hardly knew the place. Since prohibition, splendid new buildings had shot up everywhere, obscuring old landmarks. As the Methodist Clipsheet calls the revival of building a result of prohibition, what city should be drier than Buffalo? Moreover, the prohibition manuals all trace to Volsteadism the astonishing multiplication of automobiles, and automobiles have multiplied in Buffalo until there is talk of cutting down interminable rows of magnificent elms in order to widen Delaware Avenue. But I But I was skeptical, nevertheless, for I had received a hint or two regarding Buffalo from a New Yorker whose attitude toward the law is interesting.

FOR

PUTTING OVER" PROHIBITION

OR seven years he was an official of the Anti-Saloon League. He is credited with having "put over" prohibition in a populous Eastern state. He says he did it on Swedish punch. When sufficiently drunk, he still argues mightily for the Anti-Saloon League, though he left it several years ago, and he argues as mightily for prohibition. "It is the most beneficent reform ever achieved," he says; "it has come to stay, and in two generations it will be a complete success."

I mention this singular person, not because I think him representative of the Anti-Saloon League, which repudiates him with commendable wrath, but because he perfectly represents the type of citizen who votes dry and acts wet.

According to my informant, there were open saloons in Buffalo- "a whole nest of them about seven blocks up Broadway from Lafayette Square"-and the story turned out to be true. I found them selling beer but not whisky; indeed, the only spirituous liquor I came upon in Buffalo was the crême de menthe offered me, in a home, by a recent graduate of a famous Eastern university. He had obtained He had obtained the formula in the university laboratory, where, by diligent experimentation, he and a group of classmates became very successful university distillers and bootleggers, although the prohibitionists still

assert, "A generation is growing up who will never know the taste of alcohol." But it was not alone in Broadway that saloons abounded. The whole of Buffalo's East Side had them. So did large areas of the West Side. While Main Street had none, there were saloons connected with two low theaters. A "Hofbrau" was conspicuous in a busy downtown street, a "buffet" conspicuous not far from City Hall. All told, Buffalo maintains twice the number of saloons it allowed itself before prohibition. I asked why, and a citizen replied: "Because of Mayor Schwab, who owns three breweries and wants to market his beer."

On investigation I learned that Mayor Schwab had recently sold his breweries, though his views concerning prohibition have not changed. At considerable inconvenience (he was busy that day trying to discover how a large quantity of seized liquor had vanished from Police Headquarters) he gave me a statement for publication. On the wall behind him, as he spoke, hung a portrait of Grover Cleveland, once Mayor of Buffalo.

MY

LEGISLATION AND MORALITYTM

Y EXPERIENCE of twenty-five years in the business and my connection with people in all walks of life have taught me that you can't legislate morals into people," said Mayor Schwab. "My personal observation and control of the Police Department and study of the entire liquor problem have convinced me beyond all doubt that there is only one solution that can abolish the illegal traffic in liquor, and that is for the Government to give its people a light beverage for restaurant and home consumption under its supervision and to abolish the socalled soft-drink place. With a light beverage under Government regulation, moonshine and home-brew and the bootlegger would be put out of business in ninety days. ninety days. Studying human nature for just a moment, all fair thinking people will agree that had the Government abolished whisky and left the people with a light beverage, gradually reducing its alcoholic content, there might have been

a possibility of educating the human system and the younger generation in ten to fifteen years' time."

WHAT HURTS THE PAWNBROKERS?

Schwab's immediate predecessor, enforced the prohibition law to the best of his ability and stood for reëlection. He is not a prohibitionist. In a talk I had with him, I quoted the manager of a New York pawn-shop, who had said to me, "Prohibition is ruining our business. We lived principally on the workman who was unable to get home with his wages on Saturday night. Now he takes his wages home, and Uncle Sol isn't making expenses." Also, I quoted a pawnbroker who complained bitterly, “Men used to go on protracted sprees, and pawn everything they had. They aren't doing it now." Then I asked Mr. Buck, "Don't you regard such testimony as evidence that prohibition, despite its present shortcomings, is accomplishing a lot?" He answered, "I think that the Morris Plan for making loans, and not prohibition, is what is ruining the pawn-brokers." Whereupon he spoke of his attitude toward prohibition while mayor. "My oath of office left me no choice," he said. "It required me to enforce the law."

