Foreword: The Prohibition crusade of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries had many manifestations in America. Among its slogans the one that seems to have gained the most attention as well as farcical commentary is the subject of this post.
The Demon of Rum is about in the land,
His victims are falling on every hand,
The wise and the simple, the brave and the fair,
No station too high for his vengeance to spare.
O women, the sorrow and pain is with you,
And so be the joy and the victory, too;
With this for your motto, and succor divine,
The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.
The last line of the above anonymous poem from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) became a popular mantra in efforts by prohibitionists to stop all sales of alcoholic beverages in the United States. It seemingly was a threat by young women to their young men to stay away from booze or skip the smooching.
The origins of the verse are said to go back at least to March 1873 and perhaps as early as 1869. This mantra of the “drys” was publicized in newspaper articles, magazines and books; depicted on placards, signs, and needle point, and repeated in poems and songs. “Lips that touch liquor…” reached iconic stature and as such attracted more than its share of parodies. Featured here are a few of its manifestations.
Above is the most attractive of the examples. It shows a very comely young woman with a “Gibson Girl” hair style, olive skin, and ruby “bee stung” lips. This lady is eminently kissable. With this lass the WCTU went straight to the heart of potential swains. The second manifestation of an abstemious young woman below, while still attractive, lacks the same impact. Origin unknown, it appeared frequently in the 1800s on placards and signs of varying sizes and colors. A third young woman carrying a “lips” sign makes no attempt to be seductive. She seems aggressively angry about menfolk and their imbibing.
Songwriters Sam Booth and George T. Evans dedicated a “temperance” ditty to the “Woman’s Crusade Against Liquor Throughout the World” and fittingly gave it the “Lips” title. Among the lyrics were the following:
Let war be your watchword from shore unto shore,
Rum and his legions shall reign no more,
And write on your bonnets in letters that shine,
The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.
Write on your bonnets? Booth and Evans must have been taking a snort or two to have thought up that idea. The prohibitionist sentiments naturally raised the “wet” opposition to parody the idea. As shown here, the most enduring images involved unattractive and sour looking women endorsing the idea. A photograph timeless in its appeal depicts a group of ten chastely dressed matrons beneath the sign. They clearly are making themselves look as “un-kissable” as possible. My attention is drawn to the woman in the center with a large hat and what appears to be serape around her shoulders. Her eyes seem to indicate that her lips might have been on a bottle not long before.
The Mississippi Riverboat Owners Assn. obviously thought a “Lips” sign would be found hilarious among their patrons. Rightly so since it would have been a rare riverboat that did not sell or serve alcohol aboard the craft, along with other pleasures like gambling and prostitution, neither of which the WCTU would have approved.
The “Lips” notion continues to be interpreted and reinterpreted up to the present day. Note the greeting card that includes the enigmatic message, “Lips that touch liquor shall never touch my liquor,” and a puzzling drawing of a woman pouring drops of fluid out of her boot while standing over a supine male figure. I still am puzzling over this offering. It was issued by “Someecards,” an outfit that carried a line of greeting cards featuring drinking.
Just when we thought the world was safe from the prohibitionists, images like the one here appear. This young woman with a clenched fist and snarlingly face appears to be representing a new generation that harks back to the heyday of the WCTU. Marching in a parade somewhere, she has adopted their mantra and made it her own.
In closing to this examination of the prohibition theme, a third verse seems fitting. This one came from the pen of poet George W. Young. Appropriately, he entitled it “Lips That Touch Liquor.” Young’s ditty reads as follows:
You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore,
When I hastened to welcome your ring at the door;
For I trusted that he who stood waiting me then,
Was the brightest, the truest, the noblest of men,
Your lips, on my own, when they printed "Farewell,"
Had never been soiled by the "beverage of hell;"
But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign,
And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.”
No comments:
Post a Comment