illicit alcohol 
usually proves more interesting, more profitable, 
and less dangerous than hunting burglars and 
hold-up men, and it is little wonder that there has 
been an increase of criminal acts. Neither can one 
wonder that on May 4, 1923 the State of New York 
repealed the prohibition enforcement law in order to 
allow the police officers throughout the State to go 
back to their normal duties. The New York Grand 
Jury paved the way in a lengthy resolution by saying 
among other things that, “ from the evidence pre- 
sented to this body, we are brought to the conclusion 
that the repeal of the Prohibition Act by the State 
Legislature would be of benefit to the community. Its 
passage has led to acts of unprecedented violence 
and lawlessness and the more general use of nar- 
cotics and drugs. Bands of men, akin to pirates, are 
robbing each other and breaking into the homes of 
respectable citizens to carry away what liquor they 
can confiscate. Poisonous beverages secretly manu- 
factured at points outside of the City have been 
smuggled in and spread among our citizenry at 
enormous profits to illicit traders.” 
The San Francisco Examiner reported May 16, 
1923, a telegram from Chicago, May 22. “ Three 
members of a band of twenty distillery bandits, all 
former United States cavalrymen, who battled with 
guards last Tuesday night in an attempt to rob the 
Les Samuels’ distillery at Deatsville, Ky., were 
captured at Waukegan, 111., late last night. Two were 64 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
suffering from severe buckshot wounds received in 
the engagement. 
‘ ‘ The men boasted to the police that the band had 
plundered numerous other Kentucky distilleries, 
saying that the thousands of gallons seized in the 
raids have furnished Chicago’s chief rum supply 
since prohibition became effective.” 
The San Francisco Examiner reported May, 16, 
1923 that “ Two sacks, each containing 24 bottles of 
‘ Old Crow ’ bonded whiskey were stolen from a 
locked room in the Postoffice Building adjacent to 
the chambers of Federal Judge John S. Partridge. 
‘ ‘ The theft occurred some time last Friday night, 
but was not discovered until Saturday morning. 
“ There is no clue to the thieves. 
“ Sweeping investigation of the burglary was 
ordered by Judge Partridge.” 
Brisbane says, “ You were told that prohibition 
would diminish crime. It seems not to have worked 
that way—perhaps because the only thing the aver- 
age man can get to drink is bad whiskey—and every- 
body can get that.” 
Even the most ardent advocates of prohibition 
cannot deny that since the volstead law became 
EFFECTIVE, THE USE OF NARCOTICS HAS INCREASED in a 
really alarming way. The papers are printing daily 
reports to the effect and such headlines as: “ United 
States using more narcotics than China,” “ Alarm- 
ing spread of dope evil in America bared,” can be 
seen frequently enough. Of course, the professional 
prohibitionists claim that prohibition cannot be WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
65 
blamed for the terrible calamity, but those who can 
see and also wish to see, know better. Brisbane, who 
for years advocated prohibition, said recently: 
‘ ‘ Crime and whiskey have gone hand in hand in the 
United States since Jefferson’s days. Now drugs 
replace whiskey in the partnership with crime. 
* ‘ Ur. Squire, medical head of the great Sing Sing 
Prison, says that new convicts show among drug 
victims an increase of forty-one per cent. 
‘ ‘ Whiskey eventually destroys the morals, after 
first destroying respect. Drugs destroy both swiftly. 
‘1 Crimes of all kinds and new kinds are reported 
from cities and villages everywhere. Clergymen 
complain of vanishing morality, especially among 
the very young; drugs, a thousand times worse than 
alcohol, daily increase their hold on weak minds and 
create a problem infinitely more difficult than the 
old whiskey problem.”11 
Henry Van Dyke, former American Minister to 
the Netherlands, stated as early as November 
10, 1919, while addressing the World’s Christian 
Citizenship Conference at Pittsburgh, that: “ High- 
way robberies, race riots, and murders seem to be 
increasing in spite of prohibition. The world may be 
more sober, but it certainly is not more sane. On the 
contrary, it seems as if the pressure of the human 
passion and impulse has become more intense 
while the restraints of reason and conscience 
have relaxed.” 
u San Francisco Examiner, April 8, 1923. 66 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Van Dyke puts the real blame upon the fact that 
people go to church less and are more intellectually 
influenced by the moving picture shows. One is 
tempted to ask whether people used to go to church 
more before Volstead became so famous. 
The San Francisco Examiner published, Novem- 
ber 30, 1920, a telegram from Salt Lake City, Utah, 
November 29, as follows: “ The crime wave now prev- 
alent throughout the country will show an increase 
of two hundred per cent., declared William A. 
Pinkerton, head of a detective agency, who arrived 
here from Denver to-day. Pinkerton characterized 
the enforcement of the prohibition law as being far- 
cical in many instances. He said the number of 
drug addicts had increased two hundred per cent, 
since prohibition went into effect, and that the drug 
fiend was much more liable to develop into a criminal 
than a drunkard.” 
Los Angeles surely has done all it could to bring 
on prohibition, and on December 25, 1921, The San 
Francisco Examiner reported that the police blotters 
of Los Angeles police stations showed that 87,603 
persons were arrested by the police during 1921 up 
to that morning. This total has never been equalled. 
Banditry is one of the most active phases of local 
crime, the records showed. During 1921 there have 
been 1,042 hold-ups committed, as compared with 482 
last year. 
A total of fifty-five slayings to date have been 
investigated by the Los Angeles police. This figure 
sets a new Los Angeles record. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
67 
Automobile thieves were unusually active. To 
date there have been 2,163 automobiles stolen, as 
compared with 974 last year. 
The ghost of the late John Barleycorn seems to 
have stalked about Los Angeles frequently this year, 
for there was a total of 6,239 arrests for intoxication 
to date. During 1920 the police arrested 3,377 men 
and women for inebriation. 
On March 4, 1922, The Examiner printed a tele- 
gram from New York, March 3, as follows: “ A 
tremendous increase in drug addiction in Brooklyn 
since prohibition became a law was shown in figures 
given out to-day by Byrd S. Coler, Minister of Public 
Welfare. He set the blame primarily upon the dry 
laws and the manner of their enforcement. Alcohol- 
ism also has increased since the Eighteenth Amend- 
ment was adopted, the figures disclosed. 
“ ‘ Bootleggers,’ the commissioner asserted, 
‘ have worked under semi-protection, insomuch as 
government officials have at no time been sincere in 
the enforcement of the law and in treating spirituous 
liquors as drugs and medicines.’ ” 
The San Francisco Chronicle published, Septem- 
ber 15, 1922, a telegram from Chattanooga, Septem- 
ber 14: “ Judge William B. Swaney, Chairman of the 
Committee on Law Enforcement of the American 
Bar Association, in an address before the Rotary 
Club here to-day, declared that ‘ the criminal 
situation in the United States so far as violence 
is concerned, is worse than in any other civil- 
ized country.’ ” 68 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The San Francisco Grand Jury said shortly 
after, that its investigations as an official body 
showed that the increase in the sale and nse of 
narcotics since the inception of so-called prohibition 
has become a mighty and menacing problem in the 
various judiciary offices of this municipality, this 
state and other states. 
The San Francisco Examiner reported October 
6, 1922, that Warden Johnston is worried over the 
INCREASING POPULATION OF THE STATE PRISONS. On 
February 11,1923, the same paper published the fol- 
lowing report “ An alarming increase in the number 
of drug addicts received at San Quentin Peniten- 
tiary during the past five years demonstrates the 
continuous growth of narcotic addiction among 
criminals,” declared Warden James A. Johnson 
in an address before members of the Bar Associa- 
tion of San Francisco at the Palace Hotel yesterday. 
“ In 1917, of the entire number received at the 
Prison, three and one-half per cent, were drug 
addicts. In 1918 it was five per cent., 1919 six per 
cent., 1920 eight per cent., 1921 nine per cent., and in 
1922 it was ten per cent. The percentage tills year 
to date is even greater than last year and will prob- 
ably set a new record,” said Johnston. 
Again Los Angeles comes into prominence. The 
San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 1923, reported 
that “ because of overcrowded unsanitary jail con- 
ditions, Chief of Police Oaks to-day ordered the 
release of 225 minor offenders and Police Judge WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
69 
Chambers announced that he would stop his cam- 
paign of sending speeders to jail, but would fine them 
heavily instead. 
“ So crowded had the City Jail become that men 
were sleeping on cement floors, crowded together 
like sardines, without bedding or blankets. Sanitary 
conditions were terrible, jail authorities announced. 
11 Chief Oaks made a personal investigation and 
declared that the only remedy was to release a large 
number of prisoners. The list was gone over with 
parole officers and 225 were ordered freed. Many of 
them were speeders. In the Lincoln Heights Jail, 
built to house 333, there were 861 persons at the 
time of Oaks’ inspection. 
“ The jails are still crowded and it was only by 
ordering 400 extra cots and blankets that Oaks will 
be able to accommodate the number of law breakers 
now confined. ’ ’ 
The number of inmates of institutions operating 
under the jurisdiction of the California State Board 
of Charities and Corrections has increased by 
more than 1,000 during the year ending May 31, 
according to a bulletin just issued by the Board. 
The number of cases handled in 1921 was 16,540, 
whereas the figure for 1922 was 17,586. 
California is not different from other states. 
The San Francisco Examiner published, April 15, 
1923, a telegram from New York, April 14. “ Is our 
Twentieth Century civilization responsible for the 
hyper-nervous condition of society to-day, with its 
attendant increase of nervous and mental diseases f 70 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ Members of the medical profession, observing 
this increase with alarm, are giving serious thought 
to the question of coping with the growing number 
of patients who apply to them for treatment. 
“ Neurologists and psychiatrists and other mem- 
bers of the medical profession, view with amazement 
the shocking statistics concerning this phase of 
national life recently compiled by various agencies 
interested particularly in this question. 
“ According to the bulletin issued by the National 
Committee for Mental Hygiene, the number of 
hospital beds occupied by patients with mental 
diseases exceeds the number in use in all general 
hospitals in this country.” 
The author has had under personal observation 
and care several persons who became narcotic users 
in consequence of the stringency of the Volstead 
Law. No doubt, other physicians have had similar 
experiences. One glaring example may serve as 
an illustration. 
One of the author’s patients, a lady of refinement, 
belonging to an old and well-known California 
family, suffered for several years with a mild form 
of insomnia. Upon the advice of an old and expe- 
rienced practitioner, she drank every evening a small 
bottle of a well-known malt preparation, which 
insured her a night’s good rest. Unfortunately, the 
preparation contained at that time four per cent, 
alcohol, and according to Volstead and various sub- 
sequent arbitrary rulings, she found out that it was 
the law of the land for her to sleep only once in ten WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
71 
days, which she was not satisfied to do. Upon 
friendly advice, and with a friend’s help, she began 
using all kinds of narcotics. No amount of watching 
and nursing could prevent her, with the result that 
after taking various drugs in a desultory way, when- 
ever she could do it, she changed from a refined lady 
into a raving maniac. The court had to appoint a 
guardian for her. She was placed in a sanitarium 
for mental cases, and was released after four months 
apparently cured, but now refuses to see or talk to 
anyone who had anything to do with her commitment. 
From whichever standpoint we may look at the 
situation, it has been clearly proven that prohibition 
DID NOT EMPTY THE HOSPITALS AND PRISONS. 
Day by day we get new reports of inefficiency, 
brutality and corruption among many of those 
who should give a good example in upholding the 
laws. We cannot expect prohibition enforcement 
officers to be recruited from the ranks of regular 
angels, for the temptations are too great, and while 
they may be prompted by the best intentions, and 
may repeat again and again the prayer, “ do not 
lead us into temptation,” sooner or later many of 
them fall by the wayside. The consequences are 
abuse of their little bit of authority and official 
power. The daily papers publish most appalling 
and disgusting reports illustrating the situation. 
We shall cite just a few examples. 
The San Francisco Examiner reported October 
23,1920, that “ The second move toward a complete 
reorganization of the federal prohibition enforce- 72 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
ment forces in San Francisco as an outcome of 
the expose of alleged bribery and bootlegging in 
whiskey, was made yesterday by Paul F. Myers, 
assistant commissioner of internal revenue. He 
assigned E. C. Yellowley, supervising internal 
revenue agent for the Pacific Coast, to be acting 
Prohibition Director.” 
The same paper published, November 8, 1920, a 
telegram from Windsor, November 7: “ Following 
rumors of intended violence, police officers to-day 
spirited Rev. J. 0. L. Spracklin, Methodist minister 
and prohibition enforcement agent, who had been 
held in connection with the shooting to death of 
Beverly Trumble, an innkeeper, to the jail at 
Sandwich, it became known to-night. 
“ Removal of the prisoner was effected quietly. 
The action is said to have followed telephone mes- 
sages to the jail here that an attempt at violence was 
contemplated by friends of the slain man,” etc. 
The San Francisco Chronicle, July, 22, 1922, 
printed the following telegram from Beaumont, 
Texas, July 22. “ Justice of the Peace H. E. 
Showers stationed at Precinct Number 1, Jefferson 
County, was shot to-night by Federal Prohibition 
Officer Gonzaullos, the bullet penetrating the kidney 
and going through the body. He will die, physicians 
said. Judge Showers, it was reported to the police, 
was sitting in his automobile on a downtown street 
when Gonzaullos attempted to take a pint bottle 
away from him. Showers is declared to have 
resisted and the officer shot him. Judge Showers WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
73 
was a candidate for re-election in the Democratic 
primaries to-day, and was elected.” 
The San Francisco Examiner published, January 
21, 1921, a most characteristic report that “ United 
States Commissioner Francis Krull yesterday made 
formal charges that he is being made the object of a 
boycott by the federal prohibition and narcotic 
agents, who refuse to swear to complaints before 
him, taking their business to United States Com- 
missioner Thomas E. Hayden instead. 
“ The prohibition agents admit the allegations 
and bring a countercharge that Commissioner Krull 
takes up too much of the government’s time sermon- 
izing, lecturing, and belittling them. They declare 
Commissioner Hayden can conclude a petty case 
within a reasonable time, while they are obliged to 
stand at attention at Commissioner Krull’s office 
listening to extraneous remarks and hearing lectures 
on varied subjects not connected with the case. 
“ Krull claims that he is boycotted because he is 
* too fair ’ to defendants, and when informed of the 
counter-charge stated: ‘ What has been offered as 
an explanation of the situation is a mere subterfuge. 
Tricksters and political gangsters will seek to under- 
mine when they cannot control. 
“ ‘ My first consideration when a defendant is 
brought before me, is to give him an immediate 
hearing as the law contemplates and to fix bail as 
the constitution directs. 
“ * I have tried to maintain an atmosphere of 
fairness in which a defendant may feel he has 74 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
nothing to fear if the facts do not warrant a holding. 
I can only stand upon my record. ’ 9 ’ 
The San Francisco Chronicle of October 30,1921, 
reported that the third trial of an accused “ dry ” 
violator failed because court attaches drank 
the evidence. 
The same paper announced April 28, 1922, in 
biggest headlines “ San Francisco liquor ‘ graft 
list ’ seized.” 
The same paper, June 18, 1922, reported that 
Judge Dooling, a man who is highly respected for his 
learning, understanding, and absolute fairness, said 
in open court when discussing a case: “ The whole 
thing is nothing more than a civil war between the 
Government officials, and they expect this court to 
sit as referee to arbitrate their battles. The Govern- 
ment expects the court to charge to us the battle that 
rages between the departments.” 
Judge Dooling, in again scoring prohibition 
agents for not carrying out orders of the court, 
declared that, as Connolly stated, there is internal 
controversy involved and that it should have no 
bearing on the case. He declared that if the orders 
of his court could not be obeyed “ we might as well 
shut up shop and quit. ’y 
We must not be surprised when former Superior 
Court Judge Rex B. Goodsell claims12 that: “by 
permitting of misdemeanors to be tried in the United 
States Circuit Court, the people are making a police 
court of that institution.” 
13 San Francisco Examiner, May 11, 1923. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
75 
The San Francisco Examiner, June 21, 1922, 
printed a report from Los Angeles, that the Rev. 
Donald D. Stewart, well known throughout Cali- 
fornia as a temperance worker, credited with having 
caused the elimination of segregated districts from 
a number of towns of the State, and author of the 
song, “ We’ll Make California Dry,” was arrested 
near Sierra Madre, twenty miles northeast of Los 
Angeles, that night on charges that he had committed 
bigamy in several states and had swindled his wives 
out of thousands of dollars. 