FOREIGNERS VOTE FOR BEER

THE

HROUGHOUT his campaign for reëlection, American Buffalo supported him. Foreign Buffalo, including 150,000 Poles, 100,000 Germans, 60,000 Italians, and a horde of Czecho-Slovaks and Hungarians, supported Schwab, who promised that, if elected, he would repeal the Eighteenth Amendment. The issue being Buck or beer, Buffalo chose beer.

Officially, the saloons in Buffalo are not saloons. They are "soft-drink parlors" licensed at five dollars each and, with Mayor Schwab's permission, selling beer. On the East Side, it is a mild beer, though frankly illegal. The West Side has a much stronger beer, though no one seemed the worse for it. The supply is The supply is

said to come from Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, various brands of ale-among them

Carlin's, Black Horse, Frontenac, and a keg ale containing 12 per cent.-come from Canada. Cottagers on the Canadian shore opposite Buffalo observe tell-tale wagon-tracks running down into the lake.

For the rich, even

a series of heart-breaking thefts from cellars, rich Buffalonians mounted electric lights on their garages with reflectors brilliantly illuminating their back yards. "Booze lights" these are called. I saw hundreds of them.

The relative scarcity of whisky, with Canada so near, puzzles one at first. It is at the same time a great source of pride to the Volstead agents. From the rum-runners' standpoint, however, Canada is not near; the Niagara River has a current of eight miles an hour and a wellpopulated American shore, while the railway bridge at Black Rock is easily watched. But conditions may change when the fine new bridge for vehicular traffic has been completed. As regards ale, they are fairly certain to change; Buffalo capitalists already have options on breweries on the Canadian side, and property there has trebled in price.

I found Mayor Schwab's annulment of prohibition less scandalous in its result than the multiplicity of saloons might indicate. He maintains a liquor squad, consisting of one lieutenant and six patrolmen, to keep them orderly. I said to a proprietor, "Why don't you put in a free-lunch counter?" "Couldn't think of it!" he exclaimed, while in the act of drawing beer. "It's against the law."

There are few brawls in the saloons. In two days I saw no drunkenness on the street, and when a party of young automobilists undertook to show me "hellholes," their most ardent endeavors were unavailing.

I described Buffalo to a fighting prohibitionist whom I met on entering the Pullman for Detroit late at night, and he said, "The cities are wet, but the towns are dry; I go everywhere, and the only trouble is with the cities." I answered, "More than half the people of the United States now live in cities." He retorted, "Well, anyhow, you can't say prohibition was

Dt we #most he whole enter i the United States was in before the Amendment, and almost the whole nonation of the United States was iving n in tetor: asked aim. where and av whom were two milten dollars spent for irnk event year?" and thus began a fiscussion lasting into the small hours, a fiscussion furing which e appeared to be woting from he Lase for Prohibition' ay X Ison and Pickett. from 25.000 Mies of Prohibition' jv Gifford Gordon, from fies of the Aat Saicon League's American [:ue and from vamous other standard sources with which I had taken pains to familiarze myself before starting out. When I told him that my only object in traveling was to octain 21 unbiased view of prohibition "as it is," he declared, "It can't be done in a tone that implied, "You have no business to attempt itthe tone, precisely, of a fundamentalist toward a modern scholar prying into the Bible.

199

DRINKING IN THE YOUNGER SET

OWARD the end of our talk he said.

admission impled, "One reason I'm so hot about all this is, I've got a seventeenyear old daughter, and the set she goes with are drinking outrageously- a thing I never heard of when I was a youngster."

Detroit was a surprise. Despite its reputation as the wettest of cities, I saw no salons and no drunken men. The exceedingly rare soft drink parlors were tt breaking the law. Patrons of a charming Italian restaurant drank water, and inquiry for wine shocked the waiter. In the editorial rooms of the American Boy, Mr. McGuire, a Congregationalist and firm believer in prohibition, told me that he knew only one Detroit family who had liquor in their home, and that a family from New York, who provided punch at a party, were looked upon with deep disapproval by their guests. As for drunkenness on the street, he observed it only about once a month. At the office of the Anti-Saloon League, the young woman in charge said that she "lived in a

ad de comood" and saw a frunken nane Ther week.

