Pleas for prohibition / by Sam. W. Small

LEAS FOR PROHIBITION
BY
SAM. W. SMALL, A.M.
He who mouldt public Kntiment goes deeper than he who enact* ttatutet or J nounces decisions. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. II
I Think of the day, the humhling, affecting, overwhelming day, when the cup of d witter will reappear as an ingredient In the everlasting glory. HAMILTON.
ATLANTA, GA: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR,
1890.

COPYRIGHT, 1890, BY SAM. W. SMALL, A. M.
Eltctrotypid and Printedly ALFRED MUOCB & SON, 14 FRANKLIN STREET, BOSTON.

/ .

DEDICATION.
TO THE
YOUNG MEN OF OUR COUNTRY,
POM VHOX THK DUTIES ANI> ESaPONSIBILITlXS OF THE GOVIBNldNT ABB DAILY FALLINO, AND
UPON WEOSZ LOYALTY TO THE PRINCIPLE OT
PBOHIBITION
JTU8T LABGILY DEPEND TEE rcTTJBI PEACE, FHOSPEBITT, ASD OLOBT OV
THE AMEBICAN PEOPLE.

INTRODUCTORY.
NOT baring purposed within myself to write a pro found and exhaustive treatise upon the subject of Prohibition, this book is offered to the friends of the principle simply as a collection of current pleas and commentaries. It may help some persons to more fully realize the importance of the issue joined in our country between the liquor traffic and the advocates of prohibition. If it shall also move them to unite with the latter for the agitation of the issue and the accom plishment of the great reformation, my object will be attained in so many instances. I know already that many will disagree with some of the things written herein, but truth is many-sided, men are individualized by their Creator, and whilst we may not all see and speak alike, let us thank God we may all alike desire to apprehend duty, and obtain grace, strength, and courage to perform it.
S. W. S.
ATLANTA, GA., March, 1890.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

FACIE

3uouujmox AS A PKIXCU-LK ..... 3

CHAPTER II. lY.onmmoN IN THE PAST ...... 20

CHAPTER III. PnoniniTiox ix PI:.\CTICK ...... 36

CHAPTER IV. PROHIBITION AND PAKTIKS ......

CHAPTER V.

| PnoniBixiox AXI> Prnuc EDUCATION

/O

J

CHAPTER VI.

PROIinimOX AND THE PjRKSS

.....

81

CHAPTER VII. PROHIBITION AXD THE PUI.PIT ..... 98

CHAPTER VIII. PKOIIIBITION AND THE PitoiussioNS . . . . ( 113 ;

vi*n

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.
X AXD THE PUBLIC PEACE .
CHAPTER X. PROHIBITION AND PRISONS ...... 136
CHAPTER XI. PROHiBrnost AND PAUPEMSM . .... 149
CHAPTER XII. PROmBITION AND THE PUBLIC PtTRSE .... 161
CHAPTER XHI. PROHIBITION AND POSTERITY ..... 177

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

CHAPTER I.

PEOHIBITION AS A PRINCIPLE.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil

side;

"ome great cause, Gods new Messiah, offering each the bloom

or blight,

rts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the

right;

nd the choice goes by forever, twist that darkness and that

U6ht-

LOWEIX.

WHAT is
I Prohibition is ail expression of authority ; one , of the essential efficients of sovereignty. It is the ultimatum of the commandments of God ; the supreme effort in the legislation of men. Its sub ject is always some recognized form of evil, either malum in se or malum prohibitum. The very definition of law, which is the outflow of sover eignty, is inclusive of this principle. " Law," in

PLEAS FOB PROHIBITION.

the terms of the law-writers, "is a rule of actior

prescribed by the supreme power of the State,

commanding what is right and prohibiting what i.(

wrong."

Prohibition, in our day and affairs, has

on a special significance. It stands for the move

ment against the legal toleration of the liquo"

evil among the inhabitants of the country. That

movement, like all other reform agitations, divides

itself into many theories and as many methods.

Some of these methods are moderate and evolu

tionary ; others are absolute and revolutionary.

There are five distinct forms of the prohibi

tion principle included in the movement in tb e

United States, viz.:

(a.) Prohibition by municipal enactment. /

(5.) Prohibition in precincts, or school dis

tricts, by popular vote, or otherwise.

(c.) Prohibition in counties, by local option, \

or special enactment, at the will of the voters, or

the Legislature.

.

(d.) Prohibition throughout the State, by con

stitutional provision, or statutory enactment.

(e.) Prohibition for the whole nation, by con

stitutional amendment.

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.
Of the four first-named methods there are numerous examples already in force throughout thje Union.
Along the national line there is but one organ ize d and aggressive movement. It is represented by) the National Prohibition party.
-In sympathy with the action sought to be sectored by that party are the demands of the Na ;ional Womens Christian Temperance Uniou ani [ of the Independent Order of Good Templa rs, both of which are non-partisan organizatioi is.
support to this straight-out demand for national prohibition has also been given by the National Tei/nperance Society, an old society of great strength and influence, but whose main purpose is (to advance total abstinence under all conditions of public polity and legislation.
The Committee on Education and Labor of the United States Senate has reported favorably to that body a proposed amendment to the National Constitution, the purpose of which is to declare thai "the manufacture, importation, exportation, transportation, and sale of all alcoholic liquors as a beverage shall be, and hereby is, forever pro-

hibited in the United States, and in every pla rc subject to their jurisdiction."
The movement against the liquor traffic b grown to national proportions within the fiftr years past, and has now practically reached status of " an irrepressible conflict" between saloon and its allies, on the one hand, and all ,-^ forces of civilization which are naturally and logic ally antagonized by the liquor evil, on the oqier hand. The agitation of the question has spread into all circles of life, is made personal to ev ery class of our citizenry. No other great public refc Tin has developed so rapidly, against such tremend sus odds of opposition, and been the immediate occa sion of more general discussion, literary efffort, public controversy, and personal consecration than this prohibition question in the United Statesiof | America. As well might one seek to erase pie great Rockies from the topography of the Union with a school-boys sponge, as to eliminate this issue from American politics by any simulacrum of a settlement. The friends of prohibition m^an all they say when they declare that, like the slavery question, "this issue can only be settled when it is settled right"; and they regard the
/

gal prohibition of the evil as the only light thing do. The issue is clearly joined; it must go
rward to a definitive verdict.

.

TEE ONL7 REMEDY.

:

\ 3jo a goyeinment of the nature and limitations

of ourjowja, there is but^ope sovereign remedy for

any^^?S^. Public evil: it is absolute^jincondi-

tional, and enforced prohibition by law. ) This

fact, common to all human governments, has had

such repeated illustration in the experience of the

United States that few are so presumptuous as to

question the proposition. It is the process of all

j penal legislation, and is the method most often

urged against practices which are pernicious

rather than criminal. When an evil has demon

strated the fact that it is not of a convertible char

acter, that no palliations, modifications, or muta

tions are efficient to change it from an evil into

a good, then the only treatment of it that is logical

and effectual is prohibition. The liquor traffic is

such an evil. No process has ever been found,

by priest or publicist, whereby it can be trans

muted from a curse into a blessing.

The fallacy of expecting the end of the liquor

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.
traffic through the patchwork process of lodal option has been demonstrated. That method hjas had its day of trial, and is rapidly dropping out of the public favor. As a temporary respite fr^m the saloon affliction it has had commendable suc cess in some sections of the Union, but it is not a cure. It is like one of those patent medicines which arrests a trouble when taken in full doses uninterruptedly,. but you dare not relax your vigil ance, or reduce the doses, lest the evil come back again at flood height.^ Any legislation against the liquor evil that needs to be renewed periodi cally, keeps active the spirit of opposition, fa tigues the energy of enforcement, and alternates the public verdict between suppression and per mission. This is the history of local option wherever it has been tested. }
State prohibition, whether constitutional or statutory, is more effective, in proportion as the territory covered by it is larger, the public re sponsibility more equally shared, and the process of repeal more difficult. But so long as the national Congress traverses the States efforts by permitting interstate commerce in the prohibited article, and by allowing the issuance of govern-

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.
ment stamps to known illicit venders of liquors in prohibition States, such States must find their efforts largely abortive of the effective abolition of the evil traffic.
The so-called measures of taxation, regulation, and restriction are but so many forms of com promise with the traffic. And it is a compromis ing institution. Rather than suffer banishment and criminalization, the men engaged in the traffic will consent to any terms and burdens that will yet leave life and profit in their business. Natu rally they oppose all burdens placed upon them as long as opposition promises to minify the terms of compromise. But the more determined the public disposition to abolish thu traffic, the more exacting are the conditions to which the liquor dealers will submit. This is the experience of every community throughout the nation, where any effort has been made toward the suppression of the traffic. Hence the varied forms of law upon the subject in the States and communities of the country. In Ohio, the people and the traffic have come to terms upon a tax of $250 per annum for each saloon. In Nebraska, they have agreed upon a license system,, with fees of not less than $1,000

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FLEAS FOB PROHIBITION.

per annum for each saloon in cities of 10,000 and over, and not less than $500 in all other places in the State. Nebraska forces her liquor dealers into a compromise twofold to fourfold more costly than that which is obtained in Ohio. Nebraska is simply the thriftier, not the more moral, Common wealth of the two. In California the State fee is, in many instances, only $12 per annum.
These monetary compromises with the liquor traffic present so many and grotesque absurdities, they are so void of public honesty, equity, and moral quality, as to forbid them the least toleration in the thoughts of either wise or Christian men. They are the wages of unrighteousness and the rewards of immoral surrenders.
When a community has determined not to expel the traffic from its jurisdiction, and is willing to share both the responsibilities and profits of the evil commerce, the financial consideration for that decision is the only question that logically remains to be settled. How to settle that point is wholly the concern of those who consent to the decision. The conscientious opponent of the traffic cannot, with any shadow of consistency, participate in the bargaining by which the sanction of law is

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sold to the liquor dealer for a percentage of the profits of his trade.

THE POINT OF AGREEMENT.
,' It is no longer debatable as to what is the true remedy for the liquor evil. The concensus on that point has been attained. The most rabid liquor men say that " the only remedy is national prohibition, criminalizing every feature of the traffic in liquors as beverages, including the man ufacture, importation, and sale of the same." The Prohibitionists hold this identical doctrine, and seek to obtain its enactment and enforce ment.^ The liquorites and " regulators" there upon combine to defeat the application of "the only remedy." Here, then, we have the immov able line along which the battle of the future is to be fought to its finish. The Prohibitionists occupy all the territory upon one side of that line. Every anti-Prohibitionist has a place on the other side of it. The battle will be long, fierce, uncompromising, variant in incidental for tunes, but certain in the final triumph of the principle and policy of prohibition. That vic tory will not come in a day or a decade. Wen-

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PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

dell Phillips was right when he said, "It seems to be the way of reforms to try every conceiv able wrong method before the right one will be adopted. "\ Doubtless it was a study of this axiom, so clearly demonstrated in the anti-slavery movement, that inspired John Boyle OReilly, in his incomparable eulogium on Phillips, to write these words of the great reformer:
" Fanatic! the insects hissed, till lie taught them to un derstand
That the highest crimes may be written in the highest law of the land.
Disturber.1 and Dreamer! the Philistines cried, while he preached an ideal creed,
Till they learned that the men who have changed the world, with the world have disagreed;
That the remnant is right, while the masses are led like sheep to the pen,
And the instinct of equity slumbers, until roused by instinc tive men!"
This is, also, a consummate portraiture of the Prohibitionist, the legitimate successor of the abolition reformer!
OUR RIGBT TO Fl&BT.
A citizen of this government is justifiable in contending for any right to which he is entitled under the Constitution, and the laws made in

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accordance therewith. Any number of such citi zens are justifiable in combining their efforts, by party organization, to secure and establish the efficient operation of such right or rights.
But, is the prohibition of the manufacture, im portation, exportation, transportation, and traffic in intoxicating liquors one of those rights ?
The United States has taken national authority to exercise the right of prohibition in the interest of "the general welfare" in numerous instances. There can be no question, therefore, of the com mon understanding that, in matters over which the States have granted jurisdiction to the Federal government, the sovereign power of prohibition belongs to it.
Can the States also prohibit the commission of acts, or the presence of persons and things, which their Legislatures may severally declare to be injurious and " contrary to the good order, peace, and dignity of the State " ?
There is no clearer fact in the national polity than that the State is sovereign within its own jurisdiction in the exercise of the police powers reserved to each State under the terms of the Fed eral Constitution. The forty-two States of the

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PLEAS FOB PROHIBITION.

Union are to-day exercising this right, in partial or absolute form, with reference to their internal politics. Fourteen of them have so interpreted their sovereignty in these matters as to delegate the power to prohibit the liquor traffic to the local constituencies of their political subdivisions.
Every possible legal and constitutional quibble that astute and ingenious legal talent could in vent has been raised, cast into an issue, and brought to judgment before the Supreme Courts of the States concerned and the Supreme Court of the nation itself. These "cases" have been argued again and again by the most skilled and distinguished lawyers of the country. With what result? Only to be met, consecutively and continuously, with decisions iterating the doctrine declared originally by Chief Justice Taney (5 Howard, 504) :
"If any State deems the retail and internal traffic in ardent spirits injurious to its citizens and calculated to produce idleness, vice, or de bauchery, I see nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent it from regulating and restraining the traffic, or from prohibiting it altogether, if it thinks proper."

