#1925Club: Americana

My first book for the #1925Club was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes where Anita Loos makes several sly, satirical references to the journalist, critic and public intellectual H. L. Mencken.

He is unmistakably the model for one of her characters and a source of some of the book’s humor.

Mencken admired Loos’s wit and he was one of her literary champions. She wrote it to tease him after noticing that, despite his professed intellectualism and cynicism about women, Mencken was repeatedly dazzled by silly blondes. Lorelei Lee, the naïve but calculating diarist of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,  is a caricature of the kind of woman who turned Mencken’s head.

In her diary, Lorelei writes about “gentlemen who have brains” and “gentlemen who are interested in culture,” and when  she describes meeting literary men, she turns their supposed sophistication into comic vanity. One such man tells her that she reminds him of “the type of girl that H. L. Mencken writes about,”  but she has no idea who that is and simply thinks it’s a compliment.

In her memoir A Girl Like I (1966), Loos said she wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes after observing Mencken fawning over a “dumb blonde.” She mailed him the manuscript as a joke, but to her surprise he helped get it published in Harper’s Bazaar and championed it.

Did he realise that the satire was aimed at him? 

The entire conceit of the novel is that the shrewd and calculating goodtime girl – Lorelei – is able to manipulate men of presumed culture and intellect. It’s a playful jab at Mencken’s susceptibility and his cultural pretensions.

Early in the book, Lorelei explains why she prefers intelligent men:

“I always say it is better to be interested in brains than in automobiles because you can never tell when the automobile may run out of gas.”

Later, Lorelei notes:

“It really is wonderful how gentlemen who have brains love to talk about their brains and tell you all about the things they know, so a girl really learns a lot from gentlemen who have brains if she listens hard.”

Loos ridicules the intellectual male who believes himself a mentor, while Lorelei – the unschooled ingenue – quietly extracts what she really wants (jewels, travel, advancement).

Mencken – the “Sage of Baltimore” – is turned into a running joke. 

Americana

Mencken had his own book for 1925.

He was the editor of a staple feature – “Americana” – in his magazine, The American Mercury. It was a collection of whacky stories and news items  – often absurd or just plain appalling or ridiculous, from around the United States. They were published in book form as Americana

Mencken’s preface to the book explains that these bizarre snippets were compiled to provide “documentary evidence” of the minds of the American masses.

Mencken’s Preface explains the What:

They come in part from newspapers of wide circulation and from other easily accessible sources, but they come in larger part from little country papers, from broadsides and other such documents of purely local circulation, and from handbills and other advertisements observed along the streets. They thus offer a singularly intimate and revelatory insight into the daily life and thought of the American people … Here are the things that Americans of the vast majority read every day. Here are the ideas that are regularly presented to them. Here are impromptu, unposed portraits of the prophets and sorcerers who lead them.

…and the Why

… one of the main aims of THE AMERICAN MERCURY, is to make the enlightened minority of Americans familiar, by documentary evidence, with what is going on in the minds of the masses – the great herd of undifferentiated good-humored, goose-stepping, superstitious, sentimental, credulous, striving, romantic American people. Some of the ideas cherished by that herd are obviously insane. Many others stand in sharp opposition to everything that civilized men regard as decorous and for the common weal. 

It must be obvious, he says that there can be no progress or improvement until this unmistakable American “home-brew” is fully understood. 

It strikes notes that are as unmistakably American as the sound of a jazz band, a revival hymn or a college yell. It drips with the juices of Kiwanis, the American Legion, the Ku Klux, Rotary, the Mystic Shrine, the Elks, the Sons of the Revolution and the Y.M.C.A. It is genuine home-brew.

What follows is the collection of that documentary evidence presented alphabetically by state. Dip in anywhere or read from front to back and prepare to be bewildered, horrified, and amused. 

The book is a trove of eye popping absurdities, oddities that range from the grotesque to the eccentric. Politicians, prohibition, education, race relations, crime, public morality, sex, and religion are common themes. 

