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