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)

Just Imagine (1930)

The 1930 film Just Imagine depicts the futuristic world of 1980. With flying cars, food pills, and a totalitarian government the world is orderly but not much fun.

This scene depicts the meal of the future. The prohibition reference is particularly funny.



Many thanks to Amy Macnamara for this paleo-futuristic classic that hasn't yet been released on VHS or DVD.

See also:
That Synthetic Food of the Future (Ogden Standard-Examiner, 1926)
Food of the Future (Indiana Progress, 1896)

United States a British Colony (1923)

Author and critic Henry L. Mencken makes some pretty bold predictions in the February 12, 1923 article, "Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence," published in the Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut).

A hundred years hence the United States will be a British colony, its chief function will be to supply imbeciles to read the current English novels and docile cannon fodder for the British Army.

I believe that Prohibition will be overthrown and restored several times before 2022. There will be periods of Prohibition and wholesale drunkeness, as now, and periods of license and moderation. Just how the wave will be running in 2022 I hesitate to predict.

The American who will be most agreeably discussed by Anglo-American historians in 2022 will be Woodrow Wilson, the first Premier of the United American Colonies.

The greatest living American author is Dr. Frank Crane. He will be remembered long after Walt Whitman is forgotten.

See also:
Sinclair Lewis Will Be Read Until Year 2000 (1936)
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)