Presto

July 25, 1925.
PRESTO
READS LIKE PART OF
CHRISTMAN EVOLUTION DEBATE
The First Touch Tells 9 '
But It's Really an Echo of One of the Richest
Episodes of the June Music Trades
Convention at the Drake Hotel
in Chicago.
GEO. P. BENT EXPLAINS
Illuminating Correspondence Between a Joliet Min-
ister of the Gospel and the Host of the Memo-
rable Dinner to the Ancient of All Ages.
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"The Fint Touch Tells"
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Here is an entertaining echo of a very enjoyable
event which formed part of the recent convention of
the music trades in Chicago. As every reader of
Presto will recall—in fact, could not forget—a com-
plete account of the "Dinner to the Aged" which was
given by George P. Bent on June 9 appeared in the
issue of this paper of the Saturday following. And
in the Chicago Tribune of June 10 the following
brief story of the event also appeared under the head-
ing of "Dry Law, Jazz and Reformers Stir Music
Men":
George P. Bent on Prohibition.
George P. Bent, who used to be a manufacturer of
pianos in Chicago, gave a dinner at the Drake last
night to the old-timers at the Music Industries Cham-
ber of Commerce. All his guests were more than 60
years old and had records of more than thirty years
in the music business.
Mr. Bent, who now resides in Los Angeles, came
all the way to Chicago to condemn reformers and
fanatical legislation and to hearken back to other
times when things were "different and better."
J. A. Bates, 83 years old, of Middletown, N. Y.;
Charles H. Parsons, of New York, former president
of the National Piano Manufacturers' Association;
and Adam Schneider, who has been in the piano busi-
ness in Chicago for fifty-one years, were guests of
honor. David R. Forgan and Chief Justice Harry
Olson of the Municipal Courts were among the
speakers.
"My father and two uncles were clergymen," Mr.
Bent said, "and I was sent as a boy to Wheaton Col-
lege, Illinois, and Grinnell College, Iowa, with the
hope and intent to 'trim me to the same piece of
cloth.' However, I chose pianos instead of preach-
ing."
Turning to consideration of the eighteenth amend-
ment, he continued:
"Prohibition is making drunkards and ruining girls
and boys, men and women, socially, morally and
financially. The cabaret is a worse vice spot than
the saloon ever was. No decent girl used ever to go
into saloons, but they are going to the devil fast now
in cabarets and 'joy riding.'
"I used to think a lot of professed and professional
reformers, but the longer I know them the less I
admire and respect them.
"In Tennessee, right now, they are trying by law
to smother free speech and stop thought on the
theory of evolution.
"Bryan, who booms Florida for a price, is engaged
as a reformer to plead for the enforcement of that
law just as he had been doing for prohibition.
"All the hue and cry about law enforcement and
about traitors to God and country comes from those
who favor the eighteenth amendment and forget all
about and care nothing for the fourteenth and fif-
teenth or any other amendment. It comes from fool-
ish fanatics and rabid reformers, who say that con-
duct can be cured, that appetite, taste and habit can
be curbed and controlled by law."
MINISTER STARTS CONTROVERSY.
As might have been expected, the remarks quoted
by the Tribune drew quick-fire from sources the
duties of which involve the supervision of beliefs
and faiths individually and generally. Among the
censors of morals who felt moved to criticism by
what the popular piano man had said to other well-
behaved men of music was the pastor of a congre-
gation at Joliet, 111. And, believing that the paper
that printed the report of his dinner, at which the
speech under observation was delivered, should also
present the views of the minister and his rejoinder—
in which there is a fine fund of educational sugges-
tion—Mr. Bent forwarded the correspondence to
Presto for publication. First is the letter from the
Reverend Mr. Putnam, of Joliet, a gentleman of un-
challenged ability and goodness.
Rev. Mr. Putnam's Challenge.
Joliet, Illinois, July 3, 1925.
Mr. George P. Bent,
Manufacturer of Pianos,
Chicago, Illinois.
Dear Sir: The enclosed clipping, taken from the
columns of the Chicago Tribune, will account for my
letter to you. You may not think it any of my con-
cern, but as a citizen of the United States and of
Illinois, who has given considerable time and energy
in the past twenty years in the cause of rescuing boys
and girls and weak men and women from the thrall-
dom of the saloon, I must protest against the remarks
credited to you by the "World's Wettest Newspaper"
and "Greatest Garbler of the Truth."
