FOREWORD

There is a bias in every generation. When the bias is actively operating it is not recognised. It is the unconscious standard of our critical appreciation. The bias of a proceeding period is felt as false or sentimental. From the unthinking standpoint of our living values we see the limitations of past values.

In writing a book about my drink experience, I am aware that young people of mental interests will think that I am a sentimentalist. If I wrote about love--as I did some years ago-- they would feel the same. The viewpoint changes subtly or crudely. What seemed realistic then sounds sentimental now. The book, which was supposed to be rather shocking then, is regarded somewhat as mush by the intellectual young of the immediate present. I am sixty-three years old and therefore fortunately for the possibilities of this little book there are others about my age who feel as I do.

But that is not the main basis of my belief that there is some possible value in the attitudes suggested in these pages. I am intensely interested in the young men and women of this day and spend most of my social time with them. I like to drink and dance with them and their talk is like some kind of strange wine. I

know there is something vital there which I cannot easily state.

But I also feel however that there is a thread going through
the generations which remains always the same. That there is a
basic standard of conduct and norms of beauty and art and litera-
ture and I like to try to relate those varying attitudes to this
relatively constant and permanent set of values.

My Forty-Years of Drink

by

Hutchins Hapgood

I have been drinking with considerable intensity for about forty years. Before that I received my baptism in the gentle art of means of the mild, satisfying German beer, when I was a student of metaphysics at Berlin and Strasbourg. Drinking at that time, however, was a merely pleasant background to my metaphysical and mystical experiences, which have always had, it is true, a physical background.

During my early college experience at Harvard I did not drink at all. The color of thought which meant a constant excitement to me in those days, had no need of bibulous stimulation, nor of a remoter charm--for I was excessively young.

Going back still further into a remoter past, when I was around nine or ten years old, I for the first time tasted the wine, that so much poetry, ancient and modern, heralds. My father had the habit of having a bottle of wine at dinner, after a very hard day's work, and he used to give his children a very small amount of it--not more, I think, than a dozen teaspoonfuls. His theory was that if you were accustomed to having a little wine at home you might not, in later years, when the crowing brass-barred saloon takes possession of the adolescent male, feel the charm of it quite so without measure as you otherwise would.

Whether his theory was correct or not the reader may be better able to judge than I, after he has perused, if he continues to do so, these memories of the determined drinker.

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It is true that I remember several times in my boyhood when after perhaps drinking a little more than my extremely small allowance I burst out into continuous peals of merrry laughter. And I remember one day, some years after--perhaps I was twelve or fourteen--when I was so extremely merry that my older brother accused me of being drunk. My father, when I laughed and wondered why I was dizzy, was horrified. "I would give a hundred dollars" he exclaimed "rather than have this happen!"

I do not think however that it was the wine that made me dizzy--it was the violent laughter. My brother thought that I was drunk; but he was a boy, and no mature person, I am sure, would have thought so.

It is true that my brother continues, even up to this day, to think me unbalanced in one way or another.

Although both my brothers had the same opportunity as I for wine in early childhood, and as I remember they availed themselves of it to the same degree, yet they did not keep it up in after years. One of them indeed is next door to a teetotaller and the other drinks an occasional glass of wine with extreme indifference. This indicates that the prohibitionists can draw no unfavorable moral from the pernicious practice of giving children a little to drink from time to time--at least they can't draw any from my case and that of my brothers. I myself think that my father was probably right, for at least two of his three children have been extreme examples of sobriety.

I am now nearly sixty-three years of age; the doctor says my heart is in excellent condition, that my bloodpressure is as good as that of a man of any age in good condition, and that I am, as far as he could

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tell, a normal healthy man in every way......I did not ask him about my moral character...(I put this in for the sake of the prohibitionists) I do not know whether my mind has deteriorated or not---some say it affects the brain; it undoubtedly affects the kidney and the liver with some people. Most people now agree that it is not bad for the blood pressure and is good for the digestion, taken in quantities which suit the personality. And I do not notice, myself, that my mental processes are less lightening-like than they have been at any time in my life. In fact I believe that my power of concentration is greater now than it was when I was twenty-one and never drank except in the unimportant way described, in my childhood.

