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Over a dozen of our States have passed prohibition laws and after 'seeing the light," repealed them. Instead of prohibition being a benefit, they learned that it was a serious harm. Such laws, they learned, tended to degrade morals by refusing to recognize natural laws. They learned that it fostered illicit traffic, which increased the drink evil. They learned that the habitual disregard of the prohibition laws tended to create and foster disrespect of all law, both civil and criminal. Such law intensifies political dissensions, incites to social strife and abridges the public sense of selfrespecting liberty.

Let us look back and see how the States have fared that have accepted prohibition.

It is an established fact that wherever prohibition laws are passed the results are increased taxation, decline of prosperity, and general stagnation. Maine, the oldest prohibition State in the union, had, when she adopted prohibition in 1860, a population of 21.2 to the square mile. Thirty years later it was 21.7. What do the prohibitionists think of this wonderful growth in population? The "dry" States have ever been conspicuous for loss of population, pauperism, economic ruin, crime and discontent. Prohibition States lose the enormous revenues by which many charitable and educational institutions are maintained, which, in turn, works a hardship to the people who have to finally pay the bills. In 906 towns in thirty-three different States, 644 of them under prohibition laws, the average tax rate on each $100 of valuation in 1902 was $2.43 in the prohibition towns, and $1.59 in the towns where liquor was permitted. The average was 59 per cent higher in the prohibition than in the licensed towns.

The 1910 United States census proves conclusively that prohibition cities, towns and localities run far behind the natural growth in population as compared with like places where there are not these restrictions. And while the prohibitionists have for

years insisted that where the saloons disappear, savings bank deposits increase, the United States Treasury report shows that the two principal prohibition States, Maine and Kansas, have lower average savings bank deposits than any State not dominated by prohibition, and North Dakota, another prohibition State, has no savings banks at all!

Does the prohibitionist realize what it means to wipe out from this country the beer industry, which ranks sixth in reference to the amount of capital invested? Do they realize what effect it would have on agriculture? That the production of beer consumes annually seven hundred and twenty million pounds of corn and forty-five million pounds of hops? And that the brewers consume, all told, over one hundred million dollars worth of American farm products? Do they realize that, even aside from distilled spirits, there is no industry which directly contributes more to the cost of our government than the brewing industry? An annual revenue of over $65,000,000.

The State of California has over 130,000 acres of wine grapes containing over 90,000,000 vines, more than all other States in the entire United States. It represents an investment of $150,000,000, which returns an annual income of over $20,000,000. Over 100,000 people are dependent upon California viticulture. In 1913, the State produced 42,307,600 gallons of wine (this does not include brandy or distilled liquors.) The grape industry about equals the orange industry in the State.

The brewers, distillers and allied industries pay in revenue to State and Federal governments more than $320,000,000. At the beginning of the Spanish-American war, at the time of the nation's need, when $380,000,000 of war revenues were collected, the brewers alone paid one-third of the total sum required, without a single protest against the increased tax.

Prohibitionists proceed on a theory that those who patronize saloons or

are

take a drink are weak or irresponsible and need a guardian. If they given their way, will the next step be to tell us what we must smoke and eat and wear? Where is our free government? Must the workingman who stands for the decent saloon be placed in the custody of the prohibitionist? The rich and well-to-do may indulge themselves at their clubs and at the sideboards of their homes, but the poor man may not indulge himself at the corner grocery. The rich man would supply his own demands in his own way, but would enforce upon his fellowman less fortunately situated a policy which will compel him to a mode of life to which the rich man will not submit himself.

It is not the purpose of this article to defend the saloon as the present day saloon is managed, where distilled spirits are sold. With a State law, With a State law, however, abolishing the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits, and allowing the manufacture and sale of beer and light natural wines, the saloon would, more than any socializing influence of the present time, represent a greater attraction than any other force in bringing men together in intimate relations.

Gladstone once said, in speaking about the saloon, when he was asked to join in a temperance propagandism: "How can I, who have drunk good wine and beer all my life in a comfortable room and among friends, coolly stand up and advise hard-working fellow creatures to keep away from saloons and take the pledge?"

The saloon is the great meeting place of common men. It is a place where the free flow of ideas and ideals is exercised. Personal contact of man and man produces and sustains ideals of home, of country, of humanity, of party and of cause. In such a place the common possession of ideas is favored, and the world is made a coordinated world.

The saloon may be called a school of rough virtues, wherein a man may acquire self-control and learn standards of conduct which surely are bet

ter than none at all. The social spirit is awakened and made to expand, carrying him out of the narrow individualism of the home and his daily work. It keeps him in touch with the common funds of custom and belief, all of which contribute to the making of national life. Closing the saloon takes away the social life of a great number of people, removes the most important factor in the recreational life of the lower classes, or puts it under the ban of the law, and to this extent, increases the evils of monotonous specialization of labor, of narrow outlook and routine and sterile emotional life.

The German saloon stands for beer drinking, not a place of inebriation. If it were but this, would the self-respecting German take his wife and other female members of his family there? The saloon provides the only place in which sociability can be obtained for a nominal price by thousands of Germans who are sober and thrifty.

The failure of the abolishment of the canteen in the army is a fitting example of what happens, only on a greater scale, when the saloon is abolished. It was the chief cause of giving our army the worst hospital record of any army in the civilized world.

The prohibitionists claim that diminishing the number of saloons lessens inebriety and resultant crime. Let us see if it does? The United States census (1903) shows that prohibitory Portland (Maine), which has no saloons and a population of 53,000, had one arrest for drunkenness for every twenty-four of the entire population, while Milwaukee ("made famous for its beer"), having a population of 315,000 and 2,145 saloons, had only one. arrest for drunkenness out of every 142 of its total population.

