_ CHAPTER XIV. THE LIQUOR QUESTION--SHALL IT BE DRY OR EXTRA DRY?
Light wines don't harm an awful lot of people, for the same reason that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using finger-bowls.
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the day after the prohibition amendment was adopted by the House of Representatives, "there's a lot of people going around taking credit for this here prohibition which in reality is living examples of the terrible effects not drinking schnapps has on the human race--suppose any one wanted to argue that way--whereas if you was to put the people wise which is actually responsible for the country going dry, y'understand, they would be too indignant to call you a liar before they could hit you with anything that lay most handy behind the bar from an ice-pick to an empty bottle, understand me."
"I always had an idea myself that what was responsible for prohibition, Abe, was that the people is sore at booze," Morris Perlmutter retorted.
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the people would be just so sore at candy if the fellers which runs candy-stores acted the way saloon-keepers does, which you take a feller like this here Huyler, or one of the Smiths in the cough-drop business, and we would say his name is Harris Fine, y'understand, and instead of attending to the store and poisining people mit candy, he goes to work to get up the Harris Fine Association and gives all the eighteen-dollar-a-week policemen in the neighborhood to understand that it's equivalent to ten dollars in their pockets if they wouldn't take it so particular when members of the Harris Fine Association commits a little thing like murder or something,
verstehst du mich, why the people in the same block which wasn't members of the Harris Fine Association would begin to think that candy was getting to have a bad influence on the neighborhood, y'understand. Then if Harris Fine was to run for alderman and all the loafers of the eighth ward or whatever ward he was alderman of was to meet in the back room of his candy-store, Mawruss, the respectable
Leute which couldn't go past Harris Fine's candy-store without hearing somebody talking rotten language would go home and say that it was a shame and a disgrace that the eighth ward should got to have candy-stores in it. Afterward when he has been an alderman for some time, Mawruss, and Harris Fine begins to make a fortune out of the garbage-removal contracts by not removing garbage, y'understand, and also as a side line to candy and ice-cream soda, does an elegant business in asphalt-paving which contains one-tenth of one per cent. asphalt, y'understand, the bad reputation which candy has got it in the eighth ward is going to spread throughout the city, Mawruss, and finally, when the candy feller starts in to make contracts for state roads, candy gets a black eye in the state also, and it's only a question of time before the candy-dealer would go to Washington and put over a rotten deal on the national government, understand me, and then people like you and me which never touches so much as a little piece of peanut-brittle, Mawruss, starts right in and hollers for the national prohibition of all kinds of candy from gum-drops to mixed chocolates and bum-bums at a dollar and a half a pound."
"You may be right, Abe," Morris said, "but when it comes right down to Bright's disease and charoses of the liver, y'understand, politics 'ain't got nothing to do with it, because it doesn't make no difference to whisky whether a feller voted for Wilson
oder Hughes. It would just as lieve ruin the health and prospects of a Republican as a Democrat."
"Whisky might," Abe admitted, "but how about beer and light wines, Mawruss, which you know as well as I do, Mawruss, a loafer must got to drink an awful lot of beer before he gets drunk."
"Well, that's what makes the brewery business good, Abe," Morris said.
"But don't you think in a great number of cases, Mawruss, beer is drunk to squench thirst?" Abe asked.
"That's the way it's drunk in a great number of cases--twenty-four bottles to the case," Morris said; "but if the same people was to drink water the way they drink beer, Abe, instead of thirst you would think it was goldfish that troubled them, which I can get as thirsty as the next one, Abe, but I can usually manage to squench it without making an aquarium out of myself exactly."
"
Aber what about light wines?" Abe inquired. "They don't harm an awful lot of people, Mawruss."
"They don't harm an awful lot of people for the same reason that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using finger-bowls, Abe," Morris said, "because so far as I could see the American people feels the same way about light wines as they do about finger-bowls. They could use 'em and they could let 'em alone, and they feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're letting 'em alone than when they're using 'em."
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe said, "I think a great many people which is prejudiced against light wines on account of heartburn is laying it to the wine instead of the seventy-five-cent Italian table-d'hôte dinner which goes with it."
"Yes, and it's just as likely to be the cocktail which went before it as the glass of brandy which came after it, and that's the trouble with beer and light wine, Abe," Morris declared. "They usually ain't the only numbers on the program, and the feller which starts in on beer and light wines, Abe, soon gets such a big repertoire of drinks that he's performing on the bottle day and night, y'understand, which saloon-keepers knows better than anybody else, Abe, because if you would ask a saloon-keeper
oder a bartender to have something, y'understand, it's a hundred-to-one proposition that he takes a cigar and not a glass beer."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But once a bartender draws a glass beer, before he could use it again, he's got to mark off so much for deteriorating that it's practically a total loss, whereas he could always put a cigar back in the case and sell it to somebody else for full price in the usual course of business."
