AMERICA GONE DRY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1828, 23 December 1919, Page 6

AMERICA GONE DRY.

FAMISHING MIDNIGHTS. NEW CHARGES FOR HEAVY EATERS. THE SAD SOULS OF NEW YORK. HI. [By ADAM McCAY.J It looks as if America has "gone dry" for keeps; and that is what most people in the United States believe. One of my hosts in New York was a wine merchant who once rejoiced in being the American agent for a leading British beer; but in spite of all temptation to be optimistic, he cherishes no hope that he will ever Tecover his old source of income. At an age which gave him grizzled hair and moustache he has turned stockbroker, being certain that his lifetime will see no change in the ordinances against liquor. There is some sort of propaganda against the dry law. Some of the newspapers recently undertook to analyse the crime returns of Chicago, and they claimed that more people had been arrested and gaoled since the introduction of Prohibition than before it. But such isolated suggestions of evil consequence do not attract much public attention; and the majority of people in the United States appear to be just making up their minds to do without cocktails and highballs to which they had been accustomed. There is talk about the growth of "drug habits," but as yet there is no definite proof that this form of nervous excitement is being sought in place of the alcoholic stimulant. In the past the drug-taker has usually been developed from the alcoholic weakling, and has not been a separate phenomenon. It is still too early to declare tha\ morphia or cocaine is going to be chosen as a substitute for whisky. "Let Us Depart."

Some well-to-do Americans, indignant and forlorn, talk of leaving their native flag in order to seek some country where they can give dinner parties as gay and genial as those of old. You, hear this intention expressed by stout malcontents who, after retirement from business, chose their dwelling-place in California or Honolulu. They ask many questions about Sydney, and are delighted to hear of its soft climate and its loveliness as a place in which a famdy well financed can "loaf at ease."

It would not be surprising if a few such people actually pulled up stakes and came to Australia. But their number would be small; and even these few show profound anxiety when they ask the question, "Do you think that Prohibition is likely to come in your country also?" They would hate to jump out of the frying-pan into, the fire. Meantime New Yopk, Chicago and San Francisco all continue to lead, or endeavour to lead, their late-hour life in the cabarets. This midnight jollity of dance and song has always been painted by Americans as the pinnacle of high revelry. It may have been wildly exciting in the days when everybody was well speeded by mixed drinks, but to-day it is a very sombre and solemn festival.

The free-and-easy gaiety of Australia is not often visible in America. The Californians are gay, it is true, but farther east the revellers seem pretty miserable in their pleasures. A cabaret in New York just now looks very like that scene in Wilde's poem wherein the shadows dance their grotesque sarabands, and the marionette sits on the doorstep to smoke her cigar "like a live thing."

The "Dernier Cri." The lady who is the "dernier cri" in a New York cabaret in these days is not of the sort to make you rise and sing for sheer joy like a linnet or a nightingale. Her eyebrows are shaved, to be replaced by smoothly pencilled lines, and her upper eyelids are tinted. Her complexion is elaborately wrought of dull white and red. She is corseted as flatly as a Chinese woman, and her dved hair is manipulated to the last tendril. Her facial expression is that of a wooden jmage, and when she gets up to dance a two-step or a fox trot she does it with the animation of a frozen frog. If much whisky were coursing in a man's veins she might look lovelv as Cleopatra. On grape-juice anil near-beer she looks as if a rather bad piece of painted decoration had been by accident scraped off the wall to take part in the dancing.

Getting a Drink. Of course you can get a drink in New York if you go hunting for it. In the new-made freemasonry of thirst the city hums in a semi-con-fidential manner the hotels which will serve a whisky highball on the naming of certain names. In many a club each member still has a little left in his locker, and you hear two members conversing, "I can let vou have some gin for a cocktail." ~ "I can give you some rye whisky." In a private family which has been accustomed to take wine with its dinner there is still enough to let the host pass round the decanter of port. In some of the restaurants vou can openly order from a choice of French wines, and get what vou ask for. It the police choose to'step in at that moment they can order an arrest. The law has temporarilv decided that the waiter serving the hquor is the guilty partv, and after paying his fine the restaurant may still show a profit on its sales Prices

are something more than doubled by the disadvantage of illegality. Law-abiding cabarets serve their wines diluted in a "julep" with water and ice, so that they fall below 2J per cent, in alcoholic strength; and they -regulate the prices so that they do not make more than 700 or 800 per cent, profit on the liquor. The Glad Saloon. The working man is not deprived of his right to an illegal drink. Defiant saloons make a point of serving him with strong stuff if he wants it. When prosecuted they pay tho fines, and another saloon chips into the unlawful business.