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It is significant of the absolute righteousness of this view of the question that, for forty-three years, through all the changes of the personnel of the Supreme Court, that bench has never swerved a hairs breadth backward from this dec laration. Eather, it has broadened and strength ened the recognition of the States sovereignty over this question of the prohibition of the liquor traffic. The oftener the whiskey people have ap pealed to the highest tribunal of the land, the more pronounced have been its decisions against their views and demands. The latest opinions of that court have been the weightiest in favor of the prohibition principle. On the other hand, the liquor men have no right, grounded in the Constitution, to which they can appeal in defence of their traffic. Justice McLean delivered the truth of the matter along that line when he said, "No one can claim a license to retail spirit uous liquors as a matter of right."
If, then, a license to engage in such traffic cannot be claimed as a right, can it be conferred as a right? Is it not simply a permission to do that which, without the permit, would be a pub lic wrong, in that it is against the natural and

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PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

general public polity? When such permission is given by the community, whether under the guise of a tax or a license, how can it be said that such permission is a "restriction" of the traffic? It is surely but a bald, barefaced con tradiction of common-sense and simple logic to argue for such a construction/ The effort of the liquor dealer, therefore, is always to convince the public authority that there is a profitable business basis for co-operation between himself and the community. With purse in hand he frankly says to the people, "How much?" The people consult their greed, covet his gold, and vote him his "per mit " for the price they have fixed upon as satis factory."}
DIFFUSION IS A DEFENCE.
If we could once concentrate the liquor traffic, we could soon abolish it utterly from the face of the country. \ If we could drive the whiskey element of the nation into one political party organization, that party would speedily die from as maggoty a gangrene as did Philip of Spain?} If we could consolidate all liquor making and liquor vending in some one section of the Union, as slavery was once peculiar to the South, the

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great body of the people would soon revolt against the presence and power of such a sectional incu bus, and speedily decree its unconditional aboli tion. The present diffusion of the liquor evil is its most potent defence.
It is estimated that all the houses occupied, throughout the Union, by the liquor traffic would form a city twice the size of New York City. Imagine it so consolidated, and then calculate bow long the country would permit such a malignant metropolis to exist as a part of its national life. He is surely a fool who believes the people would tolerate it for a single year. Then why tolerate it any more willingly because parcelled out over the whole land ?
Mormonism is mobilized in Utah Territory. The decency and righteousness of the nation look upon it, thus aggregated, as a great cancer near the heart of the nation and a great crime against civilization. The people ai-e becoming yearly more strenuous in their demand that Mormonism be criminalized and suppressed. . Compact the liquor traffic within like limits, and the public in dignation could not be restrained from working swift destruction upon it,

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PLEAS FOB PROHIBITION.

The Louisiana Lottery is an offence to the hon esty and decency of the balance of the nation. Legislation to limit the reach of its octopus arms and to head off its highway robberies of the de luded masses has been enacted by the national and nearly all the State governments. But, if thirtyfive of the States had lotteries, authorized by their constitutions, and paying a great revenue to the public purse for their privileges, the Louis iana robber scheme would cease to be a mark for condemnation and another name for infamy. The liquor traffic is so sanctioned in thirty-five States of the Union, and hence its power, its privileges, and its immunity from wholesale odium and utter annihilation.
Cardinal Lavigerie arouses the civilized world to protest against the slave traffic of the cruel Arabs of East Africa, and urges the co-operation of all Christian nations to secure its suppression. Henry M. Stanley goes thither, attended by armed meu, and shoots down the slave-drivers, all in the name of humanity, Christianity, and God! (JBut, in the United States of America, "the land of the free and home of the brave," 187,177 drink dealers hold government permits?

fLEAS FORtPEOHIBITION.

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to debauch, pauperize, brutalize, and enslave our brethren, our fellow-citizens. The actively em ployed dram-shop army of slave-drivers in our country numbers nearly 500,000 men. The road ways of the slave caravans of Africa are not bor dered with so many bones or studded with so many skulls as the roadways of the liquor traffic in these United States. Yet, when intelligent, reputable, Christian men and women demand the suppression of the liquor traffic, with its hor rible record, patent to public knowledge, no epi thet is too vile and no characterization too brutal to be applied to them, and often by the very lead ers of the press and public opinion. This is one of the gross inconsistencies of our civilization.^

CHAPTER II.
PROHIBITION IN THE PAST.
No work shall find acceptance in that day, When all disguises shall be rent away, That square not truly with the Scripture plan, Kor spring from love to God, or love to man.
COWPEK.
THE SCRIPTURE AND PROHIBITION.
The argument for prohibition, deducible from the Scriptures, has been so often and so ably made, and is being daily so widely reiterated from pulpits and platforms, that it is not necessary to repeat it here. The many and vain attempts of the liquor advocates to invalidate this argument have come to naught but confusion and contempt. Their clumsy handling of Bible incidents and the data of Jewish customs has brought them no com fort and made them no converts. One of these liquor writers, who haspublished a book, with unconscious candor has confessed the truth, almost in the terms that Prohibitionists themselves would employ. He says: " The glory of the Bible is its

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truthfulness. It was written for all ages and for all men. It is a lesson, a consolation, a blessing to man, because it tells of the wickedness and excesses of men, and the dangers that attend them. That is all there is in the Bible. It is the most truthful, unbiased history of man that was ever written."
The writer of the above only needed to recall St. Pauls summary of the Scriptures in order to find the true premise for prohibition, viz.:
" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." (2 Tim. iii. 16.)
Therefore, when the Bible clearly reveals to us the errors of men and nations, it is our duty to be timely warned and turned away from repeating their follies. When it publishes to us the causes of the excesses which ruined men and nations, it is our duty to recognize those causes, and dili gently remove them from the ways of our brother and our people. When it reveals the indignation of the Holy One against the wickedness of men and things, it is our duty to ground our doctrines upon the revelations so made, and be earnest in

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every work of righteousness that will prevent such wickedness by men and things. We accept the history of the Bible. Its voice is unmistakable. It sounds out, truly, to all ages and to all men. (No wise and honest man can mistake what that voice declares : that wine and strong drink, in the sum total of their history among men, arc the enemies of wisdom, health, peace, prosperity, patriotism, love, and the true worship of Almighty God. To deny this is to wilfully pervert history and reject the revelation of truth, by inspiration of God. NThe argument in the biblical record for the total prohibition of the liquor traffic docs not depend upon a collection of texts ; it rests broadly, firmly, invincibly, upon the whole record of the evils of strong drink upon individual and national life. The concensus of all the writers, from Moses to John the Divine, is found in "the true verdict" that strong drink is the foe of man, the spoiler of national glory, and the arch-conspirator against the reign and rule of God with men.
This is the almost -universal understanding among the ablest and most learned interpreters of the Scriptures throughout the world. It is not a question of politics or Puritanism, not an

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issue of phreneticism or fanaticism, but a plain and overwhelming conviction of the truth as it is in the experience of men and in the revelation of God. There are but few men professing to preach the word of Truth who hold out against this verdict. There are fewer evangelical Chris tian bodies that dare to broaden their creeds to em brace toleration of the drink traffic. The day of the " oneness of the Body of Christ" against this giant evil, this centuries-crested sin, is surely coming to this country.

SIGN-POSTS ON ANCIENT ROADWAYS.
No sensible man assumes that everything ancient is sacred, or that every profitable meas ure the ancients operated should be enacted into a universal law. Noah planted a vineyard, and got drunk with the wine made from the fruit of it, but that fact did not make it incumbent on every planter of a vineyard thereafter to make wine of his grapes, and get drunk with it. Nor did it warrant a law to prohibit all men from planting vineyards. But when it was, by that experience, made known to Noah and all man kind that the strong wine of grapes was perni-

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cious, unmanning, brutalizing, and exciting to sin, the reason and necessity for the prohibition of wine-making and wine-indulgence appeared as tangibly and unmistakably as the two angels of safety appeared to Lot in Sodoni.
"But," say the liquor people, "wine is a good creature of God," and " there is not a line or a word in the Bible that can be perverted to make an honest showing in favor of the absurd teach ing that God has given man a stomach and good things to put in it, and trusted them together since the Garden of Eden; but now God is wrong, and the Prohibitionists are right, and the two must be divorced from each other."
"Grapes are good creatures of God." Very true; take your fill of Gods good grapes ! The grape-juice is, also, a good creature of God. Very well; drink and bo rejoiced, press the luscious clusters until they burst and bleed you a brimming cupful! Then, "Wine is a good creature of God." Never! Grape-juice is not wine, and wine is not grape-juice. Wine is no more a good creature of God than rotten apples or tainted meats. Fermentation is the process of death; completed, it is corruption. If wine

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is a good creature of God, so is " Limburger cheese" and the "Ihszard stews" of the Modoc Indians!
If wine is a good creature of God, why does it need to be doctored, "sharpened," "re-enforced," with high wines and brandies before it is mer chantable? Why should Senator Stanford fiud it needful, in aid of the California wine industry, to introduce a bill in the United States Congress to relieve the manufacturers (mark the word !) of pure " California wines " according to Miss Kate Field of the duty and tax on the brandies needed to fortify their product? What a blas phemy to connect the name of God with such "good creatures," nearly all of which, according to Dr. Chenery ("Alcohol Inside Out," page 25), "are largely fortified"!
The truth is, that when men began to " manu facture " and " mingle " strong drink for them selves and their neighbors, the ancients saw the dangers and immoralities of the business. They denounced individual indulgence and national toleration alike; they went back to the method of God, to the model law of Sinai, and declared for prohibition. The Nazarite was the

4

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"crank" of his age; the Eechabites were the " third-partyites " of their times, surrendering not to heathen " liberalism " nor to the " compromising spirit" of their own people. The Chinese Em peror, Key, was a more radical prohibitionist than any Neal Dow or St. John of the modern day. That cranky Celestial ordered the uproot ing of all the vines in his Empire, forbade strong drink to the people, and when a lot of Chinese " personal liberty leaguers " violated his law, he incontinently drowned them in the casks of their own illicit liquors. Lycurgus extinguished vini culture and ordained prohibition in Lacedemonia. Lycurgus is a good authority with lawyers even to this day, except on the subject of prohibition 1 And so it has been in all ages, the wise,, the good, the philanthropic have agreed to brand the liquor traffic as a sin against God and a crime against man.
Dr. Daniel Dorchester, in his great work, " The Liquor Problem in all Ages," has compiled the record of the worlds ,thoughts and efforts in relation to this tremendous evil. He presents to every honest man a panorama of historic incidents and experiences, the logic of which is irresistible,

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the conclusion from which is inevitable. From frontispiece io finis that incomparable book spells "Prohibition" in letters of blood, fire, and iron! It bankrupts the opposition beyond redemption; it capitalizes the cause of prohibition for all time to come!

HEREDITY AND HOGGKHNESS.
There can be no valid claim that the appetite for strong drink is a natural appetite, and descends by a law of heredity, from people to people, from generation to generation. The "heredity" is in the drink and not in the man, if we will use right terms. The Talmudic legend about Noahs trouble with strong drink has much wisdom in it, if not revelation. It tells that Satan, anxious to cast down Noah, yet certain that the latter was acquainted fully with the apple event in Eden, and would scarcely succumb to a like approach, was at a loss how to proceed. But Noah, having planted a harmless vineyard (for up to that time the grape had done man no evil), Satan shrewdly turned this circumstance to his profit. He slew a sheep, a monkey, a lion, and a hog, mingled their bloods, and with the compound fertilized

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the roots of Noahs growing vines. They bore grapes that purpled with the dark essences of those animal natures, find Noah " drank of their wine, and -was drunken," a shame to himself and a laughing-stock to his sons.
The author of this legend was a shrewd observer, if not an inspired revelator. No m:in who has ever himself taken the "Drunkards Degrees," or seen another pass through the processes of drink debauchery, can fail to recog nize the philosophic basis for the legend. How innocent as any lamb of wrong-doing or wrongending is the man who is in the first, the social, or "Sheep degree" of the Order of Drunkards. Next, how frisky, funny, merry-making, when passing through the second, the maudlin, or " Monkey degree." Then, how fierce, ungovern able, dangerous, when undergoing the third, the lawless, or " Lion degree." Lastly, how brutish, filthy, offensive, when overtaken by the fourth, the helpless, the " Hog degree." Is it a case of heredity? I think not. Whatever the physio logical facts may be with reference to the law, or the eccentricities, of heredity, they do not touch or influence the liquor problem at this

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point. The question at hand is, "Wherein is the excess?" Is it in the man or in the wine?
Our liquor fellow-citizen, the author of the book, "Prohibition, the Foe of Temperance," quotes St. Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess," and exclaims, "That is, do not drink to excess; not an intimation against moderation." This is a swift, shifty, and false interpretation. The apostle plainly says, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess" the excess being in the wine. What does he mean by excess? Is it an expression of quantity or potentiality? It is as if the apostle had said, "Be not burned with fire, wherein is the power to burn"; or, "Be not drowned with water, wherein is the power to drown"; or, "Be not killed with poison, wherein is the power to kill." So he exhorts men, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is the power to make drunken." Be cause this power inheres in the drink, and is always tending powerfully to make the drinker drunk, it is to be abjured.
That drunkenness may become a family curse and a national evil, is beyond doubt. That sobri ety, even total abstinence, can be also made a

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family virtue and a national glory, Las been equally demonstrated. The histories of some of the Eastern peoples exhibit the fact of great masses of individuals and sects enjoying an abso lute heredity of indisposition to strong drink. With them there exists a stringent prohibition, founded upon both faith and physiology. Their history and their habits are vindicatory of both their religious fidelity, their sociology, and their statesmanship.