I am willing to grant most readily that you may
have been misquoted, but if you were not I wish to
say that a man of your age and business judgment
should be more careful of your facts. In the first
place you have made your money to a large extent
from sales to families where sobriety was the rule
of the household. You never could have piled up a
fortune selling pianos to drunkards' homes. Permit
me to remind you that more people by far are buying
musical instruments—pianos, victrolas, radios—and
all the other things which have made your company
prosperous since the eighteenth amendment went into
force than they did before. Far more people have
sayings bank accounts and much larger ones and all
this in a time of business depression and irregularity.
Evil of Cabarets.
You talk as if there were no cabarets and such
accompaniments before the eighteenth amendment
was passed. The facts are, which you well know,
that the worst cabarets, dives and all that ugly family
of institutions known in the history of Chicago ex-
isted during the time of the seven thousand and over
open saloons in Chicago. New Year's Eve turned
Chicago into a Sodom and Gomorrah, and I could go
on in this line until I had written pages. You say,
"Prohibition is making drunkards and ruining boys
and girls, men and women, socially, morally and
financially." Prohibition is doing nothing of the kind,
but the violation of the law, which is encouraged by
such speeches as you were reported to have made in
Chicago, is doing it. Your argument carried to its
logical conclusion would be that the Ten Command-
ments have made people worse instead of better.
You claim those who favor the eighteenth amend-
ment care nothing for the fourteenth and fifteenth
or any other amendment. While you know, if you
know anything about history, that these people are
the same class of people who have written every
reformatory and curative amendment that has ever
been written in the Constitution.
Refers to "Ravings."
Such ravings as this have but one reason behind
them—namely, "I like my liquor and I want my
friends to have it; I do not like to have to be known
as a lawbreaker in order to carry out my own desire."
Your crowd should realize that this country is trying
to be a Christian country, and if you want "the good
old days," as some of your agitators like Governor Al.
Smith, call them, you might emigrate to some of the
European countries which are struggling under a
load of liquor adversity, while the good old United
States goes merrily on toward prosperity, reducing a
war debt at the same time she cuts down the taxes.
You are fighting a useless, hopeless^ shameless
battle, and I trust and pray you may see the light
and repent before you appear before the judgment
seat of God.
All of this is written with the understanding that
you may have been misquoted by the newspaper
which makes a business of misquoting "Dry
Speeches."
Very sincerely yours,
IRVING E. PUTNAM.
MR. BENT'S REPLY.
It could hardly be expected that one so ready to
express himself as Geo. P. Bent, and so frank in his
views and in his public and private life, would
fail to reply to his reverend challenger. And it is
equally certain that whether the reader fully indorses
all that Mr. Bent says, or not, his statement of be-
lief—his "Credo"—will prove of interest to every man
in the music trade. His reply to Mr. Putnam fol-
lows, and it leaves nothing more to be said here:
Illinois Athletic Club, Chicago, July 20, 1925.
Rev. Irving E. Putnam,
306 Richards St.,
Joliet, 111.
My Dear Sir: Yours of July 3rd just this moment
received. The clipping you enclosed is perfectly cor-
rect, though I had not seen the article until you sent
it.
Am going to send you a copy of a paper which
published an account of the dinner which I gave to
the "Aged."
I judge from your letter that you are a younger
man than I am. I am seventy-one, and probably I
have seen things that you never dreamed of. I per-
sonally have no use for alcohol as you think I have,
except as a medicine, but I do know and have seen
that the young boys and girls of this country are
going to the devil just as fast as they can since pro-
hibition came in. The saloon was bad enough, God
knows, but the cabaret and joy-riding are a thousand
times worse.
A Look Backward.
In the old days, when I was a boy, they said the
worst drunkard on earth was the still drinker, who
bought a bottle of "booze" and took it off by him-
self and got drunk. That was the old saying when I
was a boy. Now, today the only way they can get a
drink—those who wish it—is to buy a quart, or a
pint, and take it off and drink it by themselves. In
the saloon days they took a drink and passed on.
Now they buy it by the quart or a pint and get
drunk, and today the young boy who takes out a
young girl on a "joy-ride" has a flask in his pocket,
and feeds it to the girl, and then the worst happens.
This same girl never would go into a saloon, but she
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