Some examples:

Alabama:

Incidents of the Christian life in the back country: Robertsdale Klan, No. 78, appeared at the Baptist Church at Summerdale last night and presented Rev. Kimbrough with a beautiful new Bible to replace the one destroyed several weeks ago by vandals who entered the church at night, tore up the Bible and then locked goats in the building.

Field sports in the same region, from the archives of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives:  Adamsville, Ala.: Will McBride, 60 years old, was taken from bed by a mob and beaten to death. He had been arrested on a charge of assault but dismissed by the judge. Some school children had become frightened at seeing him walk along the road.

California

Want ad in Mr. Hearst’s great Christian periodical, the Los Angeles Examiner: WANTED: good looking stenographer: stenographic ability not essential. Apply 905 American Bank B’ldg.

From a list of acts forbidden by city ordinances in Los Angeles, prepared for the use of visitors: Shooting rabbits from street cars . Throwing snuff, or giving it to a child under sixteen. Bathing two babies in a single bathtub at one time. Making pickles in any downtown district. Selling snakes on the streets.

Colorado

Law-making by the Polizei in Denver, as reported by the patriotic Post: Chief of Police Candlish issued an edict Thursday forbidding white women or white girls being in the employ of Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican Negro restaurants, candy stores or other places of business. It is estimated more than 100 white women are now working in such places. The chief did not promise to find jobs for them. ” I’m not going to allow any white girl to be in the employ of these people,” he said.

Connecticut

Dispatch from Middletown: Asserting that there is technically no such thing as a highball, Professor Karl P. Harrington, head of the Latin department at Wesleyan, has asked for the sup- pression of the college song, ” Drink a Highball at Nightfall.”

Début of a new crime in the land of Blue Laws, as reported by the Waterbury Republican: Amelia Moses, eighteen, was arrested yesterday by Lieutenants Timothy Hickey and Milton MacMullen of the Detective Bureau, charged with being in danger of falling into vice.

Georgia

Proud boasts of the estimable Atlanta Constitution: Georgia produces enough fine apples each year for every man, woman and child in the State to have two bushels. Georgia’s sanitarium for the insane has had for the past year every bed occupied and many waiting to be taken in.

Indiana

Scientific note on the Mexican from the distinguished Lake County Times of Hammond: As a general rule, he is not one half as bad as exaggerated newspaper reports make him out. He is human like the rest of us, only his customs and ideas are different from ours. Hence it is our mission to educate him in our ways and thoughts.

Iowa

From a public harangue by one of the ordentliche Professoren at the Iowa State College: Des Moines has the largest per capita ice cream consumption in America. The second largest gold-fish farm in the world is located within seventy miles of Des Moines. The best pair of overalls made on the American continent come from Iowa. There is no group of two and a half million people in the world who worship God as Iowans do.

Kansas

Public bull issued by the Mayor of Pomona, from the Pomona Republican: WARNING! Notice is hereby given that the practice of pitching horse-shoes anywhere near or upon the public streets and alleys in the city ofPomona, Kansas, on the Sabbath day must be stopped. Any person violating this order will be vigorously prosecuted. J. S. LARGENT, Mayor.

Kentucky

Heroic words of the Hon. Augustus Owsley Stanley, A. B., as reported by the Lexington Leader: If Governor Fields is right, I am going to stand by him because he is right. If he is wrong, I am going to stand by him because he is a Democrat.

Resolution adopted by the board of trustees of the Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union Training School at Louisville: Resolved, that in the future no student wearing bobbed hair will be admitted, and that those in the school now wearing such hair be requested to allow it to grow and to wear nets until it has attained proper length.

Maine

Moral progress reported by a press dispatch from Waterville: Women students at Colby College who smoke will be expelled immediately from the institution, it was announced by Miss Nettie N. M. Runnels, Dean of the Woman’s Division, in letters sent last night to the parents of all girls enrolled in the school.

Massachusetts

The Higher Learning at Smith College, glimpsed in a dispatch to the eminent Springfield Republican from Northampton  A pickled monkey, which once acted in one of D. W. Griffith’s pictures, is perhaps the strangest gift ever presented to Smith College, which has received many useful, ornamental and historically valuable presents.

Minnesota

Warning to amorous motorists on a police sign at Lake Johanna: Side curtains not permitted unless it is raining.

