Weekly Caledonian. (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1919-1920, 1919-02-05
Dry HumOr

Well, we've gone and done it
We've turned Thumbs Down on hare
cider and declared our opinion that
it's time that those with noses that
indicate their owners faces haven't
jellied properly, be removed perma.
nently from the landscape and the
public walks. We've taken Temper.
ance seriously. 1t isn't the sign OF
the mollycoddle to be found in a cor.
ner of the library engrossed in "Ten
Nights in a Bar-Room."
Some say national ruin stares US
in the face. We're now in for Boil
shevism as an infringement of per-
sonal liberty beside which Russia is
merely the after-effect of a Sunday
School picnic. We're going to have
an increase of unemployment due to
the shutting down of the breweries.
We're going to stagger along toward
anarchy under the increased burden
of taxation. We won't have any
emigrants coming over from Europe
to lay our railroad ties or eventually
get on the police force because they
won't come 10 a land where the Oil
of Exuberation is Taboo and they
cannot acquire a beautiful Misrepre-
sentation every Saturday night and
spend Sunday beating up the wife and
kids. Nearly a thousand breweries
are going out of business and nearly
three hundred thousand saloons.
There's going to be an alarming in
crease in the physically thwarted
whose ailments simply demand
Peruna. And the end is not yet.
Over all of which we refuse to get
excited.
We have faith in the Prohibition
amendment. We believe it is going
to work more or less successfully
because all Of this talk about the
Prohibitionists and the Anti-saloon
Leagues Slipping one over" on the
country, is bunk and balderdash.
Forty-odd legislatures didn't climb
aboard the band-wagon because they
were chased there. A thousand
statesmen wouldn't have put their
official o. X on the measure if over
whelming public sentiment back home
was against it.
National prohibition has come be-
cause the country is ready for it..
The barber-shop, the cigar-store and
smoking-car boys are the barometers
in an event of this kind. And
anyone with his ear to the ground
and an intuition to read human ma
.ure, knows that with teetotalism and
temperance popular, they're admit
ting what they believed in their
hearts all along, that hard stuff
never did anyone ever good and if
prosecutions are carried out by the
federal government instead of some
local sheriff or officer whose wife
and seven kids are depending on the
conversation politics for his job,
they're ready to show themselves in
their true colors as sponsors of human
decency.
It's a queer habit when you stop
to think about it; this practice of
putting stuff into your face to steal
away your money-making brains and
rot out your bowels E. just be-
cause it was popular. It's had it's
day. It's got to walk. Being clean
and decent now is the popular thing
and when you popularize thing
with the American people it's success
is foregone conclusion.
There isn't an argument in favor
of the liquor bsiness that can't be
dealt with in the popular manner of
dealing with an old hat. We're not
in for Bolshevism over an infringe
ment of personal liberty when per-
sonal liberty implies taking a drink
any more than we have been in for
Bolshevism when we "infringed" per-
sonal liberty by prohibiting danger
Gus drugs or saying that man shall
not run his automobile down the
crowded business street at seventy
three miles an hour. Personal liberty
doesn't mean doing anything we
please. We're not going to have an
increase of unemployment due to
shutting down of the breweries. The
breweries are not going to shut
down There's score of legitimate
products for commercial use that can
be manufactured with brewery equip
ment. Many of the breweries al
ready are changing over. We're not
going to stagger along toward per-
dition under an increased burden of
taxation. The poor devil making
twelve dollars week and paying a
quarter to a half of it over the bar
every week for the stuff that made
Milwaukee Infamous, has always
bourne this Increased burden of
taxation" anyhow. He's been paying
the price for the last fifty years. The
brewers haven't been contributing to
our official revenues out Of funds de-
rived from gold mine in the
ground. And as for the emigrants
pot coming over here because they
Can't buy Periodical Pandemonium
well, if we can't have the class OF