University of Virginia Library

THE LOCAL OPTION LUNACY.

[Mr. Brann was billed to lecture at Hillsboro, Texas, on the eve of the local option election. The Antis took possession of the opera house and changed his subject. Following is a synopsis of his address.]

LADIES and Gentlemen: I came here to talk on "Gall," and I find that I must speak on "Prohibition"—a distinction without a difference. I hold in my hand a printed challenge from the Prohib committee to meet Hon. W. K. Homan in joint debate to-night—a challenge issued when they were well aware that I was to lecture here this evening. They felt certain that I would not forego a lecture fee to mix it with them without money and without price; but they didn't know their man. I'm always willing to make some sacrifice to secure the luxury of a red-hot intellectual scrapping match. We proposed to make it a Midshipman Easy duel, a three-cornered fight—Brothers Homan and Benson vs. the "Apostle," but they wiggled in and they wiggled out, they temporized and tergiversated until we saw there wasn't an ounce of fight in the whole Prohibition crew—that, after their flamboyant defi, we couldn't pull 'em into a joint debate with a span of mules and a log-cabin. I last saw Bro. Bill Homan at Hubbard City. He was getting out of town on the train I got in on —after promising that he would remain over and meet me. In his harangue the night before he told his auditors that I'd simply "abuse the church and make ugly faces." Well, I didn't abuse the church on that occasion, nor upon any other, albeit I sometimes make it a trifle uncomfortable for some of its unworthy representatives. I cannot help "making ugly faces." It's my misfortune, not my fault. I was born good and Bro. Bill was born beautiful.

He's the Adonis of the rostrum, the Apollo Belvidere of the bema. He's so dodgasted "purty" that the children cry for him. Had he come to earth two thousand years ago some Grecian goddess would have stolen him. Bro. Bill couldn't make an ugly face if he tried. If he ever catches sight of his own personal pulchritude as reflected in some translucent lake, I much fear that he'll meet with the fate of Narcissus. Some of you Prohibs don't know who Narcissus was. Well, he was one of those fellows whom cold water killed.

I'm no professional anti-Prohibition spouter, and have been jumped up here without preparation; but it occurs to me that it requires no careful rehearsal of set orations before an amorous looking glass, no studied intermingling of pathos, bathos and blue fire to demolish the Prohibition fallacy. Liberty is ever won by volunteers; the shackles of political and religious slavery are forged by the hands of hirelings. Prohibition cannot withstand the light of logic, the lessons of experience, nor the crucible of the commonest kind of common sense.

Milton tells us that the angel Ithuriel found the devil "squat like a toad," distilling poison in the ear of sleeping Eve; that he touched the varmint with his spear, and forthwith Satan resumed his proper shape and fled shrieking out of Paradise. Prohibition is another evil spirit that is breeding trouble in man's Eden; but when touched by the spear-point of legitimate criticism its disguise falls away, and we see, instead of a harmless toad, a malicious Meddlesome Mattie stirring up strife and bitterness among brethren.

Whenever a man opposes the plans of the Prohibs he is forthwith denounced as an enemy of morality, a slave of the saloons, a hireling of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association. Well, I had rather be the emissary of the

saloons than the assassin of liberty, the slave of a brewer than the blind peon of ignorant prejudice, while if morality consists in attending to my neighbor's business to the neglect of my own, then I'm ferninst it, first, last and all the time. As a good German friend of mine once remarked: "Dot beoples who lives py stones of mine shouldn't trow some glass houses, haind id?" Who is making money out of this agitation? The Professional Prohibs. Did you ever know of one of these gentry making a Prohibition speech except for filthy lucre—unless he was electioneering for office or taking subscribers for a cold-water journal? They are the cattle who are out for the stuff; they are the mercenaries—the men who pump foul air through their faces for a fee. Did you ever hear of a man getting paid for defending the doctrine of personal liberty? Did you ever see a collection taken up at an anti-prohibition meeting to pay some important spouter for pointing out to the people their political duty? (A voice: "Nix.") And you never will. These prohibition orators have the impudence to denounce me as "the peon of the rum power" while I am fighting the battles of personal liberty at my own cost, yet not a dad-burned one of 'em will open his head unless paid for his wind-power! They are "reformers" for revenue only.

