Topic 55 
ON PROHIBITION

COLONEL ROOSEVELT was not of those who favored the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, importation, or sale of intoxicating liquors.  To his mind prohibition was certain to cause unrest and dissatisfaction; he doubted the fairness of removing the saloon without providing something to take its place in the life of the tenement dwellers; and he was inclined to think the liquor question was settling itself.

"You and I can readily recall the time," he said to me one day, "when it was not bad form for sub stantial men of affairs, for lawyers, doctors — professional men generally — to drink in the middle of the day.  It is good form no longer, and it's not now done.  It is not so long ago that practically every man in politics drank more or less, when hard drinking, if not the rule, was not the exception.  Now the hard drinker, if he exists at all among the higher grade, is a survival of what you might call another day.

"Take Tammany.  No one holds that up as an organization of model men, yet I am sure that were you to make a canvass of its district leaders, you would find pretty close to a majority if not an actual majority are teetotalers.  Tammany no longer sends men with ability, and a weakness for liquor, to Albany.  It may and it probably will send another of Tom Grady's ability, but it will not send one who drinks as hard.

"This, you may rest assured, is not a matter of morals.  It is, however, a matter of efficiency.  Tammany wants results and it is sufficiently abreast of the times to know that drink and efficiency do not go hand in hand in these days of card indexes and adding machines.

" It is the same in your profession.  Not long ago most of the boys were fairly competent drinking men; some I knew were rated as extra competent by admiring, perhaps envious, colleagues.  Now the drinking man, at least the man who drinks enough to show the effects, is rare.  The reason: your editors won't stand for it.  As Jack Slaght put it the other day — I think it was Jack — a reporter in the old days was expected to have 'a birthday' about so often and nothing was thought of it.  Now, as Slaght puts it, he is allowed but two.  The first time, still quoting your friend Slaght, who at times is inclined to use plain language, he gets hell; the next time he gets fired.  That is so, is it not?"

I assured him that Slaght was substantially correct.

"It's not a matter of morals there, though" (with a laugh).  " I will admit you boys do not lack morals.  As with Tammany, it is a question of getting results, exactly as it is with the doctor, the lawyer, and the judge,

"Drinking declined once it became an economic question, or at least as soon as it was recognized as an economic factor.  It then began to be unfashionable— at least to over drink — and the man who never drank at all ceased to be unusual in any trade or calling.

" I am, however, sorry that they are pressing prohibition so hard at this time.  It is, I think, all right, desirable, in fact, to limit or perhaps prohibit the so called hard liquors, but it is a mistake, I think, to stop or try to stop the use of beers and the lighter wines.

"If this thing goes through, where does the social side of life come in? We both know that a’dry' dinner is apt to be a sad sort of affair.  It will make dining a lost art.

"Likewise, I do not know how the working classes will take to the change.  You and I have no need of the saloon.  We have other places to go.  But you and I know that the saloon fits into a very definite place in the life of the tenement dweller.  I do not know what he will do without it; what substitutes the reformers think they can give him for it.  I do not believe they have thought of that, or that they care much.

" Frankly, I do not know what will be the outcome.  Prohibition, if it comes, will cause ill feeling and unrest — it will be a disturbing factor — but I do not look for anything really serious, for after all is said and done, the fact remains that the American workman is a law abiding individual.

"When it comes, prohibition may or may not be permanent.  You may, however, be sure of one thing — it will be extremely difficult to repeal, once it becomes part of the Constitution."

Responsibility for prohibition Colonel Roosevelt placed squarely upon the shoulders of the liquor dealers good and bad.

"Some liquor dealers I have known," said he, "were good, well meaning citizens, who kept decent places.  Take the Oakeses, father and son, who own the Oyster Bay Inn.  I should be very sorry to see them lose their license.  Theirs is a clean, respectable place.  Again, there is John Brosnan's place in New York.  No one ever heard a complaint against John.  His place has been no more offensive than if he sold dry goods.

"But the John Brosnans are responsible for the plight they now find themselves in, because they have stood neutral when they did not fight to save men who ran dives.  Had the Brosnans and Oakeses and men of their stamp lined up with decent citizens in closing up dives, they would have served the community and themselves.  However, they did not, and the situation is as it is.
" I shall take no part in the contest one way or the other.  It must be settled without me.  I shall not allow it or anything else to swerve me from the work we're now in."

The "work we're now in" was the effort to speed up the war by arousing the American people to the necessity of winning a "peace with victory."