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University Daily Kansap
Tuesday, Jan. 6, 1953
Ignoble Living Caused By 'Noble Experiment'
Twenty-three years ago, on Jan. 17, 1920, the curtain was rung up on one of the wildest shows ever to hit the country. Actors in this weird drama included rum-runners, prohibition agents, bootleggers, entertainers, hundreds of thousands of citizens turned dishonest, and thousands of blue-nosed drys who trembled with delight over the havoc they had caused.
The play was entitled Prohibition; the stage, America. The play was scheduled to run forever, but lasted only 13 years. The backers believed their production would have a tremendous effect on public morals. It did, not only on morals, but on lives.
More than 100,000 people died because of the show. Its moral effect was that people all over the country, who formerly blushed when using a slug in a phone booth, turned to outlawed liquor for a living.
Prohibition spawned such characters as Jack Diamond, Dutch Schultz, Charley Luciano, Lepke Buchalter, Bugsy Siegel, Jake Shapiro, and Meyer Lansky. The era made a hero out of an ex-dope peddler and briber named Al Capone.
This was the era of the hoodlum. Politicians, courts, and police were all in their pistol pockets. An illegal house closed by an honest agent was reopened before the customers were all out. No one was safe from the organized gangster. Gang wars were at their height and when a few innocent citizens were shot up by mistake well, it was just one of those things.
Gangsters came out of hiding and opened the speakeasy. The speak became the greatest innovation in America since electricity. Fashionable restaurants and cafes had to close their doors as they could not sell liquor. In its place came the new American clubroom and night club.
If prohibition was king of the roaring '20s, Mary Louise Cecelia "Texas" Guinan was the queen. Texas was the toast of the speaks. Her line, "Hello, Sucker," became the era's password. In her time she was mistress of ceremonies at every big speakeasy in New York.
Prohibition brought another innovation, the prohibition agent. Their job was to find the clubs selling liquor and close them up. There were a few agents and prohibition agents, but only one Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith.
Liquor joints in New York probably would have been much fewer if the Prohibition bureau had been able to recruit more agents like Izzy and Moe. Nobody booked less like Izzy, but 50 less like weighed 225 pounds, while Moe was two inches taller and tipped the scales at 10 pounds more.
An actor at heart, Izzv loved to
dress up. He wangled his way into speakeasies as an Irishman festooned with shamrock; as a collegian, with which guise he wrecked the liquor business at Cornell university; as a shirt-sleeved family man carrying a pitcher of milk; as a fisherman with his catch slung over his shoulder, and once as a prohibition agent. He told the bartender what he was and the barkeep laughed and gave him a drink. Izzy took him along to iail.
The stuff that was consumed was made of straight alcohol, various oils, iodine, caramel, and creosote. This was the good stuff. Those who couldn't afford this luxury drank bay rum, perfume, hair tonic, canned heat, and rubbing alcohol.
In addition to these refreshers, there were regional drinks. Farmers in the Mid-west drank a vile fluid drawn from the bottom of silos. The South was partial to panther whisky. It was moonshine, new, raw heavy esters and fuel oil, and three small drinks would knock a man out. A Kansas City favorite was sweet whisky made of nitrous ether, nitric and sulphuric acid.
Wichita became the home of the Jake trotters. This affliction came from drinking Jake, a fluid extract of Jamaica ginger. Drinking of it caused paralysis. The afflicted had no control of their muscles, and health authorities found 500 cases of Jake paralysis in Wichita.
It was a grand show while it lasted. People died, people had fun, and people made money. The drys claimed that the '20s was an era of clear thinking and clean living. The noble experiment, like many other shows, flopped. The critics said the show was horrible, but the backers thought, and still delude themselves with the idea, that it was the greatest show on earth.
On Dec. 5, 1933, the final curtain fell on the worst farce in history. Dreamers still think of the show as just one round of fun; realists remember it as near ruin of the country.
-Don Moser.
The first attempt to colonize New Mexico was made by Gaspar Castano de Sosa in 1590. Castano was later arrested for making an unauthorized entry and returned to Mexico City in chains.
POGO
WHAT? HE WASH OUT
HE'S MOUTH AFTER WARDS OF KISS MAMSELLE.?
HE IS ONE BIG FROMAGE.
ET POMME DE TERRE!
In The Editor's Eye
Do you remember last spring when Dan Gallin and Ann Mari Buitrego, members of the Socialist Study club, were arrested by Law enforcement police for selling Anvil magazines at the edge of the campus?
Bv ROGER YARRINGTON
Although the Socialist Study club is a recognized campus organization, the Anvil is not a recognized publication and has to be sold off campuses. The two were arrested and held without explanation for several hours after some local dooer reported them to the police.
The matter hasn't closed yet. At the end of the spring term, Dan Gallin told this writer that unless an apology was made by the city, he would sue for false arrest. He is now in New York but Ann Mari Buitrego is still at KU. She is still waiting for the apology.
CHANCELLOR MURPHY, anxious to see that such a fate does not befall any other students in the future, has been aiding in her attempt to get the apology.
Ann Mari's lawyer informs her that the statute of limitations allows her only one year to begin a suit for false arrest. She has decided to begin the suit if the apology is not received by the first of February.
The apology must be a formal written one. A copy is to be submitted to the Kansan so that all may read it.
ANOTHER STATEMENT that may be submitted to us for printing on this page will come from the Jayhawker board. They will set down their system and function.
We have promised to print the statement within our space limitations.