A SILLY SUGGESTION.
It has been seriously argued by some seem ingly wise men that, admitting all these facts, the examples of these heathen and semi-civilized peoples of the planet are not fit patterns for men in our day and country. They tell us that the demand for strong drmk is one of the corolla ries of advanced civilization. The demand, they assure us, grows out of a discovered or developed need of the civilized man. In other words, we are asked to believe that one of the inevitable resultants of civilization is a disposition to absorb stimulants and become drunkards I
But we do not believe any such rank nonsense,

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It cannot be proven by any logical deduction or trustworthy data. The statesmen of civilized nations do not legislate under the limitation of that idea. The religions of the world do not recognize any such doctrine of reaction in the processes of civilization and Christianization. To admit the reality of any such law of reflexion in the mental, moral, and pli3sical progressions of our race would paralyze its faith and palsy its every uplifting energy. God made man before he made strong drink. The Creator projected the powers and possibilities of man independent of modern theories concerning the place of whis key and beer in the economy of higher civilized life. The ascent of mans perfect way of life, rising from his cradle until it is lost to mortal view in the glory of a closeness to God, runs through the open doorways of no saloon or stillhouse, nor by the swill-vats of any brewery. These are not divinely ordained ancilloa to facili tate the development of godliness in mankind.

A MODERN INSTANCE.
One of the necessary features of the institution of slavery, as it existed in the South, was a

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stringent prohibition of the liquor traffic with slaves. The law was rigidly enforced throughout the entire territory of the Southern States, prov ing beyond all question that " prohibition will prohibit" whenever there is a determined, author itative effort to do so. The results of such pro hibition upon the health, morals, and productive capacity of the negroes are clearly separable from all the other features of their condition as slaves, and furnish indubitable proof of the advantage of the measure to a laboring class of people. The contrast between the race sober and the race free and addicted to liquors is very great. It reveals the mightiest evil that has come to them as a consequence of their emancipation. The ofturged idea that exposure to temptations to do evil is an incitement to self-restraint and the development of moral heroism, has had a crucial trial in the post-bellum history of the freedmen. The result is an overwhelming contradiction of the illogical and despicable theory.
The experience of governors in all nations and the philanthropic in all parts of the world has been corroborative of the wisdom of the maxim of Mi1. Gladstone, that" it is the duty of government to

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make it as easy as possible for them to do right." If the policy of prohibition had no other claim to favor than its certain influence along the lines named by Mr. Gladstone, it is most worthy to be adopted by every wise and beneficent body politic. That prohibition does, in the matter of the evils attendant upon the liquor traffic, make it easy for men to avoid those evils and difficult to indulge them, is too self-evident to need any argument.

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE.
The favorite charge of the enemies of prohibi tion is that it has not been a success in those places in the United States where it has been tried. The truthful answer to this is that prohibition has never had a fair, impartial, and loyal trial in any State, thus far. A reform so radical- and farreaching as the total suppression of the liquor traffic in any large division of the country natu rally meets with strenuous opposition from a strong and unscrupulous minority, whose business and political interests are brought under the ban by it. Such minorities are passionate, desperate, and frequently lawless. The fanaticism of the most uncompromising Prohibitionist is far exceeded by

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the fanaticism of the men who reject the verdict of the ballot-box, revolt against the acts of the lawful authorities, and set themselves, by personal endeavor and organization, to nullify the statutes of the State. The anomaly is presented wherein those who appeal to the constitutional methods and guarantees are denounced as "cranks" and " hypocrites," while those who defy the laws, putting their own judgments and efforts in open rebellion against the public authority, are classified as " men of common-sense " and as " patriots."
Under such conditions, which have supervened wherever prohibition has been operated, the law is compelled to fight its way to supremacy, and the struggle must needs be long and difficult. It is really a matter for congratulation that, against such odds, prohibition has so often and so grandly vindicated every claim urged for it, and has shown itself fittest to survive.
The record of prohibition legislation, from 1851 to 1889, exhibits a net result of seven States under absolute prohibition", constitutional or statu tory, and a vast amount of territory throughout the Union under the prohibition enacted in local option and special Jaws. The votes cast in the

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elections held upon this question have made plain the deep and abiding interest which the people have in the final and right solution of this great national issue. Despite frauds, corruption, brib ery, boycotting, and intimidation, the popular favor shoivn for prohibition at the ballot-box is the prophecy of its day of triumph in the future. Wherever prohibition has failed to secure a popular majority, it has been because of the opposition of present political parties and the corruption funds of the distillers, brewers, and saloonists. This fact has been so fully and frequently proven that few men are hard-faced enough to deny it. Wherever it has been repealed (as in Rhode Island), it has been from disgust of the cowardice, corruption, and perjury of the party and the offi cials responsible for its non-enforcement. These are the reasons why the cause of prohibition does not die ! The people know it has never yet had a fair trial for its life, and are determined that it shall not be politically assassinated before it has had such trial, and therein failed to demonstrate its right to a place in the laws.

CHAPTEK HI.

PBOHIBITIOX IX PRACTICE.

A thonsand years scarce serve to form a State.

An hour may lay it in the dust!

BYRON.

A. SHREWD ASD SPECIOUS CURSE.
Whenever the policy of prohibition has been determined upon, it is the office of the Legislature to provide suitable laws, penalties, and official machinery for its adequate enforcement. If it fails to do this fully and honestly, the Legislature is itself recreant to the trust reposed in it by the people. Instances are not wanting in our history where such confidence has been recklessly abused, where the laws have been so made as to better facilitate their avoidance than their enforcement. This is the special trick of the corrupt and half hearted.
Prohibition is pronounced a failure because wherever it has been operated, liquor has con tinued to be sold and drank, contrary to law.

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The most stringent statutes, the most orthodox prohibition clauses in State constitutions, have not resulted in regenerating depraved human nature, converting lawless spirits into docile doers of the commandments, and wrought a millennium of so briety by sheer force of legislation. We are, therefore, given to understand that all prohibitory legislation is futile. The contention, on the other hand, is, that prohibition is right in prin ciple and effectual in form, but has never had a fair trial. Its execution has been weak, because in the hands of men not always in sympathy with its purpose, or who were willing to barter away its enforcement for the votes of its enemies and their own continuance in office and public au thority.
The liquor traffic is a shrewd and specious curse. During the centuries of toleration it has . enjoyed in our country, it has managed to skil fully interweave itself with nearly every other prominent interest of the nation. It goes to the farmers and, with undeniable figures, argues to them that the liquor business means a market for 46,000,000 bushels of their grain and $23,000,000 in their pockets. Unfortunately, many farmers

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are deluded by this specious idea, that to destroy

the liquor traffic would destroy the need for all

those millions of bushels of grain and the putting

into their pockets annually all those millions of

glittering silver dollars. The American farmer is

a man of more than mediocre intelligence, but he

has yet to comprehend the plain truth that the

liquor traffic is his enemy, not his friend; that

every bushel of grain sold to the distillery stops

the sale of three other bushels to the bread-

makers.

f

The $23,000,000 worth of grain in the hands of the distillers and brewers is turned into a product

that takes from the pockets of the people least

able to indulge themselves in liquors and riotous

excesses the enormous sum of over $700,000,000

annually.* There is, by reason of this waste

ful and pauperizing expenditure, hunger enough

unassuaged throughout the land to demand four

times 46,000,000 bushels of grain. But when the

money that should go to buy bread is diverted to

buy drink, the farmer must be content to sell

* The Voice Insists that $1,100,000,000 Is the true sum. I use however the minimum estimate of the U. Q. Bureau of Statistics, Washington, D. C.

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only 46,000,000 bushels, when he ought to and would sell, if the drink-curse were abolished, from 150,000,000 to 180,000,000 of bread-making cereals. ^
This is an instance of the way in which the liquor traffic has argued the idea of the necessity for its toleration. It makes the railroad people believe that to abolish the traffic would largely affect their tonnage and reduce their revenues; it makes the banks believe that by the prohibition of the traffic, their deposits and exchanges would be greatly cut down; it makes many lines of trade believe that the ruin of the liquor busi ness means much loss of custom and profit; and thus, like a poison vine, it has attached itself to the sturdy oaks of our prosperity. When will our people recognize the truth that this gigantic parasite can only kill legitimate trade, and never make for profit and prosperity ? How much more must the people suffer from its impoverishing and fatal blight before they lay the axe of the law to its roots everywhere, and, with strong hands, by a faithful enforcement of their decrees, tear away from the countrys life every vestige of this in fernal agency ?

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IT MUST BE OUTLAWED.
Again, the fact needs emphasizing that the only righteous way to treat the liquor traffic is to outlaw it, absolutely and unconditionally. An drew Johnson gave utterance to the patriotic epigram, "Treason must be made odious, and traitors punished !" The prohibition principle combines with the principles of patriotism and home protection to demand that " the liquor traffic must be made odious, and the traffickers outlawed and punished! "
Constitutional clauses upon the subject need to be clear, comprehensive, and commanding. Some of those which have already been submitted to popular votes in the States have been defective. They were descriptive of a plan, rather than declaratory of a principle. Legislation should not be incorporated in a constitution. Only the concisest intelligible statement of the principle is proper in the fundamental chart, which ought to be little more than a " a few strong instincts and a few plain rules."
When local option is desired, the General Local Option law of Georgia is esteemed a model

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statute. It is plain, comprehensible, and easy of application. For county option it gives the peo ple full power for legislation and enforcement, and has, therefore, found great favor \vith those constituencies that believe in this method of treatment for the liquor evil. It completely out laws the traffic in the district over which it may extend, and, in the hands of officers who are honest, can be made to produce some satisfactory results.
But these local laws upon the subject are defect ive in this, that they are easy of evasion by the process of importation from surrounding liquor territory. Liquors can be readily brought into the prohibition area from adjacent non-prohibi tion territory, and the law is powerless to correct this species of nullification until there is specific violation of its provisions by gift, sale, or barter. These acts are so perpetrated as to make them difficult of detection. The natural consequence of continued drunkenness, despite the law, tends to disgust the people and discredit the statute, and results too frequently in its final abandon ment.
Prof. Henry A. Scomp, of Emory College,

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Ga., who has carefully and honestly studied the rationale and results of local option, under its most favorable operations, says of its faults these indisputable things:
"Local option is of all forms of temperance legislation the least able to resist those temper ance revulsions which come in the course of every great moral or popular movement. Such ebbings of the tide leave the Option ship stranded high and dry stern seaward. At such times of low sentiment the vigilant enemy is always ready; the abolition of the law is but short work, and the labor of years is overthrown. Such is the ulti mate fate of all such temporary measures. Adopted as an experiment, the law continues to be regarded as on trial, and a change is always anticipated. Hercules grew weary of a battle perpetually renewed, and the hydra would event ually have couquei-ed had the contest continued one of simple endurance. So temperance men, not having the money and selfish incentives of their foes, at last tire^ out and give over the conflict, usually with the promise of high license, ample restrictions, regulations, etc., etc., which promises liquordom never yet has redeemed,"

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AN UNDEMOCRATIC IDEA.
I must candidly consent to all of Prof. Scomps statements. They are not overdrawn pictures of the facts, nor forced conclusions as to the imperfections of the system. It cannot but he confessed that, however the people may admire the so-called " democracy " of the method, they are constantly deceived by its promises and dis illusioned by its imperfect performances. The idea of making a subdivision of the State sov ereign over this matter is very seductive to the optimistic American mind. But the delegation by the State Legislature of its own and peculiar duty to the option of local enactment at the ballotbox is a pernicious perversion of the order of dem ocratic government, f County sovereignty over purely county concerns is a proper and necessary reservation ; but the liquor evil is no such limited concern.} It is a common and wide-spread evil, and any process for the treatment of it which attempts to criminalize it in spots must always prove absurd to the public contemplation, and revolting to the common-sense of earnest men. The people do not have much respect for county

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autonomy in such a matter, but do have a whole some regard for the general authority of the State. When the Commonwealth, which is a distinct and commanding political entity in the public mind, denounces the traffic as a criminal business, the masses are inclined to obey the decree; when a county only is the denunciator, the surrounding public is apt to look upon the matter as an eccentiic and futile fulmination. / It looks too much like an effort to stop the flow of the Mississippi River by driving a stake in the centre of its mighty currentA The liquor traffic is the flood; the localoption law is the stake. The plain, unvarnished truth is, that, until the general government shall criminalize the traffic and make the goods them selves contraband for transportation and sale, local option must be fatally defective as a remedy, and State prohibition itself prove, in operation, more a palliative than a reliable and effectual pre ventive. "N
It is well known to all reading-men that the failures of prohibition law are wholly administra tive. They arise from no defect in the law itself. Enforced, the law would prove itself almost a perfect panacea for the liquor affliction. There is

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a wide distinction between the non-sufficiency of a statute and non-efficiency of the administration of the law. When prohibition docs not prohibit in Maine, in Kansas, or in Iowa, the fault is always with the officials, and not with the law. The de nunciation is due to the recalcitrant officers and the unprincipled party that fathers them, and not to the law which has been thus ruthlessly nullified. It is not public sentiment which connives at this offi cial reversal of the public verdict against the liquor evil, but party necessities which impel the officers to outrage their oaths and the law; and then they ply the party lash to whip in those who dare to protest against the tergiversation.

TI1E "HOW" OF ENFORCEMENT.
Much of the trouble experienced in the enforce ment of prohibition laws can be traced to the methods employed, as well as to the men in au thority. Laws, as a rule of experience, do not approve themselves so much by the severities of their operation as b} the certainty of their enforcement. Penalties, according to the public sense of penal laws, should be in some due propor tion to the offences upon which they are imposed.