Amund te pres net raveters who ame ten o Cerit. A Nebraskan testified that Imana was wet and try by turns, and that Nebraska farmers were nized a sea iquor for their harvest lands. another traveer, from lowa, reported amiar anditons in the rural fistricts there a former nn-keeper from Wandotte Henan ampiained that prohibition had unet as business by dosing is bar out concerning Detroit these outsiders could only say "Guess it's ail under over When I suggested that cessit ncser. Cntano, just acass the ver. might be a haven for thirty Detriters, they cred. “Go and see You'l ind i tmer than Detroit."

Ccicred portraits of His Majesty King George adorn the Windsor saloons, which welcome all comers and serve the legal 2) per cent. beer, but the first bartender whispered, “I can take you where you can get 9 per cent." It was probably true, for such abuses and especially the illicit sale of whisky had led the Government of Ontario to reopen the liquor question. Windsor tingled with expectancy over an approaching plebiscite and its predicted wet result. Ontario has since voted dry, much to Windsor's indignation.

DETROIT ONLY SEEMS DRY

COR two entire days I kept telling

F the Detroiters, You've got a dry

town here," and the first definite information to the contrary came when a waitress said, nonchalantly, “Oh, wasn't 1 pickled last night!" I asked where. She said, "In my own apartment. My friend works for the Volstead men, analyzing stuff, and whenever he finds anything good he brings it to me." Next, a hotel-clerk said, "Every hotel, every apartment house, every rooming house has booze." Then a business man said, "It's sold even in butcher shops and candy shops." Moreover, the Detroit papers told of a great enforcement drive then in progress. Seventy-two hours it lasted, with police working over-time in two platoons instead of three and making

hundreds of arrests in scores of hidden distilleries and blind pigs. There were sixty arrests for drunkenness, proving, not that drunkenness is a common thing in Detroit, but that Detroit is a big city. Incidentally, policemen seized 1,000 quarts of wine, 5,000 quarts of whisky, and 75,000 quarts of beer.

SEEING THINGS AT NIGHT

ATE one night a Detroiter took me

remarked, "These are all houses of prostitution"; in another, "This is the 'coke' district"; and when we came to a long row of parked automobiles, he said, "Now I'll show you a cabaret, and you can see how afraid it is of the police.'

At the entrance, he rang. A waiter admitted us. We followed him down a hall to a second door, carefully guarded. There I was introduced to the proprietor and stepped into a beautifully decorated room where a hundred people, all very young and all of the upper class, were dancing. Between dances they drank "doctored" beer-that is to say, Volstead beer heavily "shot" with alcohol-out of extremely tall glasses at fifty cents each. This appears to be Detroit's favorite beverage. As I was told, Scotch whisky costs ten dollars a quart in Detroit, Canadian whisky from seven to eight dollars, gin from five to seven dollars.

Next day a Detroiter took me into a dry restaurant, led the way through a door in a half-height partition, and behold, we were in a wet restaurant where guests are served with tall glasses of powerful "doctored" beer.

Late the following afternoon, a reporter in the press-room at Police Headquarters said, "Isn't this drive a wonder?" and, pointing to a row of buildings visible from the window and barely a block away, commented, "Blind pig, house of prostitution, house of prostitution, blind pig, blind pig, blind pig." Another reporter, about twenty years old, said, "Come out and we'll visit pigs. I'm not feeling very fine-been in hospital from poison whisky --but come." We went on foot. By dinner time we had visited six hidden

drinking places-not a tenth of those he knew.

One of them masqueraded as a laundry, with parcels of linen on a counter and a girl behind it. If you take your "laundry" there, it will be ready on Friday night, just as the girl promises, but the work will have been done elsewhere. The work of this establishment goes on in the dirty rear room. A curtained door gives access, and I saw well-dressed business men drinking moderately at a bar covered with ragged oilcloth. The reporter ordered a "shot" of whisky, risking another two weeks of illness, and while we were there the Jewish barkeep held up a square bottle of colorless liquor and asked, "What do you call this?" "Gin," I ventured. "Wrong," he said. "Absinthe."