I am probably better aware than most people of the unfortunate results of drink. Several of my best friends have drunk themselves to death when still quite young, and as a journalist who liked at one time to frequent the saloons of the Bowery as well as those on Broadway and the Redlight district, I have frequently seen the wrecks of humanity knocked out by drink. That drink has been connected with much of the misery of mankind there can be no doubt. But a question not so easily decided is to what degree destructive drinking is an effect rather than a cause. The state of mind of the majority of respectable people in the United States of America and in England which condemns irrational amusement is certainly one of the main causes of destructive drinking.

But after all I want mainly to stick to my own experience, with occasional excursions into general principals.

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The tolerant German University of those days enabled me to
travel as much as I wanted to, even during the academic periods,
and I wandered around Germany and the Tyrol and France. And I
found whereever I went human beings to whom the gentle beer and
wine gave me an added access, and helped to eliminate the barbar-
ous hatred of the stranger which lurks in all of us. I remember
one day after a walk of about thirty miles through the rich Bur-
gundian country I came to a small town and put up at it's only
hotel for the night. At that time I imagine there were very few
Americans in those parts. I was welcomed by the host and his wife,
who nevertheless looked at me with a considerable amount of suspi-
cion. There were no other guests and the man and I had supper to-
gether while his wife was busily occupied in the kitchen. We drank
quite a bit of the generous Burgundy wine and at every glassful we
became friendlier and friendlier until finally the only difference
between us was that he handled the French language better than I.
Being very tired I went to bed early and slept the sound sleep of
tired youth. I woke up to the feeling which until the last few
years never deserted me--the feeling of the creative possibilities
of the day to come--the unknown adventure--the strange meetings--
the lovely foreign town that was my next objective. I descended
to the diningroom genuinely to enjoy the vile French coffee and
the croissants. While I was drinking coffee I heard my host and
his wife arguing in the kitchen as to the size of my bill. The
woman wanted to charge me four times the ordinary rate. Her ar-
gument was that I was an American travelling on foot with a knap-

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gument was that I was an American travelling on foot with a knap-sack on my back. This, she alleged, nobody but a rich American or a fool would do. She therefore considered it her housewifely duty to take the goods the gods seemed to provide. Her husband didn't want to charge me any more than the regular rate. His argument was that a stranger should be treated as well as a Frenchman, especially a stranger who had conducted himself both peacefully and genially. With the rich Burgundy wine still exerting its influence I felt serenely confident that my good host would carry the day. His wife accused him of being an old fool, and recalled to him the fact that she worked herself to the bone, and that it was most difficult for them to meet their expenses and provide for their old age, and that he evidently did not love her. Even the last argument did not affect his determined virtue, for, hitting the table with his clenched hands, he shouted three times, "I am the master of this house and I will do what I want." Whereupon he emerged into the cafe with virtuous indignation in his eyes, and presented me an extremely small bill. As I departed after having shaken my host genially by the hand his wife appeared with what she intended to be a sweet smile on her face and told me what a great satisfaction she had from entertaining a stranger and she hoped I would come back that way.

Many, many of the times that I have made strangely significant acquaintances with all sexes and ages which would not have been what they were had it not been for the juice of the grape.

The significance, however, was not only to the good. It would be an unbalanced procedure on my part not to describe the unbalance of life very often involved in drink. There are two occasions from

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this period of my life, that I remember, when wine "stole my
brains away." One of them was at the Bal Bullier in Paris. I
met a girl there one night with whom I danced quite gaily for
several hours and drank at the same time a great deal of bad
Champagne. The last thing I remember was that we took a voiture--
there were no taxis in those days--about one or two o'clock in
the morning, and the next thing that I remember was about eighteen
hours later, when I found myself climbing up the stairs of my
hotel. What happened during those eighteen hours I shall never
know, but apparently no harm was done--I was not robbed and evi-
dently, not murdered. I think we probably went around to the
various Monmartre resorts--listened to the French poets singing
their monotonous comments on the character of life and taking an-
other drink. Although I escaped without injury yet the possibil-
ities of the adventure are not altogether pleasant. I have no
doubt that I acted during that period which I have completely for-
gotten as I usually do. I doubt very much if any one had been
present would have noticed anything except that I was gayer and
livelier than usual. I told this story to my oldest daughter one
night when, thirty years later, she and I were dancing at the Bal
Bullier. The story amused her so much that she wrote a detective
story about what might have happened during those eighteen hours.

