The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-04-24


William Marion Reidy in st. Louis Mir
ror.
That the suppression of the saloon is
wholly good for character may well be
denied by any man of worldly experience.
know hundreds of men in dry towns in
Missouri who never come to st. Louis or
go to Kansas City without deliberately
tanking up. with other accompaniments,
and every one of them tells you. II never
take a drink when I'm at home.' You
go from this or some other big city.
where you are used to taking a drink
when you want 1t, to some smaller city
where there's a saloon two. You go
to mans office and transact your bus
mess Then you say, Lets go out and
have a drink" To which. the chances
are ten to one that you will receive the
reply, "Oh no. l can't do that, I wouldn't
enter a saloon here, but I'll send the boy
around for bottle and we'll drink it in
the office" And that's a form of drinking
that doesn't appeal to the city man. He
hates to sneak a drink.
The men who practice this hypocrisy
are men of intelligence-lawyers doctors,
merchants, politicians. They do not be-
lieve in the denial of a mans right to
drink. They come to meetings In the
cities and they drink all and more than
they want, and they denounce blue law
and lids and all such things, but they go
back home and they vote for what they
don't believe in and they become sneaks
to evade laws which they vote for while
they despise them. Who that knows any
thing about life or character does not
know that this condition of affairs tends
to develop a strain of decetfulness that
must be much worse than an occasional
drinking bout?
The country goes dry by the strength
of votes of men who do not believe in
dry government. The laws of dryness,
therefore. do not represent an honest pub
lie opinion in the communities where
they prevail We are well aware that
Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays
to virtue,' according to an old saying.
but on the other hand, is not hypocrisy
of this sort a tribute which vice exacts
of virtue? Why should an honest man
who believes in taking a drink openly be-
come vicious in doing, furtively what he
believes he has a right to do openly?
The saloon may be an evil in the coun-
try town. but the blind tiger is a greater
evil, and the saloon can be regulated by
high license and otherwise. st. Louis has
shown how thoroughly Reputable" the
saloon is in a large city. but the applica-
ton of too intensive methods of reg
ulation only suppressed good saloons to
create evil lid clubs, paying no license
and as yet indispensable. The anti-sa-
loon war is probably well motived. so far
as concerns some people who participate
in it, but the fact patent to everyone who
investigates the matter carefully in any
dry" community, is that the drouth has
validity only because 1t is supported in
cowardly conformity by men who vote az
they do not believe.
l cannot help thinking that there can
not be much hope of genuine electoral
honesty as to other things in this coun-
try when | think of the number of men
who favor the anti-saloon war, knowing
that it's strength and effect have no real
foundation other than a truly affrighting
prevalence in the body polite OF that
syphilis of the soul-hypocrisy.