Articles from 1923
In order to gain a secure footing on the issue of Prohibition law enforcement, a Federal law was passed seeing to it that no foreign ships within the three mile limit of the United States could ever keep alcohol or wine in their ship stores.
When the architects of Prohibition were planning their dry fairyland they always knew that the weak spot in their scheme was going to be the vast borderlands that separate the United States from Canada and Mexico.
The attached article from 1923 outlines the concerns President Coolidge’s administration had regarding Prohibition law enforcement along the Canadian frontier.
The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:
Can you read and write?
Five million men and women of America responded:
We cannot!
Fresh from his trip through post-war Europe, U.S. Senator Robert La Follette (1855 – 1925) declared:
The Germans have been underfed for seven years. They are suffering for want of food, fuel and clothing. Young children and old people are dying from hunger and disease induced by hunger. Emaciated, despairing, they are waiting the end.
These articles makes it clear that Clemanceau and Churchill were not the only ones who feared German duplicty in regards to the rearmament clause. Written a year apart are these two columns from Time and Punch insisting that the German Reichswehr had numerous weapons that were banned under the Versailles Treaty:
My attention had often been called to persistent rumors regarding Germany’s secret army. Whispers had reached me from quite reliable sources of over a million Teuton soldiers, well-officered and disciplined…
Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations.
A dictatorship can last forever, if properly managed. It is my task to provide a mechanism that will endure and to have the various parts of this mechanism running without friction; then after I am gone it will be able to run itself. A dictatorship must answer the purpose for which it was introduced. Certainly the Fascist regime will last a very long time… Socialism works on the principle that all are equal, but Fascism knows we are far from equal. Take the great masses of human beings. They like rule by the few.
This article was written shortly after the French occupation of the Ruhr and at a time when Adolf Hitler did not have much of a following -he was something of a curiosity to the Western press:
A principal reason why Hitler’s followers have begun to doubt him, it appears, is that the ‘dreaded gathering’ of the National Socialists in Munich came and went without ‘accomplishment.’
Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955
The Time Magazine review of Charlie Chaplin’s film, A Woman of Paris, fell in line with many other reviews of the work: they all believed that Chaplin, as director, had moved the ball forward insofar as the development of film – and Time hoped that they had seen the end of Chaplin the clown. However, the 82 minute film was a commercial flop, primarily because he wasn’t in it (they chose not to publicize that he played an extra’s roll for one quick scene).
The first film Chaplin had directed was The Kid (1922) – and you can read about that here…
Here is a column that appeared in the October 15, 1923 issue of Time that reported on the amount of devastation that was inflicted upon the German-occupied areas of Northern France between 1914 through 1918.
More on this topic can be read here
Alabama native John Purifoy was a regular contributor to Confederate Veteran Magazine and he wrote most often about the Battle of Gettysburg; one of his most often sited articles concerned the roll artillery played throughout the course of that decisive contest. In the attached article Purifoy summarized some of the key events from a rebel perspective. In the last paragraph he pointed out the one crucial error Lee soon came to regret- take a look.
A report that anticipated a hefty load of European immigrants for 1923.
During the Jazz Age, there were a number of opinion pieces published concerning the general feeling of malaise and disillusionment that was experienced throughout most of the Western nations. In this article, written by a well known Protestant theologian of the time, it is stated that a new day has come to America – one that shows itself with a blatant disrespect for law and order.
Our most obvious lawlessness is the breaking of the prohibition laws… The shame of the present situation is that the law is not being chiefly outraged by poor people; it is mainly the men of means, prestige and influence, who ought to know better. Obviously there has been a breakdown of authority in the state and the rise of a rampant and selfish individualism.
During the summer of 1923, 40 state superintendents of the Anti-Saloon League convened in Westerville, Ohio in order that they might assess the changes wrought by Prohibition and draw-up plans for the coming year.
On comparing notes, they agreed that the Atlantic states are not more than 50% dry and the country as a whole not more than 70% dry…
The opposite number of the Anti-Saloon League (established 1893) was The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (1918 – 1933). As the name implied, it was organized for the purpose of repealing Prohibition in the United States and sought to achieve this end by printing pamphlets and articles and engaging lecturers. This short notice announced that the Association was setting up the Face the Facts conference in the Nation’s Capital – to be convened immediately after the League had closed their own conference. Many elected officials would be in attendance.
– from Amazon:
The Anti-prohibition Manual: A Summary of Facts and Figures Dealing With Prohibition
It is said that the Eighteenth Amendment would never have come into being without the efforts of one Wayne Bidwel Wheeler (1869 – 1927), and who are we to doubt it. In this column, the father of Prohibition recalls the numerous times throughout American history in which those who held minority opinions bit the bullet and acquiesced to will of the majority – all but one faction, the liquor interests. Time and again, he points out, this was the one tribe that wouldn’t budge.
When the four brothers La Montagne were arrested for violating the Volstead Act in 1922, the social butterflies of New York society were shocked; not simply because some of their own had been roughed-up by the police, but shocked because they had no idea as to where they were to acquire their illegal hooch in the future.
The plea for leniency made by several well-known lawyers, on the grounds of social prominence of the accused, was ‘pitiable and foolish’, in the opinion of the New York Globe.
In summing up his case…the United States District Attorney said:
‘To allow these defendants to escape with a fine, it seems to me, would…justify the belief that men of great wealth or influence or power are above the law.’
The Crackers of old hated miscegenation (i.e.race-mixing). Sadly, they seemed to have removed the concept of love from the equation – and happily this article reminds us that not everyone felt the same way in 1923. The attached column concerns U.S. Senator Arthur Capper (1865 – 1951) and all the hot water he got into when he sponsored a bill that would have, among other things, criminalized race-mixing.
