Mark Twain Quotes
I prefer milk because I am a Prohibitionist, but I do not go to it for inspiration.
Twain, Mark. Mark Twain's Speeches. Harper & Brothers, 1910.
Before we had national prohibition, many Southern states and counties outlawed alcohol. “Wets” were those who wanted to allow drinking of alcohol. “Drys” were those who did not. The South was “dry” and voted overwhelmingly for national prohibition, and later voted to keep it even when a majority of the country voted to repeal it. The irony was that the South has always been, and still is, one of the highest alcohol consumption regions and has had much alcoholism. Hence Roger’s humor.
This is the basis for the Muslim prohibition on alcohol beverages.
In 1931 prohibition was a major political issue. Mayor William Hale Thompson organized campaign parades complete with circus animals. A camel carried the following sign.
This anti-prohibition plank passed by the largest margin of any on the platform.
i.e. serving no intoxicating beverages at the White House The practice to which he was referring was serving no intoxicating beverages at the White House.
A priest, Father Mathew, had been recommended for a State pension because of his extensive work of promoting temperance. However, his message played to and increased the degree of superstition, He preached that there were literal demons who would take over people and cause them to drink. The Queen was very aware of the symbolic value that every act of the crown conveyed and she was concerned about two things. First that superstition which she and most educated and enlightened people wanted diminished in society. Second, that the crown and the government would lose rational and scientific credibility so that future information and advice might be discounted by a cynical public who remember the crown arguing that demons were the cause of drinking and other ills. The same problem faces modern governments often. For example, in the middle of the 20th century, the Federal Government issued a film, Reefer Madness, which showed supposedly what happened when a person smoked marijuana. A few minutes after a young man smokes a marijuana cigarette, he starts to attack and rape a young woman at the party. The intent was to discourage people from smoking marijuana. But the consequences depicted were mostly false and to people who had smoked marijuana or observed smoking, the government appeared to be ignorant and or lying, The film became an icon of anti-government distrust and tendency to propaganda. Half a century later, the National Institutes of Health had trouble getting the true scientific facts about drug use believed as cynics still pointed to (and replayed on the Internet) Reefer Madness to show the government untrustworthy. Victoria understood this and took a long term view of the integrity and credibility of the crown and government.
Most people only know about Garrison’s abolition crusade. However he had others like temperance.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".
