Larry MacPhail Quotes
I should contribute generously to the war chest of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. But, I do not contribute at all.
Warfield, Don. The Roaring Redhead: Larry MacPhail, Baseball's Great Innovator. Diamond Communications, 1987.
A priest, Father Mathew, had been recommended for a State pension because of his extensive work of promoting temperance. However, his message played to and increased the degree of superstition, He preached that there were literal demons who would take over people and cause them to drink. The Queen was very aware of the symbolic value that every act of the crown conveyed and she was concerned about two things. First that superstition which she and most educated and enlightened people wanted diminished in society. Second, that the crown and the government would lose rational and scientific credibility so that future information and advice might be discounted by a cynical public who remember the crown arguing that demons were the cause of drinking and other ills. The same problem faces modern governments often. For example, in the middle of the 20th century, the Federal Government issued a film, Reefer Madness, which showed supposedly what happened when a person smoked marijuana. A few minutes after a young man smokes a marijuana cigarette, he starts to attack and rape a young woman at the party. The intent was to discourage people from smoking marijuana. But the consequences depicted were mostly false and to people who had smoked marijuana or observed smoking, the government appeared to be ignorant and or lying, The film became an icon of anti-government distrust and tendency to propaganda. Half a century later, the National Institutes of Health had trouble getting the true scientific facts about drug use believed as cynics still pointed to (and replayed on the Internet) Reefer Madness to show the government untrustworthy. Victoria understood this and took a long term view of the integrity and credibility of the crown and government.
Before we had national prohibition, many Southern states and counties outlawed alcohol. “Wets” were those who wanted to allow drinking of alcohol. “Drys” were those who did not. The South was “dry” and voted overwhelmingly for national prohibition, and later voted to keep it even when a majority of the country voted to repeal it. The irony was that the South has always been, and still is, one of the highest alcohol consumption regions and has had much alcoholism. Hence Roger’s humor.
Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher
Leland Stanford "Larry" MacPhail Sr. was an American lawyer and an executive in Major League Baseball. He served as a high-ranking executive, including club president and general manager, with the Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees, and was a one-third owner of the Yankees from 1945 through 1947. MacPhail's sons and grandsons were also sports executives. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978.