I have noticed that, as a rule, men who speak against Prohibition have never been in the gutter, while those who pick up a precarious livelihood by chasing the "Rum Demon" around a stump have usually been his very humble slaves. I have noticed that the men who oppose Prohibition are usually the solid, well-to-do men of the community, the heavy tax-payers the men upon whom the schools, the churches and the state chiefly depend for support, while those who champion it on the rostrum are usually living in some way upon the industry of others. The man who

has brains enough to make money and keep it usually has too much sense to be a Prohibitionist. It is the fellows who have made a failure of life; who live on donations; who weep over the world's wickedness, then take up a collection to enable them to get to the next town; who haven't sufficient moral stamina to stay sober, that are prating of Prohibition. If we required a property franchise you couldn't muster five thousand Prohibition votes between the Sabine and the Rio Grande.

And yet we are told that licensing the saloons is a bad business investment; that it costs more than it comes to; that the way to abolish poverty is to abrogate the liquor license law. Strange that the Prohibs should possess such transcendent business heads and such empty stomachs! Doubtless the drinking of liquor adds to the cost of our judiciary; doubtless it is responsible for some crime; but the question at issue is not one of liquor-drinking vs. teetotalism—it is a question of drinking licensed liquor or Prohibition aquafortis. It is not a question of reducing the cost of our courts, but of making liquor bear its due proportion of the burdens it foists upon the people.

I am neither the friend nor enemy of liquor, any more than I am the enemy or friend of buttermilk. I have drunk both a third of a century and have been unable to see that they did me any especial good or harm. I was never befuddled on the one nor foundered on the other, and have managed to get along very well with both. Whether in eating or drinking, a man should keep his brains above his belt, and if he cannot do that he's a precious poor excuse for an uncrowned King, an American Sovereign.

The statistics furnished by the Prohibition orators are fearfully and wonderfully made. It has been asserted in this campaign that a million Americans die every year of the world from the effects of strong drink—and all this

great army goes direct to hell. The man who made that statement is a preacher, and presumably familiar with the Bible; but he has evidently overlooked the story of Ananias and Saphira. I learn from the United States census report, which I hold in my hand, that in the very year in which this Prohibition apostle claims a million Americans were slain by strong drink, the statistical experts could find but 1,592 victims of John Barleycorn. The doctors have ever claimed that more people die of over-eating than of over-drinking, and the census report bears out the assertion, for in the year in which 1,592 people were filed away by "alcoholism," 30,094 deaths are accredited to "diseases of the digestive organs." What causes indigestion? Over-eating, or eating food difficult of digestion. Now I submit that if Brothers Benson, Homan, et al, are trying to save the people of this land from premature graves and bear the stock of the coffin trust, they should direct their crusade against indigestible food,—reduce the people of this Nation by means of statutory law to a diet of cornbread and buttermilk. Let them bring all their ballistæ and battering-rams to bear upon the toothsome mince pie, the railway sandwich, the hard-boiled egg and pickled pigs' feet—that pestilence that walks in darkness. Indigestion is indeed a fruitful source of crime. It casts the black shadow of chronic pessimism athwart the sunniest soul and transforms happy homes into dens of despair. It makes men irritable, morose, and prompts them to homicide. Who can tell how much misery and crime the wretched cookery of female Prohibitionists is responsible for? How the cost of our criminal courts might be reduced if these she-reformers would but attend to their kitchens and dish up for their lords and masters grub that would more easily assimilate with the gastric juices! If a man be fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils when loaded with a half a pint of red licker, what must be the condition of his mind and morals when he's full of sodden pie, half baked beans and soda-biscuits that if fired from a cannon would kill a bull?

The theory that strong drink is an unmixed evil that must be abolished, is not in accord with the genius of this government, which would give to the individual untrammeled liberty in matters concerning only himself. Experience has proven Prohibition a rank failure and the customs of mankind from the very dawn of history brand it a rotten fraud. The people of every age and clime have used stimulants, and we may safely conclude that, despite the Prohibs, they will be employed so long as man exists upon the earth. Banish liquor and man will find a substitute even though it be opium, morphine or cocaine. It is said that Thor, the great northern god of war, once tried to lift what he supposed was an old woman, but found to his sorrow that it was a mighty serpent which, in Norse mythology, encircles the world. The Prohibs are warring upon what they foolishly imagine to be frivolous habit of man, but will yet learn that they are running counter to an immutable decree of God—are trying to alter the physical constitution of the human race by means of local option elections.

So far as I am personally concerned, I would care but little if every ounce of liquor was banished from the earth and its method of manufacture forever be forgotten; but I object to having a lot of he-virgins and female wall-flowers sit at my muzzle and dictate how I shall load myself. If I'm an American sovereign I propose to be supreme autocrat of my own stomach. When I want advice regarding what I shall eat and what I shall drnik I'll consult a doctor of medicine instead of a doctor of divinity.