The same paper reported June 24,1922, that with 
the suspension of three Federal prohibition agents 
and the imminent suspension of a fourth, the long 
expected shake-up of the local prohibition office, 
which was rumored when Federal Prohibition 
Director S. F. Rutter was transferred from Phila- 
delphia to San Francisco three months ago, began 
the day before. 
Again on September 6, 1922, The Examiner 
printed the following telegram from Chicago: “ A 
ring of liquor law violators, declared to have manip- 
ulated whiskey and sacramental wine permits, with 
headquarters in a downtown hotel here, and whose 
deals were said to have aggregated $4,500,000 has 
been uncovered and the attention of United States 
Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty called to it, 
The Chicago Daily News says to-day.” 
The newspaper says the charges involve political 
influence, graft, and “ fixing ” of federal officials. 
The same paper published, March 8,1923, a tele- 76 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
gram from New York, March 7: “ A conspiracy, in 
which government agents are alleged to have acted 
in collusion with a Kentucky distillery in export- 
ing to Canada $1,500,000 worth of whiskey to be 
smuggled back into the United States, is under 
investigation, it was learned to-day.” 
Brisbane stated in The San Francisco Examiner, 
April 1, 1923, that: “Not long ago the head of 
Chicago’s police said half the police force of his city 
was engaged in bootlegging. Yesterday in Indiana, 
fifty-five individuals, including ‘ many eminent citi- 
zens,’ were convicted of bootleg conspiracy. Those 
convicted included the Mayor of Gary, a judge and 
the sheriff. Enforcement of prohibition is not easy.” 
To demonstrate that there is a reverse to the 
medal, we found in the same issue a telegram from 
Washington, September 5: “ A report from Federal 
Prohibition Director Linville of Oregon on the death 
of Agents Grover Todd and Glen Price in a raid at 
Portland, brings the total of known mortalities 
among Federal dry law* enforcement agents killed in 
the line of duty to twenty-four, it is announced 
to-day by prohibition headquarters.” 
Again, The San Francisco Examiner printed 
October 6, 1922, in biggest headlines: “ San Fran- 
cisco dry agents in $100,000 graft plot.” 
The same paper published, December 5, 1922, a 
telegram from New York, December 4: “ Several 
men, including two former prohibition enforcement 
agents, convicted last week of substituting one 
hundred and sixty barrels of ginger ale for Canadian WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
77 
whiskey while the shipment was being moved from 
a New York railroad station last April, to-day were 
sentenced by Federal Judge Mack to two years each 
in Atlanta Penitentiary. The enforcement men, 
Harry Meade and William Walsh, also were fined 
$2,000 each.” 
The San Francisco Chronicle reported December 
10,1922, that a “ dry agent buys drink from woman 
then arrests her.” “ Widow tricked into selling 
sleuth and supposed friend.” 
On January 17, 1923, The San Francisco 
Examiner printed a most outrageous report from 
Los Angeles stating that the stringing of a young 
boy by the thumbs to a curtain pole to obtain in- 
formation following a prohibition raid is charged 
against Federal Volstead sleuths. 
The extra-brutal treatment of an employee of a 
so-called social club during a raid aroused the press, 
the public and even some of the prohibition officers. 
The San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 1923, 
reported that: “Unable to stomach the beating 
which two of his fellow raiders were giving Clarence 
Lewis, steward of the exclusive Peerless Club, 265 
Ellis Street, Prohibition Enforcement Officer 
Edward Powers yesterday afternoon threatened to 
thrash them. It was only after Powers, laying 
his gun on a table and advancing toward his co- 
raiders with clenched fists, that Y. L. Harvill, 
assistant to C. H. Wheeler, Chief Prohibition Officer 
under Federal Director Rutter, and Agent L. H. 78 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Corey, whom he accused of undue brutality toward 
Lewis, desisted.” 
In giving the details the paper said: “ An argu- 
ment started between Lewis and Harvill. Harvill, 
according to Lewis, struck him three times, knocking 
him to the floor. While Lewis was on the floor, 
covered with blood and with his teeth loosened, 
Harville, aided by Agent Powers, together with 
Prohibition Agent William Lameister protested and 
threatened to give Harvill and Corey a dose of their 
own medicine if they did not desist in their attack 
on the prostrate Lewis. It was then that Wheeler 
dragged Corey and Harvill aside. 
“ The raid had been in progress for some time 
when Federal Prohibition Director Rutter appeared. 
“ Informed by Wheeler of the beating of Lewis 
by Harvill and Corey, Rutter, according to Lewis, 
said: ‘ Don’t say anything of this to anyone, and 
we ’ll take care of you. ’ 
“ Rutter last night denied such a remark to 
Lems, but added: ‘ Wheeler might have said some- 
thing like that to Lewis, but I didn’t hear him 
say so.’ ” 
The San Francisco Examiner reported April 9, 
1923, that ‘ ‘ the Federal Prohibition Office here was 
split wide open yesterday when William J. Gloria, 
legal advisor to Prohibition Director Samuel F. 
Rutter, resigned from office as a protest against 
alleged * rough-house ’ methods of prohibition 
agents and what he calls Rutter’s*1 failure to punish 
agents guilty of unwarranted offenses.’ In his letter WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
79 
of resignation, Rutter’s former legal advisor justi- 
fies his action as based on ‘ respect for law ’ and 
declared that he resigned only when he ‘ despaired ’ 
that Rutter intended taking action against his agents 
guilty of the ‘ recent outrages.’ 
“ Gloria’s letter continues: ‘ I do not believe in 
methods of enforcement of the prohibition law which 
result in violating the sanctity of womanhood and 
the inalienable rights which are inherent to citizen- 
ship in a free country. 
“ 4 I have waited patiently, but in vain, that you 
would take the proper disciplinary action against 
these men, but as yet your disciplinary action is 
conspicuous only by its absence.’ 
44 The phrase 4 violating the sanctity of woman- 
hood,’ is said to refer to the alleged violence by 
prohibition agents while arresting women under the 
Volstead Act.” 
Any citizen in the United States who is either in 
the habit or compelled to frequent public cafes and 
restaurants could tell of instances where most 
orderly and fashionable crowds were treated with 
disgusting contempt and impoliteness by overbear- 
ing enforcement officers, who claim to have the right 
to stick their noses and even their ill-kept mouths 
into the guests’ glasses and cups. 
In an editorial entitled 44 Making Law Odious,” 
The San Francisco Examiner on April 4, 1923, 
expressed the opinion of every fair-minded citizen in 
saying:4 ‘ Law-abiding citizens have every sympathy 
with the strict enforcement of prohibition laws. 80 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ They have no sympathy whatsoever with the 
methods employed by some of the prohibition en- 
forcement officers. 
“ The endless repetition of reports in the daily 
papers about men badly beaten by law officers 
arouses a feeling of revulsion that is bound to react 
badly upon all efforts of the prohibition officers to 
win cooperation in their work. 
“ This indiscriminate use of fists, clubs and 
pistol-ends is utterly uncalled for. The Government 
of the United States does not knowingly employ a 
lot of blackguards ready, at little or no provocation, 
to use force in most brutal manner. Government 
employees who do that sort of thing ought to be dis- 
connected from the Government service promptly. 
“ Let’s have a bit more decency in the enforce- 
ment of law.” 
Among other outgrowths of prohibition enforce- 
ment is the development of a spy system that surely 
rivals in magnitude anything of the kind so far. 
Insinuations and sly hints go pretty far. The San 
Francisco Examiner printed April 15, 1923, a 
splendid example of such doings. A man charged 
that some officials ‘ close to * the President obtained 
California, wine as a bribe. The report goes on to 
state that: “ in detail Harris’ charge is that ‘ some- 
one ’ at Livermore, ‘ who may or may not' have 
been connected with the vineyard concern which sold 
its lands to the government for an ex-soldiers’ tuber- 
culosis hospital site, in the course of the bargaining 
shipped the hundred cases of sun-reddened vintage WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
81 
to a high government official at Washington, ‘ pre- 
sumably ’ to lubricate the deal. 
“ Harris declared he had gained his information 
indirectly from a statement openly made on the 
floor at a meeting of a Legion post in California. 
He did not identify the post or say who had made 
the statement.” 
Yes, presumably it may or may not. 
The San Francisco Examiner on April 27, 1923, 
published a telegram from Washington, April 26: 
“Prohibition troubles from bootlegging to allega- 
tions of bribery in several States accumulated here 
to-day and engaged the attention of high officials of 
at least three federal agencies, the Treasury and 
Justice Departments, and Prohibition Enforcement 
Headquarters. There were indications that facts 
developed from the several investigations in 
progress ‘ might * ultimately come before Presi- 
dent Harding. 
“ Charges of fraud among former, and ' pos- 
sibly 1 present prohibition agents caused orders for 
an investigation by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. 
Another investigation along similar lines, involving 
alleged tenders of bribes for ' protection ’ to former 
prohibition officers already is under way by the 
Department of Justice, whose agents are making 
inquiries among ‘ bootleg’ circles of New York, 
Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and other cities.” 
Well, possibly it might 
May we hope that it will be better in the future ? 
The San Francisco Examiner published, May 3,1923, 82 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
a telegram from London, May 2: “In a jovial 
mood previous to liis starting for home on leave 
to-morrow, Ambassador Harvey asked the American 
newspapermen this afternoon not to expect him to 
interpret the Supreme Court’s ruling on the liquor 
transportation question, but he said he was certain 
all confusion would ultimately be eliminated. 
‘ ‘ The Ambassador remarked that probably there 
was plenty of romance and adventure to be found in 
the rum-running, piracy and sea fighting off the New 
Jersey coast, but that it certainly was not much of 
a credit to civilization. ’ ’ 
Very characteristic is a sample of a so-called 
“ Dry Debate ’’ in our House of Representatives. 
The San Francisco Chronicle of February 25, 1923, 
in a telegram from Washington dated February 24, 
published among other things, that “ Opening the 
discussion with a prepared address, Gallivan told 
the House that he had observed from a Washington 
newspaper that the Anti-Saloon League now pro- 
posed to make members of Congress ‘ drink as they 
vote.’ He then announced he would pause while 
1 dry * members who 1 religiously vote as the League 
tells them to vote,’ and who ‘ take a drink and like a 
drink ’ raised their hands. 
“ ‘ Why, Mr. Chairman,’ he said, after a pause, 
‘ all I can see around the chamber is halos. Well, I 
guess we are all sober this morning (laughter), even 
though a Senator got drunk the other night,—a 
* dry ’ Senator—and they had to stop him from WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
83 
answering a roll call, and it took two of his colleagues 
to hold him. ’ 
“ Representative Blanton objected to such a ref- 
erence to a Senator. 
“ ‘ I am not violating the rules of this House 
when I refer to “ dry ” Senators getting drunk,’ 
returned Gallivan, amid a roar of laughter and 
applause.” 
California’s own lamented Theodore Bell wrote 
in one of his last open letters, among other things: 
“ It has frequently occurred that men ‘ personally 
wet ’ have proven to be ‘ politically dry ’ as soon 
as they gain office, due very often to secret pledges 
exacted in advance by a powerful dry organization. 
That sort of political hypocrisy is largely respon- 
sible for the present national system of legislative 
prohibition, a system that has opened the way for the 
ultimate destruction of all States’ rights, and the 
substitution of an arrogant national bureaucracy 
and a Federal centralization of power in the place of 
local self-government. Moreover, the Volstead Act 
has created a system of nationwide bootlegging that 
is both robbing and poisoning the American people, 
and visiting upon our heads evils of such magnitude 
as to demand an immediate solution.”13 
Governor Smith, of New York, characterized the 
situation mildly but tersely when he said: “ We have 
had illegal traffic in liauors and official corruption.” 
As further accomplishments of the Volstead Law, 
Governor Smith cites the brevity of the official life of 
” San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 1922. 84 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
many who represent the Government in the enforce- 
ment of the Volstead Act, and their summary 
removal or transfer from this district is usually 
under the shadow of suspicion. The moving pictures 
depicting the weekly news show a fleet of rum boats 
lying outside of the three-mile limit. The smuggling 
of whiskey across the Canadian border has become 
a notorious abuse. 
We must not forget that we are also blessed with 
pirates which hardly means progress in civilization, 
though Brisbane, in his inimitable originality, says: 
“ Just oft the entrance to New York harbor there 
are fifteen armed ships loaded with whiskey, a new 
thing in civilization. They carry guns to protect 
them from pirates who would steal the whiskey from 
them, while they are retailing the whiskey to bootleg 
smugglers that bring it into the United States. 
That’s something new in civilization. ’ ’ 
One of the first items of news we read in The San 
Francisco Chronicle of February 15, 1923, is in the 
form of a telegram from New York, February 14: 
“ Evincing belief that rum pirates were active at 
sea, customs and prohibition officials to-day broad- 
cast a general alarm for a. steam trawler which was 
reported to have robbed the auxiliary schooner 
P. J. McLaughlin of nearly $250,000 worth of liquor 
off the Jersey coast Sunday night. ’ ’ 
Similar news is coming from various other parts 
of our continent fast enough. It must be considered, 
however, that in all probability many bootleggers 
pocket their loss without complaining. WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
85 
We could cite from a vast amount of material, 
accumulated during the past few years, an endless 
number of most striking examples whereby sick 
people were seriously injured through the Volstead 
Law and its interpretation by ever changing rulings, 
to say nothing of the humiliations suffered by 
the physicians. 
The referendum on alcohol taken by the Journal 
of the American Medical Association shows clearly 
that the physicians all over the United States had 
the same experience as their California brethren. 
The author asked various authorities in vain, 
what to do in the case of an eighty-nine year old lady, 
the mother of a large family, known and loved by 
many in San Francisco, who could not eat, or at 
least thought she could not eat unless she had a glass 
of Chateau Yquem with her meals. The law of the 
land limited her to a teaspoonful three times a day, 
and even that was not obtainable. The poor old lady 
grew very weak and died complaining that if her 
husband, the Judge, were alive, he would appeal to 
the President. Also she asked: “ Has the Govern- 
ment any right to murder me ? ’ ’ 
The author knows personally of an instance 
where in the north of California, a pneumonia 
patient was saved only by the fighting spirit of a 
splendid physician, who, when confronted with all 
the red tape complications recited by the druggist, 
stepped behind the counter, grabbed a large bottle 
of whiskey and took it by force, telling the druggist 86 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
to give the doctor’s compliments to the prohi- 
bition officer. 
And who is heartless enough to refuse a cheering 
drink of alcohol in a pleasant form to the incurable? 
Purposely we say in a pleasant form, because pure 
alcohol diluted with water, as it is used in most of the 
clever experiments of the anti-alcoholists, tastes and 
smells bad, and cannot increase the appetite, nor the 
flow of saliva and gastric juice. 
Before absolute prohibition became a law, the 
author wras impressed by the terribly pitiful con- 
dition of mind of most of the inmates of the San 
Francisco House for Incurables and by their un- 
avoidable sufferings. The institution was even then 
under a prohibition rule, but the powers that be were 
easily persuaded for several years in succession to 
make an exception during the Christmas holidays. 
Benevolent dealers in wines and liquors and some 
vineyardists were easily induced to donate quantities 
of wine and other beverages and the poor fellows at 
the House of Incurables had a pleasant Christmas 
and New Year’s celebration, with a few hours of 
gladness and cheer. Nowadays, Volstead will not 
stand for anything of the kind. 
Another accomplishment of the Volstead Act is 
that while people still drink alcoholic beverages the 
reading public seems to have alcohol on the brain. 
It is well known that newspapers must and do 
cater to their readers’ taste. Taking a modern, 
though conservative and very popular newspaper 
like The San Francisco Chronicle we find that for WHAT HAS PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED? 
87 
instance, on January 27, 1923, it contained eight 
lengthy articles on alcohol and prohibition. They 
were: “ Wet Violator Tells of Being Beaten in Raid; 
San Francisco Dry Navy to be Launched; Ex- 
Senator’s Name in Abatement Case; Two to be Tried 
for Breach of the State Prohibition Law; Wheeler 
Tortured Wet Violator is Los Angeles Charge; 
Rutter Says Woman Committed Mayhem; Dry 
Agents Seize Five Hundred Gallons of Wine; Rum 
Permits Altered, Druggist Tells Court.” The issue 
of the same paper of February 22, 1923, had no less 
than fifteen similar items. 
The San Francisco Examiner in its issue of 
December 22, 1922, covered six columns of the first 
two pages with ten articles on wets, dry laws and 
acts, stills, booze, the shooting of a prohibition 
officer, resignation of dry director, and doctor fight- 
ing Volstead Law. 