It seems the editorial page is considered a bulletin board for formal statements . . . first Koerper, then Wilson and now the Jayhawker board. Are there any others that would like to try to clarify their positions?
THE PERIOD BETWEEN Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed like a more inconvenient period separating two vacations.
Now that we have lived through that one, the period between Christmas and the semester seems even more so ... especially with the week of tests just before the end.
THE FIRST JAYHAWKER ever sculptured at the University is nearing completion in the third floor studio in Strong hall.
George Knotts, an art education major, is the artist. He says he did not receive much encouragement when he first began the project but now everyone seems quite enthusied.
The figure is less than a foot and a nail in height and is cut from limbation. It will go on display in the hallway there as soon as it is completed.
Daily Hansan
Member of the Kansas Press Assn., National Editorial Assn., Inland Daily Press, NAACP, and National Advertising Represented by the National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Avenue, N.Y. City,
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Editorial Assistants Charles Burch
EDITORIAL STAFF
News Room KU 251 Ad Room KU 373
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NEWS STAFF
Managing Editor ------------ Diane Stonebaker
Asst. Mgr. Editors ------------ Mary Cooper, Bob
Stewart, Chuck Zuegen
Max Thompson
City Editor ------------ Dean Epps
Society Editor ------------ Jeanne Fitzgerald
Sports Editor ------------ Don Nielsen
Asst. Sports Editor ------------ Clarke Keys
Telegraph Editor ------------ Chuck Morelock
Picture Editor ------------ Phil Starton
News Advisor ------------ Victor Pantley
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager            Clark Akers
Advertising Mgr.             Elbert Spivey
National Mgr.               Virginia Mackey
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Mail Subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester if in fall). Attend any day of the every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays and examination periods: July 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., Post Office
Little Man on Campus by Dick Bibler
under act of March 3,1879.
"Is my blind date timid or an upperclassman?"
Book Review
Greene Book Lacks Sincerity Of Early Suspense Stories
The Shipwrecked, by Graham Greene. New York: the Viking Press. 244 pages.
Graham Greene divides his books into two categories—the novels and the "entertainments." For many readers, the entertainments have been far superior to the novels, though at times it's difficult to see just what marks the line of separation.
"The Shipwrecked" is one of the novels, making it different from the superior entertainment thrillers—"This Gun for Hire," "Confidential Agent," "Ministry of Fear," which movie fans may recall as well as admirers of suspense stories. And the new book is not exactly new—it was published in 1935 as "England Made Me" and is being reprinted by Viking under the new title.
It's a gloomy, moody book, one that makes for pretty heavy going. Greene, as anyone who has read "The Heart of the Matter" will testify is a thinker as well as novelist, and he's concerned with a great many problems that trouble few writers. In "The Shipwrecked" he's concerned with an English woman, mistress and business aide of a powerful Swedish industrialist and international speculator, and the woman's brother, an adventurer, a wastrel, a man who depends on his own charms and his way with a woman in order to get along in the world.
Many readers will find "The Shipwrecked" pretty hard going. It's heavy-handed, and swings confusedly from straight narrative to flashback to stream of consciousness. Perhaps the success of Joyce and Faulkner prompted Greene to write in that style originally. He does not succeed.
What's disappointing about the book is that it is so inconclusive, Actually, it builds up to its climax well, despite the frequent wanderings. The feeling of doom is everpresent, as the Englishman finds himself in conflict with emotionless men of finance, whose aim seems to be that of becoming financial powers the world over. (Here again there is confusion. It would be interesting to learn just what shenanigans the boys were perpetrating.)
And, unlike some of the other Greene books, "The Shipwrecked" builds up no sympathies. Not that it's necessary to create heroes and heroines and villains and pawns. But it's all so what-the-heil. The reader sees the Englishman being swept into a whirlpool, sees the sister's almost abnormal love for her brother being wasted, sees the financier Krogh playing at becoming a human being. But no one cares.
So it's all pretty futile. One can
only wish for a return to the entertainments, which in most ways are the best things Graham Greene had done.
Addenda—there is no船. If anyone is shipwrecked it's through symbolism only. And why the title change?—Calder M. Pickett
Flashbacks
9
JANUARY 5
5 Years Ago
The University band, royally resplendent in its new uniforms, was the central attraction throughout the colorful pagery of the Orange Bowl Spirit of Youth celebration in Miami.
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An estimated 2,000 KU fans, many of them alumni, faculty members, and students went to Miami with the idea of seeing what made that city famous, and were willing to stay up until any hour to accomplish the feat.
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Chancellor Malott called on women students to enter war work to aid the nation and to help release men for military service.
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Elmer F. Beth, chairman of the School of Journalism, was elected secretary-treasurer of two national journalism organizations at a combined meeting held in Philadelphia during the Christmas vacation.
Personnel representatives from Boeing, North American, Cessna and Beech aircraft companies were on the campus to interview women students for their on-the-campus program for training as aeronautical technicians.
"W be o Smith Colle the
Dr. Laurence C. Woodruff receives word from the authorities of the 7th Service command that all seniors enrolled in the ROTC program would be allowed to complete their work for their graduation in May.
10 Years Ago
25 Years Ago
Commencement will be June 4 this year and has not been postponed until June 11 as indicated in a current report, it was definitely stated at the chancellor's office today.
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Several courses will be offered late in the afternoon and early in the evening next semester by the School of Education for the benefit of teachers in Lawrence and surrounding towns who wish to take part time work at the University.
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