That I probably conducted myself during that time with my
average degree of intelligence is rendered more probable by an-
other similar experience in which I had a witness. It was in

8

Berlin. My room-mate, also an American, and myself, attended a Thanksgiving dinner at which there were many other Americans. The waiters poured wine into our glasses continually and I at any rate didn't notice how many I drank. Men in certain moods abhor an empty glass as Nature abhors a vacuum. Later, several of us shifted the scene to the Cafe Bauer, where we continued our talk about the true, the beautiful and the good. I remember being at the cafe until dawn. Then I remember nothing until late that afternoon, when my room-mate told me that he had seen nothing strange in my conduct except that I began to talk German more fluently and more correctly than he had ever heard me talk it before. I hope he received some benefit from my exhibition of linguistic accomplishment. But the fact did not give me any consolation when I came to myself in the late afternoon, the victim of indescribably unpleasant sensations. The law of nature involving action and reaction is peculiarly true in the temperamental and psychological realm. Ecstatic heights lead inevitably to abysmal depths, and in the latter state good intentions are extraordinarily numerous until one becomes so familiar with their presence that one cannot even bear to look them in the face.

IO

unsightly that we know about slum life was there.

Everybody knows this, but the other side of the saloon
is not so well known, in spite of Bishop Potter's famous re-
mark that it was "the Poor Man's club". It was a truthful
remark, but not well advertised, nor understood in suffi-
cient detail.

In my day as a reporter in New York, I consider that the
good of the saloon so far exceeded its evil that from a view-
point freed from the illusion of practical success, it was a
social asset. In a highly civilised community it might have
been an evil, but by us it was deeply needed. We can now see
that the attempt to get rid of it has poisoned the community
more profoundly than did its existence.

What was the good of the saloon in those days? It was
the place where the workingman after a hard week in the fac-
tory, could have his glass of beer or his several glasses of
beer, and under the freeing influence of alcoholic glow,
could talk with his fellowmen about his condition, with for
the moment independence of his practical situation. For the
moment he need not worry about his home in the slums, about
his wife, overburdened with work and children, the exigent
landlord and the difficulty of daily bread; for the moment
he was a free human being. He could think impersonally,
and cultural thoughts, in a simple way, had their day with him.
A feeling of solidarity between him and other workers might
begin to take possession of him. Much that was genuinely sound
in the labor movement had, if not its origin in the saloon,
at least an encouraging and nourishing atmosphere there.

The number of workingmen who went down into drunkards'

II

graves, compared with those who did not is as a drop in the
bucket, and for the most part they returned home on Saturday
night with a little less money, but with love in their hearts
for their wives and kind words even for their aunts and mothers-
in-law.

It is true that on Monday morning the workers went to
their work probably with a slight immediate decrease in their
power of performance. That is one reason why the short-sighted
employer wanted prohibition. He did not realise perhaps that
men live not by bread alone--that although Saturday might might
might slow up the men for a few hours on Monday, it increased
their long-range productiveness, because it helped to extend
the background of their consciousness, and make them feel more
like human beings.

A man loses a job in Schenectady, let us say. He arrives
penniless in New York, where he has no friends or acquaintan-
ces. He cannot find a job; he needs food. He could go, of
course, if he wanted to, to the charitable organizations. But
he does not want cold charity. He does not want to feel in-
ferior to the people who are helping him.

He may have the good fortune to drop into the corner sa-
loon, and if he has a nickel in his pocket he can buy a large
glass of beer and enjoy a free lunch. He may enter into con-
versation with the bartender and with the regular habitues of
the place. They find out about his condition and very likely
they treat him to enough drink to cause him to feel entirely
comfortable, and moreover often assist him to a job. If he
happens to be a genial person, with the gift of gab, he may
even be regarded as an asset, and his society may be welcome
without immediate payment.

12

The most extraordinary incident of this kind that I know,
which I mention, not because it is typical, for it is not, but be
cause it illustrates what I have said, is that of a gifted bum
who without a cent, entered a saloon on the corner of Fourth
street and Sixth Avenue, and asked a drink from the bartender.
After he had had four or five drinks money was demanded of him
but when he said he had no money the bartender who was also the
proprietor said genially, "Well, have another." Not only
that, but he maintained the man for several weeks in his sal-
oon, gave him a bed, and all he wanted to eat and drink.
This incident I know to be a fact--that it is exceptional is
certain, but that it happened indicates that there were many
thousands of cases which showed the same attitude of spirit.

