At Last! Substitute for Booze Is Found

1920

Good Music Takes Place of Whisky, Says Pianist.

It's here! That long sought substitute for John Barleycorn has been found — and just in the nick of time. Hereafter, when the gentleman with the lustrous nose gets that longing that used to lead to the family entrance, all he'll have to do is to start the phonograph.

For music not only soothes the savage beast, but takes the place of fine whisky, declares Moses Bogulawski, the great Russian pianist in Chicago. He urges it as the social and industrial fire extinguisher of the future.

"The economic cancer with which the world is confronted now can be easily treated with music as the healing spirit," he declares. "The laboring classes have lost their curse — liquor — but good music can take its place. Beautiful tunes will put in harmony the world chaos and will soon become more popular with the laboring man than liquor was in days of yore. Good music should thus be compulsory in our homes and schools."

Professor Bogulawski also stated that social and moral conditions could be improved by the greater diffusion of a good quality of music.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 7.

Wood Alcohol First Blinds, Then Causes Victim's Death

1920

Authorities Alarmed by Increased Use

More than 150 persons are dead and scores are dangerously ill as a result of drinking poison booze in various parts of the United States. Wood and denatured alcohol, homemade stuff with "a kick in it," hair tonic, perfume and various other concoctions, drunk to alleviate the thirst that will not down, are blamed. In all parts of the country steps are being taken to put down the traffic in these death-dealing drinks and to warn the public against indulging in them. Dozens of arrests in big cities have revealed plans to ship the poison booze to small towns and villages, the men back of these plans being willing to risk killing fellow-men in order to reap a few dollars.

Investigation by the Federal authorities at Washington has revealed that existing laws are powerless to stop the sale of wood alcohol to those who may want it. Congress, when it meets next Monday, will be asked to rush new legislation that will put such restrictions upon the sale of denatured spirits that the death list which is becoming of such big proportions will not be increased by leaps and bounds.

Warning by Employers

Large employers of labor have been asked to warn all their men of the danger incurred in drinking stuff with "a kick in it." Most of the deaths and cases of total blindness resulting from drinking wood alcohol have been among the laboring classes, the people who were unable to put by a large reserve of booze when the country went dry last July.

Symptoms of poisoning by wood alcohol are vertigo, nausea, vomiting, headache, dilated pupils, delirium and unconsciousness, rapidly followed by death unless a physician is called immediately. If recovery takes place there is serious danger of blindness. Blindness has followed the taking of so little as five teaspoonfuls of wood alcohol and less than half a pint may cause death. There is no antidote to counteract the effect of this poison booze. Once absorbed into the system, there is nothing that can be done.

Started With Christmas Jags

The ravages of wood alcohol made their appearance the day after Christmas in towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where thirty-six persons died as a result of drinking booze that had been distributed from New York. At the town of Chicopee, Mass., eighteen persons, including one woman, died. Discovery then was made that great quantities of the booze had been shipped throughout the New England States for the Christmas trade. The shipments were traced to New York, where several persons are under arrest.

Federal agents arrested five men who are believed the heads of the gang which flooded five eastern States. The headquarters of this gang was in New York. A wine and liquor dealer, a druggist and an undertaker are among the prisoners. A saloonkeeper and his bartender also were arrested. Charges of murder in the first degree will be placed against the last two as a result of the deaths of four men from wood alcohol, the victims all being roomers over the saloon. Thirty-five persons have died from wood alcohol in New York since Nov. 1.

Twenty-seven deaths in Chicago are attributed to the same cause. One Christmas party resulted in three deaths, those of two women and one man. The man, a former saloonkeeper. was stricken while at the bier of his wife, who had died after being stricken with blindness.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 1.

Bound and Robbed, Now Thought Insane

Kansas, 1911

Chester King, the young man was bound and robbed over in Graham county two weeks ago, has been placed in the county jail at Hill City charged with insanity. It is said he tried to purchase a gun with which he intended to hunt up the two strangers who tied and robbed him the week before.

This is the young man found tied in his own buggy at about one o'clock on the night of January 6th, near a country store known as Corrickville in Sheridan county. The fright and the cold which was intense that night was a terrible strain on the young man and his present condition may be the result of the awful experience.