I do not oppose Prohibition because I am the friend

of liquor, but because I am the friend of liberty. I would rather see a few boozers than a race of bondmen. I am not interested in preserving the liquor traffic, but I am interested in the perpetuation of those principles that ennoble a people and make manly men—men who rely upon themselves for their social salvation rather than upon a public policy which may change with the phases of the moon or the arrival of some new demagogue from distant parts. I have but little use for men who must swing to the apron-strings of a public grand-dame or go to the dogs. Let us reserve the nursery for children. Men whom we cannot trust with the guardianship of their own appetites should not be allowed to run at large. How would you young ladies like to marry "American Sovereigns" who must be tied up, like a lot of mangy cayuses when white clover is in blossom to keep 'em from catching the "slobbers"?

But, the Prohibs inform us, the brightest men of the world are ruined by strong drink. They assure us that "it is not a question of intellect, but of appetite." What was judgment given us for if not to control our appetites? If Appetite be paramount to judgment why do we hang rape-fiends? Let me tell you the idea that the brainiest men of the world die drunkards is the merest moonshine. If only men of genius drank liquor a one-horse still would supply the demand and be idle six months in the year. Take the thousand greatest men the world has produced —the Thousand Immortelles—and not 2 per cent. of them died drunkards, yet 98 per cent. of them drank liquor. If the Prohibs have ever produced an intellect of the first class they must have hidden it under a bushel. Its possessor is probably one of those village Hampdens or mute inglorious Miltons of whom the poet sings. The Prohibs don't run to great men—they run to gab.

Stripped of all its superfluous trappings, the thesis of Prohibition is simply this: "Some men drink to excess; therefore no one should be permitted to drink at all. The human race must reserve its inherent tastes and time-honored habits lest some wild-eyed jay get on a jag." The question at issue, the riddle for us to unravel, is simply this: Can we afford to sacrifice human liberty to save the sots? Is the game worth the candle, and if we burn the candle will we win the game?

The Pros assure you that Prohibition prohibits. It does. It prohibits the sale of liquor and supplies its place with coffin paint. It prohibits the sale of good, ice cold beer and gives us forty-rod bugjuice. Theories are not worth a continental when slammed up against conditions. What I hear I take with a grain of salt; but what I see that I do know. I tell you candidly that next to a pretty woman I love a cocktail. If the liquor is good and the barkeeper understands his business, I consider it a thing to thank God for—occasionally. Like religion, a little of it is an excellent thing, but an overdose will put wheels in your head. I have never yet been in a Prohibition precinct where I needed to go thirsty if I had the price of a pint flask concealed about my person—and my stomach could stand the poison.

When high license prevailed in Hillsboro you had a dozen saloons, each contributing to the revenues of the state, the country, the municipality and the school fund. You voted local option in, and now you've thirty-two unlicensed and unregulated doggeries selling rot-gut to schoolboys and contributing not one cent to the public revenues. The cost of your courts has increased, drunkenness was never so common, brawls never so frequent. It is said that even fools can learn in the bitter school of experience; but there be idiots upon whom even such lessons

are lost. But you say, "Vote local option in again and we'll elect officers who will enforce the laws." Have you yet to learn that a law cannot be enforced that is not steadily upheld by public opinion? And do you not know that there's not a considerable town in Texas where public opinion demands at all times a strict enforcement of such a law? If you really desire to have a sober city, raise a purse and hire the operators of your blind tigers to place their booze on the sidewalk in buckets, accompanied by tin dippers and signs, "Help yourself—funerals furnished free." Men would then run away from the very smell of the stuff who now sneak up dirty alleys and pay 15 cents for the privilege of poisoning themselves. On the same principle some men—and they are not all anti-Prohibs either—will leave a beautiful and charming wife to mope at home while they are flirting with some female whose face would frighten a freight-train. Man is just like a dog—only more so. Perhaps a marauding old muley cow would be a better comparison. A muley cow will eat anything on this majestic earth that she can steal, from a hickory shirt to a Prohibition newspaper, and if she can't get it through her neck she will chew it and suck the juice. That's human nature to a hair. Man values most what is hardest to get. And until you reverse the law of nature the legitimate effect of Prohibition will be blind tigers and back-door sneaks, the breeding of spies and the sale and consumption of an infinitely meaner brand of booze.