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In this stage of the temperance reformation, it must be taken into account that the masses do not classify the illicit selling of liquor with such crimes as arson, rape, perjury, and murder. Any sys tem of enforcement which seeks to establish au npproximate parity between the one and these other and more heinous offences is sure to excite protest and weaken the popular zeal for the strict enforcement of the statute. And this, too, even where a large popular verdict has been given in favor of the enactment of the anti-liquor statute.
Whatever the radical reformer may desire of the law in the way of perfect operation and cornplate efficiency, the mass of the people take a move rational and practical view of this sort of legislation. They look to the law to do only those things which law is naturally designed to do ; that is, to denounce the traffic as a public offence, to make contraband of commerce the goods that are the subjects of the trade, and to punish ade quately the offender against these just and reason able enactments of the community. There are some impossible things, too often strenuously contended for by the radicals, which the public do not expect to reap from the operations of these

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They do not expect to see an act of legislation regenerate the whole mass of individuals who are subjects of the law; they do not believe a statute ever will, or ever can, transform at a stroke the lawless spirits of many men into pious, obedient, and sanctified souls, eager to walk in the limita tions of the perfect laws of God or pluperfect laws of men. These results are too often held up in speech and writings by enthusiastic propa gandists of prohibition as the certain followings of a legal taboo on the liquor trade. Shrewd and adept opponents of the principle seize greedily upon these Utopian promises, and skilfully turn the public attention to the universal fact that these prophecies and millennial mogrifications do not come to pass. They say: "Oh, yes; prohi bition is a beautiful theory, a paradisaical prom ise, and, if it would only work out in practice, we, also, would be its zealous supporters. But it does not work out so. What are you going to do about it, when it is plain that prohibition will not prohibit?"
Certainly, prohibition will not and is not ex pected to prohibit in this sense. The zealots are wrong to so advertise it, and the liquorites are

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disingenuous to so misrepresent its real propor tions and purposes. The prohibition of the liquor traffic is projected along the plane com mon to all other prohibitory enactments. When the constituency has acted according to its rights and desires, denominated the traffic a public offence, commanded its officers to use all their authority for its suppression, and to apprehend and punish offenders against the law, the only issue then at stake is the fidelity with which the officials obey their oaths and execute their func tions. And this raises no issue with the law, either as to the excellency of its principle or the rightfulness of the policy which it establishes. These are now res adjiidicata. The question re curs upon how to enforce the law, and this can only be answered by the officers of the police force and the courts. If they fail to do their duty, the next contest should be between the people and their servants; not, as too often falls out, between the people and the law. To end that contest in a substantial victory for the community, resort must be had to the ballot-box. The remedy is in the rejection of weak and cor rupt officers, and the election of men of true courage and pronounced honesty.

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ANTIPATHY TO FORCE-HILLS.
It is a fact that the average American is op posed to "force-bills," as that term is applied to extraordinary measures to bolster statutes. In the confusion of reconstruction in the Southern States, when the general government was operat ing grants of extraordinary power, supplied by force-bills pressed through an intensely partisan Congress, there came a revulsion of popular feel ing that absolutely demanded the abandonment of such measures. Even General Grant, as Presi dent, was constrained to hear and heed this de mand. His despatches to Governor Davis in Texas, to General Ruger in South Carolina, and to other persons connected with the tumultuous contentions of those times, indicate his slow yielding to the pressure of the public indignation against such un-American measures. President Huyes abandoned these measures entirely, and public sentiment applauded him for his refusal to further employ them. In like manner, the average citizen opposes the resort to force-bills to make effective statutes which ought to be nor mally and peacefully enforced. This is, in many

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views, an excess of caution, a species of fanati cism of patriotism. The man who thinks thus is too often unmindful of the dangerous, desperate, and lawless character of the men whose business has been outlawed. So long as they are free to follow their trade, they are as harmless as gorged lions in their lairs; but fire a challenging shot from the batteries of law into their dens, pro claim that " peace shall be no more " to them and their traffic, and they come forth with rage and recklessness to give you battle royal at every point. The horse-thief, the burglar, the assassin work in darkness and secret; they flee from light, and sneak through every avenue that offers an escape from detection and capture. The liquor trafficker is a bold, defiant, and, in his extremity, an aggressive outlaw. In Cincinnati he bands his kind into a compact organization, publicly announces his intention to violate the laws, to pool his powers against the machinery of govern ment, and defeat justice. One of these organiza tions went so far as to, apply to the Secretary of State in Ohio for a charter, which would have made it a corporate body, empowered under one statute to prosecute the overthrow of another

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statute of the Commonwealth. To the credit of the State, the charter was refused. But the organization remains, and is to-day an active, aggressive, and anomalous combination, defiant of the laws and dangerous to the public peace of the State. It has its counterparts, similarly organ ized and for the like purposes, la every consider able city of the land, and all these report to, and receive aid and orders from, .a great central national organization.
I have no hesitation in declaring, and defying a successful differentiation of the facts, that this liquor organization, as it exists to-day and with its purposes and practices, is a far more lawless and dangerous conspiracy against public laws and public authority than were ever the Ku Klux Elans and White Leagues of the Southern States. Those unlawful combinations were suppressed by national legislation. It looks probable that noth ing short of similar legislation will disperse and criminalize these lawless organizations of the liquor trade,

CHAPTER IV.

PROHIBITION AND PARTIES.

"To what party did he belong?" To the party of lit!-

manlty-

HUGO.

THE ISSUE IS A POLITICAL OSE.
Since our government is a government by par ties, almost every public question assumes a polit ical and party character. It is so with this matter of suppressing the liquor evil. Men may enlarge upon its moral phases as eloquently as they choose, but the stern fact remains that it is a problem of law, and an issue which the political parties of the day are obliged to recognize. They cannot ignore it; they dare not be unconcerned about it, nor arc they unconcerned. There is not a political combi nation in the country to-day, great or small, that is not upon one side or the other, or is straddling the line of contention "between prohibition and the liquor traffic.
It has come to pass, in this agitation, as it did in the movement for the abolition of slavery. I

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quote from the Preface of the book, "James G. Birney and his Times," viz.:
" In the first period [of the slavery agitation] freedom was the assailant of slavery, seeking to extinguish it by moral and religious influences. In the second, the slave power was the assailant, seeking to overthrow the freedom of speech, of the press, and of the mails, the right of trial by jury, the right of petition, and every other bul wark of civil liberty, to extend shivery over the Territories of the United States, and gain undis puted political supremacy in the nation."
Behold how many long and disappointing years the friends of temperance have labored along the line of "moral and religious influences"! That they have achieved much for individual freedom from the curse, and have ameliorated many public flagrancies of the liquor evil, I shall not even seemingly dispute. Nevertheless, enlargements of its privileges and liberties have also increased with astonishing rapidity and vigor. It became, during the war period, an ally of the national gov ernment as "a friend in need," and contributed its many millions to replenish the public purse and bolster the national credit. It became the active,

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subtle, and successful lieutenant of the political party, and has obtained a place and power in poli tics never before secured or held by any one inter est in our history. Thus assured of its power and its vantage-ground, it has turned about and become the assailant of the public sentiment, the legal rights, and the constitutional authority which are employed for its overthrow. The Prohibitionists are no longer a vanguard fighting an intruder; they are free men seeking to resist the tyranny of a usurper in a citadel of sovereignty, and to expel him from our borders forever. But he climbed to his eminence and enthroned himself through the forms of law; we must banish him by the purifi cation of the laws, and by the just application of their power.
It is inevitable, therefore, that so long as the liquor traffic is an affiliated force in our politics, any movement to suppress it must be a political movement. As political issues are dependent upon party championship for their propagation, party support for theif adoption, and party loyalty for their defence, until safely engrafted into the general stock of the law and policy of the State or nation, prohibition is necessarily dependent

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upon party action. The only question antecedent to its rapid and successful culmination is this, " Which party shall stand for it? "

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
-We know that the first hopes of Prohibitionists-1 were turned toward the great national Republican \ party. Since it had been the ruling party during the struggle which ended slavery in the United States, and had been continued in power to accom plish the settlement of the status and privileges of the freedmen, it was natural that all other reforms should be brought to its doors for adoption. this spirit of confidence in the great moral mission of the Republican party the prohibition matter was pressed upon its attention. With what result ?
At first, there seemed to be some disposition ^ upon the part of the leaders of the great organiza- f tion to favor prohibition. Just when the Southern f and negro questions were losing their power to * keep the great North solid for the party, the leaders ,began to look about for a new slogan of victory.-^
r The liquor question seemed to be the one most opportune to be exploited. But when the party came together in national convention in Philadel-

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ia, in 1872, the liquor power served notice upon the leaders of the party that not only must pro hibition be ignored, but some definite, explicit pledges of safety to their trade must be given in . return for the further support of the whiskey and vjbeer army of the country. The political situation was critical. Carl Schurz, Whitelaw Reid, Horace White, MuratHalstead, Stanley Matthews, Lyman Trumbull, and many other men of address and influence were out of sympathy with the party, and were actively projecting a " Liberal Republican " movement. This was an uncertain factor in the forecasting of the partys future. The Democratic party was again looming up in ominous propor tions. The demand of the great, active, moneyed liquor organization was made at a time when the leaders could not afford to tempt their fate by trusting in a great moral issue and the righteous imoulses of the people. The result was the surrenuer o? the party to the liquor power, and the passage of the ignominious w Raster resolutions," which have continued to this day to be the creed of the Republican party. It has never dai^d since to abandon the position it was then forced to as sume, and there is no fiction or logic which can

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cover the fact that the Republican party became then, and is still, the avowed friend and ally of the national liquor power. s~ The most powerful of the leaders and legislators" \ of the Republican party have put themselves 1 squarely on record against the principle of prohi\Jbition. Some of them have gone further, notably. Hon. John Sherman, Mr. Halstead, of the Cincin nati Commercial Gazette, the editors of leading Republican newspapers, East and West, and have declared, in terms, that "the Republican party is not a prohibition party," and that those who remain with it, in the hope that it will ever be come such a party, might as well go elsewhere, and " stand not on the order of their going." Other leaders and presses have contended that the " sympathy " of the party is greater for prohibi tion than for the liquor traffic, and " in due time " the party will take up the issue and work the con summate reform.
In other words, there is a clear cleavage of sen timent inside the party upon this question, but the large mass is in accord with the liquor trade. Manifestations of individual leaning toward pro hibition, and struggles to commit the party locally

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to the issue, are quite common. But they are sporadic, and do not give trend or character to the national party action.
Every Republican movement, inside the parly lines, to promote the principle of prohibition has been remorselessly crushed. Witness the fate of the Republican anti-saloon movement, attempted by Hon. Alfred Griffin and his colleagues. Its fate is a warning, not an invitation, to the Republi\can Prohibitionist. It is surely a most hopeful spirit, a most confiding loyalty, a very purblind optimism, that can induce any man to believe the national Republican party is the coming deliverer of the people from the evils, crimes, and political usurpations of the liquor traffic.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
What shall be saiJ of the prospects of prohibi tion under a regime of the Democratic party in national affairs?
It is a habit to denounce the Democracy as tho party of reaction, of fre^e whiskey and " personal liberty." Undoubtedly the party h;is labored under the incubus of " a bad name," in the sense that it is accounted the foe of moral reforms and

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progressive civilization. It is not my office to enter upon its defence. It has a record open to the reading of the world.
Nationally, the party has always stood com mitted to those absurd political platitudes of " per sonal liberty" and "anti-sumptuary legislation" that have deluded great masses of the people, and been made the -warrant for much antagonism to progressive national reforms. It has announced that the liquor traffic is a legitimate form of com merce, that under our system men must be allowed comparative freedom to engage in it, and that the only part government has in the matter is the duty of controlling the trade for police purposes, and reduce its evil influences to the lowest possible power. Hence, the party is a straight-out oppo nent of all efforts that look to the annihilation of the traffic. Of necessity its position is enmity to prohibition. Locally, it has a record quite com parable with that of the Republican party, except in those States where total prohibition has been enacted. In the Southern States, "the solid South," where the Democratic party is dominant, it is estimated that already nearly two thirds of the territory and over one half of the population

CO

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are under the operation of local prohibitory laws. These laws have been demanded by Democrats, and enacted by Democratic legislatures. They are doing a good work for the moral and economic concerns of the people affected, and arc educating a sentiment for national prohibition which will one day develop into mighty insist ence.
But the same divisions of sentiment and efforts which are characteristic of the Republican party are also visible in the Democratic party. There is little hope that men like Senator Reagan of Texas, Senator Colquitt of Georgia, Bishop Gal loway of Mississippi, and their co-workers for prohibition, can evei be made to harmonize with the free-liquorism of Governors Hill of New York and Campbell of Ohio, Senator German of Mary land, and all the great host of liquor-helpers "who are the real leaders of the national Democratic party. Hades is more likely to become a " Holy of Holies " than the Democratic party is to become a national prohibitJon^party.
I might quote volumes from the utterances of the public men and presses of both these parties, to show the utter improbability of either of them

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ever taking up the prohibition issue and making it the central object of a national campaign. I am writing with a weighty compilation of such testi monies near at hand. From Maine to California, from Michigan to Florida, these voices speak an unbroken burden. They show the cowardice, the political trepidation, and the lack of firm moral principle that keep both parties truckling after the liquor-vans and beer-carts of the distilleries and breweries. The people cannot always be held to the support of parties so careless of public virtue, so ready to bargain the sobriety of their sons for the support of the saloons. The day will come, and at no distant time, when honest arith metic will convince the great masses that the liquor trade is the Forty Thieves of civilization. The persistency of fearless preaching, the im patience and importunities of suffering wives and mothers, of neglected children, must move the generous and philanthropic to break the bands of partisanship and vote with overwhelming una nimity that the liquor trade, and every party allied with it, shall go down without a day of res urrection.

