not content with forcing us to close our lips to liquor, the prohibitionists recently sent out a request, which amounted to an order, that no one should open his lips to speak disparagingly or in jest of the sacred eighteenth amendment. we were to be denied the blessed privilege of laughing at ourselves, even! i suppose that a few fanatics—oh, merely to study life, bless their hearts!—had gone into a vaudeville theater and had been incensed at the ribaldry of the actors and the shrieks of mirth of the audience over prohibition wheezes. i have seen an assemblage in convulsions when some light mention was made of mr. volstead; and whenever a flask is displayed on the screen of some movie house, there never fails to follow a round of loud applause.
our comic weeklies and newspaper supplements continue to print prohibition jokes, much to the delight of their readers. one fearless periodical, judge, has come out openly for light wines and beer—and lost a valued contributor thereby. another paper, on the contrary, solemnly prints this editorial, headed “there are jokes and jokes”:
139 “a great concern operating vaudeville theaters in most of the large cities has issued an order that all performers must cut out their jokes about prohibition. this is progress. it should be followed by orders to eliminate prohibition jokes from our legislatures, courts, police stations, city halls, and all other places where men supposed to be serious and doing serious work are to be found. the outstanding fact about prohibition seems to be that people forget that it came about through an amendment to the united states constitution.”
meanwhile, the mother-in-law joke is tolerated, and roared at. it is perfectly all right for a man to make fun of his wife’s mother, since there is no formal statute against such jests; but it is unthinkable that he should laugh at himself because he can’t get a simple glass of beer. the country he fought for, and was willing to die for, denies him an ancient form of enjoyment. he could make fun openly of negroes, though the fifteenth amendment tells him that they are his peers.
the reformer, you see, never counted upon the chaffing which the volstead act would have to stand. ridicule can kill anything, and they know it now. therefore, they must stop ridicule by mandate. heaven knows there is little to smile at these days—except prohibition. are we to have that luxury taken from us too?
it looks that way. yet no law can control people’s innermost feelings. no request—amounting to140 an order—can coerce a nation to do something it is not impelled to do, of itself. one remembers a sad time, not so long ago, when we were begged to remain neutral in thought, word and deed; and notices were printed in theater programs, urging us to make no demonstration when the troops of the allies crossed the screen; to give no sign when the german army did likewise. yet there was a burst of applause or a burst of hisses, just the same. the minds of a people cannot be controlled. it is nonsense to try to control them.
now the fanatics would seek to rob us of the joy of laughter. for of course they despise and detest laughter. laughter—ridicule—is a sword that can be used against them. we can make this whole business of prohibition so ludicrous that we can laugh it out of the statutes. guffaws have disturbed many a solemn meeting; and a single cartoon has broken many a promising politician. one may be able to stand up against a serious argument; but lampooning has destroyed even men of genius.
all was to be well the moment the eighteenth amendment became a fact. everyone was going to sit still and take it very seriously, just as the prohibitionists had planned. the lid was on, and on it would remain—forever and ever. puritans have no sense of humor, or they would not be puritans. they had not dreamed that someone would overturn the can on which the lid was placed, and, through sheer joy of living, shout and sing as of old.141 the habits of generations cannot be changed in a moment. we who had been accustomed to decent drinking did not intend to stop at once. we would “taper off,” as the topers put it. we had laid aside a little supply of jollity, and the word would go about that so-and-so had a large enough and deep enough cellar to permit him to entertain for at least three or four years.
one of the strange things about prohibition was the fact that, with its coming, everyone imagined that everyone else would turn miser concerning treating. but here again the human element was forgotten. everyone seems more anxious than ever to prove that his bootlegger has an exhaustless supply; and a certain pride is taken in handing out innumerable drinks. an aristocracy has arisen that even serves liqueurs after coffee—as though a plethora of crême de menthe and yellow and green chartreuse were in the land. the proverbial generosity of the american was never more in evidence. where one was niggardly, perhaps, in the old days, one can scarcely afford to be so now; and those who accept drinks without returning them are frowned upon as unworthy. they are the outcasts of a new society, the lowest form of hanger-on. of course they are not nearly so numerous as of old; therefore they are more conspicuous.
