Cocktails in Kansas
Dewey, Ernest A.
COCKTAILS IN KANSAS By ERNEST A. DEWEY Volsteadism having just observed its tenth birthday, there is more than usual reason why it may profitably be kodaked on its native heath. "It is contempt of...
...There was a time when Kansas was comparatively dry...
...Hypocrisy has become the settled policy of Kansas in regard to prohibition...
...The room walls quake with the noise, but nobody appears to give a whoop...
...The $40,000 vanished so quickly that the governor was forced to go begging again, this time for $75,000...
...The effect of the drive had been to hike the price a little...
...But, good Lord...
...Wholesale concerns supplying retailers in the central and western portions of Kansas report the sale, over an eight-months' period, of about one carload of malt syrup each per month...
...Its peace officers are mostly honest, sturdy, unimaginative characters...
...Five years ago there were thousands of stills in operation producing an average of about five gallons each...
...You see there is no drinking in Kansas 1 Anybody who says so is lying...
...Prices were reported as ranging from $2.00 a pint to $8.00 a quart...
...They're drunk, too...
...The night is one long, exuberant souse...
...Then the sheriffs had one...
...Kansas has the most elaborate dry-enforcement machinery in the nation...
...Retailing at nearly $12.00 a quart, it is too expensive for even the most generous host to set out for the consumption of his friends...
...The most respected Kansas families had adopted this method...
...It explains why some of them retire to private life with shattered nerves...
...National prohibition changed that...
...One schoolma'am of not too tender age was parading about the lobby like an army with banners...
...I think she was ill...
...As she walked across the lobby four young women came out of the elevator...
...It would be the sheerest folly for any aspirant to public office to pit himself against these powerful and arbitrary organizations...
...The Kansas bootlegger at that time had not known prosperity...
...The originator of such a rumor is bitterly flayed in the editorial columns of Kansas newspapers and attempts are made to discredit his testimony by Anti-saloon League operatives who discover that his grandfather was a horse-thief, or of foreign birth...
...although some of them still cling to a belief that effective prohibition enforcement is ultimately possible, even though improbable...
...Kansas's enforcement system is chiefly a matter of spies spying on spies...
...one can see young men and women wobble over the floor in all stages of drunkenness at public dances...
...Men and women stagger down the corridors in various stages of undress in the early morning hours...
...Her hat was knocked down over one ear and her hair was as disarrayed as a last year's bird's nest...
...They are merely ineffectual...
...Most of the tipplers, the younger ones especially, drink to get drunk...
...Most towns make no attempt to discourage revelry at such times for fear visitors will carry away a bad impression of the town...
...Dewey avers in the following article...
...As Jay House observed recently, "It is not safe even to associate with one who criticizes the sacred institutions of our country, and says it isn't enforced 1" It is contempt of court to say so, under the Kansas system of jurisprudence, but there is truth in the rumor that drinking is going on in Kansas...
...Shortly after he hung up the receiver, the deliveries began to pour in...
...Dewey is white, native and Methodist.-The Editors...
...Her eyes were glassy and her manner was a caricature of dignity...
...One hotel in Wichita sends up the house detective to count noses in each room where a party is in progress...
...That is the accomplishment of forty-nine years of anti-liquor lecturing...
...Joy begins to be unconfined on the opening day of such gatherings, rises to a bacchanalian peak about the evening of the second day and remains there until the closing day when it begins to decrease, presumably to give the delegates a chance to go home sober...
...To refuse to bow down and worship the sacred cow would be nothing short of political suicide...
...The best rye runs $15.00 and $16.00 a gallon...
...Today, Kansas high-school girls can and do drink themselves "goggle-eyed" at parties...
...A goodish bit of the governor's $40,000 was spent in an attempted clean-up of Wichita last April...
...When, and if, the rumorist has been properly squelched, all parties concerned in preserving the purity of the commonwealth assume beatific smiles, rub their hands and announce: "It is just as we have said...
...There are even a few brave spirits who are willing to admit it publicly...
...EVERY now and then a rumor that there is drinking going on in Kansas sneaks into circulation...
...Most people of the state, excepting only dry crusaders, politicians and William Allen White, will concede privately that Kansas is very, very wet and getting wetter...
...And they were...
...No prohibition fanatic was ever known who could keep his mouth shut...
...If one's friends become noisy in a hotel room, it makes little difference...
...before liquid and very diplomatic relations were established by rum-runners with Canadian and Mexican distillers...
...I thought maybe they'd get drunk, and they did...
...Any person must be naive indeed to imagine its being put to such use...
...One's only neighbors are usually intent on spending their own fine, large and riotous evening...
...before the average American householder became privy to the mysteries of malt extract, corn sugar and unfermented fruit juices-only one or two bootleggers were sufficient to care for the modest needs of an average Kansas community...
...The strains of Sweet Adeline waver uncertainly out into the night...
...Then, too, all officialdom is hampered in its work by the continual interference of overzealous, fanatical drys...