And then ask yourself if Cardinal Gibbons was 
wrong when he said: “ Abortive laws breed popular 
contempt for all legal authority. There is already 
a dangerous sentiment of this kind in our country. 
To add to it by enacting an abortive law of such 
universal significance as the national prohibition 
statute, would work an incalculable injury to the 
spiritual well-being of the American people.”14 
Diagnosis: Alcohol on the brain. 
Brisbane, who, as we have stated before, advo- 
cated prohibition most effectively, is getting some- 
what discouraged and says: “ In Paris they feed 
uNew York Times, April 29, 1917. 88 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
chickens, and in Strassburg geese, by stuffing food 
down their necks. Are we to take our morality in 
that fashion? 
“ Chicago always tells the news dramatically. 
‘ Moonshine struck fifty Christmas celebrators ac- 
cording to yesterday’s diagnosis in the county 
hospital.’ The record was never equalled before 
prohibition. And in addition to being drunk and 
poisoned, the fifty Chicago patients are suffering 
from cuts and other injuries of a serious character, 
sustained in frenzied fights.’ 
“ A sad widower, congratulated on his fine dis- 
play of grief, said: 1 That’s nothing, you ought to 
have seen me at the grave.’ King Alcohol can say 
of the old days, ‘ They were nothing, you ought to 
see me under prohibition.’ ” 
The enforcement of the Volstead Law surely has 
made new friends for prohibition, and as Stout 
states there has been ‘ ‘ created a new brand of prohi- 
bitionist, the ex-saloon keeper and the cheap poli- 
tician, with their long retinue of heelers who are 
realizing enormous profits through the illegal sale 
of alcoholic liquors at fancy prices.” 
In California we can add the vineyardists who, 
while drinking more wine than ever, became con- 
verted to prohibition by the exceedingly high prices 
the grapes bring since the Volsteadian enforcement 
of prohibition. CHAPTER VII 
WHO HAS BEEN BENEFITED BY 
PROHIBITION SO FAR? 
One, and probably the only glorious accomplish- 
ment of the Eighteenth Amendment is the abolish- 
ment of that abomination we used to call the 
American saloon. No doubt, many an occasional 
and social drunkard was cured because the glaring 
and shining temptations were removed. No doubt, 
many a Saturday’s pay check is being saved for the 
use of the convivial fellow’s family. The heal 
drunkard, however, was not benefited because he is 
making his own and he can and does buy from the 
bootlegger. The dipsomaniac, the person with the 
uncontrollable craving for alcohol, the person for 
whom all prohibition laws were conceived, cannot 
be protected, because he is compelled by his crav- 
ing to drink any kind of alcohol he can get hold of. 
This is the poor fellow found dead or dying in a hole 
or behind a fence with a bottle beside him or in his 
pocket, clearly labeled with a skull and crossbones. 
This is the fellow who, just as his ill-luck may con- 
duct him, turns to narcotics. 
Though hardly necessary, we shall give just one 
characteristic example. 
The San Francisco Examiner printed January 
23, 1923, a report from Sacramento saying: “ Two 
89 90 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
are dead and seven are in serious condition at the 
County Hospital here to-day from drinking what is 
known to the police as ‘ canned heat,’ a poisonous 
concoction of wood alcohol and paraffine. 
“ Canned heat, sold in containers labeled poison, 
denatured alcohol, is placed in a cloth and the wood 
alcohol squeezed out by those who intend to drink 
it, according to the police. Addicts to alcoholism 
mix the poison with water and lemon juice. Officers 
claim it is practically impossible to curb the practice 
as proprietors of stores are unable to know the plans 
of those who purchase poisonous concoctions. 
“ Beverages manufactured from ‘ canned heat ’ 
first came to the attention of local authorities last 
week when a number of prisoners addicted to alco- 
holism gained permission to take chemicals to their 
cells in the county jail to heat coffee and food. The 
men were found in a serious condition.” 
No one can deny that more than anyone else, the 
criminals and the criminally inclined in the United 
States, were benefited by the Volstead Law. It 
certainly is less risky in every respect to be a boot- 
legger than to be a thief, a burglar, or a highway- 
man, and it is so much more profitable, to say nothing 
of the difference in the penalty. 
Crime, like water, follows the line of least resist- 
ance. There was a rumor in San Francisco police 
circles “ that there are at least three thousand places 
in this city which are carrying on a bootleg 
trade.”1 It is also stated that the “ bootlegging 
1 San Francisco Examiner, December 19, 1922. WHO HAS BEEN BENEFITED? 
91 
joints have become the rendezvous for crooks and 
shady characters.11 
Foreign trade surely was benefited most de- 
cidedly by the strict enforcement of prohibition in 
the United States. 
Our neighbors, such as Bahama, Cuba, Mexico, 
and Canada reap large profits. For instance, The 
San Francisco Chronicle published, January 23, 
1922, a telegram from Washington dated the day 
previous where it is stated among other things, that: 
“ Liquor is now being smuggled into the United 
States from the Bahama Islands at the rate of 
1,200,000 gallons annually, while the government and 
population of that British colony, getting ‘ relatively 
immense revenues from the traffic,’ are absolutely 
indisposed to sympathize with efforts to check it, 
according to a statement issued to-day by Repre- 
sentative Rogers, based he declares, on official data 
furnished him by the State Department. 
“ From the duties on whiskey alone, Rogers said, 
the Islands are deriving an income three times as 
great as their government received from all sources 
in 1918, while the estimated profits of those 
interested in the traffic, including legislators, are 
said to be enriching. 
‘ ‘ Rogers declared the State Department records 
‘ read like a book of fiction. ’ 
“ Up to 1919, he asserted, the annual imports of 
liquor to the Bahamas were 50,000 gallons. 
“ The Bahamas are certainly the oasis of ‘ dry 
America,’ his statement said.” 92 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The same paper published April, 24,1923, a tele- 
gram from London dated the day before, wherein it 
is stated among other things, that “ in answer to- a 
question in the House of Commons, W. A. Ormsby 
Gore of the Colonial Office, stated that wine exports 
to the Bahamas in 1918 amounted to $49,679 and 
spirits $29,938. Last year the value of wine exported 
was $128,122 and spirits more than $4,000,000. 
“ Asked how much of this was due to prohibition 
in America, Ormsby Gore said he thought virt- 
ually all. 
“ Commander Kenworthy said that for the sake 
of friendship for the United States, the Islands 
should be placed on rations, to which Ormsby 
Gore replied: 
“ ‘We certainly should not interfere with 
British trade. If we prohibit it, they would go to 
Haiti or some other place. ’ ’ ’ 
The San Francisco Examiner in its issue of April 
26, 1923, reported in a telegram from Washington 
that since prohibition became effective in the United 
States, exports of Scotch and Irish whiskey from 
Great Britain to Mexico and various West Indian 
Islands off the American coast has increased 2,000 
per cent. The totals according to figures compiled 
by the Commerce Department, were: 1919—70,229 
gallons; 1920—321,620 gallons; 1921—334,615 gal- 
lons ; 1922—609,500 gallons. 
To show how foreign shipping is being benefited, 
the same paper printed on October 8, 1922, a tele- 
gram from Seattle, Wash., October 7: “‘It’s WHO HAS BEEN BENEFITED? 
93 
another blow at American shipping and will drive 
passengers to the Canadian vessels,’ said H. F. 
Alexander, President of the Pacific Steamship Com- 
pany here to-day, commenting on government orders 
banning the sale of liquor on American ships. 
‘ Seattle will lose a greater part of its passenger 
traffic to the Orient,’ Alexander declared. Japanese 
and British steamship firms with headquarters at 
this port refused to comment on the order.” 
Brisbane comments on this phase of the blessings 
of prohibition by saying: “ Mr. Daugherty’s ruling, 
obeying the law and common sense, forbids the 
carrying of alcoholic drinks on any ship within three 
miles of any coast owned by the United States. 
“ The foreign ships will get around it some way 
undoubtedly. Vessels of the Shipping Board will 
obey the law, which means that their passenger 
traffic will be ruined. 
“ Privately owned American ships will obey, 
more or less—probably less. 
“ As for American yachts, if you think they will 
obey this ruling, any more than they have obeyed the 
Volstead Law, you do not know how things are 
managed in the United States. 
“ The decision of Mr. Daugherty and the Presi- 
dent is the only one possible. On American ships 
American laws apply against prohibition as against 
murder or theft. 
“It is suggested that the ruling will placate 
ultra-prohibitionists and make them consent to a 
ship subsidy. But the ruling also unfortunately 94 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
will make subsidy worthless. The good American 
water drinker changes when he starts for Europe. 
He will take boats that give what he wants. Even 
this country is hardly rich enough to run great 
ships empty. 
“ The idea of the subsidy is to supply us with 
ships that would be useful in war. That means the 
fast ship, to carry troops and escape submarines and 
torpedo boats. But only the passenger trade makes 
fast ships possible. 
“ Those that planned the law never intended it, 
but prohibition of alcoholic drinks now seems to 
threaten prohibition of American shipping. Who 
will find a way to adjust that without law breaking? ’ ’ 
In order to illustrate how other countries deal 
with the problem, we shall mention a telegram from 
Victoria, B. C., April 19, 1923: “ More than half a 
million dollars is to be distributed among municipal- 
ities and hospitals of British Columbia in profits of 
the provincial liquor board for the fiscal year 1922. 
The board which conducts the sale of liquor, earned 
$1,600,000 in the year, a preliminary distribution of 
$511,000 having been made last year.” 
The small profiteers of the Volstead Law were 
and are the countless derelicts, the shiftless ones, 
who cannot hold and do not care to hold steady and 
useful jobs, but find congenial employment as 
“ under cover ” prohibition agents. 
A witness in one of San Francisco’s sensational 
bootlegger cases, said in a letter to his brother-in- 
law, which he identified in court, “ How was I to 
know that they were prohibition agents? Both of WHO HAS BEEN BENEFITED? 
95 
them acted like crazy men and drank like fishes! ’ ’ 
And this is most characteristic. 
If we judge by what we hear, see and read, 
bigger profiteers of prohibition are the professional 
reformers. We read in The San Francisco 
Examiner, January 25, 1923, a report from Sacra- 
mento. “ The Jones Senate Committee on investi- 
gation of moneys spent for or against measures on 
the ballot at the last election began its duties to-day 
with an inquiry into the funds expended to promote 
or defeat the Wright Act. 
“ Nothing more than carelessness was developed. 
The drys accounted for something like $75,000 spent 
in publicity and organization. The wets spent about 
$15,000 through three organizations.” 
“ Ex ungue leonem ” one would be tempted to ex- 
claim when reading in the San Francisco Chronicle, 
January 30, 1923, a telegram from New York, 
January 29: “ The financial support of John D. 
Rockefeller, Sr. and Jr., has been withdrawn from 
the Anti-Saloon League of New York State, it was 
learned to-day after the appearance of Raymond D. 
Fosdick, representative of the Rockefellers, at the 
District Attorney’s inquiry into the financial affairs 
of William H. Anderson, State Superintendent of 
the League. 
“ Both the Rockefellers ceased contributing to 
the League several months ago, it was asserted, 
after their representatives were informed League 
officials were splitting commissions on contributions. 
“ The questioning of the Superintendent, 96 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
scheduled for to-day, was postponed at his request 
until Wednesday.” 
And it is only to forget all this ugliness that we 
smile at a report from Los Angeles, printed in The 
San Francisco Examiner, April 25, 1923, where it 
states that juries in bootlegging cases are legally 
entitled to drink the evidence, according to W. 
Maxwell Burke, Deputy District Attorney. 
His ruling followed the trial of a man charged 
with violation of the Wright Act. 
Burke introduced a bottle of liquor as evidence. 
The jury heard the testimony and retired with 
the evidence. 
When it returned, it was hung—seven to five 
for conviction. 
The evidence was gone. 
“ A jury has the right to sample the evidence,” 
said Burke. ‘ ‘ It has the right to take the liquor into 
the jury room and determine whether it is liquor. 
In this case the jury evidently found the evidence 
genuine, but you would not know it by the disagree- 
ment as to the guilt or innocence. ’9 
“ With the evidence gone,” Burke said, “it is 
improbable the defendant will be tried again.” 
Finally, we may mention that silveesmiths and 
silverware dealers were greatly benefited by an 
enormous boom in pocket flasks. The newest is the 
‘ ‘ King Tut pocket flask. ’ ’ And jewelers claim that: 
“ Prohibition has brought in a vogue for flasks and 
cocktail shakers as wedding gifts. Honeymoon 
homes are not considered complete nowadays with- 
out these useful articles.” CHAPTER VIII 
CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
The fight against alcohol is as old as drunken- 
ness itself. We can easily understand that the 
history of prohibition began very, very long ago. 
The author stated elsewhere1 that man, as an animal 
gifted with reason, has reached special excellence in 
various spheres. In many a province of knowledge 
and art he has left marks of his inventive genius. 
In most things it took him thousands of years to pry 
into and lay open the secrets of Nature. Some fields 
are still left fallow by his investigating power, 
because he has never felt a desire to turn his atten- 
tion toward them. He possesses, however, quite 
perfect knowledge of the means of various abuses of 
his own bodily powers, and he knows how to commit 
all kinds of excesses. This knowledge he acquired 
at so early a date that even the very oldest of monu- 
ments of human culture tell of it as of something that 
existed since the most remote antiquity. 
The Bible and ancient history prove that drink- 
ing of intoxicating liquors, and the abuse of alcohol 
cannot be blamed on modern culture and civilization. 
They have been transmitted to us, like many other 
detrimental inheritances, by preceding ages, and our 
time suffers under it neither more nor less than it 
does from many other bad qualities, perverse 
1 1888. 
97 98 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
notions, and unsuitable institutions handed down to 
us by our ancestors. 
We must not overlook that savages, not organ- 
ized and not civilized in any way, almost without 
exception have intoxicating liquors of their own. 
They invariably know how to prepare fermented 
beverages. In Dahomey find the palm wine, the 
Arabs make their date wine, the negroes of Haiti 
make their highly intoxicating kawa in a most dis- 
gusting manner; at Tahiti a highly alcoholic wine is 
made from oranges, etc., etc. 
Savages are not clever enough to make distilled 
spirits, but they soon get civilized in this respect 
whenever they come into contact with white people. 
Immediately they acquire a taste for liquor and try 
to obtain it and later to manufacture it. 
It does not take much cleverness to make liquor, 
in fact anyone can do it. Nature herself produces 
it in the most ardent prohibitionist. Some physician 
said in a discussion: ‘ ‘ Whatever its uses, there it is, 
this vile poison as it is called, appearing constantly a 
normal constituent in living beings into which it has 
never been artificially introduced, and lying beyond 
the reach of prohibition. ’ ’ 
Some combination of an historian and archeolo- 
gist may some day write the history of prohibition, 
though it will not be an easy task. It is old, very old. 
We know that it was enacted here, there, and almost 
everywhere, really enforced never, forgotten or 
repealed again and again, then introduced again and 
again, all in the vain effort to make people moral and CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
99 
good by law. New Zealand almost adopted prohi- 
bition in 1911. To-day the United States has the 
distinction of being in the same class with the prohi- 
bition zone between 20 and 22 latitude north, where 
the African negroes are protected by “ the native 
races and liquor traffic united committee.” 
The study of the recent history of prohibition in 
the various States before 1918 would make one dizzy: 
enactments, repealings, all kinds of modifications, 
many experiments, a regular kaleidoscopic puzzle 
picture, and only indifferent results. 
The first temperance society was founded about 
1600,2 and, as at that time, no one thought of absolute 
prohibition, the members had to pledge themselves 
not to drink more than fourteen goblets of wine a day. 
The first American Temperance society was 
formed in 1826, and the first National Temperance 
Convention at Philadelphia in 1833 passed the reso- 
lution recommending pure water as the only substi- 
tute for alcoholic drinks. You see the modern sweet 
and sickening beverages did not exist at that time, 
or at least they did no.t advertise. 
The history of the Eighteenth Amendment is 
only too well known. It was passed, some claim, by 
hook and crook; but it is a law and ought to be 
obeyed. Present company excepted, the writer, in 
his extensive travels at home and abroad, has very 
seldom found anyone who was not willing to close 
one or both eyes when his own personal big “I” was 
a Hemmeter. “ History of Alcohol as a Substance for Human 
Consumption.” Medical Record, August 13, 1921. 100 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
offered a drink of something choice. The same old 
story! We have the commandment ‘ ‘ Thou shalt not 
drink! ” There is always some good excuse for the 
big “ I.” 