Picture of the Nordic Blond paradise drawn by a contributor to the Journal of the American Medical Association: I have lived in Minnesota, the land of Magnus Johnson, for thirteen years, a western Scandinavia where the birds sing in Swedish, the wind sighs its lulabyes in Norwegian, and the snow and rain beat against the windows to the tune of Danish dirge.

Missouri

Scientific police methods in St. Louis, as described by the eminent Times:  William Lashley, a Negro, was reported by the police yesterday to have admitted shooting to death Sidney E. Sears of the police force. It now appears that Lashley made this ” confession ” after he had been knocked unconscious with a gun butt, had his jaw broken, three ribs fractured, and had been kicked in the face and stomach and otherwise manhandled. After all these things were done to him, he says, he was asked about the shooting.

New Jersey

Progress of Law Enforcement in Paterson, as reported in a press dispatch from that great city: The Women’s Independent Republican League of Paterson, at a meeting Monday night, adopted a resolution pledging its entire membership of 100 to the enforcement of ” absolute patriotism ” among men. They agreed to pay particular attention to military parades, and in every case where a man fails to properly salute the colors to knock his hat from his head.

New Mexico

Warning to virgins posted in the Y.W.C.A. at Albuquerque:  Remember that these diseases can be contracted from kissing or dancing with a man who is diseased. Never forget that at least 25 per cent, or one out of every four men whom you know are diseased.

New York

Sign hanging in the studio of an eminent Manhattan chirotonsor  After the hair is cut it should be singed in order to close up the ends. This prevents your catching a cold in the head through the open ends of the hairs.

(As he explains in his glossary – a chirotonsor is a fancy name for barber.) 

From an address by Dr. J. H. Hawkins at Oceanside, L.I.: The way you can tell a Klansman is by looking at a clean, upright man who does not live with another man’s wife.

Replies recorded by a Sun reporter who sought answers in lower Broadway to the question, Should Christianity be debated from a public platform? …J. C. Clark, restaurateur, 135 West Forty-seventh Street: Everybody has a right to his own opinion. Free speech is allowed in this country, but to discuss on a public platform the truth of the Bible is going too far. I do not approve of it..

Patrioethical note from the New York Evening Journal: You feel a thrill ofAmerican pride when you read of a girl in Chicago, 18 years old, beautiful, earning her living by posing as a model before an art class, who went to another room and took poison “because she was so much ashamed.” … How many marriage proposals will Chicago’s modest girl receive if she lives?

North Carolina

Bitter reflection of the editors of the Carolina Magazine, organ of the more literate students at the State university: North Carolina has less alien blood per square inch than any other State in the Union. That is one good reason why she also has less writers, less painters, less sculptors, and, above all, less musicians than practically any other State of equal resource; certainly any other State of equal bombast.

Ohio

Printed card hanging in the bedrooms of a leading hotel in Columbus: When entertaining guests of the opposite sex in one’s bedroom, it is customary to leave the door open at least six inches.

Oklahoma

News note from the University of Oklahoma: The new chapter of the Alpha Delta Sigma fraternity at the University is to be named after William Wrigley, Jr., the chewing gum manufacturer. Mr. Wrigley has promised to send the chapter his portrait, autographed and framed.

Uncompromising stand of R. A. Rooker, Democratic candidate for reëlection as alderman of Altus, as reported in the respectable Times-Democrat of the same city: I am against Sunday baseball, mixed swimming pools, boys and girls petting parties and late hours auto riding. This may not lend to popularity, but I have not compromised on this question.

Oklahoma’s contribution to the roster of new crimes, as reported in a news dispatch from Okmulgee: “Charged with” walking down the street with a questionable woman T. H. Harvey, an oilfield worker, was arrested here and fined $10. Harvey met the girl, whom he said was an old friend, outside a moving-picture house and was walking down the street with her when arrested .

Oregon

Field sports at the Oregon Interstate Fair at Pineville, as reported by the estimable Central Oregonian: A novelty was introduced by A. G. Bach in the spitting contest promoted by a chewing tobacco firm. He induced a dozen local chewers to enter and records were made by Lyle Laughlin, 27 feet; Lee Merchant, 24 feet; and R. L. Ireland, 20 feet.

