The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1929-09-01
Try to Make Their Readers Believe
Almost Everybody Drinks
Beverage Liquor
A CASE IN POINT
One Southern Editor was Forced
by Visitor to See the Error of
His Publication and Printed
the Facts

Your daily newspaper In almost every
issue has an account of one or more rob-
berries, but this does not mean that every
body in your community is a robber, or
a thief, and the editor would Indignantly
deny the assertion that the neighborhood
is filled with thieves and robbers, but it
is likely he claims that everybody is in
dulging in the illicit liquor business, and
argues that prohibition is failure, and
that the dry law is generally disregarded.
He becomes violent and virulent wet
propaganda.
On the wet and dry question there are
1nconSpicious multitudeS of lawabiding
citizens who neither buy nor sell liquor.
They do not touch the stuff. 1t is not
even minute part of their lives. They
are abstainers. Liquor in any form is
nothing to them. They give it no thought.
The great majority of their friends are
like themselves.
PERCENTAGE IS SMALL
Those who sell and buy liquor consti-
tute small percentage of the population
of community just as criminals of all
classes form but small part-an in
finistesimal percentage of the general
population. But the wet newspapers and
that almost everybody drinks more or
less, and there are those who believe and
want to believe all they read and hear.
They believe what is told them even
though their better judgment tells them
that it is not So
The Christian Advocate, of New York,
reports an interesting illustration of the
fact that the actual situation in regard to
prohibition sentiment is either not un-
derstood or disregarded in many news
paper offices. We quote from the Advo-
cate:
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE
A good example of the failure of
newspaper to understand and repre-
sent the mind of its constituency is
afforded by recent incident. Mr..
Harvey E. Simmons a Well-knoWn
Methodist layman of Brooklyn, who
was for tWenty-one years General
Secretary of the Y. M. G. A. of that
borough was in Savannah, Ga, last
spring, and became Disguised with the
attitude of the leading dailes toward
the Eighteenth Amendment. He
called the editor of the Morning Ne,Us
and urged him to give more space to
law observance instead of playing up
attractions of the law. The editor
expressed the belief so prevalent in
wet circles, that everybody breaks the
law. He told Mr.. Simmons that if he
would canvass the persons living on a
certain city square and found that
twenty per cent or more had not
taken a single drink within year,
that would be news which he would
publish. Mr.. Simmons thereupon
made canvass of every house. and of
every person, including servants, in
each house, and was able to report to
the editor that only one per cent were
breaking the law. Some, who had
served alcoholic beverages before the
Volstead Act was passed, declared
that they did so no longer. On May
4, the Morning NeaUs gave full pub
licity to the facts which astonished
the editor.
ANOTHER INSTANCE
Upton Sinclair, the well-known writer,
expresses his regret to Paris newspaper
that the editor seems to have been misled
by erroneous reports as to the operation
of prohibition in America. MIR. Sinclair
quotes the remark by the chief of police
Of the city of Denver, which sums up the
situation perfectly. The chief said: THE
stuff comes In now in Ford automobiles