Mighty few are willing to subscribe to the “ I 
shall not drink ” and when they do, it may be just 
one of those “ New Year resolutions ” or one of 
those good intentions that pave the road to a certain 
hot place. 
Even ardent prohibitionists begin to realize 
that everything is not going smoothly. The San 
Francisco Examiner, December 21, 1922, published 
a telegram from Washington, December, 20, as fol- 
lows : ‘ ‘ Charges that some of the governors called 
into conference by President Harding to discuss 
prohibition violations and other high officials them- 
selves buy and drink bootleg liquor were made in 
the House to-day by Representative William D. 
Upshaw, Democrat, of Georgia, 
“ We might as well be plain about it,” said 
Representative Upshaw, one of the staunchest ‘ dry ’ 
leaders on the minority side. The plain people are 
justly skeptical of many of these high officials. They 
laugh at their high-sounding pronunciamentos 
because they doubt their sincerity. 
‘ ‘ The people—the plain people—have cumulative 
evidence that some of these 1 conferring ’ governors 
and many high officials do not practise the prohi- 
bition enforcement which they preach to others; 
the people—the plain people—think that many of 
these high officials believe in that high-falutin CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
101 
autocracy which claims the privilege of buying and 
drinking illicit liquors themselves, while denying 
that privilege to the poor devils down among the 
masses who are foolish enough to want the oppor- 
tunity to buy and drink illicit liquid damnation. ’ ’ 
The San Francisco Chronicle of April 7, 1923, 
printed a telegram from New York, April 6: “ The 
attitude of persons in ‘ high official and profes- 
sional ’ positions who * tacitly sanction ’ violation of 
the prohibition laws by purchasing ‘ bootleg ’ liquor 
is a ‘ matter for serious thought,’ Federal Prohi- 
bition Commissioner Haynes declared in an address 
here to-day before the New York Annual Methodist 
Episcopal Conference.” 
What N. G. Welburn, Commander of the Amer- 
ican Legion Post said at a Business Development 
League meeting according to a report published by 
The San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 1922, 
is quite characteristic of the situation. Welburn 
certainly knew what he was talking about, having 
served and voluntarily resigned from the office of 
Division Chief of the United States Internal Revenue 
Department. He said, “ According to a survey made 
by a magazine of national circulation, eighty-five per 
cent, of the American people are violators of the 
national prohibition law. Prohibition abolished the 
saloon and put the breweries in the kitchens of 
American homes and the distilleries in their cellars. 
It has substituted the demijohn in the home for the 
family album. The enforcement officers are dis- 
couraged and disheartened and their failure to 102 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
enforce the law lies in the fact that they receive no 
public support. The public is apathetic. A great 
percentage of the population of the country is abso- 
lutely against the prohibition law, and a great 
majority of those who are not openly defying the 
law themselves, don’t care one way or the other 
whether prohibition is enforced or not.” 
One can read in the September 6, 1922, issue of 
The San Francisco Examiner a reflection of the 
sentiment of the people, in the report that: ‘ ‘ Detec- 
tive Robert Hunter yesterday returned from a 
hurried automobile trip to Jackson, Amador County. 
“ On Monday Hunter drove a machine loaded 
with ten cases of whiskey, which had been released 
by the Federal Prohibition Office to be used as a 
stimulant for the workers who are trying to rescue 
the imprisoned miners. Said he: 
“ ‘ One cannot imagine the reception we received. 
We were wildly cheered. It was the sort of recep- 
tion one gets when one brings medicine. It was not 
viewed in the light of liquor. 
“ ‘ We learned that the frantic workers have 
been stimulating themselves on coffee. They were 
sorely in need of the whiskey to brace them for the 
terrible work of rescue.’ ” 
Besides all the other reasons why prohibition 
cannot be enforced the most evident one is that alco- 
hol and alcoholic beverages are easily made. 
Alcohol may be made synthetically from its elements 
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; but because easier, it 
is invariably made by fermenting solutions contain- CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
103 
ing sugar. As stated before, the number of alcohol- 
yielding substances from sawdust to grapes, is end- 
less. Before prohibition went into effect, alcoholic 
drinks were almost exclusively produced by people 
who knew how, but now the number of those who try 
is incalculable, and among the ever growing number 
of those who are willing to learn there are some 
pretty good pupils. 
The author was at a dinner party at a Chicago 
newspaperman’s home where Tokay wine was served 
unstintedly. The wine was really good, but the host 
confessed later in the evening that he manufactured 
it after a Russian recipe. The recipe was carefully 
copied by several of the guests. 
The author was likewise the guest in the home of 
a famous Denver physician. After a splendid dinner, 
and when everyone had had one or two glasses of ex- 
cellent imported wine, each guest was given with 
his coffee a tiny glass of Russian Allash, made, as it 
later proved, by another Denver physician. 
A Japanese was brought into an Oakland court 
because he was selling in his soft drink place grape- 
juice showing to contain 10.7 per cent, alcohol by 
volume. His excuse was that he knew little about 
grapejuice, and that he did not realize that an open 
bung turns a barrel into a self-acting still. 
During the war when persons in uniform were 
under strict prohibition rules, the boys in one of the 
Army hospitals found out that prune juice, when 
left standing under certain conditions, developed a 
most powerful kick. At once the demand for stewed 104 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
prunes became very urgent and great, but the 
prunes were almost squeezed dry before eaten or 
thrown away. 
Necessity is the mother of invention, and the 
people in the United States are clever—they learn 
fast enough. 
The Franco-Californien of June 9, 1921, quotes 
M. Don V. Parker, the Prohibition Commissioner of 
Ohio, and furnishes thereby some interesting statis- 
tics. Up to 1919 there were no more than one 
hundred stills in operation in the State of Ohio, 
while in 1921 their number, stated conservatively, 
was fifty thousand. Before prohibition there existed 
two hundred breweries, but now that one in four 
families makes beer there are hundreds of thousands, 
in this State alone. 
The Associated Press wired from Harrisburg, 
Pa., January 2, 1923: “ Governor Sproul told mem- 
bers of Pennsylvania Legislature to-day that ‘ it is 
a patent fact ’ that the prohibition enforcement 
laws, Federal and State, are not working well 
in Pennsylvania. 
“ The Governor, who goes out of office in two 
weeks, and delivered his final message to the Legis- 
lature in person, said that some people are inclined 
to blame this condition upon the State’s own enforce- 
ment law, ‘ and yet the fact remains that in other 
States which have the kind of laws which these 
societies demand, the results are no better.’ 
“ ‘ In New York and New Jersey, where the type 
of laws which are desired here have been enacted,’ CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
105 
Governor Sproul said, ‘ the disregard for prohi- 
bition is certainly fully as much in evidence as it is 
in Pennsylvania.’ 
“ Even in States which have had prohibition for 
years there has been much more illicit trade in 
intoxicating liquors than before the passage of the 
Federal Enforcement Act.” The telegram says 
further that Governor Sproul characterized the 
“ situation as discouraging and dangerous, and is 
particularly menacing in a free land.” 
“ ‘ Bootlegging has become, a business of 
astounding proportions,’ the Governor declared, 
‘ and undoubtedly much of the banditry and other 
crimes which are now harassing the country have 
their genesis in the school of outlawry fostered by 
the illegal trade in intoxicants. We are rearing a 
fine brood of which it will require stern 
measures to suppress.’ ” 
The San Francisco Examiner had on March 31, 
1923, a telegram from Madison, Wis., March 30: 
“ Housewives of Watertown, Wis., community have 
become skilful in circumventing the Volstead Act, 
according to Dr. A. H. Hardwig, of that town, in 
urging the State Affairs Committee to recommend 
the Peterson joint resolution which would petition 
Congress for more liberal prohibition legislation. 
He declared that nearly every housewife in Water- 
town was proficient in making beverages; that 
gathering of dandelions and grapes for wine making 
was a pastime in that community and that whiskey 106 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
and drunkenness there were more common than in 
ante-prohibition days. ’’ 
The same paper published, May 13, 1923, a tele- 
gram from Georgetown, Del., May 12: “ National 
prohibition and Volsteadism are given little concern 
by residents of southern Delaware at this time of 
the year, for the season of making dandelion wine is 
at hand, and from now until June hundreds of 
people will be engaged in making a supply as a 
1 Spring tonic. ’ 
“ Nature this Spring seems to have smiled on 
those who are fond of something stronger than grape 
juice, and has brought forth an abundance of dande- 
lion blooms which are being gathered by the small 
boys and girls in all parts of the State and sold for 
wine-making purposes. 
“ Fields abound in the little yellow flowers and 
children are able to realize from twenty to twenty- 
five cents a half peck for them. Many are able to 
earn neat sums after school hours.’9 
Attorney Hugh L. Smith asked May, 12, 1923, in 
the United States District Court at San Francisco : 
‘ ‘ Does a moonshine still boiling in a private dwelling 
make it a distillery? And if it does, then does a loaf 
of bread baking make a home a bakery? ” 
Brisbane commented in The San Francisco 
Examiner, January 2, 1923, saying: “ In America 
we begin the new year with an earnest effort, led 
by Attorney General Daugherty, to make prohi- 
bition real. 
“ Insurance companies tell you that their busi- CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
107 
ness is less safe than it was, because of excessive 
drinking. The prosperous class are drinking more 
than ever, the poorer classes drink abominable stuff 
that kills, and men drink, literally, anything they can 
get, regardless of the fact that it is poison. In New 
York City where nine died of drink at once, it was 
assumed that wood alcohol was to blame. Not at all, 
the plain brand of bootleg alcohol did the killing, 
with no wood alcohol assistance. 
‘ ‘ Friends of prohibition say that there is always 
trouble in beginning. A few must be killed off to 
warn the others, then a generation will grow up 
caring nothing for drink. 
“ It seems hard on the number ‘ killed off.’ ” 
Brisbane thinks that this year (1923) “ of real 
effort by the government will show whether or not 
prohibition can be made practically effective.” 
And we may ask, is it not strange that those 
for whom prohibition was devised must be first 
‘ killed off ’ I 
In view of the easiness with which alcoholic 
beverages are made and the overabundance of all 
kinds of makings, it must be clear to any thinking 
person, not riding the prohibition-hobby, that first 
the strong desire must be overcome. This would 
involve a considerable change of human desire for 
stimulation, for recreation and the so frequently 
returning longing for even a temporary Nirvana. 
It must be clear to anyone that the home pro- 
duction of alcoholic beverages cannot be con- 
trolled, nor be prohibited. Even if the government 108 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
went so far as some over-enthusiastic prohibitionists 
clamor for, it would hardly accomplish anything 
worth while. Even a never heard of system of spy- 
ism and systematic violation of the old established 
Anglo-Saxon ‘ my home is my castle ’ can never go 
far enough to accomplish anything else than resent- 
ment and hate. 
The powers that be would do well to consider the 
warning hailed by Senator Reed, in regard to some 
other uncalled for legislation, as printed in the 
Congressional Record: “ Yes, Mr. President, it will 
have a highly educative effect. It will teach our 
people to hate the government that invades their 
homes, and thrusts the ugly face of a politician who 
tramped in Washington to get a job, into the 
sacred chamber of the woman about to give birth 
to a child. ” 
Slowly and by degrees the light of truth begins 
to dawn in many quarters. For instance, The San 
Francisco papers reported May 27,1923, that “ Pro- 
hibition agents were given to understand yesterday 
that the United States Attorney’s office will here- 
after refuse to prosecute citizens who transport 
liquor, who are not bootleggers.” And that Judge 
Van Fleet announced from the bench that “ Many 
arrests are made that should not be made. ’ ’ 
Even the curbing of the bootlegger looks to 
most observers as a hopeless task. Human greed 
for the large profits always must call new boot- 
leggers from the ranks of the criminals and the 
larger ranks of the criminally inclined. The San CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
109 
Francisco daily papers of April 5, 1922, complained 
that the mass of prohibition business clogs the 
calendar of the federal courts and delays disposition 
of other matters. 
While the prohibition agents uncover day by day 
tricks of the smugglers and bootleggers, these show 
also cleverness in inventing day by day new devices 
and schemes, from a copper lined bootleg vest to 
steel traps to snare ‘ dry 9 officers. In Colusa it 
was recently discovered that so-called customers 
obtained bracers drawn from the water wagon which 
used to sprinkle the city streets. 
The San Francisco Examiner of May 5, 1923, 
published a telegram from New York, May, 4. “ Cut 
off from surface communication with the Atlantic 
rum fleet by a concerted drive of prohibition enforce- 
ment arms, the liquor-running fraternity have 
turned to air and submarine channels in an effort to 
get contraband ashore, Lieutenant Commander 
Camden of the Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, disclosed 
to-day when he came in off the rum patrol. 
“ Instead of fleeing this port as had been 
reported last night, the rum fleet had merely moved 
a little further south of Sandy Hook. 
“ The Seneca has just located the British yacht 
Istar off Jones Inlet, Commander Camden said, 
when a big grey seaplane swooped down beside the 
rum runner and two of the flyers clambered aboard. 
The Seneca put on full speed toward the seaplane, 
but before she arrived a smaller plane which had 
been circling overhead signalled the other. 110 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
“ A short time later, the Seneca sighted two 
boats, ostensibly lobster fishermen, alongside 
another unit of the rum fleet. She sped toward them, 
and the lobster boats fled, leaving behind submerged 
boxes, which were believed to be cases of liquor, 
which were to be towed ashore under water. ’y 
The same paper published May 17, 1923, a tele- 
gram from St. John, N. B., May 16: “ Despite 
reports from New York that the United States 
Government is waging vigorous war on rum fleets off 
the Atlantic seaboard, the liquor trade is picking up 
briskly, now that the worst of the spring storms are 
believed to have passed. Rum schooners, reported 
to be heading for the Jersey three-mile limit, are 
putting out almost daily.” 
The United Press wired from San Antonio, Tex., 
May 26: “ Customs officials to-day were investi- 
gating charges that air booze lines are maintained 
from Mexican border points to the cities in the 
United States following the capture of an aviator 
with one hundred and twelve quarts of whiskey near 
Sabine, Texas. 
‘ ‘ The flyer, who gave the name of C. S. Williams, 
told officials he was only one of many aviators who 
maintain regular weekly schedules between Mexico 
and the United States, delivering liquor shipments. 
The aviators have regular customers at numerous 
towns along their routes, Williams said.” 
The Grand Jury of Bronx County found it 
already in 1921 necessary to recommend the repeal 
of the New York State Enforcement Law. The New CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
111 
York Times of October 15, 1921, reported this fact 
by saying among other things: “ Crimes of an 
unprecedented nature are charged against the 
Mullan-Gage Prohibition Enforcement Act in a pre- 
sentment handed up to Supreme Court Justice 
O’Malley yesterday by the regular Grand Jury of 
Bronx County. The statute is held responsible for 
‘ acts of unprecedented violence and lawlessness,’ 
for the ‘ more general use of drugs and narcotics ’ 
and for the organization of ‘ bands of men akin to 
pirates ’ who break into the homes of respectable 
citizens in their wide quest for alcoholic liquors. 
“ Because the Mullan-Gage law is believed to 
have led up to all these evils, its repeal is urgently 
recommended to the next Legislature. 
“ The Grand Jury reached its conclusion after 
considering, not only all the evidence brought before 
it, but also the facts presented to other grand juries 
on which some of its members had served in the 
last ten months.” 
Evidently the Federal Prohibition Officers can 
only bring isolated cases to deserved punishment, 
for the Bronx County Grand Jury characterized the 
enforcement work done by the New York police as 
WASTEFUL WORK. 
The Federal Prohibition Officers proved a drop 
in the alcohol ocean, the police forces of various 
States accomplished little, many members sank and 
drowned in alcohol and, partly urged by the ultra 
prohibitionists and in order to make an attempt to 
force respect, even for a hated law, the use of the 112 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
United States army and navy is sought in the fight 
against liquor. 
The San Francisco Chronicle of April 28, 1923, 
published a telegram from Washington, April 27: 
“ President Harding has asked the Department of 
Justice for an opinion as to whether he may lawfully 
employ the armed forces of the United States in 
the suppression of rum smuggling, it was announced 
at the White House to-day. 
“ A complete program has been worked out for 
the suppression of this illegal traffic, the White 
House spokesman stated, but the execution of this 
program awaits verification by the legal department 
of the Government of the authority of the President 
to use the Army or Navy in carrying out the plan. 
