Greenfield High School - Evergreen / Exponent Yearbook (Greenfield, MA)

Page 16 text:

10 THE EXPONENT know what kind of fish they went after. D. H.: I see by the papers that Madeline Coleman is the “Miss America” chosen at Atlantic City this year. M. H.: Yes. Millard Clement has hired her to come up for a night to his dance casino at Sugar Loaf paik. B. W.: Ruth Canty is editor of the children’s column of a large magazine. They say she knows all about youngsters. What is Jerry Palmer doing now? D. H.: He is president of the Unit¬ ed Anti-Tobacco League. He would have convinced Congress to prohib¬ it the sale of it if it hadn’t been for the expert lobbying of Margaret and Catherine Herron and Gertrude Wilbur. B. W.: Ken Bostley is an army officer and he was telling me that Russell Patterson is a labor leader and that Esther Harrison writes radical articles for socialist papers. M. H.: I saw Ken too, he was tell¬ ing that Dave Young, had quite a responsible position with the Salva¬ tion Aamy. Geraldine Moore has been speaking for them for a long time. B. W. : Yes and Isabelle Reed is a hymn composer. She wrote one for school assemblies. D. H.: Francis Rucci is doing well as a detective. She has receiv¬ ed some large rewards. M. H.; I knew that, and Doris Manning and Esther Rice have of¬ fices in the same building. They are painless dentists. Angeline Gers is the nurse in attendance and let me tell you a coincidence. Bertha Gilliland came in soliciting funds for the Girl Scouts while I was in there. B. W.: She is captain now, isn’t she? She was telling me that Elva Erhart subscribed a lot to her fund. Is Elva wealthy? M. H.: Quite. She is an osteo- pathe doctor and has rather a large practice. Doris Bicknell, who is now teacher at Aggie, has elected Elva as the College physician. D. H.: Lawrence Jones is a chem¬ istry professor at Aggie too. Betty Welch and Grace Weston are instruc- ters in a southern college too. They are trying to invent a cheaper curl¬ ing iron. M. H.: Did you see that picture by Madeline Korbel on the fron: page of the “Judge.” Maxine Sears posed for that. B. W.: Well, we’ve talked over nearly all of our classmates. Have we missed anyone? D. H.: Let see—oh yes. Beatrice Kiley is clerk in a fruit store over in Millers Falls and Isaboll Allis runs a hot dog stand in Gill. M. H.: I forgot to tell you that the main reason I am going to Eng¬ land is to see Phyllis Hardman who is secretary to the British ambassa¬ dor whom you know, Martin Voetsch. B. H.: Well, I must get to work. D. H.: Since we aren’t in Green¬ field today for the alumnae reunion let’s give a cheer for the class of 1927. All: Here’s to the class of 1927 and to the faculty, too. May they all be blest with health,, wealth, and good luck And to the purple and white be true. CLASS ORATION The Historical Background of the Eighteenth Amendment Alcoholic beverages first came in¬ to general use perhaps when our nomadic ancestors settled down and became agriculturists, for alcohol was produced in the beginning by fermentation of grapes or grains, and the method of obtaining it by distillation was not discovered un¬ til the eleventh century; in fact, ardent spirits were not at all com¬ mon in England for some six cen¬ turies after that. Nearly all the peoples of the earth are acquainted with alcoholic liquors and have used or are using them for beverages. In direct contrast, the opposition to the use of alcohol is almost as old as the practice itself, and va¬ rious attempts have been made to restrict and prohibit the use of it. An emperor of China, some four thousand years ago, prohibited the drinking of alcoholic beverages. Whether this edict had any moral

Page 15 text:

THE EXPONENT 9 ident of the United States by this time, D. H.: Oh no. Benny. He is a millionaire now. He has gone into business with Maurice Grossman. They’re running a pawn shop. M, H.: They always were thinking of devices for saving money. Fran¬ cis Faille is a big business man, too. He is running a theatre in Gill. B. W,: Yes and I heard that when his safe was jammed last week he had to get Bob Bell from Boston to open it for him. D. H.: Bob always was clever at fixing locks. Do you remember Al¬ ma Olsen and Margaret McIntosh? They’re on the stage now. They presented the vaudeville skit “Twin¬ kle-Toes.” M. H,: I thought Alma would go in for some kind of aesthetic dan¬ cing. But they’re not the only ones on the stage. Marion Dean, Alecia Osgood, Helen Kinne and Hazel Lynde belong to the follies chorus. B. W.: I’ll have to arrange to see them when I go back. I bet they’re good. Speaking of the stage though —Alice Andersen is prima dona of the Second American Opera Com¬ pany. She has chosen some of our old classmates to assure her of suc¬ cess. Albert Studer is her manager and Malvina Letourneau is the or¬ chestra conductor. D. H.: I saw the opera and they sure will be millionaires if their present success continues. The mov¬ ing pictures claim a few of our classmates, too. Steve Uzdavinis and Frances Morrell are playing to¬ gether. Steve is a dashing football captain. M. H.: I thought probably Uzda¬ vinis was in the meat market busi¬ ness that some of our old friends are running. The largest meat mar¬ ket in New England is owned by some of our classmates—Mary Jab- lonski, the commercial prize winner, is bookkeeper. Isabel Brizwiski, Stefania Kwasnieski, Bolesia Kre- sick and Alba Koldis are clerks. Vi¬ ola Korchinski delivers orders in the same truck she drove around in when she was in high school. D. H.: That reminds me, Gus Maniatty is running a soda fountain. Mooney Shor and Irene Shea are in business with him. B. W.: They have their place, next to the theatre Tim Murphy and Lu- cina Guard are running. Lucina, I believe, is collecting tickets. M. H.: I’ m not surprised that Tim¬ othy and Lucina are together, but I didn’t really expect to see them in the theatre business. By the way, whatever became of the boy with the marcel? What was his name, now? D. H.: You mean George Billings. He’s running a beauty parlor, spec¬ ializing in permanent waves for men. I understand he hired the flirtatious Mary Dean to attract the male cus¬ tomers for. him. B. W.: You remember Helen Fin- nie who had such curly hair? Well, she went to George Billings for scalp treatment and the formula he used made her hair straight. Helen was so pleased she immediately told Catherine Steiner about it and George hired Catherine as the model for the advertisements of his famous freckle cream. D. H.: Oh, there’s a restaurant down that way and I understand that the diplomatic Corrado Ceneri- zio is the head waiter. M. H.: Mary Bean is in that line of business; she is an interpreter of menu French for an old school mate of ours, John Collins, who has made a lot of money selling ivory. By the way, what happened to Mabel Dud¬ ley? B. W.: Oh she is a professional basketball player. D. H.: How interesting! Vivian Cook is a professional hiker and come to think of it, she told me that she met Grace Conway out west. She’s a dancing teacher. M. H.: Ben. Wilbur is poet laure¬ ate of Iceland. He went way up there to get away from barbers. D. H.: At his last public appear¬ ance George Newman sent him some flowers. You know that he is a successor to Thayer the Florist, didn’t you? M. H.: Ben isn’t the only one who is appearing publicly. Catherine Mayer is one of the leading lectur¬ ers of the country on psychology now. B. W.: Speaking of lectures, I imagine we’ll hear from Peg Blackall and Ruth Munyan. They’ve been on a fishing trip to Alaska. I don’t

