The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-11-15
IN RETROSPECT

DROBABLY the most far-reaching lesson
l. which may be drawn from the experiences
of the last fourteen years is that prohibition ex-
posed, in shocking fashion, the fallacy of the
old dogma that the populace at large is very
peculiarly qualified to launch and press to
successful conclusion great moral crusade
Prohibition represented the third great
American experiment with popular crusading
for supposedly high moral ends. The results
were as Illuminating and as disastrous as in
the two earlier cases.
The first example of popular uprising for
fright" was the abolitionist movement. It's
supporters were brave and honest men who
hated a great injustice-human slavery. They
sought to hasten its end by drastic legislation.
They were not willing to wait until economic
and cultural conditions should put a natural
end to the anachronism-as they were bound
to do in few decades.
The outcome was sectional bitterness and
friction, civil war, chaos in the south, and a
poStponement of the ultimate settlement of the
Negro question
Next came the crusade against gambling
race track and other venerable and relatively
harmless games of chance of all sorts were
outlawed ruthlessly. So far did this go that
four Chinese were arrested and thrown into
Jail in one of the largest New England cities
for playing dominoes for stakes.
1t was not long before our legally suppressed
gambling proclivities found new expression in
another and much more dangerous field-tak-
ing fliers on the stock exchange The barber
and the stenographer rubbed elbows with the
professional broker and the millionaire in
dabbling with margins and selling short. The
results were disastrous not only to personal
savings but also to the very economy of the
nation.
We entered upon the E'noble experiment" in
1919. Billy Sunday confidently asserted that:
''The reign of tears is over The slums soon will
be only memory. We will turn our prisons
into factories and our jails into storehouses
and corn cribs. Men will walk upright now,
women will smile and the children will laugh.
He'll will be forever to rent"
1t hardly will be necessary to remind us
that prohibition actually brought an orgy of
irresponsible alcoholic indulgence, especially
among the young of the land, such as our
country had never known. For the first time.
intoxication became socially respectable. We
had to build more spacious prisons and jails
and the Slurns remained to disgrace us. The
task of creating an era of civilized drinking
will be much more difficult in 1884 than it
would have been in 1919.
The chief lesson which we can draw from
these tragic experiences with popular crusading
for moral causes is that morality is highly
difficult and complicated problem which must
be left to science to determine. Even our
biological, psychological, sociological and medi-
cal experts, in collaboration, may go slightly
aStray in such matters
Now that the vets have come into their
own, let them demonstrate themselves more
astute than the drys If they are WISE they
will recognize that civilized drinking is the
only procedure that decent men will long SUD-
port Folly on the part of the vets only will
give the drys new lease of life and apparent
vindcation.