That liquor has done a vast amount of damage I freely concede; but shall we banish everything that has added to the mighty tide of human ills? Then what have we left? A hole in the atmosphere, God has not bequeathed to man an unmixed blessing since he expelled him from Paradise. Even woman, his last, best gift, hath grievous faults. The very first one brought into this world, according to Pagan

legend and Holy Writ, was the author of all our ills. But for her we would be to-day in a blessed state of innocence, where mothers-in-law and millinery bills, political issues and itinerant preachers, mental freaks and professional reformers, jim-jams and jag cure joints disturb us not. Instead of all this toil and trouble we would lie like gods reclining on banks of asphodel, pull the heavenly bell-cord when hungry and live on from age to age, ever young Apollos. Perhaps the Almighty made a mistake when he gave to man a wife, and another when he gave him the vine; but when he corrects 'em I'll crawl off the earth.

Woman has filled the world with war's alarms, and the bacchic revel has ended in the brawl. Troy flamed because Menelaus' wife was false, and Philip's all-conquering son surrendered to the brimming bowl. Ever is our dearest joy wedded to our direst woe. The same air that comes stealing round our pillow, laden with the sensuous perfume of a thousand flowers, rips our towns to pieces and turns our artesian wells inside out. The same rains that fructify the earth pour the destructive flood. The same intellectual power that bends nature's mighty forces to man's imperial will, enables him to trample upon his brethren. The same reckless courage that breaks the tyrant's chain ofttimes stains the hand with a brother's blood. The same longing for woman's sweet companionship that leads these to rear happy homes—sacred shrines from which incense mounts night and day to the throne of Omnipotent God—goads those to lawless love. The empurpled juice that warms the cold heart and stirs the sluggish blood that gives to the orator lips of gold, to the poet promethean fire abused doth breed the hasty quarrel and make the god a beast.

It was said of old that a middle course is safest and best, and the axiom still holds good. All the Utopias thus

far inaugurated were greased at the wrong end. The fact that since the dawn of history—aye, so far back that legend itself is lost in the shadows of the centuries—the winecup has circulated about the social board, proves that it supplies a definite, an inherent human want—that it fills a niche in the world's economy. One of the first acts of a people after passing the pale of savagery is to supply itself with stimulants. Why this is so, I do not pretend to know; but so it is, and it argues that the Prohibition apostles have tackled about as big a contract as did Dame Partington—that they had best "pluck a few feathers from the wing of their fancy wherewith to supply the tail of their judgment."

The Prohibs declare that 999 out of every 1,000 crimes are caused by liquor. Suppose this to be true: Does it take the cussedness out of liquor to drive it from the front room into the back alley? Is it not a fact that the worst brand of "fighting booze" is dispensed at the illicit doggery? But the Prohibs are as badly at sea anent their criminal statistics as in the mortuary report. Comparatively few of the great criminals of this country ever drank liquor to excess. But a small per cent. of those in our penitentiaries were confirmed drunkards when accorded the hospitality of the state. When a man is convicted of crime he naturally seeks a scapegoat. Adam threw all the blame of that apple episode on Eve, simply because liquor had not then been invented and he could not plead an Edenic jag in extenuation. I was once interviewing a man who had just been sentenced to the penitentiary for horse-theft. I thought that perhaps a cocktail would cause him to talk freer, and had one smuggled to his cell. He declined it, saying that he had never taken but one drink of liquor in his life, and that made him sick.

"But," said I, "you told the court that you were crazy drunk when you committed the crime."

"Yes," he replied, "I'd rather be thought a drunkard than a natural born d——d thief."

That led me to investigate. I interviewed the recorder of Galveston, the chief of police, the sheriff of the county, the district attorney and several other officials. We went over the records, and the habits of each offender were carefully inquired into. As a matter of course the "drunks and disorderlies" made an imposing list; but we were unable to trace the influence of liquor in more than 3 per cent. of the serious crimes committed in Galveston city and county during five years.

The great cry of the Prohibs is, "Save the boys; remove temptation from their path." Well, that's all right, if you've got a putty boy; but if I had a boy who wanted to go on a whizz and wasn't smart enough to find the means despite all the Prohibs in Christendom, I'd send him to the insane asylum. I was reading the other day of some college youths who were watched so closely that they couldn't obtain liquor, and proceeded to fill up on illuminating gas. If the supply of gas holds out those youngsters are likely to develop into great Prohibition orators. If you want to keep your boy from filling a drunkard's grave, begin by getting a sure-enough boy— one whose brain-pan lies above instead of below his ears. Then raise him right. Don't tell him that every man who sells liquor is an emissary of hell, and that every man who drinks it is a worthless sot. If you do, he'll soon find out that you are a liar without sufficient intelligence to build a dangerous falsehood, and he'll take off the muzzle. Tell him the truth and thereby retain his confidence. Tell him that liquor is a pretty good thing to let alone, but that millions of better men than his daddy have drank it and lived and died sober and useful citizens.