Page 17 text:

THE EXPONENT 11 effect we do not know, but it shows that alcohol was recognized as an evil in the Celestial Kingdom. The desire of the ancient Greeks for prohibition is revealed in their sym¬ bolic attempts to keep Bacchus, god of wine, away from the door, and the Koran explicitly forbids the Mo¬ hammedans the use of alcohol. The earliest explorers and set¬ tlers brought alcohol to this coun¬ try, and we find that Henry Hud¬ son and his brave crew celebrated their safe landing by getting glo¬ riously drunk; the neighboring In¬ dians also participated in this ca¬ rousal and thus learned the invigo¬ rating properties of John Barley¬ corn. The Mayflower carried spirits in her cargo, along with the Puri¬ tans and the numerous antiques which have come down to us through the • years. But the prohibition movement keot abreast, for in 1619 the Virginians enacted a law against drunkenness and in 1631 passed an¬ other law to prevent cler men from becoming intoxicated—evidently the clergy of that colony was not noted for its abstemious habits. In the early days of their existence most of the colonies prohibited the sale of liquor to the Indians; though this was doubtless a protective measure, for strong drinks imbued the noble redman with a desire to fight, and the hated white man was a foe he dearly loved to kill. The good citizens of New York were outraged in 1691 when the enemies of two men, by name Jacob Leister and Jacob Milborne, succeeded in getting the governor to sign their death warrant after he was thor¬ oughly drunk. Thus the progress of the move¬ ment went on during the years while we were subjects of the Crown. The method usually adopted to pre¬ vent the sale of liquor to drunkards was to post their names in a public place, and anyone found guilty of selling to them was fined, but as the bootlegger was not unknown to our ancestors probably no one was really compelled to go without his dram of rum for any great length of time. The first real prohibitory action occurred when Virginia. Maryland, and Pennsylvania enacted laws to ston the distilling of grain in 1778 because of the necess ' tv of feeding the Continental soldiers. During these years laws were being continually enacted to close saloons on Sundays, at reasonable hours at night, and to stop the sale of liquor to minors. In 1808 the first temperance soci¬ ety was organized in Marean, New ork, by Dr. J. B. Clark. Previous to this, in 1805. the Sober Society had been formed in New! Jersey. These two organizations were the forerunners of the multitude of their kind which were to follow. During the next generation these societies became common throughout the United States, and lectures, temper¬ ance songs, and sermons were used to show the people the baneful ef¬ fects of alcohol on the mind, body, and spiritual nature of man. Not- with-standing all these righteous at¬ tempts, the use of alcohol continued to be fairly widespread. These small community societies gradual¬ ly enlarged the scope of their mem¬ bership until nation-wide organiza¬ tions came into being. Of these the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, and the Anti-Saloon League, dating from 1893, are good examples. Both these societies have become tremen¬ dously powerful in their war on al¬ cohol. Today the Anti-Saloon League, which, as its name implies, is the bitter enemy of the corner saloon, has a powerful lobby in Washington, and sends forth propa¬ ganda in its own magazines, pa’ ’ h- lets, posters, bulletins, and books. This society has organized the lead¬ ing Protestant Churches of the coun¬ try and through them and its other highly organized means it struck a death-blow to its ancient foe, the saloon, with the Eighteenth Amend¬ ment. But it has replaced the above-board saloon with the greater evil, the worst thing in the way of iniquity the degenerate mind of man has ever conceived, the blind tiger. In connection with these societies it is interesting to note the gradual change in meaning the word tem¬ perance has undergone. The peo¬ ple of the early nineteenth century understood its meaning as being the moderate use of alcoholic liquors. By 1820 it meant the temperate use of mild liquors and total abstinence as regards ardent spirits. By 1830 it was used to mean total absti-