...Today they are fewer in number but most of them are capable of producing from 100 to 500 gallons per day...
...After midnight the desk clerk seldom bothers to answer a room telephone...
...The tenet of Methodism that prohibition is sacred must be devoutly and abjectly acknowledged...
...In Kansas, as in most other states, it has been conceded an impossibility to regulate the manufacture and consumption of home brew...
...It is little cheaper now than it was in the earlier days of Volsteadism...
...The law is repudiated in private life, but loudly endorsed in public...
...Kansas politics are dominated by a triumvirate the W. C. T. U., the Anti-saloon League and the Methodist Church...
...Nobody tries, at least in the larger hotels...
...When Governor Reed made the assertion that Hutchinson was the wettest town in Kansas, certain Wichitans were indignant about it...
...The distilling end of the business has developed to such a degree of perfection it is declared, that it is possible to "age" whisky satisfactorily in a few weeks...
...The indifference of the non-drinking public combined with the active opposition of the drinking element constitutes a barrier to effective work of the most conscientious officer...
...Of course the governor, the attorney-general, the secretary of the Anti-saloon League, the members of the W. C. T. U. and the Methodist ministry immediately rise in indignation to repudiate it...
...If he pretends ignorance of what is going on, the dry crank will go out and denounce him either as an incompetent or as "in league with the law-breakers...
...It assured privacy, restraint and refinement in drinking...
...Eight wholesale houses are located in this territory...
...Most prohibition-enforcement efforts are like that...
...W. Y. Morgan, who has been identified with the drys for more than thirty years, has admitted editorially in his paper, the Hutchinson News, that "There is ten times as much drinking in Kansas today as there was ten years ago . . . and consumption is increasing rather than diminishing...
...I've tried to run a respectable hotel, but I know when I'm licked...
...But if they attempted to eject every guest who became intoxicated, many rooms would be vacant night after night and the hotel business in Kansas would be ruined...
...Some of them, however, I still cherish...
...There is not a town, village or hamlet in the state where a man with a thirst and the requisite price cannot get it quenched-and that speedily...
...I hoped that this would be one convention I could remember as a sober one...
...Contending that the Eighteenth Amendment has made the state wet rather than dry, he comments upon the moral implications of the situation...
...Any convention not following this course would be marvelously original...
...Wassail is the order of the night...
...Most of the money was used to employ a special, hand-picked band of agents to augment the "voluntary enforcement officers" of the Anti-Saloon League, the attorney-general's spotters, government-enforcement officers, sheriffs' deputies and the police...
...One operator of a large liquor plant who sold out recently is reported to have received $20,000 for his business...
...Hilarious intoxication is no longer disgraceful, it is too commonplace...
...Sporadic enforcement efforts have reduced the number of stills without affecting the volume...
...His plant was dismantled and transported overland to be set up in Oklahoma...
...In due time a large box, conspicuously labeled "books," "furniture polish" or "lamp shades," would be deposited at his door by the expressman...
...Drinkers of Kansas are not confined to any one variety of beverage...
...Experienced tipplers assert that the quality compares very favorably with the pre-Volstead product...
...This product is advertised in Kansas newspapers as of invaluable assistance to the housewife in the making of bread...
...The present governor, Clyde M. Reed, asked the legislature at its last session to appropriate $40,000 for additional enforcement efforts...
...There is always at least one quartet somewhere on the upper floors and sometimes there are two or three...
...The local industry is able to supply corn and rye whisky as low as $8.00 a gallon, and as low as $5.00 when purchased in quantity lots...
...Since hotels are powerless to stop it, their managements have turned to devices for cashing in on the custom...
...In that pre-Volsteadian era, the thirsty Kansan resorted to the expedient of ordering a case of his favorite beverage from Kansas City, Missouri, just across the line...
...Such situations keep Kansas sheriffs in a constant state of irascibility...
...They have been educated to believe liquor is made for no other purpose...
...The Kansas constabulary is recruited largely from the plow handles...
...One day a hotel man who has grown grey in the business remarked to me: "These conventions are getting too strenuous entirely...
...The poor sheriff is in a quandary...
...Some idea of the volume of home brew may be gained by inquiring into the amount of malt syrup extract passing through the jobbing houses...
...Hard and heavy drinkers hold forth in the hotel-room parties...
...All available law officers were commandeered and a crusade to dry up the town was instituted...
...Hotel drinking reaches its most impressive heights during conventions...
...It could not be otherwise...
...To the uninitiated it may be explained that corn sugar is science's most bountiful gift to a bootlegger who has to fill a lot of liquor orders in a hurry...
...A salesman for a corn-products manufacturing concern told me recently that he sold two carloads of corn sugar in one Kansas town on his last trip...
...Since 12,000 cans of malt constitute a carload, 96,000 cans are sold per month...
...Hotel drinking is a quaint old custom peculiar to Kansas which has been approved and adopted all over the nation...
