H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/November 16, 1931

I

Prohibition, I take it, is now definitely doomed, but the last sad scene is certainly not upon us. It may be postponed for many years, even for many decades. The death struggle may last as long as that of slavery, which began to die in 1783 but was not buried until April 9, 1865. More than once, during those years, slavery sat up in bed and seemed about to recover—for example, in 1820. And more than once the Abolitionists started to bury it before it was really dead—for example, in 1861 and 1863. Prohibition, for all I know, may hang on quite as long, baffling the coroner again and again. There is a magnificent vitality in it, due to its complete imbecility. For among ideas, as among men, the most tenacious of life are those of the lowest mental visibility. The idea of Hell will survive whole herds of Einsteins, as it has survived whole herds of Galileos and Darwins. Every President of the United States so far, with perhaps two exceptions, has cherished it, and every current aspirant to the White House is willing to subscribe to it, with his eyes rolling and his plug hat over his heart.

My belief is that Prohibition, of late, has been gaining quite as much as it has been losing, especially in the big cities. One hears less murmuring against it than aforetime, and what murmuring one hears is less bitter than it used to be. The change is probably due to the Hon. Amos W. W. Woodcock, LL. D., who went into office promising that he would stop the slaughter of innocent people by Prohibition agents, and has pretty well kept his pledge. His gallant scoundrels, at the moment, are doing very little murdering, and that little is mainly of persons who die unregretted. The days when they assassinated one of the leading Elks of Buffalo in broad daylight, and shot an eye out of a United States Senator on Capitol Hill, are now of the past. How Woodcock managed to tame them I don’t know, but he has undoubtedly done it.

At the same time he doesn’t seem to have purged them of enlightened self-interest, for they are letting more booze get by than ever before, and on the whole it is better than ever before. The whole East, indeed, is flooded with excellent stuff at very neat prices, including even sound beer. No boozer has to worry any more about wood alcohol. Thus there is nothing for public indignation to get its teeth into, and Prohibition is damned less generally than it used to be. 

II

So much for the big cities. In the rural districts I see no sign of any very widespread change of mind. The clodhoppers, in these hard times, hate the voluptuous city man, with his warm speakeasies and his hospitable breadlines, harder than ever before, and are thus not likely to give up any scheme to harass him. A fair poll of Kansas, or of any other such cow state, would probably show a substantial majority for Prohibition—maybe not as large as in 1920, but certainly quite as large as in 1928. The farm folk, when sorrow oppresses them, always resort to religion, and so come directly under guns of their pastors. These pastors are still there, howling against the wickedness of the cities, and preaching Prohibition as a sure cure for it.

I doubt that the doings of Monsignor Cannon have hurt the holy cause in the Bible country. In the big cities, plainly enough, he has done a great deal of damage, if not to Prohibition, then at least to Methodism, and many of his church’s former customers are deserting it, but Methodism was never really strong in the cities; it is essentially a rustic faith. Even those city men who patronize it are predominantly country-bred, though in many cases they have got somewhat urbanized, and submit docilely when their pastors put on chasubles, light candies in the sanctuary, make retreats, and engage in other such Romish carnalities. Where the cows low and the woodbine twineth there is no such compromise with Satan. The yokels remain true to the ancient American faith in all its branches.

In particular, they remain true to its cardinal dogma that every man is his brother’s keeper, and has been ordained of God to spy upon him and annoy him. That is the essence of evangelical Christianity everywhere in rural America, and it will probably remain so for many years to come. For it has the capital virtue of giving the sturdy plowman a feeling of moral superiority. As the professors of moral science say, it is ethically self-enhancing. Here the movies undoubtedly help.

Every time they screen a scene showing a loose city man lolling in a vile den with a $5,000 a week female star on his knee and a flagon of absinthe in his hand, they confirm multitudes of envious rustics in the Wesleyan revelation. 

III

I refrain specifically, out of respect for the judicial process, from expressing any opinion about the criminal charges which now confront Dr. Cannon, but it is certainly no indecorum to predict that, on other fields, he will probably give his enemies a sound thrashing. This is not because he is the mastermind that romantic newspaper reporters have made of him; on the contrary, he is plainly a man of limited ideas, and some of the most salient of them are obviously unsound. But it is always to be remembered that he is fighting, not philosophers, but politicians, and that he is as far superior to the common run of the latter as he would be inferior to the former. 

His strength lies in the fact that he is a bold and resolute fellow, whereas practically all politicians are scardy-cats. When he went up against Tom Walsh and the late Senator Caraway of Arkansas, he went up against two of the toughest babies ever seen in Washington; nevertheless, he got them on the run in two minutes, and simply by showing his teeth. His Grace also has the measure of his fellow Methodists, and knows precisely how to operate on them. When, a few weeks ago, one of his episcopal colleagues undertook to spit in his eye, he was on the poor man’s back in an instant, and made a lot of capital out of the episode. As for the rank and file of the faithful, nine-tenths of them country people, he has only to show his wounds to set them to howling horrible hosannas. 

Many wets make the mistake of regarding him as a comic character. This is a great foolishness. He is actually no more a comic character than John Brown was. Despite the most powerful assaults from nine directions, he keeps firmly on his legs, and is probably more influential than ever before. Lord Hoover is in his vest-pocket, peeping out in constant alarm, and will undoubtedly remain there until the Tuesday following the first Monday of next November. After that—who knows? My own prediction is that Hoover, if re-elected, will go damp at once, and so ditch the bishop. But if he does so, there will certainly be some gaudy fireworks from the ditch. 

IV

It is quite as likely, I believe, that the Democratic aspirant, if he beats Hoover, will turn somewhat dry. Politicians, in fact, are seldom quite as wet after they get into offices as they were as candidates. The sad case of the late Dwight W. Morrow was but recently spread before us, and that of the Hon. Mr. Bulkley of Ohio is still on view, though it seems to attract little attention. Dripping wetness makes a grand campaign cry, at all events in the more civilized states, but it becomes inconvenient afterward, for the wets lack a legislative programme. If they had such a programme they could make a loud uproar in Washington, even though they remained in a minority, but without it they are impotent, and the more intelligent of them, grasping the fact, quickly subside into spooky silence. 

The wet cause has been gravely damaged and impeded by a tactical error: open admission, by the chief wet hullabaloos, that the saloon was wicked, and must not come back. This admission not only grants at least half the case of the Anti-Saloon League: it also causes painful discontent and disharmony in the wet rank and file. I know very few honest wets who are actually against the saloon. Three-fourths of them, unless I err gravely, would welcome it back with hearty cheers. What they demand today is not booze, for they have it now; what they demand is freedom to drink it openly, publicly and in good society, according to the immemorial custom of Christian men. The saloon, in brief, has become the national symbol of liberty in America, as a beautiful woman of easy amiability is the symbol in France, and the great majority of conscientious wets are determined that it must and shall be rescued and revived. 

Once the wet leaders grasp that fact, and cease their idiotic poll-parroting of Anti Saloon League propaganda, they will make much better progress than they have made in the past. But despite all their errors, and the inevitable setbacks that I have spoken of, the cause they serve is bound to prevail in the long run. Its real heroes are the bootleggers, who will be out of jobs when the day of Armageddon comes. They have not wasted any time arguing against Prohibition. They have simply, by their delicate art, made it preposterous. They have reduced it to the level of low comedy. What is going to bust it in the end is a general realization that all its grandiose aims are impossible of attainment, and that it can never be anything save a silly nuisance.