"Well, that's what makes the saloon business a swindle and not a business, Abe," Morris said. "Just imagine, Abe, if you and me, as women's outer-garment manufacturers, was to lay in a line of ready-made men's overcoats in the expectation that after a customer has bought from us a big order he is going to blow me to a forty regular and you to a forty-four stout which we would put right back in stock as soon as his back is turned."
"But even if the liquor business would be a dirty business, Mawruss," Abe said, "you've got to consider that there's a whole lot of people which is making a living out of it, like bartenders and fellers working in distilleries, and if they get thrown out of work, y'understand, their wives and children is going to be just as hungry as if the fellers lost their jobs in a respectable business like pants or plumbers' supplies."
"Say," Morris exclaimed, "if you're going to have sympathy for people which would get thrown out of jobs by prohibition, Abe, don't use it all up on bartenders and fellers working in distilleries, because there's a whole lot of other crooks whose families are going to be short of spending-money when liquor-selling stops. Take them boys which is running poker-rooms, faro-games, and roulette-wheels, and alcohol is just as necessary to their operation as ether is to a stomach specialist's, because the human bank-roll is the same as the human appendix, Abe: the success of removing it entirely depends on the giving of the anesthetic. Then there is the lawyers--criminal, accident, and divorce--and it don't make no difference how their clients fell or what they fell from--positions in banks, moving street-cars, or as nice a little woman as any one could wish for, y'understand--schnapps done it, Abe, and when schnapps goes, Abe, the practice of them lawyers goes with it."
"Well, they still got their diplomas, Mawruss," Abe said. "And even though schnapps is prohibited, Mawruss, there will be enough people left with the real-estate habit to give them shysters a living, anyhow, but you take them fellers which has got millions of dollars invested in machinery for the manufacture of headache medicine, Mawruss, and before they will be able to figure out how they can use their plants for the manufacture of war supplies they're going to be their own best customers, which little did them fellers think when they put on their bottles,
* * * KEEP IN A DRY PLACE WELL CORKED * * *
that people was going to take them so seriously as to put 'em right out of business, y'understand."
"But there's also a large number of people which is going to lose their jobs on account of this here prohibition, Abe, and if they get the sympathy of these American sitsons which is laying awake nights worrying about how the Czar is getting along, Abe, it would be big already. I am talking about the temperance lecturers," Morris declared, "which if it wouldn't be for them fellers pretty near convincing everybody that no one could be happy and sober at the same time, Abe, it's my idee that we would of had this here prohibition
sohon long since ago already, because those temperance lecturers got their arguments against drinking schnapps so mixed up with Sunday baseball, playing billiards, and going to theayters, picture-galleries, and libraries on Sunday, Abe, that some people which visits New York from small towns in the Middle West still hesitates about going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for fear of getting a hobnailed liver or something."
"At that, Mawruss, this here prohibition is going to hurt some businesses like the jewelry business," Abe said, "which not counting the millions of carats that fellers has bought to square themselves for coming home at all hours of the night, y'understand, there's many a bar pin which would still be in stock if the customer hadn't nerved himself to buying it with a couple of cocktails, understand me. Automobiles is the same way, Mawruss, and if the engineering department of the big automobile concerns is now busy on the problem of making alcohol a substitute for gasolene, Mawruss, you can bet your life that the sales department is just as busy trying to find out something which will be a substitute for alcohol, because when a feller has made up his mind to buy a five-passenger touring-car, Mawruss, there ain't many automobile salesmen which could wish a seven-passenger limousine on him by working him with a couple of cups coffee, y'understand."
"Then there is the show business," Morris observed, "and while I don't mean to say that this here prohibition is going to have any effect on them miserable plays where the girl saves the family at eight-forty-five by marrying the millionaire and discovers at ten-forty-five that she loves him just as much as if he hadn't any rating, so that the show can get out at eleven-five, y'understand, but when enough states has adopted the prohibition amendment to pull it into effect, Abe, the Midnight Follies as a business proposition will be in a class with bar fixtures and mass-kerseno cherries."
"Well, so far as I'm concerned, any show that starts in at twelve o'clock would always have to get along without
my trade, prohibition or no prohibition," Abe commented, "even though I could enjoy it on nothing stronger than malted milk."
"Which you couldn't," Morris added, "and there's why the Midnight Follies wouldn't last, because not only is this here prohibition going to kill schnapps, Abe, but it is also going to drive off the market for all articles the demand for which contains more than one per cent. alcohol."
"And believe me, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "no decent, respectable man is going to miss such articles, neither." _