From an address before the Advertising Club of Portland by the Hon. George S. Fowler, advertising director of Colgate & Company: I challenge you to find a boy with a clean mouth and a dirty heart. The boy who washes his teeth twice a day doesn’t go wrong. He can’t.

Pennsylvania

Dispatch from Harrisburg:  A patriotic doctor who objected to placards bearing the warning ” German measles ” was notified today by Dr. J. M. Campbell, chief of the Bureau of Communicable Diseases of the State Health Department, that the phraseology of the warning cards cannot be changed. The patriotic doctor suggested that “victory” or ” iberty” measles be substituted for “German.”

Counter offensive against the Pope in Chester county, as revealed by the distinguished West Chester Daily Local News: Milk from a Holstein cow; Protestants only. Reba Marie Jacons, New Centreville.

From a communication by the Hon. William B. Yeakel, of Coopersburg, Pa., in the Farm Journal: Mr. William S. Hallman wants to know if life insurance is a good investment. I say, absolutely no! In what way is it right for a man, made in the image of God, to walk around with a price on his head, payable after death?

South Carolina

From the platform of the Hon. Mountain Lion Sloan, a candidate for public office in Greenville county: I believe in outlawing liquor because it’s bad and I believe in outlawing swimming-pools because they’re bad. I’m against them, and I’m going to do all I can to put them out of business. How a man could let his wife go to one with a crowd in which there are other men, and still live with her, is more than I can see.

The delicate ebb and flow of race prejudice among the Nordic blonds of the South Carolina Legislature, as reported by the Greenville Piedmont: When the colored president of the Colored Normal, Industrial , Agricultural and Mechanical College, a State Institution, appeared before a committee of the Legislature last year, he wore a suit that had evidently been made by expert tailors. This fact stirred an un- expressed prejudice against him in the mind of the legislators, but it was quickly removed when he told them that the suit had been fashioned by students of his college who were learning the tailoring trade.

Tennessee

From a discourse by the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday to the gaping Christians of Nashville, as reported by the celebrated Banner: Our country is filled with a Socialistic, I.W.W., communistic, radical, lawless, anti-American, anti- church, anti-God, anti-marriage gang, and they are laying the eggs of rebellion and unrest in labor and capital and home; and we have some of them in the universities. I can take you through the universities and pick out a lot of black-hearted communistic fellows who are teaching that to the boys and sending them out to undermine America. If this radical element could have their way, my friends, the laws of nature would be repealed, or they would reverse them; oil and water would mix; the turtle dove would marry the turkey buzzard; the sun would rise in the West and set in the East; chickens would give milk and cows would lay eggs; the pigs would crow and the roosters would squeal; cats would bark and dogs would mew; the least would be the greatest; a part would be greater than the whole; yesterday would be day after tomorrow if that crowd were in control.

Press dispatch from Nashville, in the heart of Fundamentaldom: Claiming to own the stone with which David slew Goliath, R. M. Johnson, of Morristown, has asked Wilbur Nelson, State geologist, to inspect and value it. He said the stone had been in his family since Biblical times.

Texas

Troubles of the learned in the Bible Belt, as reported in a dispatch from Waco: Because he did not believe that Noah’s ark, with the dimensions mentioned in the Bible, was capable of  accommodating a pair of all the animals extant in the world at Noah’s time and because he had been criticized for expressing that belief, C. S. Fothergill, instructor in history at Baylor university, resigned today.

From a circular distributed by Nordic Blond evangelists at a recent revival in Dallas under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Bob Jones, an eminent pastor of those remote steppes: I am a Searchlight on a high tower. I run my relentless eye to and fro throughout the land; my piercing glance penetrates the brooding places of Iniquity. I plant my eyes and ears in the whispering Corridors of Crime. Wherever men gather furtively together, there am I, an austere and invisible Presence. I am the Recording Angel’s Proxy. When I invade the fetid dens of Infamy there is a sudden scampering and squeaking as of rats forsaking a doomed ship. I am the haunting dread of the depraved and the hated Nemesis of the vicious . The foe of Vice, the friend of Innocence, the rod and staff of Law, I amTHE KU KLUX KLAN.

