Montana labor news., 1932-05-12
TIMELY and UNT|mElY OBSERVATIONS
(By ADAM CoALDIGGER)
ON SOBER SECOND THOUGHT
(By ADAM ~COALDIGGER.)

going to give them a chance to buy drinks.
Oh we'll, that's your clown of creation. Just when you think you've
got him normally crazy, he goesa and has a relapse.
All the AMI I'm right glad that beer and wine is coming back. There
is nothing like a foaming scoop of old lager to take depression out of the
system. And if there We as anything good that didn't look, feel or
taste better after a bottle of wine, it escaped MY attention
The trouble with the American people is that they never learned to
drink. Drinking is a fine art that can only be acquired by diigent practice.
Now from tn very beginning TINS country was Always dy IN spos or G
spells. A fellow lived in a wet community, and as long as he stayed there
all went well because he never missed a lesson. But bye and bye, his
business carried him into a town, county, or state where strong drinks were
taboo. So he got vi of practice and the first time he met up with a
drink again, he tried to take all the lessons he had missed in sitting.
Then there was the taboo on Sunday drinking. Now there is n better
day for drinking than Sunday, as is proved by the fact that all the civilized
people do most of their drinking oil that day. But somehow, American
parsons got it in their heads that money diverted to spiritual exhlaraion
vas lost to the kGngel beuel which is French for collection plate. If they
had known their business, they would have realized that a MAJ in the cup
pas free with his kopeks. However, they started the holy crusade in be-
half of Sunday closing, with the result that bye and bye, only hghwads
attended church, and what that did to the solvency of salvation as a.
plenty.
ANYHOW, most of the preachers aw in countries where people drink
nor o Sunday than usual looked fit and fat while most of their brethren
wei here look like Portrait No. of the wenknown series, Before and
After Taking"
But please don't get it in your head that I'm an old soak. l know when
l got enough and SC does everybody who finds me in that twilight zone
However, hard drinking was never in my line. Even in the old days in
Texas when the standing of a gentleman was largely measured by the load
he could stand up under, I nev a considered a perfect gentleman
Leastways escaped being fined twice in one week for the same jag and
then beat the ease on appeal with the plea that a mans liberty ear not be
jeopardized twice for the sam offense, as happened with my old friend
Colonel Taylor of Taylor Texas.
Alas, he died last year at the tender age of 81, proving again the old
adage that the good die young. Oh WE'LL always told him that green
stuff he put in his mint julep would kill him some day.
But here 1 am meandering again when what I was trying to say is tina.
while always advocated voluntary abstinence for people who lacked the
talent or perseverance to master the fine art of drinking, l never believed
in compulsory selfrestraint. Telling people lot to do a certain thing is one
of the surest ways to make .em do it, as is proven in the case of Adam
and Eve, for if the Good Lord hadn't prohibited the poor couple from eat
ing the fruit of a certain tree, they'd be in Paradise yet.
Voluntary abstinence had made great strides until the noble experiment
anne along and knocked it cock-eyed lntoxicants had become SO cheap
that most everybody could afford them. Now what everybody can afford is
nrecisely that which the better classes look down u. And so it happened
that the middle classes began to scon the vile stuff in which their il.
fenors sought escape from their inferioity completes. Drinking had prac-
tcany ceased among the males of the upper and uppish strata Among
their women folks, at simply wasn't done" and there never vas a more
potent law o n the statute books than the that reads, at simply isn't
DONE
However, when prohibition along and raised the price of raw red
eye to that of imported champagne, a mansized jag was presently looked
upon as incontestable evidence Of its bearers financial soNency and social
standing. Wel-todo mel drank to show that they could afford it. Their
wives drank and got drunk to prove their sagacity in the matter of hooking
and holding the right sort of bubbles, while their high school son and
daughters got drunk to demonstrate their precociy in the matter of select
ing parents.
of Conspicuous Waste, the lower classes adopted IN the Darwinian law laid
down in his descent of Man."
So before long, working class mothers, who in the sweet innocence of
their maidenhood had earned pewter medals for recitng "Where Is My
at home. God-fearng farmers raised rye by the gallons and corn by the
barrels, while class-conscious proletarians got picked IN ~nigger gin" to
show they were as good as their Anglo-saxon bosses.
The only people who actually benefited by prohibition were the enforce
ment personnel who didn't enforce it, and the booze-runners who had
something left after paying for not getting caught. Like all superficial
reforms, it failed to deliver the good things it promised.
Pm not me of those who blame all the ills of the age On the dry breth-
rem. The population of u jas, bughouses and orphan asylums would
have increased without prohibition. The complexities, msecurites and ner-
u tension of the age have simply become too much for critters that left
their native treetops only a few thousand years ago. What the world
needs therefore is n o SO much abstinence from the cup that cheers, but
more love, laughter and loafng. And if in the pursuit of these ideals
some of US go to the devil, then pray let is depart in peace, for there
is enough hell OF earth without forcing the devil to join the bread-lne up
here.
But maybe l had better not ROY too soon over the anticipated repeal
Of prohibition. If another good val should come along, as is quite likely
the nations of Chrishndom will require all their intellectual moral and
physical resources to kill each other and that naturally predudes the use
of alcohol, which as everybody knows, is 10 detrimental to the free play
of these noble attributes. l thank you.
P. S-Speaking of va and sobriety, another great thought just hit me-
which is too good to let slip by, even if it doesn't dOvehl in what I've said
above. Now brace yourself, here it ZONES
If war can't be abolished as all great minds claim, and consequently we
must have standing armies, why not arm and drill the unemployed. There
are some twenty million cf them in the civilized world now. Then if war
should come and they kill each other, that1l do away with unemployment,
and If war don't come, they all are armed, and if that don't cure employ
ment, then nothing will
CLEVELAND-(FP)-Thre Cleveland mn who stole food and coal in
order to take care of their families were freed by Municipal Judge Alfred
L. Steuer. All Of them had been out of work a long time and had been
receiving meager relief from the welfare organizations.