The corruption of the saloon was part and parcel of the
corruption of political life. Since the abolition of the sal-
oon, which was by many supposed to be the hotbed of political
corruption, we are no better, in fact I am one of those who
think we are much worse. The social evil of the saloon--and
and by social evil is not meant merely sex evil but general
community corruption, was again merely an expression of our
state of culture: something that might gradually have impro-
ved with our greater ability to live sweetly together.

Several years before the war I was interested as a citizen
and as a journalist in trying to improve the saloon, which
seemed a much sounder thing to do than to try to get rid of it.
Unless the saloon was improved a short-sighted and fanatical
attempt to abolish it was imminent. That was shown by the ex-
ample of several states, by the continuous activity of the Anti-
Saloon League, and the limited life-activity of so much of the

I3

Population.

I had at that time a large acquaintance in New York
among prominent and respectable women, whom for some weeks I
urged
attempted in articles, speeches and private conversation to
go into the saloons--where indeed they were not allowed. Any
real desire on their part would have broken through the conven-
tion. With their families and friends accompanying them, I
thought they might gradually form something like the European
cafe. If they were better than the people who frequented the
saloons, the best way to help their low brothers and sisters
was to associate with them, so that these latter might benefit
from their light and virtue. It was hoped that the respectable
classes would take possession of the saloon, as much as they
were entitled to, and that they might also be helped by con-
tact with the low; that a conception of goodness less snob-
bish and classy might thereby be developed.

Many Americans now know what the European café is--a
place where people of both sexes sit quietly at the tables,
read their newspapers, write their letters, play cards and talk
with their friends, and drink not rapidly but in a quiet mood
unhurried by the bartender or by the nervous desire for com-
petitive treating.

Several years before Prohibition I used to visit McSor-
ley's saloon, Second or Third street, off the Bowery, where
good ale and other well-selected drinks were served. There
were tables where one might quietly sit and drunkenness or
riotous conduct were not allowed. John Sloan was also a fre-
quenter of this place. He illustrated an article I wrote for
Happer's Weekly, on McSorley's, which I had forgotten about

I4

until one day, perhaps twenty years later, long after Prohibition and the war, I happened into the saloon for the first time in all those years, and found it looking just the same, though the ale, I suppose, contained only half of one percent. My article, carefully framed, and John Sloan's picture, were hanging on the wall. I was surprised to see that in the article was predicted the coming of Prohibition, unless there were more saloons like McSorley's. It is certainly true that evil in one direction produces evil in the opposite. A sound moral and social advance is set back by extreme measures, The late nineties were especially wet, but for the few years preceding Prohibition New York was much more temperate. That was due to the gradual understanding which normally takes place in a community of what are the necessary habits of living. Competition too, always keener, made it necessary to be more temperate in order to survive.

So we were beginning to build a wiser society, when the intemperate Prohibition Act was, for a number of causes thrust upon us, setting true temperance back by at least three generations.

We have at the present time a society where respect for law is lower than it was in the wet nineties. Young boys and girls drink for the first time in the history of the country. "The racket" and the gangster are a greater menace than anything known in this country before our time. Not all of this, but a large part, is due to Prohibition.

The causes which brought about Prohibition were very complex. Not only the obvious evils of the saloon, foremost among which was the persistent violation or evasion of restrictive laws some of which were good:

15

the political ability of the Anti-Saloon League, the unthinking dry one-sided morality of half-educated people, the desire of many employers to get another bit of work out of their workmen, the absence in France of two million young Americans, the great majority of whom would have voted wet--these are some of the causes. E

Even this unprecedented combination would not have been enough to initiate Prohibition, had it not been for the misconception of the nature of democracy, underlying this political act. Democracy began in the world as an attempt to free the many from the oppression of the few, whether king or aristocracy, but a majority can certainly be as oppressive as a minority. Understanding democracy, we would not attempt even if we had a majority to force a law upon a large and decent minority. Such a law not only cannot be enforced, as is now plainly evident in case of the Prohibition law, but it ought not to be enforced. It tends to make us feel that law in its nature is oppressive, and not an instrument of liberation, and we justly dislike oppression whether it is sanctioned by law or not. A bad law should be opposed by every rightminded citizen, and there are no laws which are good, appertaining to the moral and social conduct of the community, which do not codify the conscience of all sane and respectable citizens.