Specimen aphorism by the gifted editorial writer of the Houston Chronicle:  Granting the right of free speech, why should it be exercised at times and under circumstances which irritate people?

Virginia

Beginnings of a horrible doubt in the mind of the gifted editor of the Petersburg Progress: We confess that for years we regarded alcohol as one of the agents chiefly responsible for crime in the world. Yet, losses by larceny, burglary and embezzlement are over six times as great as they were while we had the saloon and before the Eighteenth Amendment or the Volstead Act was ever heard of.

ALASKA

Dreadful news brought out of the snow wastes by the Right Rev. Peter T. Rowe, Bishop of Alaska: The church has won its fight, and Alaska today is as good as any other section of the country.

Americana was simultaneously published in New York and London. To help British readers, Mencken added  glossary and a Notes for Foreign Students.

This is actually the funniest part of the book. 

In a parody of academic and cultural authority Mencken adopts a mock pedagogical tone that is arch and sardonic.  It’s the voice of the anthropologist explaining American customs to a bemused outsider. He mimics the solemn tone of a guidebook, making sweeping and cynical generalisations about the states that are both dismissive and misleading. He positions himself as the knowing insider letting the foreigner in on the truth. 

Arkansas supports a State university at which 1500 boys and girls from the hills and swamps pursue what is regarded in those parts as the higher learning. It has some of the worst clergymen in America. It advocates Prohibition and drinks moonshine.

California – in its early days, was peopled by a hardy and adventurous folk, including many fugitives from justice, and in consequence life there was full of charm. But of late it has been overrun by retired country bankers, cattle-dealers and other such petty rogues from the Middle West, and the old charm has vanished. Los Angeles, its largest city, is run by Christian business men. Any visitor suspected of harboring radical economic views is clubbed by the police and sent to jail. The courts of California are the worst in the United States. Just outside pious Los Angeles is Hollywood, a colony of moving- picture actors. Its morals are those of Port Said.

Colorado is now under control of the Ku Klux Klan, and in consequence it has no intellectual life .

Connecticut– lies just outside New York City, and is made up, in almost equal parts, of golf links and squalid factory towns. There is a university called Yale at New Haven.

Delaware is a small and measly State, owned by a single family, the Du Ponts. They made their money manufacturing explosives. Now they spend it quarreling among themselves … no person of any consequence has lived in it for half a century.

Florida is the Riviera of the Eastern United States . Along both of its long coasts are strings of Winter resorts, many of them very bawdy. The native Floridans in the interior are all Baptists and Ku Kluxers, and suffer from intestinal parasites. The coast resorts, being close to Cuba and the Bahamas, are all very wet. Good whiskey is even cheaper in Florida than in New York.

Georgia is the home of the Ku Klux Klan … The sports of the people are such things as lynchings and Methodist revivals. Georgia is one of the wettest of American States. Its hills are full of moonshine distilleries.

Iowa -One of the principal Cow States. Its peasants are very rich, and in every farmhouse there is a phono- graph, a telephone and a radio outfit. When an Iowa farmer accumulates a competence, he sells out and goes to Los Angeles, in California, to live. The State is very religious, and its principal statesman is one Kenyon, who invented a way to punish immorality by taking from the accused his constitutional right to a jury trial. For this service to God he has been elevated to the Federal Bench. …

Kansas – was much beset by plagues of locusts and grasshoppers, but of late it has grown rich.

Kentucky – formerly given over to whisky-drinking, horse-racing and other forms of high living, but now submerged in Methodism.

Louisiana –  mainly swamp. Its chief city, New Orleans, was settled by Frenchmen and Spaniards, and was until lately the scene of a charming social life. It had, for many years, the  only opera house in the South, and the only good restaurants. Recently it has been invaded and ruined by 100% Americans. Rural Louisiana is mainly Methodist, and runs to barbarous lynchings. The climate is very hot. There are no inhabitants of any importance.