“ The President is particularly interested in dis- 
covering whether he may legally divert money 
appropriated for the use of the Navy to the enforce- 
ment of the prohibition law. ’ * 
In order to show what may be expected in the 
future it is further said: “ While the White House 
spokesman used the expression ‘ armed forces,’ it is 
not understood that use of the Army is contemplated 
for the present at least. The opinion of the Depart- 
ment of Justice, it is believed, will have direct 
bearing particularly upon the naval phase of 
the question.” 
For the good and loyal citizen the only remaining 
hope is that the splendid fighting forces of our 
country may not be compelled to suffer by too much 
sampling of the various evidences they may seize. CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
113 
Attorney General Daugherty, Secretary of the 
Treasury Mellon, and Prohibition Commissioner 
Haynes reported at the conference of fifteen State 
governors with late President Harding that the 
situation has become so serious, with the law in 
many localities held in such little esteem, that drastic 
measures must be employed at once.3 
At the conference Governor Ritchie, of Maryland, 
declared that he and the majority of the people of 
Maryland believe that the Volstead Act is impossible 
of enforcement. 
No law could be drastic enough to satisfy the 
“ prohibitionists at any cost.” To show to what 
length they would and do go, we may cite one most 
characteristic example. 
The San Francisco Examiner published, in its 
issue of November 4, 1919, a telegram from Wash- 
ington, November 3: “By unanimous vote the 
Senate Judiciary Committee to-day declined to 
recommend repeal of the espionage act. Repeal 
bills of Senators France, of Maryland, and 
Poindexter, of Washington, Republicans, were 
ordered reported adversely. 
* ‘ The Committee decided it was impracticable to 
repeal the law because it included search warrants 
and other provisions necessary for the enforcement 
OF PROHIBITION.” 
Early in the game, the then Prohibition Com- 
missioner Kramer, in demanding an appropriation 
vastly in excess of that allowed by the last Congress 
* San Francisco Examiner, December 19, 1922. 114 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
for carrying on the work, declared that the use of 
intoxicating liquor cannot be successfully curbed 
until the sale of hair tonics and other similar solu- 
tions containing a large percentage of alcohol, is 
thoroughly supervised. 
Many grocers and alleged soda fountains, he 
stated, are now doing stupendous illegitimate busi- 
ness in bottled remedies containing from three to as 
high as forty per cent, alcohol. 
Then Kramer worried about hair tonics and in 
1923 we need the Army and Navy to enforce 
prohibition! 
No matter what may be done and undertaken, we 
know that absolute prohibition cannot be enforced 
in reality until the provisions of the law become 
popular with the overwhelming majority of the 
people. This is not an easy task, for the use of 
extraordinary powers conferred by erratic and ex- 
ceptional legislation could subdue no nation, least of 
all the freedom-loving, though so patient and other- 
wise so law-abiding people of our country. Stout,4 
who claims that prohibition “ should never have 
passed beyond the dignity of a village ordinance,” 
very cleverly adds: ‘ ‘ Evolution will never bring any 
species down to the level of its unfit. And no nation 
can adopt measures which sacrifice its manhood and 
womanhood for the benefit of its drunkards and 
debauchees and still hold its economic position.” 
As it has been proven beyond the shadow of a 
doubt, and in accordance with the opinion of the 
4 l.c., p. 131. CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
115 
majority of physicians everywhere that alcohol is of 
value, one must agree with Wallace when he says 
that ‘ ‘ human effort is not likely permanently to pre- 
vent its legitimate employment. ’55 
Ivan Bratt who devised the Swedish method of 
drink control, claims that his interest in the drink 
control is the interest of the social physician; his 
method the method of the intensive administrator. 
He would be a prohibitionist, in spite of liberalism, 
if he could see any chance for interdicting alcohol. 
But he could see no chance for it. He favors control 
as the one rational method. 
Doctor Bratt sympathizes with the aim of the 
prohibitionist—to end the misuse of alcohol—but he 
sees prohibition as an administrative impossibility. 
The best way to end misuse, he asserts, is not to 
attempt to prevent use, which cannot be managed, 
but to administer use, which can. 
Triboulet, Mathieu, and Mignon, who in their 
great work on alcohol condemn it in every respect, 
and, while prejudiced, surely are not prejudiced in 
favor of it, think that absolute prohibition would be 
to their great liking, but “ elle nous semble impos- 
sible.’’ (It appears impossible to us.) 
The prominent anti-alcoholist of France, Monin, 
advises: to point to absolute abstinence as an ideal, 
but to ask for temperance only.6 He deems it an 
error and fanaticism to attack wine or to declare 
0 Medical Record, January 14, 1922. 
fl l.c., p. 155. ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
116 
that whatever contains alcohol cannot be called a 
hygienic beverage. 
Jacquet,7 another scientist who is rather severe 
on alcohol, calls prohibition the “ remede par excel- 
lence,” but its application, being too radical, can 
only be regarded as an Utopia. 
Cardinal Gibbons surely was a prophet when he 
said: “ All history shows that you cannot legislate 
morality into a people; that the law that is enacted 
against the majority sentiment immediately becomes 
a dead law.” 
The Volstead Law may not be dead, but its 
emanations surely smell to heaven. 
Can any fair-minded person claim that prohi- 
bition, or even temperance has been promoted by the 
Volstead Law! Can any American citizen disagree 
with Senator Brandegee when he said: “ If this law 
cannot be enforced except by Russian and inquisi- 
torial practices, it is not a law for the Anglo- 
Saxon peoples.” 
Butler says when speaking of the Eighteenth 
and another Amendment, that ‘ ‘ they are not obeyed 
by large numbers of highly intelligent and morally 
sensitive people, and there is no likelihood that they 
can ever be enforced, no matter at what expenditure 
of money or effort, or at what cost of infringement 
or neglect of other equally valid provisions of the 
same Constitution.” 
We may ask why the people of the United States 
1 l.c., p. 753. CAN PROHIBITION BE ENFORCED? 
117 
should disregard what Abraham Lincoln in his 
sublimely simple way stated in 1840: 
“ Prohibition will work great injury to the cause 
of temperance. It is a species of intemperance 
within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason, 
in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by 
legislation and makes a crime out of things that are 
not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at 
the very principles on which our government 
was founded.” 
Though Arthur S. Henning, of Washington, 
states 8 that there has been a good deal of specula- 
tion as to whether President Coolidge had the Eigh- 
teenth Amendment in mind when he, at that time 
Vice-President, addressed the American Bar Asso- 
ciation, August 10, 1922, we are quite sure that the 
words were wise and to the point when he said: 
“ Behind very many of these enlarging activities (of 
the Government) lies the untenable theory that there 
is some short cut to perfection. It is conceived that 
there can be a horizontal elevation of the standards 
of the Nation, immediate and perceptible, by the 
simple device of new laws. This has never been the 
case in human experience. Progress is slow and 
the result of a long and arduous process of self- 
discipline. It is not conferred upon the people, it 
comes from the people. In a republic the law reflects 
rather than makes the standard of conduct and the 
state of public opinion. Real reform does not begin 
with a law. The attempt to dragoon the body when 
8 San Francisco Chronicle, August 30, 1923. 118 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
the need is to convince the soul will end only in revolt. 
“ Under the attempt to perform the impossible 
there sets in a general disintegration. When legis- 
lation fails, those who look upon it as a sovereign 
remedy simply cry out for more legislation. A sound 
and wise statesmanship which recognizes the 
attempts to abide by the limitations will undoubtedly 
find itself displaced by the type of public official who 
promises much, legislates much, expends much, but 
accomplishes little. The deliberate, sound judgment 
of the country is likely to find it has been superseded 
by a popular whim. The independence of the legis- 
lator is broken down. The enforcement of the law 
becomes uncertain. The courts fail in their function 
of speedy and accurate justice; their judgments are 
questioned and their independence is threatened. 
The law, changed and changeable on the slightest 
provocation, loses its sanctity and authority. A con- 
tinuation of this condition opens the road to chaos. ’ ’ 
May we ask finally why all this terrible turmoil to 
enforce something that positively cannot be en- 
forced? Why drastic and inapplicable laws that can 
but further secret use and abuse f 
Caveant consules ne quis detrimenti respublica 
capiat! CHAPTER IX 
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
AND PROHIBITION 
It is a poor medical man who takes no interest in 
medical societies. Any physician in the United 
States who is not one of the 89,000 members of the 
American Medical Association simply shows that 
something is wrong with him. Any physician who 
does not honor and respect the American Medical 
Association shows lack of understanding by ignoring 
the facts of enormous achievements. This is no 
place to enter into the history of this, the largest, 
and easily the best medical society in the world. It 
may he sufficient to mention that The Journal of the 
American Medical Association is by far the best and 
most read medical publication in the whole world 
and that, if real medical education and public sanita- 
tion are to-day of high standing in the United 
States, it is solely due to the efforts of the American 
Medical Association. 
But, and there always is a but, the American 
Medical Association, is not perfect, their Board of 
Trustees and even their House of Delegates are not 
infallible. This is the only excuse one can offer 
for the now famous resolution on alcohol passed in 
1917 at the New York session. The only excuse, but 
not the only explanation. 
119 120 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The author who had for several years the honor 
to represent the Medical Society of the State of 
California in the House of Delegates.of the American 
Medical Association was for certain reasons not 
elected to be a delegate in 1917, therefore was not 
present when at the opening meeting of the House 
of Delegates June 4, the Council on Health and 
Public Instruction reported that “ at the Detroit 
session, the following letter was presented by the 
Secretary of the Association to the House of Dele- 
gates, and was by that body referred to the Council 
on Health and Public Instruction: 
“ To the House of Delegates of the American 
Medical Association, Detroit, Michigan. 
Dear Sirs: 
‘ ‘ In view of the increasing desire on the part of 
the nations of the world for relief from the evil 
effects of alcoholic liquors on society, and in view of 
the fact that all the warring nations of Europe have 
found that liquor drinking must be curbed because 
of its interference with health, efficiency and safety, 
we, representing 400,000 women, members of the 
National Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 
respectfully request that your honorable body give 
expression at this annual meeting of the American 
Medical Association to such a warning against alco- 
holic liquors as shall strengthen the hands of boards 
of health and temperance organizations now com- 
batting the liquor evil. 
“ One of the chief causes of the alcohol habit is THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
121 
the ignorance of the mass of people concerning the 
real nature of alcohol. They have been taught that 
alcoholic liquors give health and strength, that they 
are tonic and remedial. The brewing and whiskey 
trades advertise* that their products are foods and 
tonics* and aids to digestion, and that they are 
endorsed and recommended by physicians the world 
over. The medical profession owes it to itself and 
to the public to offset this dangerous and misleading 
advertising by a statement of the truth. 
“ The Medical Society of Russia, at its meeting in 
1915 issued a notable document against alcohol, a 
copy of which is appended for the information of 
any of your honorable body who may not have 
seen it. Your petitioners hope for as strong and 
helpful an expression from the great American 
Medical Association as that emanating from your 
Russian confreres. 
Yours sincerely, 
Anna A. Gordon, President. 
Martha M. Allen, Superintendent Department of 
Medical Temperance. 
“ The Council has given careful consideration 
to this communication, and presents to the House 
of Delegates the following resolutions for its 
consideration: 
“ Whereas: It is the unanimous opinion of the 
Council on Health and Public Instruction of the 
American Medical Association that alcohol has no 122 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
drug value, either as a stimulant, as a tonic or as a 
therapeutic agent, and that it has no food value; and 
‘ ‘ Whereas: Its use as a beverage or as a thera- 
peutic agent is detrimental rather than beneficial to 
the individual; therefore be it 
“ Resolved: That the House of Delegates of the 
American Medical Association, at its Sixty-eighth 
Annual Session, declares it is opposed to the use of 
alcohol by individuals either as a medicine or as a 
beverage, and be it further 
“ Resolved: That its use in medicine is permis- 
sible only in the preparation and preservation of 
pharmaceutical products.” 
The Reference Committee on Legislation and 
Political Action requested on June 5, more time for 
the consideration of the resolution on alcohol. 
At the closing meeting, June 7, after the election 
of officers and the selection of the place of the next 
annual session, when everyone generally is eager to 
go home, and, as everybody knows, resolutions pass 
more easily than at any other time, the aforemen- 
tioned Reference Committee reported that the reso- 
lution on alcohol, submitted by the Council on Health 
and Public Instruction, has been gravely considered 
by the Committee. 
“ Since the first premise of these resolutions 
expresses an opinion held by the Council, and since 
the expressions of opinion from numerous members 
of the House and the Association lead us to the con- 
clusion that the status of alcohol in medicine is still THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
123 
undetermined, your Committee begs to amend the 
resolution by substituting the following: 
“ Whereas: We believe that the use of alcohol as 
a beverage is detrimental to the human economy, and 
‘ ‘ Whereas: Its use in therapeutics, as a tonic or 
a stimulant or as a food has no scientific basis, there- 
fore be it 
“ Resolved: That the American Medical Associa- 
tion, opposes the use of alcohol as a beverage, and be 
it further 
“ Resolved: That the use of alcohol as a thera- 
peutic agent should be discouraged.” 
This resolution was put and carried, though Dr. 
R. A. Hatcher, New York, delegate from the Section 
on Pharmacology and Therapeutics, offered a sub- 
stitute presented at the direction of the Section on 
Pharmacology and Therapeutics after having been 
adopted by that Section: 
“ The Section on Pharmacology and Thera- 
peutics instructs its delegates to the House of Dele- 
gates that it is the sense of this Section that the 
question of the therapeutic value of alcohol which 
has been long in dispute remains yet undetermined, 
and that hasty action taken in the stress of present 
circumstances would not be wise, and would not 
reflect fully the best therapeutic and pharmaco- 
logic opinions. 
“ Furthermore, while recognizing the possible 
need of prohibition of the use of alcohol as a measure 
of public safety it would ask that the two questions 
be considered separately on their respective merits.” 124 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Some of the most influential men of the medical 
world had set their hearts upon satisfying the 
400,000 ladies of the W. C. T. U. Under the circum- 
stances, and backed by the universal sentiment that 
the winning of the war was paramount to all else, 
anything they would have brought forward would 
have been adopted. 
Knowing that the resolution did not tell the truth 
and knowing that it does not express the opinion of 
the practising physician, Dr. E. Eliot Harris, New 
York, moved to amend it by striking out from the 
resolution offered by the Reference Committee on 
Legislation and Political Action all that relates to 
the therapeutic use of alcohol. 
But Charles H. Mayo favored national prohi- 
bition and hasty action was taken. 
The House of Delegates of the American Medical 
Association is a political, not a scientific body, 
though partly composed of scientific men. The 
House of Delegates of the American Medical As- 
sociation is not competent to decide any therapeutic 
question at any time, least of all on the spur of the 
moment. A congregation of representatives of 
various specialties may condemn any remedy of 
which the majority makes no use. 
In this case it helped a great deal, that most of the 
delegates, who had to vote openly, were not eager to 
go on record as favoring booze. 
When in 1918 at Chicago, again attending the 
House of Delegates, the author called on the late 
Secretary of the American Medical Association, our THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
125 
lamented A. R. Craig, and asked him why such a 
resolution was passed, he simply answered: “ be- 
cause we had to show that even we sometimes lack 
common sense.” 
The 1918 meeting was entirely under the influence 
of the war-fever and no one could have dared to 
think of bringing up any alcohol question. 
At the victory meeting of 1919 at Atlantic City 
the author interviewed a few influential older mem- 
bers of the House of Delegates to learn if there was 
a possibility of having the resolution on alcohol 
reconsidered. The immediate consequence was that 
a resolution was adopted that “ the Secretary be 
instructed to have published in a handbook, as an 
addendum, all resolutions that express an opinion or 
policy of the Association that have been adopted by 
the House of Delegates during the past five years, 
and that this addendum be added to from year to 
year as new resolutions are adopted so that the 
members of the House may know what opinion and 
policies have been approved by this body, with the 
suggestion that the period embraced in the review 
be lengthened from five to ten years.” 
The author, when speaking against the adoption 
of this resolution, used the argument that the time 
would never come when anyone did not view some of 
his actions in the years gone as foolish. 
The speaker of the House told the author that he 
would be sat upon most emphatically, not by the 
speaker, but by an overwhelming majority of the 
delegates, if he attempted to assail the 1917 alcohol 126 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
resolution, and Simmons, the master mind of the 
American Medical Association, when asked for 
advice, said that it would create much acrimonious 
discussion and accomplish nothing. 