and so the laughter goes on; but even when the reformers do not hear it, they writhe, knowing of its existence. once in a great while some echo reaches142 them, no doubt. things have not “straightened out” as they had anticipated; and so they squirm, and rage, and puff up, and devise ways and means to call a complete halt on all merriment, whether it is directed at them or not.
in all seriousness a woman’s temperance society sent a mandate to every editor in the united states not long ago, bidding them cease satirizing prohibition. it would not do, they contended, to continue to smile at the sacred eighteenth amendment. mr. volstead, also, was sacrosanct; and it was outrageous the way piety was pooh-poohed, and what did the editors mean by such conduct, and why didn’t they stop it and obey teacher and be good?
and every government official, when he gets up at a banquet to make a speech, begs his hearers to heed the law—though he knows full well that down the street another banquet may be going on, attended by officials equally high, where the law is never thought of. it is a sad commentary on our government when it is necessary thus to address the people. “we must be one people, one union—and that the american union,” shouted one representative of the government speaking in chicago before a business men’s convention. and he went on to say, “whenever a newspaper ridicules a law, plays up a policy of contempt for law and its enforcement and in its news and editorial columns fosters law-breaking, that newspaper is doing more to destroy american institutions than a federal judge can do to maintain143 them.... no man in public life who is possessed of vision and realizes his responsibility to government would favor regulation of the public press by law, but it is obvious that the power of the press must not be used to foster disrespect for our government and disobedience to its laws.”
free speech will not be tolerated, if the fanatics have their way. yet the first article in the amendments to the constitution says:
“congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
in order that the eighteenth amendment may be upheld, the first may be forgotten.
but to get back for a moment to the ladies of the something-or-other temperance society. a brilliant writer, mr. edward s. martin, answered them delightfully in harper’s magazine; and with the kind permission of the editors of that periodical, i am privileged to make extracts from his article. mr. martin never loses his temper, as the ladies certainly did. he remains, as ever, the tactful, urbane, pitying occupant of the editor’s easy-chair. he does not even frown. he speaks from a long experience, gently but to the point:
“the enforcement of prohibition meets with some obstacles and furnishes food for thought to144 two large groups in the community—the people who want it enforced and the people who occasionally want something to drink. just at the moment it seems as if the people who want a drink are somewhat ahead of the other group in the competition; at any rate, the group that wants enforcement seems to think it necessary to make extra effort. to harper’s magazine, as doubtless to hundreds of other periodicals, has come a communication from the committee for prohibition enforcement of a much-respected and powerful organization of women, which announces that the committee has adopted a program, the items of which it communicates. the fifth item is to the effect that all the ministers be urged to preach and teach the necessity for respect for and observance of the law. the sixth item runs, ‘that every theatrical manager, movie manager, and editor, whether of a daily, weekly or monthly publication, be requested to see that all jokes ridiculing prohibition and its enforcement are eliminated from any production, film, or article coming under his jurisdiction, and that the matter be treated with that seriousness that the subject merits; and that this resolution be thrown on the screen and printed in the different papers and magazines throughout the country.’
“the demand for protection from jokes is often made and always implies that there is something that needs to be joked about. there is a sin called ‘sacrilege.’ if we joke about things that are sacred145 to enough people, it gives a kind of offense which, even if the law does not punish it, it is not safe to excite. there is a sin of blasphemy, which we suppose the law will still punish if it is gross enough. it will be agreed that the considerate people do not jest about sacred things, nor even about things which, though not sacred to themselves, are sacred to the people they are talking to. well, then, is prohibition one of these sacred things we must not talk about? are amendments of the constitution and the volstead law to rank with the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount as not being safely subject to derisive comment?
“something like that seems to be in the minds of the women whose communication we have received, who include item six in their program, but if so, their attitude is wrong. a constitutional amendment is not sacred, much less a volstead act. it is the volstead law that the jokes on prohibition are aimed at more than the amendment. if we cannot joke about an act of congress, then indeed things have come to a restricted pass. if a law is bad, one of the ways to beat it is to laugh it out of court. if that is being done about the volstead law, the ladies who want that law enforced would do well to examine it and see why it is not enforced, rather than try to stop jokers from laughing at it.