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MINOR PARTIES.
There was a time when a great many earnest people hoped that there would be organized in this country a great national Labor party, em bodying in its platform an assemblage of economic principles that would command for it a hearty welcome and a successful support by the people. The Knights of Labor, immadiately after their organization, occupied this position of promise, and had the grandest opportunity ever given to a third political organization to crystallize about its standard the friends of reform, and especially to draw to themselves the support of that large body of moral and Christian men who believe that the prohibition of the liquor traffic is one of the neces sary precedents to a successful social reforma tion for the advantage of the laboring masses. But the Knights of Labor unfortunately busied themselves with questions of wage advancement and local authority over the conduct of industries. The consequence was, that contentions arose among themselves. Differences of opinion as to the measures they should exploit were frequent and irreconcilable, and the sympathies of millions of

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men drifted away from them, unwilling to jeop ardize the necessary interests of capital, and loath to be drawn into the internal contentions of the organization. Practically, the great labor move ment has disappeared as a possible political entity in national affairs. Locally and spasmodically it will have its victories and its defeats ; but iu the end, its forces must be absorbed by the other parties.
More recently the "Nationalist" scheme has come to the front, and is being enlarged upon in literature and through local organizations. The propagandism of its principles has not proceeded far enough to raise any tangible hopes of its speedy adoption by any great propoition of the people. The writers of papers ou " Nationalism " make extravagant claims for the ability of their scheme to settle all pending controversies in soci ety, industries, and government; but it must be confessed that their prophecies are yet too inti mately associated with a pleasing fiction rather than any acceptable data or logic. The Nationalist also professes his ability by his system to effect ually deal with the drink problem, and to so ma nipulate it as in time to cause the traffic itself to

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disappear from among the people. Mr. Edward Bellamys own statement of the process by which he would effect this part of the national reform, as outlined by him in his speech in Tremont Temple, Boston, in December, 1889, is not suffi ciently specific to divorce Prohibitionists from their own views and win them to the acceptance of his plan.
Mr. Henry George has given his views in the January (1890) "Arena" upon the subject of the solution of the rum problem. He advocates the outright doctrine of "free whiskey," and claims that under this treatment the traffic would be obliged to die. His argument is too sinuous and ill-supported to deserve more than this allusion to it.
The more the problem is studied, the more co pious the literature that is produced relating to it, and the more wide-spread public discussion be comes, the truth appears by so much the more prominent, that prohibition is the only possible remedy for the evil; that a total suppression of the traffic is absolutely necessary; and that a party definitively pledged to pass a law to secure this suppression is the only rational agency to that end.

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There is already such a pavty m the field. It has been growing visibly, in numbers and influence, for twenty years. It is aligned upon a principle, and is not a mere mass cohering for the trial of a policy. It has shown its ability to survive the most strenuous and unscrupulous opposition. It shows no signs of weakening and no disposition to disband. In the favorite terms of its members, "it has come to stay." What does it promise, and what are its prospects ?

THE PROHIBITION PART7.
This party, once mercilessly ridiculed and re garded only as an amusing vagary by the politi cians of the Republican and Democratic parties, has at last come to the proportions of a formida ble danger to both. The jeers with which they once assailed it have turned to curses, since it has produced confusion in their ranks and drawn from their standards supporters whom they could ill afford to lose. In many localities, the defec tion to the prohibition ranks has reduced their majorities to minorities. In several of the States and in many Congressional districts the Prohibi tion party to-day holds the balance of power.

PLEAS FOB PBQHIBITION.
If its disposition and its object were to merely produce confusion to the old parties, to help one at the expense of the other, to play at politics, and be amused at the surprises they could pro duce, the whole aspect of national politics would be subject to their caprices. The lower house of Congress would change complexion at their pleasure, and the President of the United States would be certainly selected by them; not from their owu ranks, it is true, but by giving to or withholding their support from the candidates of the other two parties. The fact that the Prohi.bition party does not enter upon this tempting course of conduct, that it does not seek to wreak revenges upon its enemies, that it steadily pur sues its purpose to agitate the country on behalf of a great and distinct principle, is the reason why its adherents are so loyal, and its prospects are so promising. The vacillations, retreats, and subterfuges of the Democratic and Republican parties make no change in the action of the Pro hibition party. It believes iu the righteousness, constitutionality, and necessity of the principle it espouses. Its campaigns are campaigns of education. It knows that the spoils of office

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will go elsewhere, but it is determined that the people shall know the truth concerning the liquor traffic; that its evils shall not be cloaked by the plausible excuses of its friends and political al lies ; that its refuges and its robberies shall be ruthlessly unveiled; that the rights of the people and the revelation of God shall be brought to the choice of the great army of voters in the nation. Its campaigns have already produced unexpected and wonderful results. /There is more attention given to the liquor question to day by public men, by the press of the country, by pulpit, by platform, by all the agencies of ; education and moral propagandism, than was ever before witnessed in the worlds history. This agitation, this multiplication of energy, this unappeased desire for a solution of the great prob lem, is due to the courage, industry, loyalty, and management of the national Prohibition party. Strike it from the political forces of the hour, and it is certain there would ensue a swift and fatal decline of public interest in the drink ques tion. All the discussion and legislation that have taken place within the ranks of the two greater parties have been distinctly predicated upon the

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menaces to their respective interests made by this same Prohibition party.
These facts, which are indisputable, have caused many thousands of voters of the country to affili ate with this party of principle, rather than with the other two parties of policy. The influences of woman, of home, of many of the colleges, of nearly all the pulpits in the land, and of the re ligious press, have been in sympathy, indirectly as well as actively, with the purposes and for tunes of the Prohibition party. The inability of the politicians to set up other issues, such ns the tariff, the negro question, ballot reform, and in dustrial legislation, as permanent divisors of the popular .vote, keeps them in fear of the prohi bition issue and the Prohibition party. It would seem most probable that the Ruler of the Uni verse is actually concerned in the coming of this great blessing of prohibition to this chosen peo ple. As in other ages, the confusions he pro duced in the movements of governors and parties were the forerunners of reforms they had con spired to reject, so it riiay prove in this case, that the growing difficulties of the political par ties are the prophecies of that day of sober pause

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and return to righteous works, when prohibition will come to its victory. Once it is established as Ji policy of the nation, there is no question that parties may be formed on purer lines, with higher purposes, and easier reach those other reformations which they now seek to compass in advance of the destruction of the liquor traffic, but which the liquor traffic itself continually pre vents.
Whatever may be the vicissitudes of fortune to the present organization of the Prohibition party, the principle cannot die, nor will the party disappear until some other and greater party relieves it of the necessity to exist by adopting this principle,and vigorously pushing it to its consummation. Whether the present Prohibition party, or some other, shall accomplish the oveithrow of the liquor traffic, it is not necessary to speculate, nor necessary to care; but that pro hibition, with a party pledged to it, with a party loyal to it, with a party disposed and able to enforce it, will yet, and at no great distance in the future, become an established fact of the American Union, we do not permit ourselves for an instant to doubt.

CHAPTEK V.
PROHIBITION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION.
Go, fix some -weighty truth; Chain down some passion; do some genrous good; Teach ignorance to see, or grief to smile; Correct thy friend; befriend thy greatest foe.
YOUNG.
PUBLIC INTEREST AND ACTION.
The present is an era of education on the sub ject of prohibition. There is great encourage ment in the increased attention given to the sub ject by the public press, by public men, and by the pulpit. No national convention of any polit ical party can now be held, and escape the intru sion of the liquor question. Such bodies are pliable enough to public sentiment to either make some pleasing declarations on the subject, or to discuss it in a partisan way, and dispose of it in a fashion that will be commended by their own partisans. In that most excellent journal, Public Opinion, may be found abundant evidence of the great interest which the press of the country is

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taking in the discussion of the liquor evil and its political aspects. Every week that summary of the most prominent deliverances of the press of the nation contains from one to three pages of excerpts from editorials, giving the current views of the Republican, Democratic, independent, pror hibition, and liquor journals of the country. Ten years ago such a collection would have been meagre in its best possible extent, and inconse quential in the importance of its matter. But to-day scarcely a great public journal is printed in America without either news or comment upon the subject of the liquor evil, and of the efforts of its opponents to apply some adequate measures of restraint or oppression. The pulpit, which for many years was silent for long seasons upon this subject, or gave forth merely perfunctory preaching upon some of its most extravagant manifestations, has within recent years been aroused to unparalleled activity against the sa loon. Church assemblies seldom adjourn with out having passed through heated discussions over this topic, and without passing resolutions, more or less radical, demanding the suppression of the traffic. In every campaign for prohibition, the

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g\. e-au majority of the evangelical preachers in the territory to be affected have tin-own their weight of influence, their information, and their eloquence upon the side of prohibition. From the pulpit they preach, not only more sermons, but sermons of more pith, courage, and Christian insistence, in opposition to all compromises with the traffic. In the Sabbath schools the children are being taught the evils of intemperance, the sin of trafficking in strong drink, and the duty of Christians to oppose this evil work against man and God with all the powers of their spiritual and civil citizenship. More books, with the purpose of pushing for ward the cause of prohibition, are being printed from year to year. A prohibition press has grown up in the country, numbering from one to half a dozen journals in each of the States of the Union. They are edited by men of wit, courage, and Christianity, and are veritable thorns in the sides of party leaders and the partisan press. Temperance societies are increasing in number, influence, and,aggressiveness. The good and Christian women of the country, with cour age and consecration, have taken up the defence of their homes, their husbands, and their offspring,

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and have banded themselves into efficient organ izations which have had much to do with reviving interest in and augmenting the agitation of this question. Too much credit and honor cannot be given to these noble mothers, wives, and daugh ters for the wisdom, skill, and persistence with which they have pushed this problem and its solu tion upon the attention of all classes of our people. Society itself has been greatly leavened for the better by this far-reaching agitation. There has been a notable decrease, in recent years, of social freedom in the use of wines and liquors. There has been a growing odium following the practice of drunkenness by men of position and influence. There is visible a slowly growing aversion on the part of thousands of men to the indiscriminate treating system. Thousands of others, who are by no means abstainers, have yet abandoned the public bar-rooms. Large employing industries have already made rules requiring that their employees shall abstain from drinking, either while on duty or altogether. Express com panies, with their many thousands of employees, nominate this condition in the bonds they execute of their servants. Railroad companies are mak-

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ing it obligatory upon their officials that they shall give up their drinking habits or leave the service. Guaranty companies are coming to the point of refusing to underwrite the bonds of per sons occupying fiduciary positions and who arc addicted to indulgence in strong drink. The celebration of the New Year in social visitations has fallen into "innocuous desuetude" by reason of the scandals which grew out of the custom on such occasions, of serving wines and other intoxi cating drinks to the guests. Many public ban quets are now held without the once indispensable presence of wines; and, even in official life, in the nations capital, public receptions are not in frequent where liquors are omitted. It is to be regretted, in passing, that this reform has not yet found a welcome in the White House. No thoughtful observer of these testimonies of a change for the better, in thought and deed, in all the departments of our countrys activity, save that represented by the liquor interest, can doubt that these forces favorable to reform of the drink
*
evil must eventually come to focus upon gome immediate and effectual plan of prohibition.

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SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE TEACHING.
One Of the UJliqno mnvemenfa in fhfi intftrpst
of the ultimate prohibitionof the liquor traffic is that pf teaching the scientifia.trutjbs_pf.temperance, by means of specially prepared text-books, in the
.^(^ . . ~ac - * '~''"'-"'r..M^t---,..,,,----,.y ._*... *,________________---- ----... _'.--
pM\c_8shQQ^ Seventeen of the States have already enacted and put in operation laws to this effect. The text-books used liave~been carefully prepai-ed by writers whose scientific attainments cannot be questioned, and whose authority has been recognized by the chemical and medical world ; and hundreds of thousands of pupils, who are thus being taught the truth that alcohol is not a food but a poison, will produce, in the next generation, men and women who can be relied upon to strenuously oppose the extension of the
traffic, and aa st.rtnuionsly tn_jftTnnnj_ijgJrvhnT^prn-
hlbltion. This form of teaching the truths of temperance has excited vigorous opposition from the people interested in the liquor traffic. They claim that this teaching is not true, that it is an indirect assault upon their characters and their trade, and that it is a violation of the principles of government which justify appropriations for public

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education. They thus distinctly put themselves in opposition to the admitted truths of science and to the judicially settled rights of the State. But, since they have assumed this attitude in all other matters relating to their traffic and looking to its suppression, we need not be surprised at their enmity to and assaults upon the public-school system. It is more than probable that this sort of education will be enlarged rather than dimin ished in the future. If the government shall ever consent to give us an official, inside view of the true statistics of the liquor traffic, as it affects morals, economics, crime, and public expenditure, it is not too much to expect that the people will promptly include those discovered evils of the trade in the text taught in the public schools. The better and nobler ideas of education, which are constantly being applied in our public-school system, must surely include the teaching of these essential facts, to give the next generation a clear view of its relations to the State and to the social order.
TSE PUBLIC PLATFORM.
The lecture platform has become one of the favorite and effective agencies for the dissemina-

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tion of truth concerning the liquor traffic. Hun dreds of specialists, who have studied the question in all of its bearings, and have come to definite knowledge concerning it, are almost daily heard by the people from platforms in cities and country. So large an appetite for information upon this great question has been stimulated by the work of recent years, that lecture courses, Christian associations, churches, tamperance organizations, labor lodges, schools, colleges, and local lyceums find it almost necessary to include, in their pub lic entertainment programs, one or more lectures upon this subject. Thus all phases of the ques tion receive attention and careful treatment, and the people are presented with sufficient data on which to choose their attitude toward the traffic and toward the measures which are being em ployed for its reduction or abolition. It is not extravagant to estimate that one thousand public addresses on the subject of temperance, local option, and prohibition are made from the plat forms of the American States and Territories every week. In times of political excitement, or campaigns for the adoption of prohibitory meas ures, this number is immensely augmented. It

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will be one of the anomalies of civilization if this amount of labor, attention, and debate should fail to produce substantial and lasting advantages to the cause of prohibition.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION.
Millions of pages of carefully prepared litera ture upon the subject are being annually distrib uted in the homes, workshops, and public resorts of the country. Facts and arguments are put in terse, compact form, cheaply printed, and put into the hands of thousands by men and women who take satisfaction in thus helping the cause. All history, ancient and modern, the testimony of wise men and careful observers in all ages, the calculations of political economists, the investiga tions of medical and social specialists, the experi ences of rulers and statesmen, are explored for facts. These are massed together and brought to the knowledge of people who must otherwise remain ignorant of the great volume of testimony and authority which is back of the demand for the total abolition of this gigantic evil. Several large printing-houses have been established in the United States to meet the demand foi this litera-

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tuve. The Womens Christian Temperance Pub lication House, in Chicago, the Publication De partment of the National Temperance Society, the busy presses of Funk & Wagnalls, of The Voice, New York, and many lesser establish ments are constantly pouring upon the currents of our life those books, pamphlets, speeches, and leaflets that are opening the eyes and changing the judgments of millions of men on the subject of the relation of the liquor traffic to individual, social, industrial, and national Affairs. Oae hun dred pages of this sort of literature are being printed to-day, where ten years ago perhaps ten pages were an abundant supply.