Maine went dry long before the national Prohibition Act was adopted. As a result, its people early attained to proficiency in the trade in contraband liquors. They are now largely occupied by bootlegging from Canada, which adjoins it to the North…. Maine is as dead, intellectually, as Abyssinia. Nothing is ever heard from it.

Maryland is known for its attractive social life, and has the best cooks in the United States, most of them Negroes.

Massachusetts -The principal State of New England, and for long the chief stronghold of the Puritans. Now they have fallen into decay, and Massachusetts is run by the children of more recent immigrants, mainly Irishmen. Harvard University, at Cambridge, is the most fashionable American university.  The principal city, Boston, is very wet. Since the death of the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, LL.D., the State has no statesman.

Michigan is the seat of Henry Ford, the billionaire automobile manufacturer. Its chief city … Canada is separated from Detroit by a narrow river; thus the city is tremendously wet. The rest of Michigan is negligible-farms and forests, inhabited by a half-civilized peasantry.

Minnesota – A Cow State, mainly settled by Swedes. It inclines toward radicalism in politics, especially when the crops are poor. It has two cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis. They are but a few miles apart, and hate each other terrifically. It is dangerous to his life and limb for a St. Paul bootlegger to visit Minneapolis, or vice versa. The State has no statesmen, poets or painters, but there is a good symphony orchestra at St. Paul. 

Mississippi is in the heart of the Black Belt… It is controlled by the Methodists and Baptists and is very dry, but its principal statesman, the Hon. John Sharp Williams, now retired, is wet. There are few cities, and all are small; thus there is little intellectual life. The State has some of the worst newspapers in America.

Missouri – The principal city is St. Louis, which, before Prohibition, had the largest breweries in the United States. The State is still very wet. It was settled largely by Germans, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen from down the Mississippi River. The chief statesman is the Hon. James A. Reed … Its other politicians are all ninth-rate.

Montana is in the Rocky Mountains, and is largely uninhabitable.

Nebraska -A typical Cow State. The inhabitants, with few exceptions, read the Bible daily. When they accumulate enough money, they sell out their farms and go to Los Angeles. The State university at Lincoln is superior to most other universities in the Middle West. 

Nevada -This is a mining State, mainly desert. It has very liberal divorce laws, and in consequence is visited by swarms of unhappy husbands and wives … Nevada has no intellectual life. The members of the divorce colony occupy themselves by playing golf, watching the calendar, and practising adultery.

New Hampshire – almost wholly mountainous. It has escaped the degeneration of Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, and still shows a considerable intellectual vigor … It has no statesmen. It lies along the Canadian border, and is very wet. In Summer it attracts many holiday-makers.

New Jersey  is the wettest of American States. It lies just outside New York City, and its towns are largely peopled by New Yorkers who go into the city every day … On the coast is Atlantic City, the Brighton of America, with dozens of large hotels, and a merry, voluptuous life. Rum ships from the Bahamas ply direct to Atlantic City…At Princeton there is a university.

New Mexico is mainly desert. It has a high altitude and is much frequented by invalids. Many Spanish-speaking Mexicans survive in the population. Of late a colony of writers and artists has been set up in the old Spanish town of Taos,… The principal statesman is the Hon. Albert B. Fall, who was Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of the late President Harding. Fall is now awaiting trial on a charge of accepting a bribe of $ 100,000 while in office. … It is a dry State meteorologically, but otherwise wet.

New York is the Empire State … Rural New York is religious and very dry; New York City is antinomian and wet. The city pays little heed to the laws of the United States, or to the national mores. It is immensely rich, and devoted to pleasure. There are more harlots in New York than in the whole of Spain. Many of its bootleggers are millionaires. The principal statesman is the Hon. Al Smith, who began life as a fishmonger. He is barred from the Presidency by the fact that he is a Catholic. In the Middle West New York is looked upon as the capital of Satan, and no woman who has ever been there is regarded as a strictly Aı virgin .

North Carolina is one of the Southern States, but is far more civilized than the others. It has several good newspapers and a State university at Chapel Hill with a number of able professors. … Its peasants are of a low grade, and mainly Baptists or Methodists. North Carolina is full of moonshiners. Its principal statesman is the Hon. Josephus Daniels, Litt.D., who was Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinet ofDr. Wilson. He is a professing Christian and wears the traditional uniform of a Southern politician, with a boiled shirt, a soft black hat and a black string tie.

