The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-18

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 kee was on the wet side and said every man had a right to drink if he wanted to, and that settled it with me He and his New Jersey cows and his suction pump for milking cows are too rich for Alabama, and I guess he won't last long around here' Five thousand such herds of New Jersey cows, with creameries and cheese factories, would start Alabama out of the rut she has got into, and set her going on the road to prosperity and greater happiness than she has ever known.
 think 1t was in Alabama that I heard that the state commissioners of immigra- tion who had been trying to get foreign CTS to locate in the state, had reported to the governor that it was no use to keep up the work, as they could not get anybody to come Maybe it was in Tennessee that I heard that. Anyway, it will apply to Alabama, because where prohibition is going into effect January 1 everywhere in the state there is no use of trying to get the people who work and produce and populate and who want to be allowed 10 drink their beer and wine without going behind the door, to live in such a state.
 In studying the condition of things brought about by prohibition in Alabama, I first struck Birmingham, a most inter- esting city full of manufactures. steel
 
 employing thousands of laborers. The town has gone dry, not on her own ac- count but because the county in which she is situated voted dry.
 Montgomery and Mobile are the only wet places in Alabama, and they will dry up according to law on the 1st of January. Birmingham believes she will always have plenty to drink, law or no law and she certainly has plenty now. It is proposed tr WE VI to keep things wet, but it will be uphill work to irrigate so large town with an occasional bottle on the sly. The adVo- cates of prohibition have quite an object lesson in Birmingham. It was thought that when things went dry the foreigners who work in mines and factories would simply leave on short notice if they could not get beer and things that they were accustomed to the use of, but the laws are so that intoxicating liquors can be shipped in from other states, and the management of the factories and mines wink at the formation of clubs among the men where they can get what they think they need to drink, so there has been no great exodus. How it will be when the law makes the whole state dry by constitutional act, and the state is pa- trolled by whisky game wardens," and spies on the neighbors, is not known, but if the present condition is any criterion to judge by, Alabama is going to be the wettest dry state in the union. Birming- ham citizens simply laugh at the condi- ton.
 Men can get all the liquor they want. day or night, and the dear child, the ne- gro. who was to be saved from drunk ards grave by legislation, laughs loudest of all. One thing bothers the negro, and that is that it is unlawful to drink In public. and though he may have the goods concealed about his person, he has got to find place to drink where no one can see him. So he will go into an office build ing, or in a stairway, and while he looks out, or has a friend look out for intrud- CTS, he puts the bottle to his mouth and the guggle is all that can be heard, the jag Is acquired, and no one is any wiser unless they happen to run up against MT. Negro when he feels his fighting spirit come on.
 vide little wooden buildings just large enough for one man to stand up in to take a quiet drink, but the idea is not yet popular, so the empty freight car or the covered wagon is used extensively to hide him during the critical moment when the drink is actually going down the col- ored gullet Negro women, well as men, take their drinks, and many calico skirt conceals the ''boot-legger' plant where any colored brother who has the price may procure bottle of vile stuff from a regularly ordained "aunty.' who is not burdened with a license or a con- science. And yet some of these negroes, male and female, who sell it and drink it, are devout church members on Sun day, and shout and sing "Glory to God between drinks, and impress others as be- ing pretty good intermittently Drunken ness and crime among the negroes is not on the decrease since Birmingham went dry, as getting the stuff is easier than ever. and after a negro gets more than he needs of the deadly fluid, he has not the miserly instinct that causes him to lay it up against a rainy day, but some thing impels him to put it down for the dry day, and when he gets full and his brain begins to sizze like fat frying in the pan, he is ready to kill a neighbor, or steal a mule, and (he does not care much which comes first.
 But dear old Mobile, which has miles of docks where ships from every port bring cargoes and take away the products of the southern plantations, whose business has been the pride of the south for leo years. whose people speak all languages, and which is visited by foreigners from all lands, and whose ocean steamers go to every port where there is business, and whose hotels and clubs are the finest in the land, and which catches the world s travellers going and coming, is going to feel prohibition the worst.
 It is going to take her from the class or Paris, Venice, Buenos Ayres and other world leaders in business and pleasure and put her in the class with Skowhegan, Maine and Vineland, N. J., and the peo- ple are heart-brol<en over the prospect after January l. when everything must become dry in Alabama. With banks as solid as the Bank of England. business houses that trade with all the world, the stopping place for the tourists of our own country and all of Europe, cosmopolitan city today, she is to be clsed up so that an emperor visiting her would have to drink soda water at dinner instead or i the champagne he is accustomed to-. Business is already feeling the slump and one can buy what has always been a | good paying business at his own price. l One man told me that a year ago he 1 could have sold his business for 150 cents on the dollar for all that he had put in it. but now he would sell for 50 cents on ] the dollar and be glad to get out Prohi- 1 btion has done the business for Mo- i bile.
 A man from the north here selling prod i ucts of the packing houses. canned stufs, l etc. says jobbers are not buying for next ] falls delivery. as they have done Tor 1 wears. but simply will not give an order. | because they do not know whether it will 1 nav them to continue to do business here. | The people act as though they were sit ting on an open barrel of gun powder, l 1l~.x1 .atfr- rft tr