“a letter writer to a newspaper says, ‘if it is true that a community gets the kind of government it146 deserves, it is equally true that a law gets the kind of obedience it deserves.’ his assertion may be disputed, but still, if the volstead law is not being respected, is it certain that it deserves respect? it is a law in the process of being tried out. if it is good we want it enforced. if it is bad we want it amended, but we do not want to be choked off from discussing it or testing it. there is no power in congress to say what is right or wrong. the most that congress can do is to say what is lawful or unlawful. the distinction is important. the practical judge of whether a law is right or wrong is the general community to which the law applies. if that community will not back up the enforcement of the law, it will not be enforced. it is yet to be demonstrated how far the volstead law, as it stands, is enforceable. if its fruits do not please a majority of the people who live under it, it may have to be modified so that it will stand for something that is near enough to be the popular judgment of what is right to win popular support. there is a great deal of good in the present prohibition movement. it put the saloons out of business. it checked the brewers and distillers in their over-strenuous efforts to sell their products. it accomplished benefits which probably could not have been accomplished except by the kind of clean sweep that the amendment was. but it was necessarily a rough job—an experiment to be tried out in practice. if its rules need modification, they may get it or they may not,147 but if not, they may be practically modified in enforcement.
“who is boss in this country? is it the president, the senate, the house, the supreme court, the state authorities, the newspapers, the lawyers, the ministers, the doctors, or possibly the women?
“none of them! public opinion is the boss. in the long run, what public opinion demands it gets. laws to be of any worth have to have sanction. that is, there must be something to make people who violate them feel that they are doing wrong. the laws of nature have abundant sanction. if you fool with the law of gravitation, you get bumped. there is no trouble about the enforcement of the law of gravitation. nobody goes around begging you not to ridicule it. it takes care of itself, and if you flout it you pay the consequences. the ten commandments have a sanction of long experience. some of them are obsolete, but the others are respected, and, though they are not directly enforced by the courts, laws based on them are so enforced. public opinion hereabouts rests very considerably on the ten commandments. they have shaped the habits of thought and deportment of many millions of people, including most of those now living in this country.
“the trouble with the present enforcement of prohibition is that it has not yet got moral sanction enough to make it effective. public opinion will back up the law in closing the saloons and restricting and regulating the sale of intoxicants, but it does not148 follow it, for one thing, in defining a beverage with an alcoholic content of one half of one per cent as intoxicating. when it comes to that, public opinion laughs, because that is contrary to its experience. furthermore, public opinion shows as yet no particular fervor about achieving a total stoppage of alcoholic supplies from those who want them. no serious stigma attaches to violations of the volstead law by private buyers. fines and like embarrassments may result, but not disrepute. a good many fairly decent people seem to buy what they want, and do not conceal it. the people who thought before the law was adopted that it was wicked or inexpedient to drink intoxicants, still think so. the people who thought otherwise continue to think otherwise. many people drink less than before the law began to operate, but a good many other people drink more, and buy much worse beverages at much higher prices. to some extent prohibition seems to have made drinking popular by diminishing the individual discouragement of it and putting the responsibility for the maintenance of temperance on a law and the officers who enforce it. that may be only a temporary effect, but if it turns out that the volstead law, as it is, cannot be enforced at the present time, there may possibly be an effort to tinker it—to put it into such shape that public opinion will stand back of it and give it a sanction. the alternative would be to wait and see what effect time will have on men and habits. there is no one to tell us149 that we shall be damned if we disobey the volstead law, and so long as juries refuse to convict persons who violate it, it stands modified in practice....
“the organizations, political, commercial, religious, that seek to shape public opinion all use propaganda. we all know what that means because we have all had such a surfeit of it. during the war we were flooded with it and everyone learned what it was and how to use it. it is put out by speakers, on the movie screens and in print wherever possible. organization secured prohibition, but organization is not public opinion and may for a time override it. organization works on the run with noise and big headlines and meetings and even with threats. public opinion slowly takes form in the minds of individuals. there comes in lincoln’s saying about the impossibility of fooling all the people all the time. propaganda may overwhelm private judgment for a time, but private judgment keeps on working after propaganda ceases. it digests what has been offered to it. the common facts of life continue to appeal to it and impress it. it views what propaganda has accomplished and slowly and deliberately considers whether it is good, and if it concludes that it is not good it ceases to back it and then there has to be something different, something that looks like improvement....”
