Bernard DeVoto Quotes
Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man's lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?
DeVoto, Bernard. The Hour. Houghton Mifflin, 1951, p. 24.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The Congressmen who voted for Prohibition in the next century had not read or believed this quotation of Twain’s.
Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher
Sunday Excise Laws, sometimes called “Blue Laws”, prohibited commercial activity on Sunday, the day most Christians believe to be the Sabbath. Then such laws had not been constitutionally tested and when the were later were they were all found to be unconstitutional. Some Christian sects believe that Saturday is the Sabbath as do most Jews. Muslims believe Friday is the Sabbath. So any state determination on the Sabbath favors some religious viewpoint and discriminates against others. Today, decisions about Sabbath are left to individual consumers and store owners. Saloon keepers were particularly hard hit if they catered to the working man as in those days people worked a 6 day week and Sunday was the only day that people had leisure time. When TR became Police Commissioner, the law was on the books but rarely enforced as they were unpopular with most of the population—the orthodox Christians excepted. He felt obligated to enforce it even if he thought it too strict himself.
To this day efforts to regulate alcohol, the nation’s most frequent drug of choice and cause of addiction and violence, are met with the same “virtues” of employment and tax revenue. It was not until the 1990s that we learned that the revenue from alcohol taxes was far less than the cost of society coping with the problems of drinking and addiction.
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.
The poem was his summary of the Wickersham Commission’s (National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement) conclusion regarding Prohibition.
Bernard Augustine DeVoto (1897–1955), American historian, essayist, columnist, teacher, editor, and reviewer, was a lifelong champion of American Public lands and the conservation of public resources as well as an outspoken defender of civil liberties. He was the author of a series of Pulitzer-Prize-winning popular histories of the American West and for many years wrote The Easy Chair, an influential column in Harper's Magazine. DeVoto also wrote several well-regarded novels and during the 1950s served as a speech-writer for Adlai Stevenson. His friend and biographer, Wallace Stegner described Devoto as "flawed, brilliant, provocative, outrageous, ... often wrong, often spectacularly right, always stimulating, sometimes infuriating, and never, never dull."
