The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-07-06

! sailors sleeves on bartenderS' jackets. Everybody in the Great Tight Way 1 observed Daisy Day--the protest against wartime prohibition arranged tby the association opposed to national prohibitions. Flower girls. cigarette l girls, hat check boys and other bandits usually set down in the pest list, were accepted as brothers and sisters last night merely because they wore daisies showing tf.y were not prohibitionests.
 DRUNkS WORN ON THE ARMS ] The trunks were worn on the arms O. their friends. It usually took two friends to support one drunk, and in most cases the friends were almost as drunk as the man in the middle. Crowds 1 jammed the bars of all the Broadway hotels all afternoon and evening. The ] bar flies were SO numerous at the Hotel l Knickerbocker that the regular system l of paying your check at the cashiers desk
 was discontinued. You paid for your whisky over the bar, and you paid be- fore you drank The daisy wearing gen tleman behind the bar were taking no chances on their customers beating 1t without paying for the check.
 At the hotel bars, incidentally, prac- tically everybody drank straight whisky, 1 highballs, sloe gin rickeys gin flzzes, cocktails, brandy, creme de menthe, ben edictine and other hard stuff. Molly coddle drinks like beer and light wines were snered at Champagne was left to the cabarets, restaurants and hotels.
 The jam in the Hotel Astor bar was l so dense that a reporter for the World had to take his place in the fifth row removed from the rail and wait l5 min utes before the line reached the man in 1.-the white coat. Then he had to fight his way out. It was as crowded and tipsy as the bar at the Hotel Taft after a Yale Harvard football game.
 | One OartV GTa ope0 itself reluctantly away from the Astor. explaining-need- l llessly-that it has got itself thoroughly l stewed during the afternoon, was now | going to Turkish bath to get steamed out and then was going to get soused | again at midnight. A good many per sens who heard the plan thought it was a good idea, and the Turkish baths were crowded during the early and middle l parts of the evening.
 There were some boasts of getting Ipickled several times during the day. Tone man stood up in the Clardge bar and declared he had been drunk six times since Saturday night and was then rapidly approaching his seventh inning.
 MANY WOMEN AT TABLES l The oldest inhabitants of Broadway agreed they never saw anything like the ! drinking that took place. Even the bartenders and the walters in the high class rum joints were tipsy A man and woman went to a popular roof garden | atop a big hotel and ordered Scotch high balls.
 Here's you rye" said the waiter when he came back with the order and placed two gin rickeys on the table.
 The prevalence of heavy drinking among women at the high-class places | was generally commented upon. Accord l ing to the managers of these places, many oi their regular patrons-women and men | kcf bn touched thing to drink-were indulging immoder- ately last night merely because it was the last chance for some time to come to get any real booze to drink and because 1 they wanted to show their opinion of the prohibitionists who fastened their own | ideas of conduct upon the public under the guise of wartime legislation.
 I It was pointed out that in all the long l and colorful history of drinking in New I York no such scenes had ever happened l as the doings of last night, which came | about because the prohibitionsts had made it the last chance to get drink of booze legally at a public place. lt may not be the last chance, in view of the wet period between the end of demob- ilization and the constitutional amend ment, but there was feeling last nlght that it might be the last chance, and no risks were run of being cheated of the final fling.
 | Iv had no difficulty in getting anything they wanted to drink. Men in and out of uniform who evidently had not seen enough fighting in, France got enough rum under their belts early in the even- ing to feel aggressive, and fist fights were reported all over the city.
 l There was so much excitement at the Hotel Biltmore that the management closed the bar at 9 o'clock. The bar had been crowded with a wild, drinking, fehting crowd since mid-afternoon. Just before a group of rich young men who 1 had been drinking highballs for hours got into an argument about the war. Somebody praised Germany and knocKeo France One word led to another, and that led to a blow. There was a general fight before the management succeeded in clearing the bar and locking the doors.
 Other fights took place in the lobby and on the sidewalk just outside the Bi1tmore. A group of men were dis cussing Belgium Along came stranger and said Belgium could go to blazes, or
 something to that effect. One of the
 group, who had been in the diplomatic
 service, went up to the stranger ana trleo
 a little whisky diplomacy, consisting oi an invitation to walk into the street and fight another battle over Belgium Ine
 stranger accepted ana potn staseeleu
 
 They made a few passes at each other but both were weighted down so heav-
 ily by the cargo of alcohol they were carving that it was more like Weper
 and Fields comedy scene than night
 Friends intervened at last and dragged the men apart. Afterward each man
 apologized, saying he did not reaiize the
 other was drunk One of the lighters said he had lost a 5000 cane To be
 worth that amount the cane must nave been filed with gold-or Scotch whisky
 OUT LIKE A SHRAPNEL SHELL
 Right after the foregoing incident oc-
 cured an object was hurled violently ont of the front entrance of the B1ltmore
 Termination proved that it was man
 well soaked in alcohol Some friends
 anurared and tumbled him into taxi leah Inside the hotel an Irish house de-
 tective went about his work with a
 pleased smile and explained that It was
 unhealthy to say an Irishman was>yelio" laround his neighborhood
 Across the street from the Belmont Il
 was said the rush of business between l3 and o'clock yesterday afternoon had
 been unprecedented. It consisted chlefiy of suburbantes, who stopped Tn TOT ,l,ei. last cocktails and drank so many tna' they must have been able to eat the 'aoie lwhen they sat down to dinner
 | In the bar at the Hotel Commodore the lmost conspicuous object, after the throns of bar supporters, was small Wnlte
 caslSet in the center of the room. Ihe
 body in the casket was a quart bottle o'
 Commodore rye lying at full length 1T