“New Year: 1919, Chapter Two”

c. 2007 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(12-07)




Note to Readers: After going to press last week, I rediscovered the ‘lost’ photo of our bygone Geauga Republican newspaper headquarters. It hangs in the Chardon Post Office on Center Street. The look of this visual document indicates that it was probably taken at a time close to that represented by the issue I discovered on eBay.

TIME TRAVEL – DO YOU BELIEVE?

After studying my tattered copy of the Geauga Republican, such adventures began to seem possible. In a literary sense, I had journeyed across the last century to witness events that transpired long before my birth.

I had engaged in a backwards version of what iconic late-night radio host Art Bell calls ‘remote viewing.’

The yellowed newsprint spoke with authority about county life in 1919. It opened a portal to dirt roads, primitive lights, and developing communities that were bustling with rural enthusiasm. Yet one subject dominated the paper.
They called it ‘The Temperance Question.’

My parchment relic was dated January 29, 1919 – just after the eighteenth amendment to our constitution had been ratified. Offered was text of the measure that decreed prohibition of beverage alcohol in America would commence, twelve months later:

“AMENDMENT XVIII – (1) After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. (2) The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

It was in a joint resolution from Speaker of the House of Representatives Champ Clark; Vice President and head of the Senate Thomas Marshall; and secretary James M. Baker.

The Republican newspaper offered a straightforward assessment of the populist groundswell and its leaders:

UNITED STATES WILL NOW TRY EXPERIMENT OF PROHIBITION

Astonishing Action of an Individualistic People With a Strong Sense of Personal Liberty Is Brought About by Lessons of the Great War – Additional Legislation Planned to Enforce Law – Will ‘Wets’ Contest? – Ratification Details.

“We are an individualistic people… yet here we have set out to regulate personal habit, not by statute but by constitutional amendment.
And the manner of the passing of this constitutional amendment is quite as remarkable as the amendment itself. Action on the seventeen previous amendments to the Constitution has taken between nine months and forty-three months, an average of about two years. The resolution providing for this eighteenth amendment was passed by congress December 17, 1917. On January 16, 1919, its ratification by the states is accomplished.

What has brought about this ratification so quickly? Obviously the National Prohibition party has had practically nothing to do with its accomplishment. The answer evidently is that the war has brought it about.

Prohibition (is) both an economic question and a moral question. The war set the American people to looking at prohibition from both viewpoints. We got accustomed to the thought that grain was better eaten as food than swallowed as liquor, inasmuch as we were told that food would win the war. We saw what the enforced sobriety of military service did physically, mentally and morally for young men who had indulged in liquor in peace times.

Some of our allies got into the war in a hurry because they had to – Belgium and France to save their lives, Great Britain to save its national honor. America took its time – a long time – and gradually worked itself up to the determination to fight. Doubtless much consideration of prohibition was a part of this slow process. So that when the opportunity came the states of the Union went over the top just about as the American marines and doughboys did in the Argonne.”

The Republican’s outlook was unexpected, and interesting. What they noted was the rise of a kind of activism that would shape our country throughout the Twentieth Century. We were changing from a nation founded on libertarian self-reliance, into a modern republic with strong centralized authority being wielded in the name of goodness.
Even then, controversy afflicted the political proceedings. The report continued with details from Capitol Hill:

“Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, author of the amendment, holds that national prohibition will go into effect January 16, 1920, certification and announcement of ratification being merely a matter of form. It is needless to say that the wets do not accept this view and that effort to delay the formal proceedings will be made, preliminary to contesting the legality of ratification.”

Ohio figured prominently in the movement. Both the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and The Anti-Saloon League began their odyssey on our soil. So the Republican had great cause to print an extensive background view for its readers:

“When the movement which has now brought about prohibition began in the United States it was called the ‘temperance movement’ and the phrase ‘temperance question’ embraced all the problems in connection with the use and abuse of alcoholic drink. Temperance, of course, primarily means moderation, while prohibition, as used in this connection, means a form of sumptuary legislation abolishing the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors. In the early days, ‘temperance’ was loosely used; sometimes it meant moderation and sometimes total abstinence. Many of the first crusades were against ‘spirits’ – distilled liquors as distinguished from wines and beer. Early temperance pledges were often framed to draw this distinction. However, the word temperance as used in the titles and constitutions of reform organizations soon came to mean total abstinence.

This temperance movement, which shows signs of bringing about prohibition in many parts of the world, began in the United States. The temperance pledge was in existence before 1800. Possibly the first temperance society was organized by the farmers of Litchfield county, Connecticut, in 1779. In 1808 a society was formed in Saratoga county, New York; the 43 members were pledged not to drink rum, gin, wkisky, wine or distilled spirits except by a physician’s advice, in illness or at public dinners, under penalty of 25 cents.

The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance was organized in 1813. The American Temperance society was founded in 1829. Thereafter organizations of various kinds came thick and fast, many of them securing large memberships. Among them were the Sons of Temperance of New York (1842), Order of Reachabites (1835), Society of the Washingtonians (1840) and Good Templars (1851).

In 1873 began the Women’s Temperance crusade in Ohio. Women held prayer meetings in saloons in this campaign against alcohol. This movement grew so strong that in 1874 in Cleveland the National Woman’s Christian Temperance union was formed.”

While it was an exercise that failed ultimately, the temperance movement demonstrated how political action could affect public policy with sheer determination. It also indicated that there were limits to the ability of our federal government to shape citizen conduct. Given enough time, American liberty surpasses all else with dependable regularity.

My episode of time travel had been rewarding. I was grateful to the yonder journalists who composed my issue of the Geauga Republican. Only one question remained – what local item would appear next in the commercial cyberworld of eBay?