THE EFFECT OF ALL THIS.
It will be readily admitted that the logical effect of all this activity and focalization of light and truth upon the liquor question must change if slowly, none the less radically the attitude of the people toward the traffic. Many of the false arguments, absurd theories, and misinter preted " rights " which now prop and bolster this trade as a factor in the commerce of the nation, must soon be discovered in all their nakedness

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and discarded by a wise and truth-loving people. The processes of education which finally lead to the reversal of national thought are slow, always; but when they are finished, they produce prompt and mighty results. Public opinion, like some fragrant plant, blossoms in a night. They who went to sleep, easy in mind and seemingly secure in position, awake to find themselves the objects of public indignation and the decree of banish ment to them and their business ready for procla mation. This constant turning of the liquor question, so as to give full view of all its aspects, must, in time, lead the people of America to esti mate it truly, and to put upon it that sure and irreversible judgment of condemnation and expul sion which it so richly deserves.

CHAPTER VI.
PROHIBITION AND THE PRESS.
Here shall the Press the peoples right maintain, Unawcd by Influence and unbribed by gain; Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law.
JOSEPH STORY.
TffE POWER OF THE PRESS.
With the advances of education and civilization it remains true, as the poet declared, that the Press is
"... The mightiest of the means On which the arm of progress leans."
In no country is this more a truth than in the United States. The growth and power of the daily and weekly press with us has been one of the stupendous achievements of our aggressive American enterprise. The statistics which exhibit the wide-spread circulation of newspapers among the sixty-six millions of our people are revela tions. They demonstrate the eagerness of the educated citizenry to keep abreast of the times,

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and the tremendous energy of the press in meet ing the demand. Where all men are judges of the public concerns, such general, accurate, and continuous knowledge of affairs is necessary to intelligent action. The press, therefore, has a terrible power in our American economy. The word " terrible" is used advisedly. Even the people fear the press, and the administrators of public afiafrs are in constant awe of its power. It is the daily ballot-box from which may come forth any morning the decree of public condemna tion, or the award of popular applause. This power of the press, upon all adjudicated matters, is generally wielded on the side of the established order. The larger interests of morals, govern ment, social ethics, and political integrity arc conserved by the vigilance and patriotism of the press. On the other hand, when there has been established no concensus of the popular judgment upon public measures, the press has often shown its power to obstruct and defeat good causes.
In the matter of the-liquor trade the press of America is a divided host, with the major part in close communion with the liquor trade. It does not change the effect of its position that it occu-

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pies this relation, not by conspiracy with the liquor traffickers, but because of its own judg ment as to how it should speak and act in the controversy. In many instances we know that this agreement between presses and the saloons is the direct outcome of pure bargain and sale; but in the great majority of cases it arises from no such negotiations. The conductors of many reputable presses, that are unfortunately found in alliance with the liquor trade, have assumed their positions because of other and more potent than paltry pecuniary considerations.

TSE PARTY PRESS
Is bound, by reason of its convictions and the expectations of its constituency, to uphold the policy in general of its party, and to keep to the rear every obtrusive issue that might prove dan gerous to the partys success. Men of unim peachable personal integrity, of unquestioned moial purity in habits and deeds, practising the graces of the Christian religion, and often them selves enemies of the liquor abomination, will yet send out their journals, year after year, freighted with denunciation of those who seek to guillotine

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the diabolical institution. Their papers are in no wise transcripts of themselves. They are made up to suit the urgent demands of the partys interests, and are padded \rith doctored statistics and delusive argumentations upon those topics which it would be dangerous for the party to exploit. Such is the record of the partisan press for ten years past, in either party, upon this issue of prohibition. They oppose it because they fear to favor it. The liquoritcs are shrewd enough to know that when they alavva the press they have alarmed the party. They have experi mented along this line until they know their power. They can marshal the money and the men to give almost a sure guaranty of vic tory to eitbei party in those critical places where defeat locally means also the wholesale defeat of the party. The loss of the city may jeopardize the control of the State. The loss of a State may ruin the national supremacy of the party. The liquor trade know how to play these facts against the fears of the partisan press. So soon as the liquor leaders can make the New York Tribune see that " the trade " can give the State to, or take it from, the Republican columns, the

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Tribune, notwithstanding its high integrity and moral predilections, at once gives voice to the policy of " dealing justly, wisely, and from a triie temperance view" with the liquor trade. In Tennessee the \vhiskey conspirators say to the Democratic press : " See, your party is uppermost in this State, but take away from it the funds and friends we control for it, put them on the other side, and the day of Democracy is done in Ten nessee. Defeat the prohibition amendment, and we are with you; permit its adoption, and we arc against you!" Immediately the whole pack of the Democratic press, " Tray, Blanche, and Sweet heart," are let loose upon the amendment, and it is .hounded to defeat. This is a faithful photograph of "the way it is worked." Even where the directors of a press have scruples sufficiently pro nounced to deter them from active championship of the liquor interests, they are too frequently induced to preserve that masterly inactivity which, in a moral conflict, is just less dastardly than open hostility. Men at the head of great journals have been induced into consenting to contracts which muzzled their guns. The liquorites go to such a man, and say: " Now, look here; you publish

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your paper to make money. We arc assailed by the fanatics, and must defend ourselves. They have the churches, the speakers, the women, nil on their side. Our only way to reach the public, and appeal to its fairness and interest in this mat ter, is through the press. Of course, we know you will not sell your own opinions for money to any body, but we do not want our money to be taken by men who turn upon us and rend us ou the self same instant. Now, we want to occupy your col umns during the campaign with matter prepared in our interest. This is purely a business trans action with you. "We pay reading-matter rates per line, and agree to print so inany lines per day. All we ask in return is that you do not yourself attack us. We do not ask you to champion our cause. But when the prohibition fanatics want to print their side of the case, yon are to be fair to us, and charge them the same rates you do us."
The contract, " a purely business transaction," is made. The boodle of the liquor trade flows silently, swiftly, in a golden stream into the
*
pockets of "this cultured, Christian, and fairminded journalist." The temperance people come bravely to battle, and ask the privilege of replying

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to the lies and billingsgate of the liquorites. The " cultured, Christian, and fair-minded journalist" receives them blandly, and gently informs them that, in view of the heat of the campaign and the mass of matter offered, all of which it would be impossible to print, while to reject any arbitrarily would offend his very dear friends, " in order to be perfectly impartial, we have determined to print nothing on the subject for less thau reading-matter rates."
"How much is the rate? " " One dollar per line ! " " What! Do the liquor men pay that price for all the columns of stuff they are having you pub lish?" "Ob, yes!" No wonder the honest citizen goes away, bear ing his manuscript, and with his amazement too great to give space for even indignation. You say this is a hypothetical case. Would to God, for the honor of American journalism, I might confess it is so; but I speak that which I know, when I say the above transaction is a common method between the press and the liquorites.

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TEE SALOON PRESS.
The liquor interest, GO alert in its own defence and so skilful in the employment of instruments to that end, has not neglected the use of the press in its own hands. It has a regularly es tablished and liberally patronized line of trade and political journals, covering the continent. These newspapers have scant circulation except in the places of the liquor traffic. They are conducted to spread the news of their movements, the methods of their antagonists, and to fire the hearts of their followers to zeal aud vigilance in the common course of trade protection. An ex amination of their columns shows them to be edited by as virulent a species of fanatics as ever degenerated any cause on earth. They are the craziest of men, blind to all uncomfortable truth, deaf to all logic, and defiant to all law. As be tween fanatics, those who are of the temperance host must everywhere, among sensible men, be the more tolerable of the class. The falsehoods, vagaries, and fool-arguments of the average liquor journal will one day furnish some of the most gro tesque curiosities of our national literature. It is

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a charity to dismiss them now with the amused contempt they excite.

THE "FOREIGN" PRESS.
The " foreign" press, using the phrase as de scriptive of those journals published in our coun try in other languages than the vernacular, is very largely contrary to the principle of prohibition. This is not strange, considering the European notions and habits of the peoples for whom they are printed. But to the German press of the United States must be awarded the palm, with out praise, of being the most compact and aggres sive and anti-prohibition press in the land. Their conductors go wild upon the subject. The large constituency which they serve, the strength and unity of the German vote thoy control, make them the more powerful and dangerous foes to this great national reform. Their strength is largely due to the fact that their constituency is ignorant, and easily duped. I do not mean that these Ger mans are ignorant of letters and even the higher knowledge of civilization, but they are, as a mass, frightfully ignorant of the history, development, spirit, and institutional structure of our system of

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government. They judge public questions from the stand-point of their European experiences, and seek to adjust their relations to our government in accordance with the desires they once vainly cherished in the ruck of their German vassalage.
The German press, I charge distinctly, is re sponsible for the crude, illogical, and unpatriotic views of the masses of the German reading citi zens. The conductors of these journals have gen erally been long enough in this land, they have education sufficient, and are daily in contact, by exchange with American papers, with data com petent to make of themselves able teachers of true and loyal American doctrine. Kather than do this noble and patriotic office, they prefer to cater to the race instinct and prejudices of their people, and to struggle for the Germanizing of America rather than the Americanizing of our German immigrant masses. This is of the very essence of disloyalty. They erect an effigy of so-called "nativism," and upon it train all the guns of their vituperation and unpatriotic blasphemy. They call upon their fellow-refugees to preserve here in America their German language, German customs, German notions and prejudices. If a

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Chinaman were to make such an appeal publicly to his fellow-Celestials in any city in the Union, it would be hard for the police to preserve him from the indignation of a loyal mob. When the white people of the South call to one another to preserve the supremacy of the white race in that section, to guard the integrity of white govern ment and white social domination, against the rule and ruin of the black masses of ignorance, passion, and prejudice which once cursed them, and are eager for a return to power, they are denounced as still rampant with the spirit of rebellion, and as defiant of the Constitution and the laws of the nation. If they were, they would be no more so than these German editors who urge their Ger man readers to war against " uativism," to vote for no man who is not in sympathy with their German prejudices, and to supplant American law wherever they can with German liberalism. What these German editors and speakers are pleased to call" nativism " is what Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Grant, and every loyal American in our history, recognized, prac tised, and praised as "patriotism." It will be a sad and disgraceful day in our history when this

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noble and worthy disposition of the people shall be repudiated, at the demand of the foreign con stituency, as a vicious, rather than a virtuous, American trait.
But that day will never arrive. The same broad charity, patriotism, and Christianity which, in 1856, gave its quietus to Know-Nothingism will assert itself in due season, and trample out of existence this disloyal effort to enthrone "alien ism" in our country at the expense of patriotism.

THE RELIGIOUS PRESS.
A press presumably consecrated to the inter ests of the Christian religion and righteousness among men and nations might reasonably be expected to be in unison upon a distinct and indivisible moral issue. The casuistry which can invent differentiations of Christian attitude toward the consummate evil of the liquor traffic should have no place in the sanctum and columns of a Christian religious journal. It is apart from the responsibility which they have assumed, to say that they may interpret their relation to this ques tion by a measurement of methods. No one has a right to command them to adopt any concrete

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or hypothetical proposition of legislation, or political policy, on the subject. But the Al mighty God, in whose service they profess to be using their pens and presses, has the right and does command them to be instant and uncom promising in their effort to destroy the inventions of the Devil. The man who doubts or denies that the liquor traffic is comprehended in this scheme of prohibition and annihilation will hardly be accused, on earth or elsewhere, of having edited "a religious journal."
The religious press, to be sure, should not become a political press. That is already the fly in the ointment pots of too many of their sanc tums. Nevertheless, a religious journal cannot justly ignore the relations of religion to public affairs. It must deal with the deeds of men and government, test them with the truth of the "Word of God, and speak understandingly, courageously, and with non-partisan spirit, as the circumstances may warrant. I hold it absolutely incumbent upon the religious press to favor, advocate, and unceasingly insist upon the immediate and uncon ditional prohibition of the liquor traffic. As to the political, legislative, or Congressional action

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necessary to effect it, the religious press is not obliged to champion any paily or any particular proposition above another. Only let them make it clear, emphatic, and eternal that they are for prohibition, and nothing short of it. When they do this, there will cease to be confusion, recrimi nations, and sorrows in the body of Christ, because of the disorderly attitudes of religious journals of the land.
In some of the hardest fought battles for pro hibition through which we have passed in recent years, the friends of the principle have had churches, ministers, and religious journals arrayed against them. These high and influential forces have been found fighting valiantly on the side of the liquor traffic. I am thoroughly convinced that these influences, thus cast against prohibition, had a tremendous and controlling effect in the amendment campaigns in Massachusetts and Penn sylvania. I regard the fixing of the liquor traffic in the polity of those States as the work of antiprohibition church members, ministers, and reli gious journals. It is one of those mysteries which is inexplicable to finite minds. The day of judg ment only will reveal the reasons for their strange

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conduct. The explanations they have themselves given do not explain. They are as varied as the protean colors of the chameleon. No considerable number of them seem to have acted against pro hibition from precisely like motives. It would be a great help to the popular understanding of such a phenomenon the servants of God help ing the hosts of hell if the perpetrators would hold a preliminary convention, and agree upon some common line of explanation. It is a great strain upon Christian credulity to try to believe that sane and pure men would so unanimously do a similar deed from so many frivolous and foolish motives. The "anti-prohibition religious press" has given no adequate explanation of its vehe mence against that measure, and their desire for the continuance of the abominable liquor trade. Too much honor cannot be awarded to those stal wart journals of the churches that have refused to

" Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee That thrift might follow fawning! "

Believing that the spirit of God has led the great body of the church of Christ to a right judgment and a correct disposition toward the

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liquor traffic, they have sent the exhortation far and wide, in no faltering tones, to " come up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty!" They have stood valiantly for prohibition; they have vindicated their Christian liberty; they are not left hungry and unsheltered by reason of their refusal to cater to the financial fiend of the liquor traders. They are the pillars of the church, the defenders of the faith, the friends of the people and the nation.
THE ANTI-LIQUOR PRESS.
In a few years the cause of prohibition has brought into existence a comfortable number of able and aggressive newspapers. These journals have won, in many instances, high character in popular estimation, and are treated with upon equal terms by the greatest journals of the country. They are doing magnificent work for the cause, and it is stronger and more respected to-day by reason of their labors.
The Voice, published in New York, by Funk & "Wagnalls, is the leader of the prohibition press. By reason of the capital, enterprise, and skill which are back of it, it occupies this position

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in the thought and affections of the national Pro hibitionists. It has done noble work in furthering organization, discovering news of the doings of the enemy, exposing the schemes, bargains, and dodgings of the old parties, and generally keeping the agitation of prohibition in such channels as to compel the country to give the matter attention. It has fairly won the confidence and distinction it enjoys.
The other prohibition journals of the country, to the extent of their means and opportunities, are not a whit behind The Voice in zeal, loyalty, und worthy service. They are, in their fields, achieving great good, and their reward should come to them substantial^ from all supporters of the cause. The American public can be reached and moved by the far-reaching arms of the press better than by any other means we can employ.

