Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, December 1921 · page 37 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #28 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is satirical commentary on **Prohibition** (the Volstead Act banning alcohol, 1920-1933). The author argues that a well-organized *minority* successfully imposed alcohol prohibition on the disorganized *majority* through effective propaganda. The piece uses the example of **Georges Carpentier**, a famous French boxer who visited America around 1921, to illustrate how emotions can be manipulated. Society women's enthusiastic response to the celebrity boxer demonstrates how people are easily swayed by passion—and similarly, the public was manipulated into supporting Prohibition through emotional appeals rather than reason. The author's point: organized groups with focused messaging defeat scattered majorities. He's criticizing Prohibition as an illegitimate restriction imposed by a passionate minority, suggesting that emotional propaganda—not genuine public will—created this law. The tone is sardonic, treating Prohibition as an example of how democracy fails when the majority lacks organization.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 35 AN AUTHORITY once established is hard to controvert. That is why it is going to be one heck of a job to knock any kind of a dent into the present Volstead law prohibiting even a smelling acquaintance with wine, beer or regular hard “licker.” Organized minorities vote solidly in politics; the vote of the majority is scattered. There is nothing more easily swayed than popular opinion and popular “passion” with the right kind of propaganda. I remember when Carpentier, the French fight champ, came across to get his bump on the beak, Gus and I were discussing the antics of the New York society women who “literally” fought with each other for the privilege of kissing him at a garden party. It is the human nature of the female of the specie to kiss the male brute at every opportune occasion, and, under stress of easily aroused emotions, under other conditions as well. Emotion is a primitive human instinct and if women swarm to kiss a prize fighter in these enlightened days, it is easy to understand how an unorganized majority of males, as well as females, might be moulded by proper propaganda to a conviction that this country will go to the bow wows unless booze of all character and description is kicked into the discard. We must admit that the prohibition minority did not slip anything over on the majority when it wasn’t looking. First they sneaked