The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-08-02
NEW YORK LETTER.
Liquor Interests Fighting for
Worlds Fair Sunday Closing.
A Trip Up the Sound to the Clubhouse OF
the Famous Americas Club
The Days of Tweed
Recalled.
ICoPYR1GHT, 1897

COPYRIGHT, 1891
One of the most interesting assem-
blages among quaint and unhackneyed
surroundings that a visitor to the city
or even a veteran New Yorker can see
anywhere near the metropolis in mid
summer is to be found in Prohibition
park, on Staten Island. The great
| question which has been agitating
many thousand minds during this 'ssilly
season." in whose midst we still find
ourselves, is whether the Columbian ex-
position at Chicago should be closed on
Sunday Two powerful forces are be-
ing exerted from New York and it's vi
cinity for closure. Prohibition park,
in which many notable Americans
| gather every summer to speak and hear
speeches in favor of total abstinence
from all alcoholic liquors, is now the
seat of much prayerful endeavor to in
| fuence the managers of the fair, as the
prohibitionists think, to cooperate with
them against the ''World's Fair Orgy"
as Sunday opening is somewhat flip
PANTY referred to, but shutting up the
exposition on the one day upon which
our prohibition friends seem to think
the free and independent Ameri-
can citizen delights in getting drunk
and enjoying himself. Gen. Weaver, the
peoples party candidate for the presi-
dency; ex-senator John j. Ingalls, and
Senator Roger @. Mills, together with
some of the most famous physicians of
this city, are among the notable people
whose philippines against the curse Of
rum have walked and are still waking
the echoes of Prohibition park. The
influence which New Workers of wealth
and prominence are now exerting most
powerfully in favor of the closing of the
fair on Sunday may turn out to be in
spired by the great brewing industries
of this city. No organization is more
complete and united and fruitful in re-
sources than that which is called the
''liquor interest" None is more tact
full and farseeing in its methods. If, as
some prohibitionists hear with vast as
constituent, the organized distillers and
brewers are their most powerful allies
in the movement to shut up the fair on
Sunday, and so drive visitors to the
dives and drinking resorts of Chicago for
amusement, no one need be surprised.
But the liquor dealers do not hunt their
quarry with brass band.
At a notable little social gathering
not long since in Arden Inn, on the
south shore of Staten Island, quaint
and beautiful resort, whose walls, four
feet in thickness and apparently built
of indestructible stone, show the en-
brasures from which Dutch cannon
frowned two hundred years ago over
the quiet waters of Princes bay, some
famous medical men of New York were
present. 1t is difficult for writer to
assure himself whether prominent doc,
tors are more enraged or delighted by
mention in print of their names and do,
ings, so | will omit the names of those
who lent professional celebrity to this
particular occasion. But some things
were said there well calculated to shock
the man about town, the moderate
drinker and the devotee of cocktails any
where in this broad land. 1t seems that
at medical congress, held-in this very
prohibition park, curiously enough, I'M
der the auspices of DR.. Orlando B.
Douglas, president of the Medical soci-
ETY. of the county of New York, DR.. l..
D. Mason, consulting physician to the
Fort Hamilton Asylum for Inebriates,
and other well-known professional men
here, the question as to whether alco-
hol was food or poison was discussed
in way decidedly calculated to stimu-
late the curiosity of the laymen. Some
OF the papers read were upon these top
les: GLOW to Deal with the Drunkard;''
''In What Ways May Physician Effect
lively Help to Stay the Ravages of In
temperance" SIS Alcohol a Poison?"
and ''Should Alcoholic Stimulants Ever
Be Taken Except Under the Direction
of Medical Adviser?" Even in the
''silly season. the spectacle of plain
American citizen Juggling his family
physician around town with him and
buying prescription for SO to IS
every time he wanted to buy
glass of beer or cocktail is
well calculated to promote the gayety
ofnations. But your teetotaler is deadly
serious; he never seems to see joke.
There was very little in the newspapers
here or elsewhere about the doings and
sayings of this medical congress. 1t is a
question whether scores of thousands
of persons technically described as mod
crate drinkers would not have been
drawn down to Prohibition park to
drink in these medical discourses with
wonder and alarm if half the things
said at the supper table at Arden inn
about the proceedings were founded in
fact.
rs THERE POISON IN LIQUOR?
DR.. William FL. Porter, who is pro-
fessor Of clinical medicine and pathol-
ogy in the New York post graduate
school and hospital, said in his paper:
Each additional dose or portion of
alcohol introduced into the body leaves
the animal economy more poorly nour-
ished and more quickly and positively
depressed just SO soon as the exhilarat-
ing effects of the alcohol have passed
away With each succeeding draught
and it's consequent, depression the de-
mands of the system for renewed slim
ulation are more and more urgent, I'M
til the final picture of the insane drunk
ard is presented to us. All the vital