Prohibition was first tried in the Garden of Eden. It proved a failure there, and it has proven a failure ever

since. It is not in accord with the Christian Bible, the fundamental law of the land or the lessons of history. Wine has been used in almost every religious rite except Mohammedanism and devil worship. St. Paul recommends it, Christ made and used it and God saved Noah while letting all the good Prohibitionists drown. The Saviour came eating and drinking. Abraham Lincoln declared Prohibition "a species of intemperance within itself" and "a blow at the very principles on which our government was founded." General Grant, Thomas Jefferson, Horatio Seymour and John Quincy Adams denounced it in unmeasured terms. Who's taking issue with these giants of the intellect? Redlicker Benson of Ingeanny, who has come all the way to Texas to tell us barbarians what to do to be saved—and incidentally pick up enough money to pay for another "jag"; Whoopee Kalamity Homan, the pretty man of Dallas, whose chief argument is that I abuse the churches—which is an infernal falsehood; and Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, an ex-bum who aspires to the presidency of the United States, but couldn't be elected pound-master in his own precinct.

I have been asked why, if as much liquor is sold under Prohibition as under high license, the saloonists insist upon contributing to the public revenues. The answer's dead easy. The men who engineer blind tigers vote the Prohibition ticket. They contribute to the campaign fund. They help pay the fees of the cold water spouters and sputers. More liquor is sold under local option than under high license, because of man's natural hankering for forbidden fruits; but it is sold by a different class of men and is a different kind of booze. It is sold by chronic law-breakers, by men who have little to lose, by toughs for whom the bat-cage hath no terrors. The man who is capable of straddling an unlicensed keg of bug-juice in a

back-room and ladling out liquid hell to little boys, is quite naturally in favor of Prohibition. A man of respectability, and who is financially responsible for offenses, desires to keep within the limits of the law. That's the reason that respectable saloon men are the enemies of Prohibition.

Legalize the sale of liquor and you will have some crime, no doubt. You will have paupers and criminals to provide for, but you'll have a revenue to help bear the burdens. Prohibit it and you'll have the burdens without the revenue. Permit its sale and you will have law-abiding citizens engaged in the traffic, men who will try to make it decent, who will take a pride in the purity of their wares and the orderliness of their places; prohibit it, and you will have a lot of law-breakers on the one hand selling slumgullion made of cheap chemicals and general cussedness, and a gang of spies and informers on the other stirring up strife and entailing costly litigation.

When driven to the wall; when it is clearly demonstrated that their doctrine does not accord with the genius of this government; when it is amply proven that wherever tried it has proven an expensive failure, an arrant fraud, the Prohibs fall back upon the Bible. You may prove five hundred different religious dogmas by the Bible, but Prohibition is not one of them. Bro. Homan declares that the Old Testament prohibits the drinking of wine. It does not; but it does not make circumcision obligatory, and a sin of omission is as bad as a sin of commission. If Bro. Homan proposes to be guided by the Old Testament I beg to suggest that he is overlooking a very important bit. The Old Testament commands no class of people to abstain from wine, except the Jewish priesthood, and they only while performing their sacred offices. An angel of the Lord did command the barren Manoah to stay sober

awhile and she should conceive and bear a son; and I imagine that something equally as miraculous might happen to Luther Benson under similar circumstances. David recounts as one of God's mercies that he giveth water to the wild ass and wine to make glad the heart of man. Solomon sings to the wine cup with all the ardor of Anacreon, while the prophets kept the morals of Israel toned up by threats that a lapse from virtue would prove disastrous to the vineyards. St. Paul advised bishops and old women to take but little wine. He also suggested to the first that they should not fly into a passion, and to the latter that spreading false reports about their neighbors was not considered good form. The Prohibs, as a last resort, insist that the wine of Biblical days was very different from our own—a kind of circus lemonade; but it seems to have gotten in its graft on old Noah in most elegant shape. If the wine of Biblical times was so harmless why did the sacred writers consider it necessary to caution people against drunkenness, bid them be temperate in all things—while avoiding teetotalism? The only beverage I can find mentioned in the Bible that affected a man like a Prohibition drink, was that given Col. Lot in the cave by his two daughters. It accomplished what medical men assure me was a miracle—and the Prohibs run largely to the miraculous.