North Dakota is a remote and God-forsaken Cow State, largely peopled by Scandinavians. … At the first fall of snow the inhabitants barricade their houses, and resort to sleep and prayer.

Ohio has supplied more Presidents than any other American State… is controlled, politically, by the Anti- Saloon League, and its politics are inordinately corrupt … There is no intellectual life in the State; all of its energies are absorbed by money-getting, religion and bootlegging.

Oklahoma is chiefly given over to oil- drilling. It was settled largely by persons who left the East for the East’s good, and remains turbulent and barbarous to this day. Its politicians are almost unanimously thieves. 

Oregon – is controlled by the Freemasons, who lately forced the adoption of a State law prohibiting private schools, and requiring every child to be educated at the public expense. The aim of the law was to put down the Catholic parochial schools. It was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. Oregon is seldom heard of. Its people believe in the Bible, and hold that all radicals should be lynched. It has no poets and no statesmen.

Pennsylvania was originally settled by Quakers and Germans, and many of the latter, until very recently, scarcely spoke English. The State has a corps of Cossacks devoted to putting down strikes by force, and has been the scene of many massacres of workingmen, mainly foreigners. At Philadelphia the enforcement of Prohibition is in the hands of a brigadier general of marines; the city remains one of the wettest in America. Philadelphia is otherwise a dull town, devoted to money.

Rhode Island is organized, politically, on the rotten borough system, and of late the inhabitants have been trying to free themselves by armed rebellion. Rhode Island next to New Jersey, is the wettest American State. It is crowded with filthy factory towns, and has no statesmen.

In South Carolina divorce is forbidden by law. This eccentricity gives the State its sole distinction. At Charleston, on the coast, there is a Poetry Society; the rest of South Carolina is a blank. It has not produced a man of mark since the Civil War.

South Dakota – Nothing much is known about this State, which lies upon a prairie and is peopled almost solely by peasants. Persons who have visited it report that its people are all professing Christians.

In Tennessee a school-teacher was lately fined $ 100 for teaching Evolution to his pupils. Such heresies are prohibited by a State law. Tennessee is controlled by the Primitive Baptists, and is only half civilized. It has no statesmen. A few poets lurk in one of its so-called universities, but the Polizei are preparing to rout them out. It is universally believed in Tennessee that if one puts a horse hair into a bottle of water it will turn into a snake.

Texas was very wild in the early days, and is still inhabited largely by he-men with hairy chests. … The prevailing faith in Texas is the Baptist, and the chief clergy of that persuasion are very influential. But of late there has been a rising of atheism in the towns, and recent travelers report that the more advanced female inhabitants now smoke cigarettes and otherwise flout God. But it is still considered immoral in Texas to wear spats or to dress for dinner. A dry State and very wet.

Utah was founded in the desert by the Mormons, and they still control it. Its principal statesman, the Hon. Reed Smoot, is one ofthe Twelve Apostles of the Church, and has magical gifts. One man stands ahead of him; when that man dies the Hon. Mr. Smoot will succeed to all the awful powers of the late Brigham Young. The Mormons renounced polygamy 40 years ago, but the older ones still cherish their surviving wives. Utah is very rich, but not active intellectually.

Vermont is the native State of the Hon. Mr. Coolidge. Otherwise it is a vacuum.

Virginia was once the premier American State, and hatched a long line of statesmen, headed by Washington and Jefferson. It is now controlled, politically, by its poor white trash, and so it produces no more Statesmen… Its university at Charlottesville is dull and reactionary. The people of Virginia, white and black, are mainly believers in baptism by total immersion. Richmond, the capitol, is the only State capitol in America that lacks a public library. Nevertheless, the social life of its surviving gentry is very agreeable.

Washington is on the Pacific Coast, and is still rather primitive. It has no citizens of any importance, and is seldom heard from.