CHAPTER VH.

PROHIBITION AND THE PULPIT.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven,

Whilst like a puff*d and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own road.

SHAKSPEAKE.

PROVINCE OF THE PREACHES.
The independence of the preacher of the gospel of the kingdom of God and his righteousness is a divine right. He cannot be deprived of it, except through physical tyranny, by kings, laws, or public opinion. The only limitations of his liberty, " wherewith Christ hath made him free," are those which define loyalty to Christ, and are forbidden to be trangressed by the laws of God. Certainly, the preacher of a creed is limited by his creed. The preacher of a dogma must adhere to its definition. The,preacher of an idealism, of a speculative system, is obliged to respect the boundaries of his " ism " and his system. But the preacher of the glorious gospel of the Son of

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God is a free man, at liberty within the scope of the Word of God and the faithful way of the spirit of truth.
Who, then, shall say to him, "Preach thus," or " Preach so "? He is simply to preach Christ as, with honest mind and sincere faith, he under stands him, and all that belongs to and flows from him. In the book of the great Prophet Ezekiel there was given a plain and comprehensive defini tion of the purpose of ministry that may be wisely and safely adopted in our times. It reads:
" And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean." (Ezekiel xliv. 23.)
Laying aside the ceremonial interpretation as functus officiv under the present dispensation, and viewing the priesthood of the Christian in its sublimer spiritual relations to life and environment, how noble and Christ-like becomes the office of the pieacher! He becomes, indeed, a teacher of holiness; a preacher of the wholesome doctrines of moral outward and spiritual subjective clear ness. The religious mind must always have a division line, distinct, arbitrary, and eternally un-.

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impeachable, between the things which are holy and the things which are profane. This line cuts through thought, action, government. It divides the clenn and unclean in individual and national affairs. Its first stake was set in the Garden of Eden, and its last will be driven at the throne of judgment. We may transgress the line; we can never obliterate it.
As related to the individual, the preachers office is to help the disciple to a right understand ing of the Word of God, a hearty acceptance of the personal Christ, and a ceaseless endeavor to " purify himself even as Christ is pure."
As related to the social order, the preacher has the right, because it is his duty, to differen tiate the dispositions and deeds of the people, and exhibit from the divine standards the cleanness or uncleanness, morally and spiritually, of the community life in all its phases. This domain includes all the amusements, employments, en terprises, and ambitions that constitute the com monwealth of society.
As related to the larger concerns of the world, the constitution and operation of government, the differentiations of civilizations, the interdepen-

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dencies of nations, the racial duties of Christian citizenship, all principles of legislation and of public economics come within the jurisdiction of the preacher. He is divinely ordained to ana lyze, weigh, measure, judge these matters, and prophesy concerning them. And all this by the Word of Grod and in the spirit of Christ.

THE CRY OF POLITICS.
The impartiality of the pulpit should be the fulcrum of its power. Partisanship, as between individuals and their temporal combinations, is justly held to be an unworthy trait in a preacher. "Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth," but let the preacher "preach the word ; be instant in season and out of season ; reprove; rebuke; exhort with all long-suflering and doc trine." The wide-spread spirit of commonalty, which is the marked feature of the civil progress of the world in this age, is rapidly bringing all possible questions of life, liberty, and the pur suit of happiness into the arena of politics. If the preacher is true to his mission, he cannot avoid political questions. Nor should he be detezred from boldly taking up these pending prob-

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lems and trying them by the rule of righteousness. The world cannot be allowed to claim a copyright upon the trade-mark "Politics," and stick this label upon its concerns, as a warning that preach ers must pass by on the other side, and say noth ing about the injustice, uucleanuess, and sinfulness of the people, their parties and rulers.
The recalcitrant priest Amaziah, at the court of Jereboain, sought to turn back Amos from preach ing righteousness and the judgment to come, to the evil-doing monarch and his minions. But Amos, though "no prophet, neither a prophets son," but " a herdsman and a gatherer of syca more fruit," felt the burden of his message, and with a heroism marvellous for his times and his opportunities, insisted upon preaching the infal lible word of God. This same cry against inter ference by the ministers of God with the affairs of the politicians was raised against Christ him self, when his doctrine impinged upon the rights and rule of the hierarchy. It assailed St. Paul, in the streets of Ephesus, with the cry of the silver workers, led on by Demetrius, that " this, our craft, is in danger." It would have cast him to the lions, but for the providence of God. It

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has been so ever since in the history of affairs. Any attempt on the part of the preacher of right eousness to uncover the iniquities of rulers and demagogues, in the interests of truth, purity, and humanity, has been met with abuse and vio lence. But it is better to suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing, and the saints are to judge the world. The preacher, therefore, is recreant to his Master when he ignores the most dangerous of the things which destroy faith, degrade char acter, and damn immortal souls. It is the typi cal, organized sins of mankind that work the ruin of piety and obstruct the practice of holi ness. Government must not, therefore, without faithful and zealous protest, be permitted to or ganize wrong, legalize unrighteousness, and per petuate the instrumentalities of sin. In fact, I cannot see how a man, divinely commissioned to preach the gospel of him who was the Son of God and Son of man, whose manifestation was for the salvation of men and the destruction of the works of the Devil, can peacefully ignore these tremendous concerns, and hold "hands off" from them on account of the vicious cries of the Mammon-serving mob. I hope I shall

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never be able to run this line of demarcation between the spiritual and political duties of the preacher.
The history of the times, the statistics of evil, and the revelations of experience, especially those made by the ministers of the churches, in the papers which have been read before church bodies and Evangelical Alliances within recent years, show that the organized saloon, permitted and protected by government, is the great obstruc tionist to the evangelization of the masses. It is a fierce opponent of all those rules of order which conserve individual purity, domestic har mony, social fraternity, and national peace. It assaults the Sabbath, and seeks to turn it from the uses of worship and rest into a day of gain to the purveyor of those goods and amusements which would make it worse than a heathen holi day. It is the enemy of all teaching and preach ing which tends in the slightest to diminish its hold upon the life of the people. It goes into the politics of the land with boldness and heavy equipment, with the avowed purpose of debauch ing them to its own profit.
Shall we oppose such works, or submit to

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them? If we are not ready to abandon all our rights along these lines of power, it is high time that we should enter the arena, clad in the armor of Christian citizenship, recover this ter ritory to the best uses of society, and leaven the labor of legislatures with the wisdom, justice, purity, and humanity of Christ, our Master.

THE BLASPBEMY OF IT.
The saloon and its operators are blasphemers of Almighty God and his Christ. The liquor dealers are continually preaching the gospel of debauchery us against the gospel of salvation and sobriety. They claim that their doctrine is both biblical and Christian, Elsewhere in this volume I have noted some of the blasphemous vagaries with which they have bolstered, in weak and wicked minds, the claims of their traffic by ref erences to Scripture. They go further even than to quote the customs of past ages. They insist that Christ himself was a distiller, and point to the marriage feast at Cana and the first miracle for the evidence that he began his mission of salvation by providing an abundant store of the means of damnation. They insist that he made,

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by a mere act of creation, some ninety gallons of intoxicating liquor for the bumble company gathered at the wedding celebration. They have not scrupled to say that the distillers and brewers of the beverages of the saloons are in direct suc cession to the Saviour of the world. They do not see the blasphemy of the declaration. They do not see the falsity of their interpretation, for there is no evidence extant that Christ ever made any such amount of wine, and no one who has read the Scriptural account carefully, believes that he did. It is distinctly said that the servants were commanded to draw out from the waterpots, and when that which they had drawn out was put into the hands of the governor of the feast, it was found to bo wine. There is no evi dence anywhere that there was any more wine made than that which was drawn out. Other miracles of the Lord might be equally and as absurdly misinterpreted. A doctor who should go about the country proposing to cure blindness by spitting into the dust and making a clay to anoint the eyes of his patients, would be looked upon as a lunatic; and I fail to see why these men who misinterpret the action of Christ, in the

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matter at the marriage feast, should not be clas sified in like manner.
They quote Paul to Timothy, telling him to " use a little wine for his stomachs sake " and his "oft infirmities," but ignore the fact that St. Paul did not tell Timothy to give himself up to the daily consumption of " morning cocktails," " noon day appetizers," "evening beers," and "night caps " of brandy. Timothy was a frail and sickly personage, and the injunction to him was one of kindness, that might or might not have been mis taken advice. However that may be, it cannot be taken as authority for the rum-shop traffic of the present day.
It has been frequently said that Satan himself can quote Scripture to his purpose, and there is no reason to believe that his disciples of this later day are less adept in the art. The revelations which have been made by analytical chemists, and by converted men who have renounced the trade, show conclusively that the wines and liquors of the present day are mostly artificial concoctions of which alcohol is the base; and all argument as to the harmlessness of wine-drinking is discounted by a series of facts which establish beyond doubt

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the harmfulness of this latter-day substitute for the genuine article. Wiues are not now produced, but manufactured; and liquors are not pure juices, but artificial compounds. A grape-grower of Kellys Island, in Lake Erie, told the writer that he had to abandon his vineyard because the winemakers of the island refused to buy his grapes at a reasonable price, saying that grapes were no longer necessary to the making of their so-called wines. It has also been calculated that there is marketed and consumed more so-called California wine in the cities of Chicago and St. Louis, annu ally, than is produced in the whole State of Cali fornia. Either these cities have a monopoly of all the genuine wines of California, and the balance of the country is being defrauded with substitutes, or else the great bulk of these so-called wines are not of California origin, but are compounded in the factories of the unscrupulous dealers who palm them off upon the public. Surely, in view of these facts, no minister of the Gospel can claim that he is barred, by any Scriptural instance or injunction, from denouncing and preaching the destruction of this fraudulent and disgraceful traffic.

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THE CHURCH A REFUGE.
As long as the pulpit is silent upon this ques tion, and tolerant of liberal opinion and action concerning its settlement, the church to which it belongs is sure to become a refuge for those men who are seeking a respectable form of compromise between their consciences and the traffic. Just so long as the church can find excuse for holding in fellowship men who will not only drink liquors, but will vote to license and perpetuate their sale, there must be a break in the line of demarcation between loyalty to Christ and compromise with this evil. Through this break many unscrupulous men will press to find in the church a cloak for their sin. There is no form of liberalism more fatal to piety than that which leaves a moral ques tion to the so-called conscience of the individual. Conscience is not always a correct moral guide. Consciences may be defiled. Consciences may be callous; they may be seared with sin as with a hot iron; they may be past feeling, past sensi tiveness to moral light and darkness. Luther was right when he proclaimed that he would stand, when fronted with such issues, "upon his Bible

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and his conscience !" When these two agree, then a man may safely act upon their revelations. But when the Bible and the conscience draw different ways, there is the place where the pious and loyal citizen should pause until his conscience \s brought into subjection to the truth of the Word of God. The idea that a man is right in anything he may do, when his conscience does not reprove and pain him for the doing of it, is misleading, and may be damning. He may be deluded into believing that because his conscience does not speak in opposi tion, his action must be right. The truth may be that his conscience is dead and past speaking, even when the action is morally and eternally wrong. It is time for the pulpit to draw these distinctions on this question of the liquor traffic, and teach men, whether they will bear or forbear, that no Christian can be both loyal to Christ and the friend of those whose business and goods work the damnation of the souls he poured out his own precious blood to save. The church should be purged of all those who will not abandon their friendship with this traffic for the sake of Christ and his purchase.
Until that work of purification and strict align-

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ment of the Christian forces is wrought, all efforts to reform society and government in this particu lar must be lame.