...One can of malt syrup is reputed to produce five gallons of highly alcoholic beer, which means that 3,760,000 gallons of beer are made and consumed by otherwise law-abiding citizens in the most thinly populated western half of this "dry" state...
...No one is expected to sleep in a Kansas hotel...
...The special fund was spent with a great deal of pother but any diminution in the liquor stream could have been measured with a micrometer...
...I expected them to get drunk, and they did...
...Look at 'em...
...Ninety-nine out of ioo hotel men swear helplessly to themselves at the wreckage visited upon furniture, bedding and fixtures by playful drunks...
...The traveling men had their convention...
...This is about a gallon for every man, woman and child in the state...
...When the bill is presented, the guests usually pay promptly, knowing it would be useless to kick...
...I have lived a long time," the hotel man continued, "and have lost many of my illusions...
...Wichita boasts a night club and prides itself on being the least hypocritical town in the state...
...When officials in charge of the drive pronounced themselves satisfied that the last vestige of forbidden beverage had been mopped up, the editor of the Wichita Eagle called the telephone numbers of a dozen bootleggers...
...It remains high in price because of the long distances it must be transported, and because boosters for local industry discourage rum-running by scattering tacks, nails and broken glass on favorite rum lanes, and tipping off enforcement officers in order to keep "foreign" liquor off the market...
...At the desk the individual renting the room is charged $1.50 for every person occupying it in addition to himself...
...One can sing, yell, curse or fight in peace...
...There is no law prohibiting the sale of malt extract or corn sugar...
...No indignant neighbors will be roused from slumber to send for the police...
...The aroma left by their passing reminded one, not unpleasantly, of a distillery...
...Lest there be any mistake, it may be admitted that Mr...
...Having to contend with dry cranks, gubernatorial snoopers, assistant attorney-generals while trying to enforce an unpopular law is enough to break down the most phlegmatic temperament...
...At one time-before an eighteenth constitutional amendment became America's pet statute...
...There is a plethora of drinking parties in Kansas homes, to be sure, but the true student of bibulous society will not overlook the hotels...
...For that reason I'm going to try to sell out before the Christian Endeavor has a convention...
...It is another by-product of the forty-nine years' experience with constitutional prohibition...
...In fact, there is a lot of drinking going on...
...Thus conviviality in the household was assured for another month...
...The next day the Eagle published a picture on its front page of the collection it had made...
...I'd hate to become a hopeless pessimist...
...Forty-nine years of experience with constitutional prohibition has removed illicit liquor manufacture from the status of an infant industry struggling for existence, and bootlegging is no longer a haphazard enterprise...
...Moderation is a matter of past history...
...One of the curious notions of that day was that a man had disgraced himself who advertised his inability to carry his liquor like a gentleman by becoming intoxicated...
...The hotels are not responsible for conditions...
...If they are intensely rural in thought and action, apparently blind to the urban view-point, that is to be expected in an agricultural state...
...The demand continues to a lesser degree through the other four months...
...If he reveals information, the prohibitionist invariably will blab it...
...The favorites are about as follows, listed according to popularity: spiked beer, homebrewed beer, sand-hill rye whisky, spiked ginger ale and other prepared concoctions, Kansas corn whisky, sugar moon whisky, grape wine, elderberry wine, bonded whisky, dandelion wine, synthetic gin, etc...
...He knows full well it is only a guest with a fiery thirst who is endeavoring to hasten the lagging steps of the bellboy sent out after another half-dozen bottles of near beer or ginger ale...
...It is not that the minions of the law make no effort to dry up Kansas...
...Bonded whisky is ninth on the list because of its price...
...That is why, when the dry hierarchy asserts there is no drinking in Kansas, all incumbents of public office from governor down to township trustee shout "Amen," and self-righteously denounce anyone who ventures to assert that prohibition is not a great success...
...Now the school teachers are having their convention...
...Reed took their denial of his statement at face value...
...Reed's got a lot of nerve, trying to give our town a black eye like that," declared resentful civic leaders...
...It is contempt of court to say so, under the Kansas system of jurisprudence, but there is truth in the rumor that drinking is going on in Kansas," Mr...
...Nor does one exist who does not regard himself as rightfully entitled to know everything that is going on in the sheriff's office...
...Since many partyists roam from room to room during the genial hours some of them are counted several times in the course of the night...
...He was, in most cases, a slatternly individual who peddled a concoction of indifferent quality to besotted social pariahs...
...A Kansan who becomes dissatisfied with the drinks ladled out for purely social purposes and desires to celebrate his independence simply goes to a hotel and rents a room for the scene of operations...
...We paused to let them pass...
...Holding as they do the political balance of power in the state, no official dares antagonize the drys...
...On a lounge in an obscure corner of the lobby another lady educator was reclining in an unconventional pose...
...They appeared to be afflicted with a sort of alcoholic halitosis...
...To say that Kansas is dry, or anywhere near it, is to be ridiculous...
Vol. 11 • February 1930 • No. 14