In the meantime, the prohibition forces had made 
good use of the ill-advised resolution of 1917. Some 
people even go so far as to accuse the American 
Medical Association of being the main cause of the 
adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, and that its 
members make an enormous profit through their 
monopoly of prescribing alcohol for medicinal pur- 
poses. Such accusations are so childish that they 
need no refutation. Everybody knows that the men 
behind the 1917 anti-alcohol resolution never took 
out a permit to prescribe alcohol, and the protests 
against the present day alcohol prescribing rules 
and regulations prove how little the medical pro- 
fession cares, in fact, how much it detests any 
profiteering a few black sheep may practise. 
The first to protest was the New York Medical 
Society by adopting January 27, 1919, a resolution 
that “ the Medical Society opposes the ratification 
by the Legislature of New York of the measure of 
National Prohibition. The measure is irrational and 
unscientific and in opposition to the accepted usages 
of all civilized nations throughout the world.” 
But California had to show how. At its annual 
meeting at Santa Barbara, May 1920, the Medical 
Society of the State of California passed the fol- 
lowing resolution: 
“ Whereas: It has always been the policy of the THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
127 
medical profession to maintain the confidence of 
their patients as an inviolate secret, and 
“ Whereas: The Volstead Act compels the phy- 
sician to betray the confidence placed in him by the 
patient by publishing the nature of his illness, and 
“ Whereas: The said Volstead Act dispenses 
with the judgment of the physician when treating 
his patients by limiting the amount of alcoholic 
stimulants he may prescribe, 
“ Therefore: Be it Resolved, That the Medical 
Society of the State of California expresses its dis- 
approval of those portions of the said Volstead Act 
which interfere with the proper relation of the 
physician and his patient, and it is further 
“ Resolved: That a copy of this resolution be 
sent to each of our representatives in the House and 
the Senate of the United States.” 
The resolution was presented by the author, and, 
though meeting at first with some decided opposition 
by certain members of the Board of Trustees, was 
recommended by that body when they were con- 
fronted with the original wording of the Volstead 
Act. Though the number of delegates from the very 
dry Southern California was large, the resolution 
was adopted unanimously. 
Shortly before this, in April, 1920, at the New 
Orleans session of the American Medical Associa- 
tion, a delegate from Kentucky tried to pass a reso- 
lution that the House of Delegates of the American 
Medical Association reaffirms the resolution adopted 
in 1917, and further records its opinion that whiskey 128 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
is not necessary for the proper scientific treatment 
of influenza. 
But in the meantime, the physicians saw some of 
the effects of the Volstead Law and the resolution 
was tabled. 
In 1921, at the Boston session a resolution was 
adopted: 
“ Whereas: Reproach has been brought upon the 
medical profession by some of its members who have 
misused the law which permits the prescribing of 
alcohol, therefore be it 
“ Resolved: That the American Medical Associa- 
tion now expresses its disapproval of the‘acceptance 
by a small minority of the profession of the position 
of being purveyors of alcoholic beverages.” 
Then in November, 1921, the editor of The 
Journal of the American Medical Association sent 
out a questionnaire to 50,000 physicians; not in 
order to decide any scientific question, because such 
cannot he decided by resolutions or by votes, but in 
order to secure the views of a large number of 
physicians. 21.5 per cent, of the physicians in the 
United States have given their opinion. 
Approximately one-third of those replying com- 
mented on the general prohibition situation, on the 
restrictions and regulations, or on some allied topics. 
Since national prohibition went into effect, judging 
by these comments, there has apparently been a 
reaction against prohibition in many states in which 
prohibition by state law had become accepted and 
effective. This is especially noticeable in the com- THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
129 
merits from Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South 
Dakota, and even from Maine. From the com- 
ments, one must come to the conclusion that home- 
made, illegally distilled or chemically compounded 
liquors—so-called “ moonshine ”—are being exten- 
sively used in states in which this was not the 
case three or four years ago. What has produced 
this apparent change? 
The questionnaire has brought out definitely the 
fact that present regulations governing the medical 
use of alcoholic beverages are not satisfactory; in 
fact, many physicians declare them “ intolerable.” 
Many who were convinced that these drugs were not 
necessary therapeutically were emphatic in stating 
that other physicians who believed them necessary 
were entitled to have their views respected, and were 
warranted in efforts to have the drugs made avail- 
able without incurring the odium attaching under 
the present regulations. 
Evidently most physicians are satisfied with the 
control of narcotics as regulated under the Harrison 
Narcotic Law, and many expressed a desire that the 
control of alcoholic liquors follow such lines. A 
decidedly large number of physicians suggest that 
the government take over the whiskey, including its 
storage and sale, and supply it in sealed packages 
for* medicinal use only, and at a fixed price, under 
regulations similar to those of the Harrison Nar- 
cotic Law, thus making available to physicians a 
drug of dependable quality.1 
1 Journal American Medical Association, January 21, 1923. 130 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
And was not Jacobi a real prophet when he said: 
“ I am no longer surprised if a man, because he is 
President of the United States, is expected to know 
all about the effect of alcohol in the illness of a 
patient of mine. You see, he is the President and I 
am only a general practitioner. Without any dis- 
respect to the President of the United States, or even 
the President of the American Medical Association, 
I am sure that I know more about that case of mine 
than the lay President of the United States and the 
great surgeon, the President of the American Medi- 
cal Association; and I have the courage to tell my 
friends of the House of Delegates that their opinions 
will change, should change, with better information 
or closer thinking. ’ ’ 
To illustrate the change of sentiment it may be 
stated that before the author could open his mouth 
at the proper time during the St. Louis session, May, 
1922, several resolutions were introduced protesting 
against the Volstead Law, and the House of Dele- 
gates without any opposition voted that: 
“ Whereas: The medical profession has been sub- 
jected to criticism and unfavorable comment because 
of present conditions associated with the enforce- 
ment of the Volstead Law, and 
“Whereas: The results of a referendum con- 
ducted by The Journal of the American Medical 
Association, covering 54,000 physicians, indicates 
that fifty-one per cent, of physicians consider 
whiskey “ necessary ” in the practice of medi- 
cine, and THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
131 
‘ ‘ Whereas: The dosage, method, frequency and 
duration of administration of this drug in any 
given case is a problem of scientific therapeutics 
and is not to be determined by legal or arbitrary 
dictum, and 
“ Whereas: The experience of physicians, as 
reported in The Journal, indicates that the present 
method of control, limitation of quantity and fre- 
quency of administration, licensure, and supply of a 
satisfactory product constitutes a serious interfer- 
ence with the practice of medicine by those phy- 
sicians who are convinced of the value of alcohol in 
medical practice, therefore be it 
“ Resolved: That the House of Delegates of the 
American Medical Association, in convention as- 
sembled, representing a membership of 89,000 phy- 
sicians, appeals to the Secretary of the Treasury and 
to the Congress of the United States for relief from 
present unsatisfactory conditions, and recommends 
that provisions be made for supplying bonded 
whiskey, for medicinal use only, at a fixed retail 
price to be established by the government. ’ ’ 
The subject-matter of another resolution intro- 
duced by Dr. Randolph Winslow of Maryland, peti- 
tioning the House of Delegates of the American 
Medical Association to use its best endeavors toward 
the repeal of the Volstead Act, so far as it applies to 
physicians and the practice of medicine, is ade- 
quately covered by the above recited resolutions. 
Does that look as if the American Medical 132 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
Association were looking for any profit for any of 
its members ? 
But it is quite certain that the more than 89,000 
members of the American Medical Association will 
never again be subject to special legislation with- 
out even being consulted concerning it. Why should 
a physician be compelled to either betray his patient, 
or write a lie into a booklet that later on becomes 
a public record? Why should, in a medical sense, 
ignorant persons create ridiculous laws, or commit 
such blunders as to place apomorphin among the 
narcotics and leave hashish out? Why do they not 
ask someone who knows? 
One is really reminded of the man who, when 
asked if he played the piano, answered: “ I don’t 
know, I never tried. ’ ’ 
Can our government ignore the honest opinion, 
or the legitimate wishes of a large percentage of 
the educated? 
As to the enormous profits from the prescribing 
of alcoholic fluids, it takes a great deal of fantasy to 
see them. Even the few scamps who were caught 
selling their prescription books to a criminally 
inclined druggist made two hundred and fifty dollars 
every three months. What an enormous profit! 
The Journal of the American Medical Association 
of November, 5, 1921, reported that: Sir Arthur 
Newsholme, late principal medical officer to the Local 
Government Board (England), has been in America 
for the last two years. At the Royal Society of 
Medicine he has given the results of his study of the THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
133 
prohibition law. The results of the first year of 
prohibition, he said, were only partial. There were 
150,000 physicians in the United States, and every 
one of them had to take out a permit to prescribe 
alcohol. Four out of every five had not taken out a 
permit, and in twenty-four out of forty-eight states 
not a single physician had taken one out. 
One of the arguments used in the various 
attacks upon the medical PROFESSION is the one that 
before prohibition times prescriptions for whiskey 
and other liquors were a great rarity, while they at 
present are written by the thousands. Anyone en- 
dowed with ordinary intelligence can find the expla- 
nation easily enough. Why should a physician have 
written a prescription when it was so easy to tell the 
patient to take a tablespoonful of whiskey before 
meals, and the patient had the proper sense to know 
where to buy good liquor in preference to the then 
not very popular drugstore article? Does a phy- 
sician to-day write prescriptions for meat or broth? 
Will he write such prescriptions if the vegetarians 
should rule as the prohibitionists do to-day? 
Why accuse the medical profession, which 
clamors against all possibility of profiteering, and 
insists on showing a clear way to remove that 
primary cause, the high prices exacted by the 
vendors of alcohol in any form? 
No wonder the physicians of the country are 
getting restive because the Volstead Law went the 
Eighteenth Amendment more than one better, and 
the laymen enforcing the Volstead Law go even 134 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
further than that law itself with ever changing and 
differently interpreted rules and regulations. 
The many changes in the rulings, since the compli- 
cated “ regulations for prescribing alcohol ” at the 
time of the enforcement of the war prohibition law, 
show that those who made them really did not know 
how, while local officers claim very often “ that they 
do not know where they are at. ’ ’ 
How helpless a physician is who tries to help his 
patient and obey the law at the same time, the copies 
of two original and official letters will illustrate. 
Treasury Department, 
Internal Revenue Service, 
San Francisco, Calif. 
Office of 
Federal Prohibition Director 
California 
February, 9, 1923. 
Dr 
San Francisco, Calif. 
Dear Sir: 
I have for reply your communication of the 30th 
ult., and beg to apologize for not having answered 
before, due to the fact that the same was mislaid in 
the mailing department. 
The only course to pursue in regard to prescrib- 
ing additional wine for your patient, Mr , is 
to state the facts fully to the Federal Prohibition 
Commissioner, Washington, D. C., who may author- 
ize you to issue additional prescriptions in the THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
135 
treatment of this case. This is the only course left 
open to you, as I am not permitted to exercise any 
discretion but must abide strictly by the Regulations 
of the Department, which permit but one quart of 
wine being prescribed to any one patient within a 
period of ten days. 
Regretting my inability to be of direct assistance 
to you in the matter, I beg to be. 
Very truly yours, 
S. F. Rutter, 
Federal Prohibition Director. 
The law-respecting physician acted according to 
instructions and received the following reply: 
Treasury Department, 
Bureau of Internal Revenue, 
Washington, D. C. 
Office of 
Federal Prohibition Commissioner 
March 17, 1923. 
Dr 
San Francisco, Calif. 
Sir: 
Reference is made to your letter of March 5,1923, 
advising that you have under your care Mr 
residing at the Club of San Francisco, 
California, who is seventy years old and is suffering 
from diabetes, and in the treatment of his ailment 
there is required about sixteen ounces of dry wine 136 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
each day. It is noted that you request a special 
ruling in order that more than one quart of wine can 
be obtained every ten days. 
If you feel that this case is very meritorious, 
consideration may be given, but it will be necessary 
for Mr to file an application on Form 1404, 
together with an affidavit from you outlining the 
treatment given, with the Federal Prohibition 
Director, San Francisco, California, and upon re- 
ceipt of the same with his recommendation thereon, 
it will be given consideration. The application form 
may be obtained from the Director. 
Respectfully, 
James E. Jones, 
Acting Prohibition Commissioner. 
In the meantime a patient may suffer, may die or 
may act in self-defense and under the supreme law 
of self preservation appeal to a friend in need, even 
to a bootlegger. 
The physicians of the country keep on protesting, 
and as law-abiding citizens wait patiently, but so far 
hope in vain, that common sense will win in 
proper time. 
Dr. Charles S. Pots of Philadelphia, said: “ I also 
want to protest against allowing hysteria, hypocrisy 
and cowardice to influence the settlement of medi- 
cal questions.”2 
The Academy of Medicine of Cleveland has filed 
a protest with the Commissioner of Internal Revenue 
* New York Medical Journal, April 3, 1920. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION 
137 
and with the Federal Prohibition Commissioner, 
against the regulation requiring the physician to 
enter on his prescription for liquor the name of the 
pharmacist by whom it is to be filled. In Cleveland, 
only a few druggists have taken out liquor permits, 
and, particularly among physicians who but seldom 
prescribe liquor, the identity of those few permit 
holders is not always known. A prescription written 
in an emergency has not infrequently been taken by 
the patient to the pharmacist named by the phy- 
sicians, only to find that he cannot lawfully fill it. 
The trouble and delay that certainly result, and the 
harm that may result, are called to the. attention of 
the two commissioners in a vigorous protest made 
by the Cleveland Academy of Medicine.3 
The Nevada State Medical Association passed in 
January, 1923, a resolution demanding that their 
State Prohibition Law be changed because: The 
majority of the physicians of the United States 
believe that alcohol and alcoholic liquors are a neces- 
sary and essential therapeutic agent in the treat- 
ment of disease.4 
The Bulletin of the American Medical Associa- 
tion complained recently: “ We all recognize that 
too much governmental regulation has hampered the 
physician in the application of his professional judg- 
ment in his private practice. The tendency has gone 
too far toward emphasizing social and criminal 
3 The Bulletin of the American Medical Association, December 
15, 1922. 
* California State Journal of Medicine, January, 1923. 138 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
aspects and in submerging or overlooking medi- 
cal aspects.” 
Finally, if we consider how frequently life de- 
pends on the judgment of the attending physician we 
can hardly understand that it should be necessary 
for the physician to go into court to obtain the* right 
to use his own judgment. On May 9, at New York, 
Federal Judge Knox declared unconstitutional, as 
restricting the right of a physician to prescribe for 
his patients, the provisions of the Volstead Act and 
its amendments prohibiting the prescribing of more 
than a pint of spirituous liquor every ten days. 
Quousque tandem? CHAPTER X 
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? 
Of course, everyone knows what is the proper 
tiling to do in any case, and it would be therefore no 
wonder if the author too should know precisely what 
is to be done in the interest of temperance and even 
toward ultimate prohibition. But the author is not 
so sure about it. One thing alone is certain and that 
is that laws like the Volstead will accomplish more 
harm than good, because the remedy is worse than 
the evil it is supposed to cure. 
When studying social conditions, one must come 
to the conclusion that the present distribution of 
wealth is not as it should be. It is not right that one 
person may possess many millions, while there are 
others who are compelled by the police to move out 
into the rain or apply to some charitable institution 
for shelter. 
No one can deny that such conditions should not 
be. But, and unfortunately there is even in this 
case a but, if you ask any one of those who thunder 
against our present economic system what their 
remedy is against it, we invariably find that the 
MEDICINE is WORSE THAN THE AILMENT. 
Russia, for instance, took a strong dose of the 
medicine, and we can plainly see the effect. While 
formerly only few had reason to laugh every day, 
many could laugh sometimes, some only seldom, only 
139 140 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
a few never; now everybody may and must cry every 
day and all the time. Some kind of an equality was 
obtained, but no one wants to have it in our country, 
and those who know must acknowledge, in spite of 
all—that wherever you go from the United States it 
is worse. 
Everybody knows and everybody must admit 
that the conditions of the liquor trade before prohi- 
bition were deplorable. A remedy was sought for, 
and look at it. The Volstead Law is the medicine. 
The patient struggles, the patient becomes un- 
manageable, the nurses are unable to hold him down 
and clamor for a strait-jacket, which in this case is 
to be the United States Army and Navy. 