While I was in Chicago the police raided a saloon of this sort. Two waiters and two bar-tenders were arrested, taken to the police depot, and released on bail. It was recorded in the Press that the remaining waiters and bar-tenders who were left serving all the drinks that were - called for were on the point of collapse when their comrades came back from gaol. The returned heroes were greeted with wild cheers by a thirsty congregation of customers, who for a time had not been able to get their drinks fast enough. Some States carry the doctrines of Prohibition to curious lengths. On board a west-bound railway train I asked the dining-car conductor for a box of cigarettes. In America, especially on the railway trains, you can get bad cigarettes at a higher price than in any other country I know of. One popular cigarette is called the Camel, and its proprietary recently advertised, "Camels supply everything you expect to find in a cigarette," on which the Chicago "News" passed the comment that this was indeed very frank. But in the dining-car the conductor first looked at his watch and then at the train timetable, and decided that he couldn't sell cigarettes. We were in Kansas.

At last the cigarettes were slid to me under the table, and I paid double price because of the criminal risk to which I had tempted the conductor.

Prices of Food. Prohibition seems to have an effect on the restaurants, driving them into a career of public piracy in the charges they make for food. As a rule, the proprietors of high-class restaurants in Australia have all had the same story to tell. In common with hotel proprietors and companies, they find that the dinnertable and supper-table by themselves will not/pay profits or dividends. But if the money paid for the solid meal can be made to balance what is spent on providing it, there is profit in the wines which are drunk with the meals.

Thus the price of a good meal in an Australian hotel remains remarkably moderate compared with what has to be paid in America. This has reference not only to the luxurypriced hotels in New York, which, to show their superiority, will charge five dollars, or well over £l, for a single choice* dish; it is true even in restaurants which could be called second-rate. Places which do not pretend to luxury, or even to daintiness, ask from six to eight shillings for a single slab steak, and charge, moreover, an extra shilling for a potato, another for coffee, and sixpence more for bread and a meagre pat of butter. There is in these restaurants a mean and hungry avarice which is novel to an Australian, used to the more careless cheer of his own country. Therefore I am tempted to feel sorry for the Australian Prohibitionists if they should ever succeed in having their way, for I have noticed that most of them are hearty eaters —excessively hearty eaters. At present they exercise their mighty tripe-and-sausage talent at the expense of the wicked who order the burgundy or the champagne. Let them make the restaurants dry, and they themselves will have to pay for all their stews and ragouts and turkey-legs. The dry day will be a sad day for the heavy-eating teetotaller.

What's in a Name? "A highball by any other name would taste as nifty," says the American Shakespeare. But dismiss the highball, keeping the name, and what is left. The American struggle to find names for the temperance drinks is pathetic. On a restaurant list you may read of 40 different beverages—punches and cocktails and highballs, made of grapejuice and orange and lemon—and they all taste the same. There are nine-and-thirty ways of constructing a teetotal cocktail, and every single one of them is wrong! Most people drink iced water with their meals and run away from the pink lure of Honolulu punch, the green deception of the imitation cremede menthe.

Some witnesses say that the work-, ing men of America are better off since Prohibition came in. They are certainly earning higher wages, but the question of drink or no drink has had little to do with that movement. I talked with some workmen in New York who said that since drink had been denied to them they had saved more money. They.were just about to go on strike. I don't know whether such an application of unusual savings would please those commercial magnates of New Zealand who were so strong for Pro* hibition in the recent campaign.