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About The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip. (Portland, Or.) 1923-1927 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1926)
Page Ten THE UNITED AMERICAN EDITORIAL OVER-PRODUCTION WILL ELIMINATE THE DIS TILLER AND THE BOOTLEGGER THE MINDS that have been at work to counteract the prohibition laws have now succeeded in dis covering a new cheap process of making alcohol from vinegar. Combined with two chemicals, easily obtained at any drug store, a vinegar “kick” distiller can make a gallon for fifty cents, according to John Whitehead, agent of the Bureau of Internal Revenue at Phila delphia. Mr. Whitehead has been investigating the new method since last November, and it is his opin ion that “there is no way to prevent it’s manufacture, unless the bootlegger is caught with the alcohol in his possession, as no still is required in the new pro cess.” Rather discouraged over the outlook, Mr. Whitehead in an interview with the Associated Press said: What is the use of having large squads of men watching breweries and supervising withdrawals of commercial alcohol if a bootlegger can buy 1,000 gallons of vinegar and turn it into a high grade, safe quality of alcohol, for that is exactly what is going on all over the country at this moment. Mr. Whitehead gives the following details as to how the vinegar-alcohol manufacturers work: The vinegar is placed in a large vat, the chemicals are thrown in and the mixture allowed to stand. After a period of time the chemicals sink to the bottom of the container, leaving the alcohol on top. The Pennsylvania federal prohibition director, Wm. G. Murdock, in stating that he was aware of the new alcohol production, stated, hopefully, that the government was working to find a way to meet the new problem. With carloads of vinegar obtainable anywhere in the country, the bootlegging fraternity will have no trouble in obtaining the raw material. The fact, how ever, that the vinegar-alcoholic drink can be produced so cheaply and without a still might become an aid in the process of eliminating the bootlegger. If the “big money” factor in the illicit liquor traffic could be destroyed the bootlegger would become a thing of the past and the fact that alcohol will become so disgust ingly cheap will probably destroy much of the incen tive to obtain and consume it. A thing that becomes so plentiful that there is no expense connected with obtaining it, usually loses it’s popularity and ultimately, the demand stops. WHEN FAITH AND IDEALS BECOME IMPAIRED COME PEOPLE think. Others don’t. Still others dwell in the land that lies between. The last type always supplies the procrastinators who sneer, doubt and ridicule growth and human progress. They have no faith and they know no redeeming ideals. They grope in darkness and treasure the phantom shadows that take form where the sunlight of reason, love and human goodness is shut out. They serve but one purpose — that of furnishing the material necessary for greater growth and development of the mind that is ever active in the workshop of thought. ■ April 1926 Among the finest products from this source are those emanating from the mind of Dr. Frank Crane, who delivers the following stop-look-and-listen epi grams in a recent issue of Current Opinion: The road to ruin is to refuse to grow. In fact, as far as science and nature are concerned, the great Unpardonable Sin is to quit growing. When an apple ceases to ripen and ripen, it begins to rot and rot. When a tree ceases to grow sturdier, higher and wider, it begins to decay. And when a man ceases to learn and change his opinions and develop new and better tastes and enter upon wider regions of faith and love, the jungle forces of cynicism, doubt and reaction come in. The same is true of nations. It is commonly said our safety lies in clinging to the ideas of our forefathers. Quite the contrary. That way lies surest death. If our forefathers had clung to the opinions of their fore fathers, and so on back, the Caucasian race would still be herding sheep at the foot of the Himalayas. No more nonsense is perpetrated about any subject than about the safety of nations. Most steps taken to insure our safety are precisely the ones that insure our destruction. Walls, castles, armor, battleships and armies, and the like, are the grave-diggers of nations. The best life insurance for a nation is vigorous growth. No nation that is full of the tides of health and growing rapidly, not only in numbers but in wisdom and purpose, can be destroyed. No nation that crawls into its isolation and depends upon the thickness of its shell for protection can last long. Premier Smuts of South Africa, in a recent speech, dwelt gravely upon the rapidly developing crisis in Europe, where forces, he said, “are being set going which may in the end ruin European civilization.” The trouble with Europe, the trouble with the world, is that it has backslidden from its ideals. It has slumped from its high faith. It is listening to the frog-like croaks of na tionalists, militarists, reactionaries and cynics. What the world needs is what a tree needs or an animal needs — life force. Life force does not come from beef nor beer nor money bags nor poison gas nor guns. It comes from faith. Not faith in the mode of baptism nor the supremacy of Allah, Buddah or Isis, but faith in man kind. The faith that saves is the faith in humanity. The doubt that damns is the doubt of humanity. A co-equal source of power is love. Not love of 'beauty nor of order nor the Whig party nor of the French nation, nor of this or that totem — but love of people, love of the human race. Hate, envy, distrust, and all such things are negative qualities. Rather they are destructive microbes. They eat the heart out of a nation. The surest road to ruin is a belief in those destructive forces which history shows to end inevitably in death. The realm of. reason is delightfully pleasant to dwell in, as compared with the realm of darkness, where lives the spectres of distrust, intolerance, suspicion and hate. It is delightfully pleasant to live creative lives in the realm of reason with every window of the soul open on the sunny side of life where the fairest flowers of harmony bloom eternally, creating the incentive to labor ceaselessly for human betterment in the laboratory of love. HELP TO PROTECT THE NATION’S FORESTS \ATITH THE coming of spring and the season for out-a-door sports — hiking, camping and fish ing along mountain streams and on the shores of placid lakes in the forest — the admonition is again in