Foreword: Dictionary definitions of a “pundit” suggest an individual who provides opinions on a subject or subjects to the public, usually through the media. That definition suits the three men featured here, all of whom began their careers as print journalists and moved on to more literary forms. Two grew up in smaller towns but all three developed national audiences by commenting from large cities, namely Baltimore, New York and Chicago. All three at length addressed whiskey and prohibition.
Known widely as the “Sage of Baltimore,” Henry Louis (“H.L.”) Mencken was the most influential American commentator of the first third of the Twentieth Century and a man of strong opinions on almost everything. One of his positive views was of Maryland rye whiskey. Mencken contended that a friend “always ate rye bread instead of wheat because rye was the bone and sinew of Maryland whiskey -- the most healthful appetizer yet discovered by man.” According to Mencken, the family doctor “believed and taught that a shot of Maryland whiskey was the best preventive of pneumonia in the R months.”
When Maryland distilling came to a screeching halt with the coming of Prohibition in 1920, Mencken abhorred it. “The chief argument against Prohibition is that it doesn’t prohibit,” he commented. “This is also the chief argument in favor of it.”
In a more serious mode in 1925 Mencken wrote: “There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. Not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”
The author personally responded to the “Great Experiment” by selling his car and using the proceeds to purchase a large stock of “the best wines and liquors I could find.” Maryland rye was among them. Mencken stored them in a basement vault in his home whose locked door bore a custom-painted sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. The sign said: “This vault is protected by a device releasing chorine gas under 200 pound pressure. Enter at your own risk.” 
No one celebrated the end of Prohibition with more gusto than Mencken. A photograph on the front page of the Baltimore Sun showed him downing the first beer to be poured at Baltimore’s Rennert’s Hotel bar in 13 years. “Pretty good. Not bad at all,” said the Sage.
Once Irvin S. Cobb was among America’s top celebrities: author of 60 books, he was America’s highest paid journalist with the New York World; a national celebrity of radio, motion pictures;and a high paid speaker on the lecture circuit. As native Kentuckian, Cobb was steeped in the taste and lore of whiskey. At the height of his popularity in 1920 National Prohibition was enacted. At first Cobb dealt with it humorously, writing that: “Since Prohibition came in and a hiccup became a mark of affluence instead of a social error as formally, and a loaded flank is a sign of hospitality rather than of menace, things may have changed.”
That jocular attitude had vanished by 1929 when Cobb wrote the only American novel devoted to the American whiskey industry. Entitled “Red Likker” and featuring a map of Kentucky on the cover, the book tells the story of a family that founded a distillery called Bird and Son right after the Civil War. It traces the history of the business to Prohibition when, like most distilleries, it was forced to close. Ultimately the distillery is destroyed by fire and the family is reduced to to running a crossroads grocery store.
Not only did Cobb inveigh against Prohibition in his literary works, he made it a personal crusade. Joining a national organization called the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, he became chairman of the Authors and Artists Committee. Under his vigorous leadership the committee ultimately boasted 361 members, including some of the nation’s best known figures. As chairman, he blamed Prohibition for increased crime, alcoholism, and disrespect for law. “If Prohibition is a a noble experiment,” he said, “then the San Francisco fire and the Galveston flood should be listed among the noble experiments of our national history.”
When Prohibition finally ended in 1934, Cobb was recognized nationally for his personal contribution to Repeal. The first night liquor became legal, he reportedly went to a hotel bar that once again had begun pouring, pulled out a $20 bill and hollered: “Drinks for everyone.”
A more nuanced approach to Prohibition was taken by George Ade, a favorite author of Mencken (who conversely did not like Cobb). Ade, from rural Newton County, Indiana, began his career as a newspaper reporter in Layfayette, Indiana, before moving to Illinois to work for the Chicago Daily News. His newspaper columns, short stories, and Broadway plays brought him national attention during the early decades of the Twentieth Century.
As many journalists, Ade was fond of strong drink and once wrote: “Do not give alms promiscuously. Select the unworthy poor and make them happy. To give to the deserving is a duty, but to help the improvident, drinking class is clear generosity, so that the donor has a right to be warmed by a selfish pride and count on a most flattering obituary.”
Breaking with his “dry” fellow Republicans, the writer supported the movement to end Prohibition. Ade was equally concerned. however, about bringing to the fore what he saw as the abuses involved in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade and saloon life. The result was a short book Ade called “The Old Time Saloon,” with a subtitle, “Not Wet, Not Dry, But History.”
Ade’s book has been republished several times, most recently in 2016, annotated by Chicago author Bill Savage. Noting that in 1931 most Americans had never been in a saloon, Savage notes: “Ade takes the liquor industry and saloon owners to task for flouting the law and bringing on their own demise, but he also brings to life the political, economic, and sentimental reality of this American institution.” The book is notable for its use of saloon-based cartoons of the “wet” era.
In a late chapter, Ade takes aim at what National Prohibition had done to America: “Whether the reader of these lines happens to be a die-in-the-last-ditch Prohi, or as I am, a member of the Association Against the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, he or she will admit that the drinking habits of…youngsters who have come from the cradle and up from the nursery since 1920, are pretty deplorable.”
Eventually each of these pundits observed the end of National Prohibition and celebrated. Ade would see the 1934 Repeal legislation from Congress require many of the saloon reforms he had advocated. Cobb would author a drink recipe booklet for Paul Jones distillery of Paducah, Kentucky. Although exalting, Mencken complained about paying higher prices for liquor after Repeal. Now, he contended, his favorite Maryland rye cost $3 to $3.50 a quart -- not the $4.00 per gallon he had paid in 1919. 
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