XVI Prohibition
Every one agrees that the most remarkable phenomenon in the recent history of the South is the “wave of prohibition” which has passed, and is passing, over the country. “There are 20,000,000 people in the fourteen Southern States, 17,000,000 of whom are under prohibitory law in some form.” “Yes, sir,” says Mr. Dooley, “in the sunny Southland ’tis as hard to get a dhrink now as it wanst was not to get wan.... Why, Hinnissy, I read th’ other day iv a most unfortunate occurrence down in Texas. A perfectly respectable an’ innocent man, of good connexions, while attemptin’ to dhraw a revolver to plug an inimy, was hastily shot down be th’ rangers, who thought he was pullin’ a pocket-flask. Is no man’s life safe against th’ acts iv irresponsible officers iv the law?”
Georgia led the way in “State-wide” prohibition, by a law which came into force on January 1, 1908. This law nominally affected only fifteen counties, since 135 out of the 150 counties in the State had already “gone dry” under local option. But its importance is not to be measured by the mere number of the counties affected; it lies in the stoppage of the “jug trade” between “wet” counties and “dry.”
Alabama and Mississippi both passed Statewide prohibition laws which came into force in January, 1909. A strong fight is being made for State-wide prohibition in Tennessee, though “all but five of the ninety-six counties in the State are now ‘dry’, and only three cities—Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga—remain ‘wet.’” Though Kentucky has over £30,000,000 invested in distilleries, the saloon has been expelled from 94 out of 119 counties, and from the great majority of its towns and cities. All over the South, in fact, the same tale is being told—even where Statewide prohibition cannot as yet be carried, local option is riddling the defences of the whisky trade.
First-hand Evidence.
Of course I made it my business to inquire into the effects of this great movement, and, of course, I received many conflicting answers to my inquiries.
Many people told me, just as they would in England, that “You can’t make a man sober by Act of Parliament.” They enlarged on the evils of the “blind tiger,” or illicit saloon. They sang to me the refrain:
“Hush, little grog-shop, don’t you cry:
You’ll be a drug-store by-and-by!“
They told me of the “clubs” where each member can keep his private locker full of alcohol, and get drunk at his leisure. As for drink and the negro (they said), what is the use of keeping whisky out of his way, when in ten cents’ worth of a “patent medicine” he can find enough cocaine to make him more dangerous than could a gallon of whisky?
On the other hand, I was told of a State in which the gaol-keepers, who (strange to say) made their living out of catering for the prisoners under their charge, applied for a special “grant-in-aid” on the ground that prohibition had so depopulated their preserves that they could no longer keep body and soul together.
This, though I believe it to be true, sounded a little like a fairy-tale; so I thought I would go to headquarters for exact information. Atlanta was the only city I visited where prohibition was actually in force; so I betook me to Decatur Street Police-court, in the middle of its lowest quarters. I arrived at a fortunate moment: it happened to be the first of May, and Mr. Preston, the Clerk of the Court, was just making up his statistics for April. He took the trouble of looking up the records of the previous year for me, and gave me the following figures:
Number of cases tried in the first four months of 1907 (before prohibition), 6056.
Number of cases tried in the first four months of 1908 (after prohibition), 3139.
Convictions for drunkenness before prohibition, 1955.
Convictions for drunkenness after prohibition, 471.
“Take it all round,” said Mr. Preston, “our work has been reduced by just about one-half.”42
I afterwards attended a sitting of this Court (Judge Broyle’s), when, in a very light calendar, there was not a single case of drunkenness.
Oddly enough, no distinction of colour seemed to appear on the records, but I gathered that about 75 per cent. of the prisoners who come before Judge Broyle were negroes.
Of the negroes to whom I spoke of prohibition, all but one were strongly in its favour. That one, Dr. Oberman of Memphis, thought that more real good would be done by a “high licence.” Mr. Millard, of Montgomery, was emphatic in his approval. “I believe we’re the ones that are going to get the biggest part of the bargain,“ he said. “My people are going to have better homes and look after their families better—to pay for their schooling and pay their bills.” It is only fair to point out, however, that this was pure prophecy, since in Montgomery prohibition had not then come into force.
Being myself but a small consumer of alcohol, I was not irresistibly impelled to study the various methods of evading the liquor laws. One mild evasion of them I did come across at one of the “Country Clubs” which are such a delightful adjunct to American city life. |Club Law.| Here each member could by law have his locker; but it was found an intolerable nuisance to carry the system literally into effect. So, as a matter of fact, drinks did not come from any individual locker; they were supplied from the club cellar in the ordinary way; only the club must not be paid for them, since that would be a confession that the member ordering them had not stored them for his own use. What, then, was the method adopted? Members bought of the club books of ten-cent coupons, and with these coupons they paid the waiters who brought the drinks—not for the drinks, but for their services in bringing them! It appeared to me a complex and rather childish fiction, but probably it was no one’s business to look into its seams.