West Virginia is given over to coal mining, and the mine owners control it. When the miners go on strike they are murdered by the State police. Sometimes their women and children are butchered with them. In the remoter mountains of the State the blood feud still prevails, and assassinations are common. The people are all evangelical Christians, and devote their leisure to moonshining. The general state of civilization in West Virginia is that of Albania, Haiti and Afghanistan.

Wisconsin was peopled mainly by Germans, and its principal city, Milwaukee, is almost as German as Munich. Good beer is still on public sale there, despite Prohibition. The peasants of the State incline to radicalism in politics … Wisconsin has a State university with more than 8,000 students. There are professors of swine husbandry and cheese-making. Milwaukee is the only large American city ever to be captured politically by the Socialists .

Wyoming  is a mountain State, given over to mining and sheep-raising.

A sampling:

American Legion -A national organization of veterans of the World War. It consists mainly of conscripts who saw no active service.

Bible Belt -That portion of the United States in which the people believe in the literal accuracy of Genesis. It includes the whole country, save only for areas often mile radius around the cities of above 100,000 population.

Blind Pig – An unlawful and surreptitious liquor shop.

Blue – A general synonym for Puritanical. A blue Sunday is one on which the blind pigs and speakeasies are closed.

Cow State -A State in which the peasants are mainly herdsmen. Constant association with animals makes them very religious .

Dry -One in favor of Prohibition. Most bootleggers are ardent drys.

Eighteenth Amendment -The Prohibition amendment to the national Constitution.

Eminent – Applied to a politician, the word means that he is not actually in jail for corruption. Applied to a newspaper, it means nothing.

Fourteenth Amendment -This amendment, with the Fifteenth, was adopted after the Civil War to enfranchise the liberated slaves. It is violated in every Southern State.

Hookworm Belt -That region in which most of the peasants are infested by the hookworm (Necatoramericanus). They become lazy and shiftless, and commonly devote themselves to religion. The Hookworm Belt covers most of the South.

Invisible Empire -The mystic domain of the Ku Klux Klan. When a peasant is initiated into the Klan he becomes a citizen of the Invisible Empire.

LL.D.– A degree conferred by American universities upon politicians, millionaires, and other men likely to be useful. 

Mail Order Catalogue – The price list of a mail order company. Many such catalogues weigh three or four pounds. There is one in every American farm-house. The Bible, the almanac and the mail order catalogue constitute the main reading of 50% of the American people.

Moonshine – Contraband whiskey, usually made by farmers. It is the common drink in the regions where Prohibition is ” enforced “-that is, where good liquors are unobtainable. It is drunk fresh from the still, sometimes still warm.

New Thought  – A system of mystical philosophy, very popular among the uneducated. Its chief tenet is that matter has no existence that mind is all powerful. Its practitioners profess not only to cure all diseases, but also to reunite separated lovers, to bring worldly prosperity, etc.

Rotary – An organization of luncheon clubs, mainly devoted to hearing ” inspirational ” speakers.

Rum Row – The line of liquor-laden ships lying 12 miles outside New York harbor.

Sauerkraut – A German dish, extensively consumed in the United States. It is made by fermenting sliced cabbage. During the World War, the government ordered that its name be changed to liberty cabbage, but the old name is now in use again.

Scofflaw – One who scoffs at the Prohibition Act.

Vice Crusade – An effort to put down prostitution. It usually takes on the form of a public orgy, led by the Methodist parsons of the town afflicted. The parsons greatly enjoy the contact with the loose girls .

Volstead Act -The national law for the enforcement of Prohibition, so-called because it was brought into the House ofRepresentatives by the Hon. Andrew J. Volstead, of Minnesota.

Wet – Dripping with alcohol, as, a wet town, a wet congressman, a wet university president. There is also such a thing, in politics, as a wet dry, e.g., a politician who prepares for making a speech in favor of Prohibition by taking three or four stiff drinks. The late President Harding was a wet dry.

The #1925Club

Many thanks to Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings  for hosting the #1925Club and leading me to read – and write about  – so many interesting books and writers.  My other #1925 posts are:

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Richmal Crompton Witness for the Prosecution, Collected Poems of H.D. and Karel Čapek’s Letters from England

Now I’m off to read what others discovered for the  #1925Club this week.