But all that I have described is there--aggressively,
blusteringly, optimistically there--and is going most confidently on. It
is for the most part a temperate life. All through that valley there has
swept a movement, moral, economic, or both, which has closed saloons and
prevented the sale of intoxicating drink of any sort in States or
communities all the way from the lakes to the gulf.
But, singularly enough, there is promise of a new age of alcohol, I am
told. Farmers can distil a variety of alcohol from potatoes at a cost of
ten cents a gallon and use it in gasolene engines most profitably, which
leads one who has written most informingly and hopefully of the American
farmer to foreshadow the day when the farmer "will grow his own power and
know how to harness for his own use the omnipotence of the soil" and get
its fruits most beneficially distributed.
That there is a strong utilitarian spirit possessing all the valley I do
not deny. But I often wonder whether we are not conventionally astigmatic
to much of the beauty and moral value of such utilitarian life and its
disciplines.
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