HOW many Americans know that on August 6, 1833, Abraham Lincoln, with two other men, took out a license to sell liquor? Through the kindness of my friend, William L. Fish, I am permitted to reproduce it (see page 84).  
Times were different then, it is true; but one has the feeling that Abraham Lincoln was not a Prohibitionist. He was temperate in all things.
liquor license
In his amazingly interesting book, “Talks with T. R.,” Mr. John J. Leary, Jr., includes a chapter wherein Theodore Roosevelt speaks in no uncertain manner about the prospect of the country going dry.
“Colonel Roosevelt was not of those who favored the Eighteenth Amendment,” Mr. Leary points out. “To his mind Prohibition was certain to cause unrest and dissatisfaction; he doubted the fairness of removing the saloon without providing something to take its place in the life of the tenement-dwellers; and he was inclined to think the liquor question was settling itself.
“‘You and I can recall the time,’ he said to me one day, ‘when it was not bad form for substantial men of affairs, for lawyers, doctors—professional men generally—to drink in the middle of the day. It is good form no longer, and85 it’s not now done. It is not so long ago that practically every man in politics drank more or less, when hard drinking, if not the rule, was not the exception. Now the hard drinker, if he exists at all among the higher grade, is a survival of what you might call another day.
“‘Take Tammany. No one holds that up as an organization of model men, yet I am sure that were you to make a canvass of its district leaders, you would find pretty close to a majority if not an actual majority are teetotallers. Tammany no longer sends men with ability, and a weakness for liquor, to Albany. It may and it probably will send another of Tom Grady’s ability, but it will not send one who drinks as hard.
“‘This, you may rest assured, is not a matter of morals. It is, however, a matter of efficiency. Tammany wants results and it is sufficiently abreast of the times to know that drink and efficiency do not go hand in hand in these days of card indexes and adding machines.
“‘It is the same in your profession. Not long ago most of the boys were fairly competent drinking men; some I knew were rated as extra competent by admiring, perhaps envious, colleagues. Now the drinking man, at least the man who drinks enough to show the effects, is rare. The reason: your editors won’t stand for it. As Jack Slaght put it the other day—I think it was Jack—a reporter in the old days was expected to have “a birthday” about so often and nothing was thought of it. Now, as Slaght puts it, he is allowed but two. The first time, still quoting your friend Slaght, who at times is inclined to use plain language, he gets hell; the next time he gets fired. That is so, is it not?’
“I assured him that Slaght was substantially correct.
“‘It’s not a matter of morals there, though’ (with a laugh). &lsquo............