It does not take very much experience and wis- 
dom to see that the ultimate purpose, the only attain- 
able purpose, TEMPERANCE, IS NOT SERVED, but Only 
damaged by the intemperate efforts of the ultra- 
prohibitionists. Drastic laws, drastic punishment 
never accomplish anything. Butler says: ‘ ‘ Human 
experience has long since exploded the doctrine that 
a severe punishment will deter from' the commission 
of the crime. The fear of detection will so deter, 
but the fear of punishment will not.”1 
Blair suggests the proper way of attaining most 
desirable results in regard to temperance. He com- 
pares the present day efforts at prohibition to attack- 
ing a high tide with a broom. Of course, no clean 
sweep to be had. Therefore, first a low tide of 
indulgence must be created. Blair knows that ‘ ‘ any 
11. c. WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? 
141 
reform can defeat itself by the enforcement of 
narrow policies,” and asks “ if it is wise suddenly to 
legislate a long indulged habit out of legal existence, 
whatever may bet said about its actual status ? ’’ 
Clemenceau in his preface written for Louis 
Jacquet’s enormous volume on alcohol,2 though 
asserting that alcoholism has done more damage 
than any pestilential epidemic of olden times, even 
more damage than any war, says at the same time 
that everybody agrees upon the unwisdom of oppos- 
ing the moderate use of alcoholic beverages. 
Gladstone thought that the consumption of wine 
curtails the consumption of spirits.3 
Cardinal Gibbons said: “ I believe that we can 
attain national temperance, but I am firm in the 
belief that any enactment of a widespread prohi- 
bition measure is a long step backward.” 
Cardinal Bourne, who was only too frequently 
accused of ultraconservatism, said that to his mind 
‘1 prohibition was the very antithesis and the contra- 
diction of temperance. It was an open confession of 
failure to educate the people.”4 
Evidently the cardinals know the psalm which 
sayeth: ‘ ‘ He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, 
and herb for the service of man that he may bring 
forth food out of the earth, and wine that maketh 
glad the heart of man.” 
3 L’Alcool, Paris, 1912. 
8 Monin. loc. cit., p. 250. 
4 London Telegram, March 17, 1923, published the following day 
in the San Francisco Examiner. 142 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
We may come a little nearer to wliat should be 
done when we listen to Sir James Crichton-Browne 
who wrote that: ‘ ‘ The acquirement of self-control 
is one of the main objects of education, the exercise 
of it a chief part of the discipline of life, and to sub- 
stitute for it grandmotherly legislation is to debili- 
tate human nature and court disaster. There is no 
danger to a lawful government greater than for a 
well-behaved subject to feel himself deprived of his 
natural rights, and that danger is aggravated when 
he knows that the deprivation is inflicted on him for 
the sake of those who are morally inferior to him.” 
If we further consider that we know that instincts 
cannot be removed or destroyed by law, but that 
sublimation and modification is possible, and know 
as a fact that human beings all over the world are 
prone by instinct to employ certain substances, day 
in and day out, without being able to explain their 
actions by any other statement than that they like 
them, we must see that there is only one way to 
further temperance and combat alcoholism and that 
is by education, not coercion. 
Prohibition laws will be really effective when the 
desire for drink is subdued; and this can only be 
accomplished by individual social education.5 
Though the evils caused by alcohol were fre- 
quently magnified, and though an authority like 
Ftirbringer thinks that there is no valid reason to 
decline the golden middle-way between drunkenness 
“Afonin, loc. tit., p. 253. WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? 
143 
and total abstinence,0 it may, for argument’s sake 
be conceded that total abstinence may be desirable. 
But we must know that there are many other things 
that are even more desirable and at the same time 
attainable. One of them surely is general education 
based on an equal chance for every child born. This 
is desirable and also possible. 
Recently we heard the complaint that only a very 
small minority of the people are really educated, 
the large majority being ruled by almost incredible 
beliefs and superstitions. The small minority ad- 
vances very rapidly while the large majority of 
anthropoids lag behind more and more. Thus the dif- 
ference between a, farmer and a man like Spencer is 
surely considerably greater than that between a 
Greek porter and Socrates, for instance. But, here 
again we must not expect sudden progress, we must 
not expect ideal conditions or the millennium when 
everybody will be really educated. At present we 
must be satisfied with what those who teach are able 
to teach. 
The public school is the first place where the 
dangers of alcoholic abuses must be impressed upon 
the child’s mind. But real facts, not exaggerations 
must be taught, because exaggerations may create 
votes for all kinds of enforcement laws, but never 
will become implanted permanently in the public 
mind, nor further the cause of temperance. 
The public school must turn out the legions of 
propagandists for temperance and against alco- 
0Deutsche Medizmische Wochenschrift, November 4, 1920. 144 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
holism, and then the government can go a long way 
in crushing the commercialism in the sale of alco- 
holic liquids for any purpose whatever. To make 
alcohol less easy of access to everybody, and to 
remove unnecessary temptation could accomplish a 
great deal toward temperance, but there can be no 
real sense in trying to transfer the profits from the 
liquor producer and dealer to the druggist. 
As every little helps, we may mention an excellent 
idea originated in Iowa. John B. Hammond, chief 
of police of Des Moines, announced that every 
drunken man who is brought into police head- 
quarters will have his picture taken. When the 
offender has become sober again he will be pre- 
sented with a picture of himself so that he may know 
how he looked when taken to the jail. Hammond 
hopes this “ picture cure ” will be a potent weapon 
against drunkenness. 
History ought to teach anyone who cares for and 
reads history, that drastic laws have never accom- 
plished the purpose they were enacted for. Did it 
help any that King Francois I issued, in 1536, an 
edict by which drunkards were publicly whipped and 
if this did no good, their ears were cut off? France 
is still struggling with its alcoholism problem, and 
French scientists agree that control and education 
are the only means to obtain temperance. 
Why experiment on so splendid a body as the 
sturdy people of the United States? Why deprive 
the well-behaved American citizen of his right to 
self-control ? CHAPTER XI 
LONGEVITY 
‘ ‘ Whom the gods love dies young ’ ’ said Plautus 
over two hundred years before Christ, and daily up 
to date we hear various versions of this wise saying 
from the mouths of unthinking young ones and 
decrepit old ones. 
The young readily accept the smart theories that 
people ought to be chloroformed when fifty, but with 
their growing years, only too readily add more and 
more years to this age limit. 
While the young see an inexhaustible supply of 
joy, energy, and time ahead of them, the old look 
upon their past as short and only too quickly gone 
by. The vanishing of the youthful appearance, of 
one bodily faculty after another, of robust health and 
vigor are generally considered as quite natural, un- 
avoidable and therefore to be submitted to, under 
regretful protest, but meekly; seldom does anyone 
think of opposing and fighting against it. 
Of course, the fountain of perpetual youth has 
been sought by many. Some clever ones pretend to 
have found it, in order to be able to sell shares to 
unsophisticated members of the privileged class of 
holders of wealth. But while we may be sure that 
man, developing from a protoplasma cell into such a 
wonderfully complicated organism is surely not at 
the end of his development, and that further evo- 
145 146 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
lution may result in a being quite different from 
what we are able to conceive at the present time; so 
far we know or think we know, that there is nothing 
eternal and unlimited but time and space, and it is 
therefore evident that the searchers for a fountain 
of perpetual youth were looking ior something that 
does not exist. On the other hand, modern science 
demonstrates, and living examples illustrate, that, if 
perpetual youth is out of question, uninterrupted 
youth and vigor may be secured and enjoyed until 
the final, the inevitable great interrupter puts an end 
to the individual existence. 
Against all endeavors to prolong human life fre- 
quently the objection is raised that old people are 
useless, and that there is no gain in preserving them. 
Old people’s brains are being devoured by neuro- 
phages, and while in olden, barbarous times old 
people were destroyed, nowadays they are simply 
pushed aside. The value of their experience and 
wisdom is offset by their physical shortcomings. 
But it is our own fault if we are old at fifty, sixty, or 
even seventy, and if we die before we have reached 
one hundred years of age. Plato, Goethe, Victor 
Hugo, Michael Angelo, Titian, Gladstone, and many 
others have done and produced their most important 
works at an age when according to sensational celeb- 
rities they ought to have been dead. 
According to many good observers among phil- 
osophers : man must dedicate a large part of his life 
to the complete development of his own individu- 
ality, and it is only in the second half of his life, LONGEVITY 
147 
when he has grown wise by experience and feels 
satisfied as an individual, that he can and should use 
his activities for the good of mankind. 
It would be an economic waste to prolong the life 
of helpless and useless old people. Fortunately, it 
cannot be done to any extent. 
Real old age has arrived when the individual 
becomes a child again, has no hair, no teeth and his 
thyroid and other glands of internal secretion are 
atrophied, his whole character changed. Then he 
must be fed on milk again, may be nursed and pre- 
served by loving ones but is useless for humanity 
and from an economical standpoint. A person, no 
matter how far advanced in years, who has pre- 
served the activity and usefulness of his glands and 
shows no signs of senility despite his age, will be able 
to take care of himself in every respect, and no one 
will dare to try the chloroforming act. 
When hideous old age is reached, and one wants 
to die just as a tired person wants to sleep, then, but 
only then it is too late for any prophylaxis. A fair 
example is this little dialogue: “ Old man Jones died 
to-day.” “ Is that so. What complaint! ” “No 
complaint. Everybody’s satisfied.” 
There is no doubt that nothing is more important 
for every single individual, as well as for any family, 
society, community, race, state, and humanity as a 
whole, than the preservation of personal health and 
that physical welfare without which youth and 
youthful vigor in every respect are unthinkable. It 
speaks poorly for our, as we claim, so far advanced 148 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
civilization that very few people possess any degree 
of knowledge of their own bodily make-up and of the 
mechanism of their bodily functions. 
Childhood and early youth pass partly listening 
to lies, learning lies by heart, and learning a lot of 
things that are more or less, mostly less necessary. 
Then comes tumultuous adolescence with its lavish 
and reckless squandering of bodily energies and of 
health reserves, with its solitary vices and boastful 
dissipations, followed by manhood spent in barter- 
ing away health and vigor for dollars, interrupted by 
frequent gorging and tippling until ugly fat masses 
or a flabby wrinkled skin, high blood pressure, 
clogged bowels, impaired liver and kidney function- 
ing, and many, many, other troubles arouse the 
dulled senses of the man who has no time to take care 
of his health. Many are not alarmed until they find 
that some of their organs absolutely refuse to work, 
and there are not a few who even wait until they are 
down and out altogether. Then, and not until then, 
they call on the best authority in their estimation, 
willing to pay a few dollars for the prescription of a 
medicine that will swiftly, without much trouble, and 
without interrupting all important business, restore 
what they call their lost manhood. It would be 
laughable were it not such a pitiful situation. It is 
surely true that everybody should know better and 
it begins to dawn upon the people that it would pay 
to give some attention to the preservation of health 
and vigor. Instruction in anatomy, physiology, and 
hygiene is being urged a great deal, the people at LONGEVITY 
149 
large are beginning to take real interest, and if we 
succeed in the by and by in overcoming many 
centuries old prejudices, we may be able to secure 
for humanity rational teaching, of a character that 
will do real good and relieve suffering mankind 
FROM the CRUSHING BETWEEN FRIGHTFULNESS AND 
puritanical bigotism. As things stand now, we 
positively must come to the conclusion that it is 
better to know nothing than such a lot that is not so. 
Teachers of a hygienic living, of a kind calculated 
to maintain bodily health and prolong human life, 
are regularly preaching theories and giving advice 
that is doomed beforehand to be very unpopular and 
therefore generally disregarded by the vast majority 
of people. We are mostly told a great many dont’s. 
We must abstain from doing those things which we 
enjoy, and instead use and do things which we hate, 
in order to be healthy and to live long. No wonder 
some wise fools began to preach the short and merry 
life and declaimed vociferously that, if every enjoy- 
ment is taken out of life then there is really no use 
in living. 
Thus, we see ourselves placed between the two 
extreme schools, the one leading back to primitive, 
peacefully herbivorous, animalistic life, and the 
other pointing the way to aggressive bestiality. It 
is surely more than clear that we must refuse to live 
the life of an oyster in order to be healthy and live 
long, and also must refuse to become hogs in 
order to enjoy life thoroughly without any regard 
to consequences. 150 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
The man who preaches against all the enjoyments 
that civilization has brought in its trail, the one who 
adds ever new don’ts, who dictates don’t smoke, 
don’t drink, don’t eat what tastes good, don’t kiss 
the pretty girls, or at least count your kisses, don’t 
dance, don’t play, don’t sing, don’t laugh, might just 
as well say: back to animaldom, back to the tree 
branches and the nut-cracking with sharp, white, 
shining teeth. 
But there is a golden middle road and if we but 
persist on it we shall easily find the secrets to a 
healthy, long, although merry life. Common sense is 
all that is required and we must come to the con- 
clusion that WHATEVER WE REALLY ENJOY IS GOOD FOR 
us in every respect. Of course, the term enjoy is a 
relative one and must be analysed in almost every 
instance. Whenever a person thinks that there was 
enjoyment, it is sufficient to ask oneself: would I do 
that again just as I did it this time? Let’s take a 
few concrete examples: 
Some one takes a walk, a run, a ride, a swim, or 
any other exercise; if he returns perspiring and 
tired, with palpitating heart he may think he has 
enjoyed himself, though the accompanying discom- 
fort discounts considerably the real pleasure. 
Another person not being able to resist the temp- 
tations of a well-set table, loaded with fine-smelling, 
good-tasting eatables, enjoys himself thoroughly by 
eating until he can eat no more, but he will find that 
the enjoyment is short lived and certainly does not 
pay for the pangs of an overdistended stomach, LONGEVITY 
151 
consequent indigestion, as well as the pangs of con- 
science which bring to mind threatening obesity, or 
liver, kidney, and other troubles. 
You may ask any excessive smoker and he will 
acknowledge that in reality he does not enjoy the 
smoking. It just became a habit, and every one of 
them wishes to be able to quit it. The moderate 
smoker is the one who really enjoys his few 
daily smokes. 
And the person who enjoys any alcohol-con- 
taining beverage, having common sense, ought to 
know where the enjoyment ends and immediate 
discomfort, followed by the brown tasting, head- 
aching difference in the morning and the many bad 
consequences of acute and chronic alcoholism, begin 
to threaten. 
We know that over-feeding is dangerous for 
bodily vigor and energy, and it is almost pathetic to 
see many persons who have damaged their strength 
by habitual gluttony, stuff themselves with cheese, 
caviar, lobsters, oysters, and other things that have 
the reputation to enhance virility. On the other 
hand underfed individuals, poor people who cannot 
afford proper food, well-to-do people who are too 
stingy, persons who follow various dietary fads, 
vegetarianism included, weaken their constitutions, 
lower their natural defences against infections, and 
certainly do not increase their personal vigor nor 
improve their looks. The gouty, for instance, who 
may be benefited by a strictly vegetarian diet, 
suddenly jumps to conclusions, and becomes a vege- 152 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
tarian fanatic. Because he was temporarily bene- 
fited, everybody else should do likewise. He begins 
to preach vegetarianism, and as vegetarianism like 
any other kind of asceticism very seldom tends to 
improve and to sweeten the disposition of the 
victim, the vegetarian becomes intolerant. If there 
were enough of them we would surely have a vege- 
tarian candidate running for presidency on the no- 
meat platform, and have also a Christian Women No 
Meat Association. 
For a normal individual wishing to remain in 
good condition the golden middle way is the road to 
choose in regard to diet. Extremes must be avoided. 
Experience reinforced by scientific experimentation 
has taught us that it is the best to adopt a mixed diet, 
consisting chiefly of milk, eggs, well prepared whole 
wheat or a good kind of brown bread, butter, cheese, 
fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat; while bullion and 
meat gravies, which contain irritating and harmful 
meat extracts should be avoided; and it is just un- 
fortunate that they, in reality, taste so very good. 
A few simple but very important rules are self- 
evident. Never eat unless hungry, masticate your 
food properly, therefore never eat in a hurry or 
when angry, always refuse when the enough is 
reached, and while it is foolish to permit oneself to 
become faint from hunger, we decidedly must de- 
cline even the friendliest and best meant offer to dig 
our graves with our teeth. 
