The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-27

ton by moonshiners, and started raising tobacco, and now that it is smoked up by the night riders there is gloom and despair. and revenge on too many faces Every county that is dry gets liquor some where, and men that I have talked with today say there is more drunkenness in many dry towns in the country than there | is in dear old Louisville, which is about as wet as any place you can find, except ] Sundays. On Sunday, they say. you can't get drink to save you, but l shall be in Tennessee next Sunday, where it is dry some but not so alfred dry. 1 talked with man today who had lived in a dry town in this state for two years. and he said he would not go through the exper- fence again for a million. He believes in personal liberty. takes q drink if he feels like it. as We do in Milwaukee. and when the fight was on he voted wet and talked some on the subiect-perhaps too much. But when the "dry season actu- ally came he lived up to it. though he had q bottle or two in the house. He says the whole dry party became spies on him and other former vets, and acted like hired sleuths, and he was marked man.
 The dry town was divided as much as a town was ever during accession days, and his dry enemies would shadow him, looking in his windows at HlSDt, HIS WlIe was oStlaclIeu ana illS children were insulted at school. He said he tried to be jolly and spoke pleasantly to the neighbors, and every time he made an advance to any citi- zen it was thought that he was drunk. It seems to him that his dry neigh bors wanted to quarrel and fight with him. and he wouldn't have it, so he pulled up and moved out, and the peo- pie who saw him off on the train acted as though disappointed because they had not thought to give him a coat of tar and feathers. This man says there will be a great exodus from dry and 'night-ridden communities and ne cannot see who will take the places of those who will go away from home to enjoy a quiet life. It is certain that in many dry localities, where liquor is freely shipped from other states and there is more drunkenness than in cities where it is easy to get liquor without violating the law a change is coming. Already many excitable and revengeful drys are beginning to say that they don't know but they would favor letting beer in because. as they remember beer, you cant get very drunk on beer unless you go about it with that purpose in view, and drink all that is in sight. Within year, man who travels over this state. telis me he would not be surprised to see plenty of dry counties and towns loosen up and let the amber beverage have d show for it's money.
 I met a member of the legislature, q dry man for sure, and he pitied me when he knew 1 was from Milwaukee, as he had heard people bathed in beer outside and in, and he asked me if we didn't have trouble finding enouga sober men to tranact the business of the city. l thought he was joking and l told him we kept a certain numb CT ! of men in jail, and let regular de- { tial of sober men out every morning to transact the business, and he said, Il should think you would have to-" and when i found that he was dead earnest and sorry for us, I told him we had a thousand or more saloons open night and day the year round and we had less percentage of drunken ness than any dry community in the { United States He looked queer at me and got up to go, said he was glad 10 have met me, and l saw him whisper ing to the hotel clerk and after he had gone the clerk told me he did not want { to help along any row but that legis- lator told him the baldheaded man from Milwaukee was probably the biggest liar on the face of Gods green earth
  There you are. and now I am going down to Chattanooga, Tenn. whe re everybody in dry old Tennessee is get ting rich sending liquor to dear old Georgia, which is dry that it can only get liquor throuh a mail order house in an adjoining state. As look things over here and listen to the re- ports of trouble everywhere in the state, from the mountains where feuds grow and the graveyards yawn, and the moonshine distller has his ready Winchester on the hair trigger, to the homes of the victims of Night Riders Where smoke fills the air, to the dry counties where the only drink lawful to get is a patent medicine for the liver or the lungs or the stomach or the blood or the rheumatism all of which will make the patient as drunk a s though he drank vanilla extract or alcohol, I thing of the inspiring words that the girl at the ribbon counter ot a department store said to her chum. "Ain't it awful Mabel?'