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OLD WALDORF-ASTORIA BAR BOOK
together with what was quantitatively described as
"beau–
coup cognac."
When the survivors of the War and its at–
tendant gustatory campaigns got back home, it was to a
country all set for strict Constitutional sobriety, legally en–
forced. America was to be dried up.
Of course, no such thing happened, except in theory.
Sumptuary legislation has always proved repugnant to free
men and difficult to enforce. Instead of becoming alcoholi–
cally arid, the United States grew wetter and wetter as
the years passed. The bootlegger, once among the most
despised members of society, became important-as impor–
tant in his way as the Missing Link might be considered
by ethnologists and anthropologists of the Darwinian
school. Indeed, he proved a missing link. He bought mag–
nificent motor cars or high speed motor boats, amassed
fortunes, grew into might and acquired a definite and
even respectable status as an indispensable member of so–
ciety. More than one read his name in some Social Roster,
-though it had probably been printed there before he
turned outlaw. The racketeer and the gangster, protected
by the politician and even in collusion with the revenue
officer, waxed powerful and became superior to the law.
The average American who wanted liquor bought from
one or the other. What he got was their business, not
his. True, persons with long purses might purchase what
was "good stuff" according to pre-war standards, but mis–
takes were made. The rest of us often paid fancy prices
for labels: Stimulated by the very difficulties created by
the law and encouraged by the ease with which those dif–
ficulties could be surmounted, as well as by the temptation
to break a statute that was never popular in large centers
of population, an appetite for strong drink spread among