Friday, July 6, 2007

Alcohol Unknown in 2022 (1923)

This 1923 prediction in the February 12 Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut) was written by William H. Anderson, New York Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League. Mr. Anderson insists that by the year 2022 only the "abnormal, subnormal, vicious and depraved" will drink alcohol.

Drink up you friendly degenerates! We only have a few years left!

By the year 2022 the general public will have learned that the proverb "Wine is a mocker" is scientifically true; will have discovered that beer is "not liquid bread but poisoned water;" and will have accepted the fact that alcohol is "a habit-forming, irritant, narcotic poison." The beverage use of it will be utterly unknown except among the abnormal, subnormal, vicious and depraved, which classes will largely have been bred out of the race in America.

The result will come because the beer and wine campaign will die when the American people comprehends that it seeks to write a lie into the Constitution and in spite of its pretenses would operate to bring back the saloon.

The prohibition Law will speedily be enforced with increasing efficiency due to comprehension that olation of any law brings all laws into contempt and jeopardizes our free institutions.

The millennium will not have arrived because of Prohibition, which will then be world-wide, but the road will have been cleared and made straighter.

See also:
Just Imagine (1930)
Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence (1923)
Pictures Stately Edifices (1923)
Thinks We'll Do Our Reading on Screen (1923)
Work Days of Two Hours (1923)
United States a British Colony (1923)
Looks for Era of Brotherhood (1923)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

here, here! I'll drink to that!

MattyMatt said...

The even crazier part is that he believed that "abnormal" classes could be "bred out."

artbot said...

Going against 4000 years of brewing and distilling history is not really a safe bet, imho.

Unknown said...

Ah, "moral crusades," wrong 85 years ago, still wrong now.

[first comment here; I <3 Paleo-Future since I recently discovered it]

Scott Radtke said...

Amazing that something like that would be written at the height of prohibition. Hmmm.... Propaganda at its finest.