The motto of the prohibitionist is abolition or nothing-rule or ruin. The disreputable saloon is far more to their liking than the decent saloon, for the more disreputable the saloon the more ammunition for the campaign. If all saloons were made de

cent and allowed to sell only light wines and beer, the bottom would soon drop out of the prohibition movement.

If those interested will read the newspapers printed throughout the State of Oregon (one of our last States to go "dry"), they will be awakened to the fact that prohibition is the forerunner of evils that were never dreamed of. Over half the drug stores have a "blind pig," or a "bootleg." Opium and cocaine are in such great demand that the supply cannot meet it. Oregon, like Maine, is mobilizing its army of secret drunkards, fed, nurtured and harbored by a well meaning but puerile population of prohibitionists. The good citizens of Oregon who were loudest in their clamor for prohibition are now loudest in their prayers for its repeal.

Should drink be abolished because it is abused? One may become blinded by fixing the eyes too long on the sun. Would you, therefore, despise the sun? The railroads kill about eight thousand persons each year in the United States. Would you abolish the railroads? The stock exchange brings misery to countless homes. Should we abolish the stock exchange? Thousands of our youths commit crimes, bring disaster, ruin and disease upon themselves through women, yet no one doubts that women are the greatest blessing of life. Water may refresh or it may drown. Fire may warm and it may burn. And so it is with drink. It may be abused and cause countless evils, or it may be used with moderation and healthful and beneficial results.

If more arguments were needed to convince that drunkenness follows prohibition, let the friends of prohibition consider this:

The first State-wide prohibition movement began in 1907, with the adoption of a State-wide law by the State of Georgia. The last report of the United States Internal Revenue before Georgia went "dry" shows the nation's production of 150,110,197 gallons of distilled spirits. The report

ending June 30, 1913, seven years later, shows a production of 193,606,258 gallons, or an increase of 43,496,061 gallons in that seven years. During that seven years, seven States went "dry." So that, as each State went "dry" each year, there was produced in this country an additional 6,213,723 gallons of distilled spirits. Can the prohibitionists give any other reason why this additional six million gallons of distilled spirits was produced, as each one of the States went dry, except the only sound and sensible reason that must be conceded by every unbiased mind that drunkenness follows prohibition as consistently, as unerringly, and as surely as death follows life.

There has been steady progress in France, Germany, England and America, all countries where mild alcoholic stimulants are drunk by the leading men. There has been stagnation among the Mohammedans, Asiatics and other teetotal nations, for example, India and Turkey. Rome did not fall on account of wine. It was gluttony, not drunkenness, that killed Rome, as is shown by the writings of Tacitus, Sentonius, Juvenal and Petronious. It is an historical fact that the nations who have been liberal consumers of wine, beer and ale have always been in the vanguard of human progress, and have made the greatest sacrifices for liberty. From the days when the English Barons, supported by generous jugs of mead, forced the grant of Magna Carta, down to the present war in Europe, where the beer-drinking Teutons have astounded the world with their valiant and brave fighting ability, strength and endurance, this fact stands prominently forth.

Would the prohibitionists be surprised to learn that seven signers of the Declaration of Independence were brewers? George Washington, the father of our country, had a brew house in Virginia, and Patrick Henry of "Give me liberty or give me death" fame was a bartender. Who have you among prohibitionists to equal Glad

stone, Bismarck, Moltke and Goethe?

Tear

Prohibition is not needed to sober the world. The world sobers itself. The necessity of temperance is by economic consideration forced on every individual. The man who drinks to excess fails. One loses trust in him and he loses his job. He sees about him the men who are at work, the good workers are not the drunkards. No prohibitory law is necessary. The eyes of every young man more quickly grasp the situation than all the laws in Christendom could instil. instil. down every saloon and brewery and anything and everything outside the man that you argue is a temptation and cause of defection, and you will begin a campaign of destruction that will practically empty manhood--for the will of the supposed victim remains untouched. Your work will have been in vain, for a man cannot escape from himself. It is inner control through organized interests that is the ideal of an education of the individual and the same ideal must be maintained in the education of society.

It is temperance through inner control that we must work towards if we wish to live in moral freedom, and not in a stage of development in whicn a large part of the energy of one group must be expended in controlling the actions of another, thus using two sources of energy with a wholly unproductive result.

Of all forms of drinking, none is more ruinous than the solitary drink. As soon as the feeling of repugnance

has been overcome, there is no limit and no inhibition. It is, in most cases, an easy thing to cure the social drinker of the large cities, but very hard to break the lonely drinker of the "dry" towns.

Let us discard our fanatical blue glasses, and let the blessed sunshine throw the light of common sense on the subject. Every decent person today is a believer in temperance, but every decent person is not a prohibitionist. We all recognize excessive drinking as indecent and a curse, but let us be quite fair and recognize what is lawful. Prohibition will never prohibit. Where it has been tried it has proved farcical and morally corrupting in the artificiality of life and morals it has no doubt fostered. If the legal traffic is absolutely suppressed while the appetite remains, it merely runs into illicit channels. And illicit traffic aggravates the evils of drinking enormously.

Our prohibitory

statute-makers,

working from a benevolent motive, have debauched politicians, corrupted legislatures and soiled the processes of the courts. The evils of drink exist, and to neglect their cure would be criminal, but to rush on to the conclusion that every vineyard ought, therefore, to be devastated, that every brewery should be razed, that the will of man, who lives in a free country, should be forcibly bent to the ground like the twig of a sapling, to satisfy the insane desires of a minority of the brains of this country, is unworthy of the logic of a self-governing nation.

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