16

III.

The early days on the Commercial Advertiser were full of joy. There were many colorful elements in the complex city life. In and out was the thread of drink--it was perhaps a s slight thread but it touched the whole. I appreciated to the full the values of the old saloon and the characters found there. Chuck Connors, who most of the day and night inhabited Barney Flynn's saloon on the corner of Pell street and the Bowery, was known throughout the United States--a letter addressed merely Chuck Connors, America, would reach him. People went from far-distant places to listen to his wit and wisdom, to hear his co nstant flow of Irish fancy. He never stopped drinking until he died and was never very drunk. It is not desirable that everybody be a bum, but there are a few bums, among whom was Chuck, who have contributed more to the qualities of life than most good citizens. The mention of Chuck Connors will cause a thrill in many an old newspaper man. Then there was good old Luke O'Connor, proprietor and bartender of the Working-Girls' Home, on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth street. Luke never got drunk, and prided himself on the excellence of his clientele. One of his most distinguished friends was John Masefield, who helped Luke as bartender, for some time, and occupied a room above the saloon. Luke was a poet in action, he did not believe in diluted whiskey nor in riotous conduct nor in unrestrained language.

A more gentlemanly man there was not. Even when with the lig
of battle
light in his Irish eyes shining with intention to expel a X
loud drunk by squirting the contents of a siphon of seltzer
into the bloated face, resulting in the drunk falling back-

17

wards into the street: even then Luke did it with perfect grace, his movement was that of a panther, quiet and quick, and he said not a word. He did not even breathe more quickly but returned behind the bar with dignity and served drinks as if nothing had happened. When Prohibition came Luke felt that something wrong had happened in the universe. He knew that many good men and true had been entertained by him. In these sad circumstances he did all he could; he saved from the wreck many cases of good old whiskey, and hired a little room over a grocery-shop in an inconspicuous part of New York, and quietly passed the word among his old friends that he would be glad to see them there. For several years a few of us would talk with him there sentiment ally about the old days. Into the dignity of his aspect there had grown a subtle melancholy--probably of idealistic disappointment at a harsh world which could so have misinterpreted the meaning of life.

Called upon to fill the newspaper with "specials" of all kinds, I wandered through the town with not too much industrication from my boss, and gathered up many picturesque characters and incidents, which almost always involved a drink or two, and these helped to release their tongues and my pen. Many a time after the days work was done and I, at that time a bachelor, with no obligation to be in any definite place, would continue my day's work on the newspaper by increasing my knowledge of the town and its characters. Often I dined alone at a place like the Cafe Boulevard on Second Avenue or the Huxley Hotel & Griffou on Ninth street or Maria's on Twelfth street, or the old Brevoort. In those days red wine was to be had, good white wine, and the pre-prandial Martini or Manhattan. The

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slight exhileration thereby induced enhanced the meaning of the
men and women and situations I found myself with. The slightest
of them therefore became fullof meaning and charm. The light on
the glasses, the wetness of the streets, the feeling of the city
night, were subtly fused into the articles of the next day. At
that time the conception of the news was not so strict as it is
now. Lincoln Steffens, city editor of the paper, asked me once
to write a news story about the difference between Seventh Avenue
and Eighth Avenue which was published on the first page. I would
never have seen the difference between these two streets vividly
enough to write an article had I not my faculties been stirred by
a drink or two. On another occasion my story about the big modern
picture show at the Armory putxik on the first page was treated not
as art news but as a dramatic event. Although this story was pub-
lished the next day it was composed the previous night in a saloon.

