PROHIBITION: Ritzy

Some time ago a scintillating adjective joined the American language. It expressed the superlative of all that is elegant, fashionable, fastidious and rich. From which famous hostelry, the Ritz-Carlton of Manhattan, or the Ritz of London, or the Ritz of Paris this word sprang is a question which philologists must decide. Thus, at least−somehow or other−was born “Ritzy.” (See THE PRESS.)

The name may now fittingly be applied to Roy Asa Haynes, National Prohibition Commissioner, and to his agents and his policies. The practice of padlocking, for a twelve month, the doors of any restaurant or dive caught selling forbidden liquors is not new. Not until last week, however, did it become “Ritzy.”

A doctor, enraged because he could buy liquor publicly for his pleasure more easily than he could prescribe it for his patients’ health, visited enforcement headquarters in Manhattan.

That night the doctor gave a dinner to the prohibition agents. He gave it in the Japanese Roof Garden of the Ritz-Carlton. It was alleged that the agents bought champagne at $20 a bottle. In this way they acquired an idea of Ritziness.

Straightway they prepared an injunction and many padlocks for use, not against the Ritz Roof Garden, but against the entire hotel, rendezvous des élites, cercle du beau monde. This was not only unprecedented, it was superlative, it was Ritzy.

…

At about the date of this proceeding, the American Hotel Association convened at Cleveland, heard the Chairman of its “Educational Committee,” John McFerlane Howie, declare: “The prohibition law raised the hotelkeeper from the level of saloonkeeper and placed him on a level with any other legitimate business man. His business today is better than ever before.”