In order not to reach before time, chronic drowsi- 
ness and ugly helplessness, we must flee from the 
average business and professional man’s existence LONGEVITY 
153 
consisting of work, lunch, again work, motoring, eat- 
ing, drinking, and smoking. When pursuing the 
almighty dollar we must not forget that a dead 
millionaire is no better than a dead lion. We must 
avoid the life of the oyster, and neither live the life 
of an old maid, nor that of a sporting lady, re- 
membering always the old saying, that“ everything 
in excess becomes a vice. ’ ’ When we drink we must 
not forget that water is also a delicious drink, but 
we must tell the meddler, the fanatic reformer, the 
fellow who cannot see the forest because there are 
too many trees, to mind his own business as we 
shall take the liberty of deciding what we shall eat 
and drink. 
As shown elsewhere alcohol in moderation is 
necessary in old age for many reasons. We must 
not forget that it is a law universally acknowledged, 
that everyone has the legal right to do anything that 
may be necessary to preserve his or her own life. 
The Volstead Law is being interpreted by the 
enforcement officers that every ten days one quart of 
wine may be prescribed for anyone needing wine. 
This gives about two tablespoonfuls three times a 
day. Why force people to become lawbreakers ? 
Dr. Thomas Bodley Scott says among other 
things: “In the diet question of old age, alcohol 
must be included. The nutrient value of pure alco- 
hol is almost nil, but in the forms of wine and malt 
liquors there is an appreciable amount of sugar and 
extractives; but it is for the side effects that it is 
taken and valued. Old people get along often very 
well without it; but when they have been in the habit 154 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
of taking it in moderation and with, their food, during 
life, it is a mistake to give it up. Alcohol is not 
a tension raiser, as some seem to think; but rather 
has the opposite effect, and, if stopped suddenly in 
old age, the digestive powers will be lessened and 
the whole tone of the body depressed. 
“Now that whiskey and brandy have become so 
dear, I often find that old people do very well with 
good beer, stout, or cider.” 
Monin, France’s most ardent medical anti-alcohol 
preacher, cites Grehart who said that hygienic 
beverages are those that one does not abuse.1 
Politicians, teachers of fads, teachers of creeds, 
teachers of real things, philosophers, moralists, 
socialists, anarchists, reformers, soap box and sand 
lot orators, in fact, almost everybody clamors for 
justice and equal rights, some ask for an equal chance 
for all human beings, a few go so far as to demand 
absolute equality in every respect. But so long as 
people will have no say in the selection of their 
parents, and so long as heredity will play such an 
enormous part there can be no real equality. Nature 
herself is not just, and opposes equality at every 
step. We may be able to legislate inheritance of 
money and property out of existence. We, who 
never inherited anything, and what is worse, never 
expect to inherit anything of negotiable value, would 
surely think that such a law would be perfectly 
proper and just, but there is no power on earth that 
can stop anyone from inheriting his ancestors’ good 
looks, healthy and powerful metabolism, healthy and, 
11. c. LONGEVITY 
155 
in their interdependence, properly working glands 
of internal secretion, and alas! neither is there any 
power in existence to protect a poor fellow from 
inheriting a saddle nose, lack of resisting power, a 
miserable constitution and many other physical 
shortcomings which carry in their train again a 
sour disposition, dull mentality and other unfortu- 
nate combinations. 
We lmow the great importance of heredity, and 
we know what a serious handicap it is to have 
inherited bodily or mental shortcomings, but we 
know also that inherited delinquencies can and there- 
fore must be corrected, and no one is justified in 
simply giving up. It is always worth trying and, 
the least said: we may succeed. Sound hygienic 
precautions may overcome the burden of inherited 
defective glands of internal secretion and may, at 
least partly, overcome the curse of the visitation of 
the sins of the fathers unto the second and third 
generation. And even if the golden opportunity of 
corrective hygienic measures during childhood were 
lost, because the child cannot know and those who 
ought to know were also ignorant, there is always 
time to do some good, and the individual must never 
give up. 
One must be glad to be able to state that we are 
progressing, the child is receiving better and more 
rational care, mothers, while always loving, are daily 
becoming more practical, prejudices in the way of 
raising children are disappearing one by one, and 
while there is plenty of room for improvement the 
outlook is hopeful. CHAPTER XII 
KINDNESS VERSUS BRUTALITY 
In the fight between the so-called liquor interests 
on one side and professional, as well as idealistic 
reformers on the other side, the public at large 
hardly took any interest, and therefore was entirely 
lost sight of. Just as in other fights, in wars, for 
instance, in struggles between capital and labor, the 
public at large is the sufferer, and being in large 
proportion ignorant and entirely patient, big as 
well as small interests simply said and say—the 
public be d 
The liquor interests surely were not headed nor 
manned by angels, and all possible accusations were 
hurled against them; everything, even exaggera- 
tions, were readily believed by the public. The 
reformers again were accused of hypocrisy and 
even Sadism. 
The Medical Sentinel says in this regard: 
“ There is a form of Sadism among the people who 
enjoy mental exhilaration or gratification by impos- 
ing their will on others—that is, preventing other 
people from enjoying themselves in harmless habits 
and pursuits. Tobacco, cards, dancing, theatres, 
Sunday baseball, etc., are the things they would love 
to stop us from enjoying. These abolished, and then 
the fight to stop laughter and smiles would start. 
156 KINDNESS VERSUS BRUTALITY 
157 
“ This form of Sadism is not uncommon among 
elderly men, but most of the devotees are among 
barren women, women who have never functioned 
properly and have passed the climacteric. These 
people form the nucleus of any reform that has for 
its object the withdrawal of pleasure from others.” 
The reproach of fanaticism is made only too 
often. Sajous gives the following definition of 
fanaticism: “ a form of obsession in which the mind, 
by becoming the abject slave of its prejudices, loses 
all sense of proportion and justice.” 
We know that fanaticism is always condemnable 
and always ought to be kicked back into the darkness 
and tyrannical misery from where it originates, and 
from where always anew it trys to emerge. Fanati- 
cism is an abomination, no matter if displayed by 
Chinese, Mohammedan, or so-called Christian Pur- 
itan narrowmindedness, bigotism, and intolerance. 
We are told besides that the number of people 
whose chief aim is to mind everyone’s business but 
their own is rapidly increasing, and that consider- 
able legislation is now being dictated by those 
mentally diseased.1 
Mark Twain when overwhelmed by the moral 
statistician said: “I don’t want any of your statis- 
tics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. 
I hate your kind of people. You are always figuring 
out how much a man’s intellect is impaired, and how 
many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course 
of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice 
‘Charles S. Potts, l. c. 158 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
of smoking, and in the equally fatal practice of 
drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasion- 
ally, etc., etc. 
“ Of course, you can save money by denying 
yourself all these vicious enjoyments for fifty years; 
but then what can you do with it? What use can 
you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal 
soul. All the use money can be put to is to purchase 
comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you 
are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is 
the use in accumulating I ask? In a word, why don’t 
you go off somewhere and die? and not be always 
trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and 
unlovable as you are yourselves by your ceaseless 
and villainous moral statistics.” 
We know also, however, that accusations and 
recriminations have done very little good. To call 
the other fellow names surely is no argument. Un- 
fortunately, since the horrible World’s War, we only 
hear and read of drives and fights, even in the loftiest 
undertakings. People are being denounced, flayed, 
grilled; the lash is laid upon. If a man is elected 
he wins a hot fight, if he is not elected he goes down 
to ignominious defeat. The speaker always hits from 
the shoulder, there is always some kind of a clash. 
If any foreign country does not agree at once with 
us the United States are defied; if Turkey, England, 
or any other country complies with the request, at 
once or after argument, they back down. No golden 
middle road! KINDNESS VERSUS BRUTALITY 
159 
And all we really need is a little bit of kindness. 
Forbes Magazine said: 
More kindness, less creed, 
More giving, less greed. 
More smile, less frown 
Less kicking a man when he*s down. 
More “ we,” less “ I,” 
More laugh, less cry. 
More flowers on the pathway of life, 
Fewer on the graves at the end of the strife. 
We hear, and until a short time ago, heard it more 
frequently, that there will always be war! and that 
war is necessary! But we know that at present there 
are running around a large number of jobless ex- 
crowned buncomen, ex-great field marshals and 
generals who used to be great wab preachers and 
mighty war makers, and who at present know for a 
fact, that war does not pay. Even Uncle Sam, who 
in self defence taught them the.: absolutely necessary 
lesson, knew all the time that war does not pay, can- 
not pay. We may hope that, when the last con- 
vulsions of the late world war calamity are over, 
and when it will not be possible any more that the 
will and the word of any one single man or a small 
group of small men shall plunge nations into war, 
the saying that there will always be war, will prove 
to be an empty phrase. 
Thus we too may hope that very soon the pro- 
fessional reformers also will find themselves with- 
out jobs and realize that it does not pay to harness 160 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
their fellow-citizens, and that instead of playing in 
the hands of the ‘ ‘ Reds, ’ ’ it is better to use kindness, 
and never brutality. 
There is no use to argue with a drunken man, 
though he may listen and agree with all your argu- 
ments when he is sober. And there surely is no 
time when it would be of any use to argue with 
people who would subject all laws to the one supreme 
law called Volstead. The United Press wired March 
10, 1923, from Washington: “ Demand that the 
United States use destroyers to round up the rum 
fleet reported off the port of New York was made 
to-day by the board of temperance, prohibition and 
public morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
“ ‘ The only thing to do is to detail United States 
destroyers to round up these ships, bring them to 
port, confiscate ships and their cargoes and jail every 
man found on them,’ a statement of the board said. 
“ The church was bitter in its denunciation of 
the Government’s failure to halt the activities of 
the rum fleet. 
“ If the ships are of foreign registry the United 
States does not have the right under international 
law to act against the boats. The board declared 
that ‘ international law ought to be changed and the 
United States ought to change it some time within 
the next few hours.’ ” 
All this, and even war! regardless of the fact that 
the Volstead Act, which imposes the rule that one- 
lialf of one per cent, of alcohol is intoxicating within KINDNESS VERSUS BRUTALITY 
161 
the intent of the prohibition amendment, is not sus- 
tained by a single scientific fact. 
But all the authorities quoted in former chapters, 
to whom could be added Sir James Paget, Lord 
Lister, famous William Jenner, Sir Andrew Clark, 
Sir William Broadbent, Sir Lauder Brunton, and 
many others, argue in vain with people who con- 
demn a thing just because they do not like it or do 
not approve of it. 
And when we have abolished international law 
“ within the next few hours,” then we must listen to 
the kind-hearted people who ask for “ stricter dry 
laws ” and “ stiff sentences ” for anyone breaking 
them. The followers and heirs of those who were 
kind enough to boil fellow-beings in oil in order to 
save their souls, would be ready to demand capital 
punishment for “ dry offenders,” and to hang the 
man that bars his house, and makes a still out of 
his coffee machine. 
Someone asked: “Is civilization coming and 
when? ” We may answer that it is slow in coming, 
but will be here when we shall not believe any more 
anything because we wish it were so, when we shall 
abandon all efforts to make unbearable conditions on 
this minute planet harder and more disagreeable, 
and when we shall be done with making hell upon 
earth in order to gain heaven. 
Considering that it is harder to bear small, but 
constant annoyances, than real tragedies that occur 
seldom, we must come to the conclusion that those 
who inflicted the volstead act upon the people in 162 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
the United States were not prompted by kindness, 
else they surely could not have made the obtaining 
of alcoholic beverages more difficult than the obtain- 
ing of narcotics, nor would there be provided more 
than ten times as many officers to enforce the 
Volstead Act than officers to enforce the narcotic 
law. They did show no kindness when they refused 
to use common sense in distinguishing what is intoxi- 
cating, and in refusing to consider that the consump- 
tion of a sufficient quantity of concentrated spirits 
only takes a few moments, while it would take hours 
to drink as much alcohol in diluted form as for 
instance wine or beer, and that during this time the 
absorbed alcohol is being oxidized and thus any con- 
centration in the blood prevented. 
The only excuse for them we can offer is they 
did not know. In his autobiography, “ The Iron 
Puddler,” James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor, tells 
them: “ You never worked at terrific muscular 
exertion, handling white hot iron in a mill like this. 
You haven’t got the muscles to do it, and I doubt if 
you’ve got the heart. You cannot know the condition 
a man is in when he hits his hardest lick here. But 
they know, and I know. ’ ’ 
The physician was not wrong who said: “It is 
not for those who lead sedentary lives, and have per- 
haps never done a day of real hard, physical work in 
their lives, to dictate what those who engage in 
herculean toil shall drink.” 
An argument that ultra-prohibitionists fre- 
quently employ is to ask the person who uses alco- 
holic beverages in moderation: “ Can’t you do KINDNESS VERSUS BRUTALITY 
163 
without it ? ’ ’ A well-known physician answered this 
question at one occasion with: “ Of course, I can, I 
can do without anything if I must. I can do without 
a bed, and without shoes, I can do without soap, with- 
out books, without any comfort. But, may I 
ask why ? ’1 
And why should Kipling have the right to sing 
about the American spirit (not the one under the 
Volstead ban) 
“ The cynic devil in his blood 
That bids him flout the law he makes; 
That bids him make the law he flouts.” Why? 
The really civilized person knows that even with 
children, kindness will do considerably more than 
the cruel whip. 
A really kind person will always be humane, 
merciful, and compassionate, therefore will not need- 
lessly inflict pain upon the meanest thing that lives, 
will always try to mitigate the suffering even of the 
guilty, will sympathize with and whenever possible, 
relieve actual suffering, and always at least try to 
prevent and stop it when it threatens. 
May we hope that kindness will prevail, and 
that common sense will point the way out of the 
present abominable conditions? 
No one can claim that the Volstead Law is 
enforced. It cannot be enforced so long as it remains 
as it is. 
The Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch thinks that if the 
President wanted to bring about “ respect for prohi- 
bition he will use every effort to modify the drastic 
terms of the Volstead Act. The saloon-keepers 164 
ALCOHOL AND PROHIBITION 
brought about prohibition, and just as surely the 
professional prohibitionists and their inexperienced, 
though sincere amateur associates have brought 
about disrespect for prohibition laws.” 
We may hope that those who have temperance at 
heart will heed late President Harding’s words when 
at the unveiling of the Alexander Hamilton statue 
at Washington, he pleaded for honesty by saying: 
“ Honesty in politics will reveal unerring public 
opinion and honesty in public service. ’ ’ He deplored 
factionalism and said: “ Factions have arisen which 
would invade the constitutional rights of others or 
subvert the constitution itself.” 
And we may ask with The New Haven Journal 
Courier whether “ the time has not come for the 
advocates of prohibition and its opponents to set 
aside their prejudices and together calmly con- 
sider the situation from the point of view of 
general welfare? ” 
Why should we not hope that kindness will pre- 
vail with people who have labored assiduously for 
a laudable object, and have rescued from ruin a 
multitude of erring brethren? They cannot help 
but realize that temperance in language and state- 
ment is desirable, as well as temperance in alcohol, 
and that freedom comes before total abstinence. 
Former President Wilson2 felt that the practical 
unanimity with which the Eighteenth Amendment 
was supported arose from a nationwide resentment 
against abuses by the American saloon and economic 
evils that have grown out of the organized liquor 
* Tumulty, San Franoisco Chronicle, January 2, 1922. KINDNESS VERSUS BRUTALITY 
165 
traffic. He felt that it was unreasonable for 
Congress, in the Volstead Act, to declare any 
beverage containing an excess of one-half of one per 
cent, of alcohol intoxicating, and that to frame a 
law which arbitrarily places intoxicating and non- 
intoxicating beverages within the same classification 
was openly to invite mental resentment against it. 
He was of the opinion that it required no compro- 
mise or weakening of the Eighteenth Amendment in 
order to deal justly and fairly with the serious pro- 
tests that followed the enactment into law of the 
Volstead Act. He was, therefore, in favor of per- 
mitting the manufacture and sale, under proper 
governmental regulations, of light wines and beers, 
which action, in his opinion, would make it much 
easier to enforce the Amendment in its essential 
particulars and would help to end the illicit traffic in 
liquor, which the Volstead Act fostered by its very 
severity. This would put back of the enforcement 
OF THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT THE PUBLIC SENTI- 
MENT, always necessary to the execution of laws. 
It certainly is not too much to hope that there 
will be found a way to re-affirm the sublime truths 
of our Declaration of Independence, our unalien- 
able rights, so that at home we may be able to say: 
“ I am an American citizen! ” with the same pride 
as we always do abroad, where the last war taught 
the people to respect the United States. 
“Good laws under a free government,” was the 
favorite object of the immortal father of this 
country: Kindness would remove from the Volstead 
Law all that is bad and therefore impossible.