He is seventeen years old and is the twin brother of Charlie King who was adjudged insane about two months ago for acting queerly on the streets of Hill City.


Got The Limit

Tuesday morning there were three cases before Police Judge Howell. One for selling intoxicating liquor and the other two were for vagrancy.

Oliver Penny was the guilty person in the case of selling "booze" and plead guilty to the charge. He was arrested Tuesday night for selling the "dope" to the soldiers that were going through here, by Marshall Davis and put in the lockup over night. He was fined $100 and thirty days in the county jail, where he was taken Wednesday.

The best thing that can be done with these unlawful people is to give them the limit every time they violate the law.

—Ellis Review-Headlight, Ellis, Kansas.

If They Prohibit Booze in Movies, No More Drunken Bullies to Fight

1919

WILL THE DRY WAVE AFFECT THE MOVIES

Here's Henry Lehrman's Humorous Account of Substituting Tea for Booze

The recent intimation that the depiction of intoxicating liquors and their effect on the consumers thereof will in future be taboo in motion pictures has brought consternation to the hearts of producers, who have already begun to wonder what will happen when the reels are really removed from the films. Henry Lehrman, the noted comedy producer, having duly sworn, deposes and says:

If wet goods must disappear from film comedy, bald-headed theatre patrons may find comfort in the fact that dry goods are following in the same pathway.

Many a film actor will sprain his ankle within the next few months, when he strides up to a coffee counter and reaches for the rail.

It is a sad thing to realize that the kick in comedies must now be registered entirely with the feet.

Picture the hero, disappointed in love, rushing off to a tea room and making a beast of himself on Lipton's Best.

How can he save the heroine from the drunken bully, if there are no drunken bullies?

We will now be confronted with the spectacle of the weak but willing hero going west to fight off an inherited craving for orange phosphate, and clapping on a gas mask every time he approaches a fruit stand.

If a ship captain can't take a schooner over the bar, will they even prevent his making port in a storm? Can we show a horse's neck or a bier? How about the old parlor wood-box, if there happens to be a stick in it?

We are ruined! They're going to take the punch out of the pictures!

—Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, IN, Aug. 10, 1919, section 4, p. 5.

The Cost of a Cocktail

1916

The Drink a Young Business Man Had to Have Before Lunch

In New York city there is a man who once paid $6,000 for a cocktail. He did not know it then, and he never will know it unless he happens to read this story.

A certain prosperous manufacturing company needed a new departmental manager. The salary was $6,000 a year. The officers of the company considered a great many candidates and at last decided to offer the position to a clever young man of unusual business ability. He seemed to be exactly the man for that particular place. The president and general manager invited the young man to lunch with them at a downtown club, ostensibly to talk over a less important business matter. They wanted to "look him over" just once more.

The man met them at the appointed hour, and the president, anxious to make the occasion a pleasant one, ordered an elaborate luncheon. The waiter was a long time in bringing the first course, and the guest began to appear ill at ease. He seemed absentminded and uninterested in the conversation. He twisted about in his chair and tapped his finders nervously upon the table. Finally he turned toward the president and said almost desperately "Would you mind very much if I ordered a cocktail?" Then he flushed a little and offered a laughing apology for making the request.

The other men exchanged surprised and significant glances, but they called the waiter and ordered the cocktail. When it came the guest drank it eagerly. In a few moments he had become another man — the man of keen vision and quick mind, who could be so useful in their great business. There was no more preoccupation in his manner, no shifting about in His chair. He was alert, eager, clear headed.

But as the luncheon went on neither the president nor the manager mentioned the real object of the interview. Each was thinking the matter over seriously, and neither could be sure of the other's secretly formed opinion. The situation became awkward. Finally the president excused himself on the pretense of going into the library to speak to a friend who had just entered. But after speaking to his friend he went straight to the desk and wrote a message on a telegraph blank. He gave the message to a uniformed attendant and went back to the dining room.

In a few minutes a page brought a telegram to the manager, who read it hurriedly, while the president finished telling their guest about a shooting trip in Maine. This is what the telegram said:

The job is too big for a boozer. We can't run our business by cocktail power. — Youth's Companion

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 6.