Some of the blind pigs were a flight or two up in commercial buildings. We would come to a door whose glass was painted green with a square inch of the paint scratched off to provide a peephole. The reporter would ring, an eye would appear, and the door would open.

The blind pigwhich I recall most vividly occupied a spacious but dowdy apartment hung with the pictures displayed by shops near five-and-ten-cent stores. In what was once the living room, seven or eight well-groomed patrons lolled in gaudily upholstered chairs and consumed the beer and whisky brought to them by a Jewess of the market type, sometimes setting their glasses on a round table in the middle of the room. Among the patrons was a girl, flushed with drink, whose face expressed the vague fright common to women who have blundered into vice and can see no way out. In other rooms I observed other women-some as young, some older. Except for the case of that girl I found no one visibly affected by liquor in Detroit, though I spent four days there.

HEARSES FILLED WITH LIQUOR

270

ago. Conditions have not changed, he says, and in that scrapbook I read: "There is an undertaking establishment in Detroit which has been doing a prosperous business and yet no corpse has ever been carried through its portals. Mourners come regularly, but they leave in better spirits than when they entered. A hearse wends its way up the driveway to the rear door. The undertaking establishment is a blind pig."

Also I read: "There is a lawyer's office in one of the downtown office buildings which does a big business but which never had a case except it be either Scotch, rye, bourbon, or beer. The sign

the door says 'Attorney-at-Law.' One enters to find a brisk and businesslike young woman at the stenographer's desk, and if the visitor is not known to her she asks his business. He wants to sue his mother-in-law or a railroad. He is ushered into a side room and the 'lawyer' explains that he does not handle that kind of business, whatever it might be. If the visitor is known, he nods smilingly to the young lady and goes into the other office. There he can buy what he wishes without being molested, in a comfortable chair and with good service."

And again I read: "There is a grain and feed store in one residential district, which to date, although it looks prosperous, has never sold a grain of corn or a wisp of hay. All business is done at the rear, where circular stains of many glasses warrant belief that the business is an active one.

And still again: "There is a Turkish bath-house in the down-town district which has been running since prohibition, but which for several years has given no customer a bath in relation to his epidermis. The place is a blind pig."

Finally I read: "There is a tire store in another street near by, which occasionally sells a tire, but which is usually just out of the kind you want. One might marvelOne might marvel at how a business so poorly conducted could exist. The place is a blind pig and the loads of tires which come in but never seem to go out, are in reality bottled goods and kegs."

Confronted with such scandals as these, the uninformed will ask indignantly, "Where are the Volstead agents?" The answer is, "Right on the job-the few of them that exist." America can have all the Volstead agents it will pay for, and the present appropriation allots only seventy for the entire State of Michigan. Quite properly they are endeavoring to check the torrent of liquor, not at its outlet, but at its source; and when I called upon Mr. Decker at Prohibition Headquarters he was interested, for the moment, in the quality, rather than the quantity, of the stuff many Detroiters are imbibing. He opened a drawer, took out several bottles, and stood them in a row. They had splendid labels -"Bacardi," "Pebble Ford," "Kentucky Tavern," "Cedar Brook." All these labels are furnished "confidentially to the trade" by a New York lithographing establishment whose price-list I was shown. Last came a bottle bearing a genuine label: "Parisienne Solution for Perspiring Feet, 90 per cent. Alcohol. Caution: For External Use Only; If Taken Internally Will Cause Violent Gastric Disturbances." Then said Mr. Decker, "The Bacardi, the Pebble Ford, the Kentucky Tavern and the Cedar Brook over there are simply this poisonous foot-wash, colored and flavored. Our analyses prove it."

UNJUST CRITICISM OF THE POLICE

indeed

Detroiters, blame the Detroit police for the amazing prevalence of blind pigs. This is unjust. As Congressman R. H. Clancy declared, in a recent statement before a Congressional committee in Washington, "The last two police commissioners of Detroit have both been men of the very highest caliber for the enforcement of law. One of these is United States Senator James Couzens, who labored several years as police commissioner and as Mayor of Detroit to enforce the prohibition law. He had been a strong dry advocate, but finally, after deep study and wide experience, he announced himself an advocate of amending the Volstead