It was at this club that a Senator from an adjoining State, who had been very active in the prohibition campaign, was found one day seated before a “high-ball” of imposing dimensions. On being reproached for inconsistency, he replied: “Prohibition is for the masses, not for the classes.” A most un-American sentiment, some will say; but to my thinking characteristically American.
In Savannah, Georgia, 147 “locker clubs” were organized the day after prohibition came into force, one of them, a negro club, numbering 1700 members. But it will not be long before this evasion is dealt with. It is held by able jurists that, even under the present law, such clubs are illegal. In the mean time, I suppose they exist in Atlanta no less than in Savannah; yet, as we have seen, the work of the police court has been reduced by one-half.
As for “blind tigers,” there is no doubt that they follow in the track of prohibition laws, and that it is fairly easy, for those who know how, to procure bad liquor at high prices. |The “Blind Tiger.”| But in the first place you have got to “know how;” in the second place, even for those who know how, it costs more time, trouble, and money than it did of old, to attain the requisite exhilaration; in the third place, “blind tigers” can, and do, have their claws pared now and then. Most of the people I spoke to, at all events, admitted that the evils of the “blind tiger” are not to be compared with the constant temptations offered by the open saloon.
That these evils are serious enough, however, appears from the following brief paragraph which I cut from the Atlanta Constitution:
KILLED AT A BLIND TIGER.
Nashville (Tenn.), April 29.—“At a blind tiger on Knott Creek, Kentucky, Henry Pratt, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, shot and killed Howard Maunds, also aged thirteen. The boys were intoxicated, and the killing followed a game of cards.”
During the days I was in Atlanta, five blind-tiger keepers were prosecuted and “bound over under bonds to the city court,” one in the sum of £200, the rest in sums of £100. What this “binding over” precisely means I cannot say, but it seems to be a painful process to the animals in question, for I read that “their howls filled the court.”
One of the persons “bound over” was a doctor. It was noticed that his practice had of late increased enormously. A stream of patients resorted to his office at all hours of the day, till at last a plain-clothes officer joined the stream. The doctor told him that he was out of whisky, but could fix up a good substitute, which proved to be some form of alcohol, tinctured with syrup, to take away the crude taste. Of this beverage the officer purchased two half-pints at two different times, and then ungratefully arrested his benefactor.
On another occasion a plain-clothes officer was told off to watch a house where it was suspected that an illicit trade was carried on. Near it he came upon a negro lounging against a fence.
“Nager,” said the constable, “do you know where a fellow can get a quart of good whisky?”
“Naw, sir, I don’t; but mebbe I kin find some,” was the reply.
The constable handed him a dollar and a half, and told him to see what he could do.
“Yessir,” said the negro. “Just you hold this shoe-box for me while I step down the street a piece.”
The policeman held the carefully wrapped shoe-box, while his emissary disappeared round the corner. For half an hour he waited in vain, then searched the neighbourhood up and down, and returned to the station enraged at having let himself be victimized. But when he investigated the shoe-box, expecting to find it full of rubbish, behold! it contained a quart bottle of whisky.
Such are the dodges to which the liquor-trade is reduced. But however manifold and ingenious its sleights, I cannot be persuaded that it is so easy to get drunk in Atlanta as it is in New Orleans, with its 2000 open saloons—to say nothing of cities nearer home.
South Carolina was for some time, and is still partially, under the “dispensary” system, the State undertaking the function of providing its citizens with alcohol. The dispensary is open only during limited hours, and no liquor may be drunk on the premises. This system has proved the reverse of satisfactory from the point of view of the temperance reformer, while corruption has fleeced the State of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the purchase of its liquors.
There have been “waves” of prohibition in America before, which have more or less receded as time went on. Will that be the history of this wave? The best authorities do not think so.
Has Prohibition Come to Stay?
In the first place, as I have said before, the South is deeply and earnestly religious. The Churches are all opposed to the liquor traffic, and it has been said that “a proposition to restore it would encounter from them almost the same reception as a proposition to restore a State Church establishment.”
In the second place, the presence of the negro in the South is a tower of strength to the prohibitionist.
In the third place, the rapid industrial revival of the South is making men alive to the economic waste involved in the liquor traffic.
In the fourth place, prohibition has touched the patriotic imagination of the South, which is a very lively faculty indeed.
On this subject I spoke to Dr. E. A. Alderman, President of the University of Virginia. In that State local option has banished the saloon from almost all the country districts and from most of the towns. Charlottesville, the seat of the University, is, according to Dr. Alderman, distinctly a better town since it “went dry.” Manners are better, the standard of comfort is higher, there is more money to spend.
“It seems to me,” said Dr. Alderman, “that society has an absolute right to protect itself against the evils of alcohol, just as it has the right to take compulsory measures of sanitation. Whether the best method of protection has as yet been reached, I won’t undertake to say. But I think you may safely assume that in the Southern States the age of the open grog-shop is past.”
Notes
42. In Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 49 (published in 1904, when as yet prohibition seemed scarcely within the range of practical politics), I find the following remarkable prophecy: “The fountain-head of crime among the negroes of Atlanta is the open saloon. There is no doubt but that the removal of strong drink from the city would decrease crime by half.”