ARLINGTON MAYOR SAYS CHASING HONEY BEES, RABBITS AND BOOZE IS TOO MUCH

Offers $25 for Evidence That Will Convict Bootlegger in His Town.

The miseries of a mayor have seldom been more picturesquely described than by J.W. Ruble, mayor of Arlington, Fayette county, Iowa, in an open letter published recently in the Arlington News in reply to a letter from the W.C.T.U. asking him to enforce the liquor laws.

A mayor's duties include not only hanging around the alleys looking for bootleggers, says Ruble, but also keeping men from beating their wives, seeing that the boys and girls don't fall off their sleds, and catching wild chickens, rabbits and honey bees.

Ruble further says that there is no bootlegger selling booze in Arlington "that I know and am sure of," and he offers $25 reward for evidence leading to the conviction of any liquor vendor.

Ask Pledge Fulfillment
The letter from the W.C.T.U. is as follows:

"Mr. J. W. Ruble, mayor of Arlington. Dear Sir: We, the members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Arlington, respectfully request that you fulfill your pre-election pledge, that if elected you would clear this town of bootlegging and selling of intoxicating drink, and put an end to the disgraceful disturbances that accompany drinking habits and customs -- that you would certainly enforce the law touching these things.

"We are making this request as citizens who have the good name of our city at heart, and are deeply grieved that there should be any occasion for people to give Arlington a bad reputation, or for there to be any condition that would cast a hurtful influence on our young people."

No 'Leggers He Knows of.
To this letter, signed by 34 women, the mayor replied:
"In answer to the above petition I will have to say that there is not a bootlegger selling booze in this town that I know and am sure of. I also know that there has been less booze sold in this town in the past year than in any one year since the act of prohibition was passed, and what is drunk here comes from out of this town.

"I doubt if there has been consumed or drunk five gallons of booze here in the past year; and to show these good ladies of this noble society where and how I stand, I will pay out of my own pocket $25 for evidence that will convict any bootlegger selling in this town.

Mentions Sheriff.
"Your whole society supported and voted for a sheriff in this county. What has he done? Not one of you voted for or supported me when I was elected as mayor and now you come asking to be helped out from under this great booze curse that this whole government can't stop; you expect a poor little mayor of a small town that can't even support a town marshal to do the business.

"I will also say that Arlington is one of the most peaceful and quiet towns in this county. The greater part of the signers of this petition I personally know, they are as good old grandmothers as ever lived and nine-tenths of them have not been on the streets this winter. How many of the above signers have seen one intoxicated person in the past year? You would have to answer, none! but still you say this is a bad town. Now, I want to ask the good old ladies of the above petition if it is not a fact that you have one or two most meddlesome members who have nothing else to do only gad around and stir up trouble. Some people hate themselves and all around them, and it is too bad such people have to live.

His Duties Many.
"I want to state more fully what the citizens, or some of them, expect of a town mayor; I have been called on to stop men from misusing their wives, stop children from using profane language, see that they go to school, some want me to furnish clothes for them, see that chickens don't run at large, see that the weeds are cut, that water runs in a natural course, sidewalks cleaned off, see that kids go home from school, catch all honey bees flying at large; if a kid loses his sled I am called on to hunt it and expected to do it; one lady, a good old soul like most of the above signers, came to see me about catching a rabbit that was running around her place, said it might eat up her berry bushes. I have been called on to kill dogs. Some people think a town mayor should hang around some back alley all the time, and if he did that they would report that he was after some other man's wife.

But He'll Hang On.
"What I have mentioned is just a small portion of a mayor's work; of course he gets big pay and must do something, and I am going to stand it until the women get to expecting me to haul their kids to school on a hand sled. I have been asked by the most of the ladies that have boys if I wouldn't keep my eye on them when they were on the street riding bobsleds, hitching on automobiles and such like; of course I do. Now if I should say one cross word to one of these boys their mother would cuss me only as a woman can.

"Any time any citizen of this town wants to file any information for drunkenness, or any other just cause, get out and do your duty and get this $25 that I have offered. Don't expect your mayor to do all your dirty work."

Comment: Handwritten on the article, it looks like "Did Jim do all this". No source or date, but on the flip side is a Hills Bros. Coffee ad that is Copyright 1929.