I can hardly see my working life during those journalistic years
otherwise than as a long series of meetings with human beings held
together in a large part by talk-enhancing drink. Very likely
my work did not justify my life, but such as it was it was closely
connected with the flowing bowl. "The Autobiography of a Thief" was
part and parcel of my life in the saloons. Josiah Flynt, at one
time a well-known writer on tramps and other low-life personages,
was a member of our Griffou Push, meeting at the Hotel Griffou in
Ninth Street. Flynt, Alfred Hodder, and Arthur Bartlett Maurice,
editor of the Bookman, were the inner members of a group of eight
or nine young men, enthusiastic about night life and all elements
of the

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of the great city. These two men, Hodder and Flynt, died at the
age of forty. They were both gifted. Professor Royce of Harvard
was of the opinion that Hodder was the most brilliant student of
philosophy he had ever known, but that he would be lost to philo-
sophy on account of his romantic nature. Those words proved to be
prophetic, for Hodder got mixed up inextricably with wives and
whiskey. He wrote the "Adversaries of the Sceptic", and "The Fight
for the City" during the time that he was private secretary to
William Travers Jerome, who was making his spectacular and interest-
ing experiment of the reforming District Attorney. Hodder, Flynt
and I roomed together for a time, and for a much longer time we were
pals who could not see life fully without acknowledging by our actions
the importance of the saloon. Flynt and I investigated Philadelphia
to write a report for the Committee of Fourteen. This involved
spending our nights and days with the "guns"--as they were then called
They were the pickpockets and Burglars, confidence-men and low
politicians of the city. If we had not drunk their "rot-gut" along
with them we would never have been able to open their mouths. The
result of this little expedition was that I had the most serious
and long continued attack of indigestion that I have ever known.
The death of Flynt and Hodder, so young, was directly due to drink.
A few years before that I had married and saw much less of my com-
panions and when with them went home comparatively early. If I had
not married at that time I might have gone the same way, but as it
was I continued in the old way to a degree sufficient to pick up most
of my working material thereby for years afterwards.

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One day I met Flynt at the Griffou. He was about to go to Chicago, and introduced me to a pickpocket who had just been released from Sing-Sing prison and had called on him the night before. He asked me to lend a helping hand to this individual. Although I was not particularly keen about the job I yet took it over, and soon got interested in Jim. He lived with his mother in a relatively poor place near the lower Bowery. There, but more often in some saloon we met. In the back room of the saloon he felt at home. There I met his pals, pickpockets and burglars, learned enough of their dialects not to be conspicuous, especially as I cultivated silence as much as possible. I was looked up to as a confidence-man from Chicago and nobody but Jim suspected me to be a journalist. In our long association together, sitting in the back room, I would take notes, ask him many questions about his life in prison and out, about his early youth, and attempt to ascertain his values. Generally it was hard work to bring out from him the desired material. That is, it was hard work to do so when he was sober. It was necessary to give him a few drinks to get him to be expressive. One day was a striking exception. He was at that time addicted to dope, his favorite form being cocaine. It is noticeable, by the way, that nearly all pickpockets tend to become addicts to this drug. This is not the case with burglars, bank-robbers and others in the criminal professions. During Jim's association with me, he did not take any dope except on this one occasion. I knew when we began our work that night that he was different for I did not need to question him at all. He told me a per-

2I.

fectly coherent story which, unedited, may be found in the chapter of the book called "Mamie and her Bonds", in the "Autobiography of a Thief".

Jim was of course a complete wreck. How could it have been otherwise? But if people had been what one cannot reasonably expect them to be, genuinely interested in the lives of others, and had time and opportunity to show their interest, Jim even then, after four terms in State Prisons and previous terms in juvenile criminal institutions and jails, might have contributed a good deal to society. Through association with me, he spent some time in a trade school, with the assistance of Dr. Helix Adler, and afterward he secured several jobs, but could not hold them because of his irregularity. On my return from a long stay in Europesome years afterward, I saw in the New York Sun an interview that Jim had given to the reporters the day after his release from another term in Sing Sing. The burden of his story was that I was responsible for all his troubles--typical instance of psychological habit connecting everything unfortunate in one's life with the person nearest one. However he got another job in Detroit, but I received a letter some months afterwards from the head of a charitable organization, there, saying that he had been found dead in the street, struck by a motor-car.

I suppose that I have paid heavily for my interests. The time and energy I put into those associations is probably out of proportion to whatever good results may be conceded by tolerant friends. But this book started me on a line of investigation which continued my life in the saloon for a number of years. I saw that criminals, like pickpockets, burglars and so forth, were of no importance socially. They are not