By Gregory Clark, May 23, 1925.

The man who is going to be hardest hit by Premier Ferguson’s Beer Verbotens is the man who votes dry but feels wet.

There is at least one in every office. There are probably ten thousand of them in Toronto. They constitute the mysterious and elusive element in all booze balloting. The talk of them leads the wets to believe there is a strong wet sentiment abroad. Their actions, on voting day, discover to the drys that the situation is not as black as it looked.

They are on the fence to this extent: they do like a little drink now and then, but to escape that guiltiest feeling when facing their wives and mothers-in-law at home, over the supper table, they vote dry every time. When the results are published, and Premier Ferguson announces that a certain wetness will be the real result, notwithstanding, these men get a double kick out of the situation. They are proud to have done their duty; but they are secretly tickled that they will be able to have the odd snootful of beer. They look forward to a very easy summer, when the family is up north…

The wets look on them with loathing and contempt. They are men without the courage of their convictions. They are henpecks, apron-string men, weak-kneed and contemptible. The drys regard them with a peculiar lofty pity. They are dry except when opportunity presents itself. They will not buy a bottle but they will share a bottle. They are the kind of men who will get a prescription from their doctor in a friend’s name and let the friend go to the vendor’s.

Now they are up against it.

All the secretly cherished expectations of the past three months have been suddenly and flatly dissipated into thin air. There will be no nice cosy little bars to hide in for a couple of glasses on those evenings on which they have to stay downtown on business (long enough for the smell of the beer to go off their breaths before they go home). There are to be no old-fashioned bar parlors with curtains and alcoves where they can spend jolly afternoons when their wives are out of town.

No: drinking will either be in the privacy of their own home, from bottles or kegs delivered in a public way by a loud and conspicuous delivery wagon, or drinking will be very horribly in public, at tables, which must be clearly visible from the street through uncurtained windows.

It looks as though Premier Ferguson had made a deliberate attack on the liberties of one section of the community – the semi-prohibitionists who want to be wet only on the sly.

Drinking at home is, of course, out of the question for these men. And now drinking in public, except at very late hours when all respectable men (who might see them) ought to be home, and in bed, is out of the question, too.

The semi-prohibitionists are out of luck.

Premier Ferguson has been guilty of a gross piece of class legislation. Nobody now can have a drink but the wets!

Editor’s Notes: In 1925, the Prohibition question was still front and center. “Wets” were against prohibitions and “Drys” were in favour of it.