THE COMING UNITY.
It is gratifying to note the rapid change which is taking place in the attitude of the clergy of the evangelical churches of the country on this sub ject. In recent years a thousand of them have come forth proclaiming their enmity to the traffic, and their determination to use their powers and opportunities against its extension and in favor of its prohibition. When this great and forceful army shall stand a solid phalanx throughout the land, their assaults will soon break down the walls of every city of refuge that greed and politics may have established for the traffic.
Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, who was the Vice-President of the late Southern Confederacy, speaking of the ante-bellum slavery contention, remarked to the writer: " So long as the discus sion of the slavery question was confined to the Congress, the press, or the platform, the men of the South were equal to the discussion ; but when the churches of the North denounced slavery as

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a sin, and every pulpit north of Mason and Dixons line thundered this statement, in ten thousand variations from Sabbath to Sabbath, into the ears of the people, we knew the end could not be long postponed; we knew the fearful energy of reli gious zeal in such a contest, and we knew that if the peculiar institution could be preserved at all, it must be with arms and with success in battle." So it may be said of the liquor traffic, that its strongest bulwark of defence to-day is the divi sion of sentiment concerning it that exists in the churches, and the permission which is given, tacitly if not expressly, to Christian men to retain their fellowship with their church communion and still vote for the maintenance of the liquor traffic. The division of the forces that should slay the traffic is to-day the best defence on which the traffic relies. When this division shall be cured, when the body of Christ is in harmony with itself, and when all the Christian forces of the land are in action along the same line of unfalter ing, uncompromising enmity to the traffic, then, under God, the traffic will go down forever!

CHAPTER VIII.

PROHIBITION AND THE PROFESSIONS.

What plea so tainted and corrupt,

Bat, being seasoned with a gracious voice,

Obscures the show of evil?

SHAKSPEARE.

JUDGES AND LAWYERS.
When the prohibition of the liquor traffic is urged, judges and lawyers may disagree with the. method, for the score of more or less substantial reasons they can conjure to the front. They are a class skilled in the multiplication of reasons for or against any given proposition. But there is one great feature of the liquor traffic about which they do not disagree, and that is the fruitfulness of the traffic in producing crime and criminals. This is a fact which rests upon records too vo luminous to be disputed. The courts and the penal institutions of the land are fed more abun dantly from the saloons than from all other crimebreeding places. Judges and criminal lawyers admit this to be true, and frankly testify that the

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suppression of the liquor trade would result in a tremendous and permanent diminution of the criminal burdens of the country. Such testi mony might be spread out over a hundred pages of this volume, but so obvious a fact needsnot to be supported by specific citations. It is enough that the proof is accessible in nearly every town and county in the Union, both where tie traffic is permitted and where it is prohibited. In dealing with the subject of crime, it should be the object of every government and legislator to prevent rather than punish. It is not more jails or penitentiaries that we ueed, but fewer induce ments and facilities for the perpetration of crime. Common prudence and common-sense, therefore, seem to dictate to every sincerely conservative legislator that the best cure for crime which he can give to the country is to remove the saloon. In those localities where this has been success fully accomplished, and they are many, the re sults have been such as to justify this action. The prosecution and punishment of criminals are seldom a profitable business to the legal profes sion, and never to the State. One of the problems of the day is the economic and humane disposi-

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tion of the criminal hostages of the State. In the solution of the problem the multiplying effect of the saloon cannot be ignored. It may be, therefore, taken as a sign of wisdom when the people turn and listen to the testimony of their judges and lawyers, and act upon it by a prompt suppression of this prolific source of crimes and criminals.
TBE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
It is not to be wondered at that we have had conflicting testimony from the medical profession on the subject of the place of alcohol in the ther apeutics of the world. An agent so facile in the hands of the physician is obliged to have many friends in the profession. But these friends of liquor in the medical ranks are not drawn from the most reputable, scientific, and trusted examples of the profession. As a rule, the majority of those who insist upon making liquor an indispen sable of the materia medica are those who are largely unacquainted with the other agencies in the field of medicine. A man deficient in medical knowledge, and practising as much upon the cre dulity of the public as upon the extent of his attainments in the healing art, is apt to supple-

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ment his ignorance with an agent so ready with temporary effects and deceptive as to its beneficial operations. It will hardly be disputed that the last resort of many of these practitioners is the liquor bottle for the patient. This may be often times as agreeable to the patient as it is a happy solution of a difficult situation to the doctor; but from the day of the Therapufce of Egypt, who were the hoary ancestry of the healing profession, the better and more honest doctors of the world have agreed that alcohol has no essential place in the agencies which make for the health of the human constitution. With the advances of science, a fuller understanding of mineral and vegetable agencies, and a higher regard for the sanctity, not only of human life but the human body, the best scientists and physicians of civilized countries have almost completely discredited the use of alcohol in their practice. They say it may be utterly discarded, and no damage ensue to the art of healing. The testimony is worthy to be ac cepted, and the day should not long be postponed when it is emphasized by the law of the land. Even now there has been a quasi-recognition of this fact in the legislation of the United States.

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The interpretation of the internal revenue statutes permits a druggist who uses alcohol simply as a medicinal agency in the compounding of prescrip tions, to do so without paying the special tax to the government. No druggist is compelled to pay that tax unless it is his desire and purpose to simply sell liquor as an article of commerce ; and hence the reason why, in some States, it has been sought to make the holding of such a special-tax stamp prima facie evidence of intention to violate the prohibitory statutes. If the United States government is not ready to embark upon total prohibition, it at least ought to give validity to its own interpretation of the internal revenue law, and refuse to sell such special-tax stamps to drug gists at all, and compel them to restore their places of business to the legitimate character of drug stores, that they may cease to be cloaks for illegal saloons.

COLLEGE OFFICIALS AND PUBLIC TEACHERS.
In the domain of education, as organized for the youth of our country, there is scarcely any dissent from the testimony that the liquor traffic is the great enemy of education. It prevents

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hundreds of thousands of the youth of the land from securing the benefits of the schools estab lished to promote knowledge and furnish forth the higher powers of our growing generations. It is at the bottom of nine tenths of the child labor, which is already a social and industrial problem with us. It drags young men and women from their desks when they are eager in study, harnesses them to menial tasks of the machinery of trade and production, destroys their nobler aspirations, and makes millions of them serfs who should have been sovereigns of their own independent fortunes. It is the enemy of the accomplished work of the schools and col leges, dragging down those who otherwise were empowered and expected to become efficient fac tors in progressive affairs. The saloon seems to enjoy a fiendish satisfaction in spoiling the young, cultured, and ambitious, in every walk of life. The evil bred it expects to get for its own by the mere force of moral gravitation, but its captures, its victories, are won In the better circles, when it has blighted a budding career, despoiled a prom ising character, and deprived society of one whom it was hoped would become a lusty, loyal, and

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leading spirit in its progress. The banks of the river of Dissipation are strewn -with the wreckage of countless such examples.
If the statesmen were sincere who affect, in formal addresses and on the Fourth of July, to believe that "the welfare, progress, and glory of the nation are dependent upon the virtue and intelligence of the people," they would not so shamefully hesitate about putting the knife of death to a traffic that so conspicuously and con tinuously wars against the virtue and nullifies the intelligence of their constituencies. In such an emergency, their inconsistency is indefen sible. They waste the public sacrifices, poured into the public purse by a hopeful people, when they expend the money upon systems of educa tion which are so often and so utterly defeated in their work by the damning influences of the saloons they also establish.
Already hundreds of our colleges have been compelled to secure special legislation, to guard their charges and their environment from the presence and power of the saloon. And if the authorities of these institutions would unite, as one voice, in demanding the abolition of the

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traffic altogether, I am sure they would command an attention from the law-makers of the land that few other leaders in this reform have yet been able to obtain. It is to be hoped the colleges will one day be a unit, an aggressive and powerful unit, in demanding this great reform.
THE FINANCIAL WOULD.
The leaders of the financial enterprises of the country are so busy with the schemes which concentre upon the almighty dollar, that they have scant time and only sporadic dispositions to engage upon the side of the Almighty Father . and his imperilled children. But the day of enlightenment must in time dawn upon these busy men of finance also. They must in time have their shrewd wits drawn to a recognition of the truth, that the saloon is the enemy of property; .. that it breeds the anarchist and communist; that r* it disseminates a gospel of the injustice of owner- \ ship, and seeks to render all possession insecure; ^ and that it increases taxation, insurance, and pub- lie pensionism. They will find that the best safe- ( f guard to enterprise, investment, and public peace ti is the sobriety of the masses, and will acknowl- \

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edge it an absolute requirement to include among the defences upon which they depend, the rigid and inviolable prohibition of the liquor traffic.
The stake of the moneyed men of the land is daily growing greater In this direction. The wealth of the nation must bear its burdens. The increase of these burdens means the increase of taxation. Taxation means a division of profits, or principal, with society. The cause which un righteously multiplies public dependants, destroys individual independence, and converts the State into a system of charities rather than a commu nism of thrift and prosperities, is the enemy of property and the spoiler of the property-holder. Such a cause is the liquor traffic. It is both a robber and a revolutionist; what it cannot take under the protection of law, it will seek to have against law. So it must grow more and more evident to the men who own wealth, and-who bear those burdens which only wealth can sustain, that the protection of the rights and revenues of prop erty demands the expulsion from the system of the country of this gigantic spoliator.

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FIRE AND LIFE.
To indemnify the losses occasioned by fire, and to capitalize the calamity of death for the comfort of dependent survivors, constitute great enterprises of modern civilization. Insurance ^ companies and schemes are among the wisest and most helpful of the inventions of men. They are not wholly humane in their objects ; they are skil- ^ fully organized for profit to those who conduct and capitalize them. This leads to exceeding ~ care in the selection of risks. In the matter of life insurance the probabilities of the risk are cal- culated with marvellous nicety. Hence it has 'if happened that scientific investigation and experience have caused the life insurers to discrimi- aT'& nate between men who ask for insurance. \They * ** make a difference, as a rule, between men who. %f drink and men who abstain from liquors. ^vjThe >^r^> man who is free from this appetite and vice 4s J* preferred always, and, celeyis parilus, obtain?- >;_-. many advantages from the underwriter that the 'T bibulous cannot be safely granted. This is cttfo- ^j mercial testimony to the value of sobriety. It -is f not the testimony of fanatics, but of shrewd finals"" j

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. . ciers ; it is not the voluntary vagary of a ranting Prohibitionist, but the voice of a dispassionate
^ profession, testifying to the truth, that liquors do not make for health or peace among men. When all these great concerns of the people exhibit the wrongs they cannot but suffer as long as the saloon remains, when they unite to instruct the statesmanship of the couutry of the
^ dangerous and unprofitable results which always attend the traffic, it grows a deeper mystery that
(CJ States still coddle that devilish trade, and Congress still dallies with the subject of its destruc tion from the face of the nation.

CHAPTER IX.
PROHIBITION AND THE PUBLIC PEACE.
O peace! thon source and soul of social life, Beneath whose calm, inspiring influence Science his view enlarges, Art refines, And swelling Commerce opens all her ports; Blest be the man divine who gave us thee!
THOMPSON.

RIOT AND DISORDER.

As

population

multiplies,

and

many

of

our

-

^^ '^-f

cities suffer congestion from the gregarianism of *;

the idle, vicious, and debauched of their inhab-;"^f

*

^^

itants, riots and public disorder are the results-

with which authority must continually cope. This <

truth has had its ample demonstration in all coun- .

tries, and especially in later years in our own. ;

Anarchism and the spirit of mobocracy get their .

inspiration, hatch their schemes in, and sally forth ;

to disturb the social order, from the saloons. The

police must ever keep a watchful eye upon these

nesting-places of the reckless and lawless. The

^

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| ___________________________

general public is kept in continual dread of the

demonism that may at any moment come from

them. The saloon-keeper must make friends with

these classes, for they are his most constant and

. profitable patrons. He must sympathize with their

. enmity to the law and to decent government, be-

^ cause these things are antagonistic, by natural

logic, to the nature and products of his trade. It

is the inwrought condemnation of strong drink

that it makes outlaws of both those who drink it

: and those who trade in it. The public journals,

," . in chronicling the crimes and disorders of the

country, as often suppress the fact that liquor is
r
.->-, responsible for them as they proclaim it. A long

? ' experience in journalism enables the writer to

know that it is often considered supererogation to

mention that "whiskey was the cause of the affair.

j. It is very generally left to be recognized by the

\. reader.

."i The public has grown callous to the iteration of

V; the fact, and it makes small impression upon men

:.T" to mention it any more, unless in connection with

>" some exceptional crime, accident, or mobocratic.

f exploit.

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PLEAS FOE PROEIBITIOy.

BEER AND BOMBS.
An affair like the Haymarket riot in Chicago, where the conflict is a desperate encounter of the law with the anarchist and his barbarous bombs, where death comes to the representatives of the public peace, and the demand is overwhelming for civil supremacy and the vengeance of the gallows upon the murderers, brings the truth I am seeking to emphasize to the public attention. Then the press and the people take up a tremendous, but temporary, offence against the saloon, and seem for a season about to overwhelm it with public condemnation and destruction. But when the law gets the upper hand of the wretched criminals and they have met their end with public approval, the spasm is expended, and the real offender, the saloon, goes scot free. [It would be an interesting thing to know how often, in the testimony and other proceedings of the Chicago anarchist trial, the word " saloon " occurred. It would be equally interesting to have the record of how often the press of the country inveighed against the " saloon " as a particeps criminis in the affair; and how often the pulpit felt called upon to deplore that the

PLEAS FOB PROHIBITION.

127

" saloon " was the COmmOlLSchool of nnmr^pnism
and the university of ungodliness and crime.^
John Most and his "miserables," in New York, are never hunted elsewhere than in the saloons. There they meet, make common cause against society, and mix their malignance with the frotb j and filth of the beer they guzzle and worship. It has become a stock joke of the newspaper paragrapher to couple the anarchist and the beer-mug in the popular eye. The caricaturist seldom pictures the wild-eyed Ismaelite of the slums and the secret communistic club without the neces sary environment of beer-kegs and liquor-bottles. With all these facts the public is familiar, but the buoyant optimism of the American citizen tempts him to see only the ludicrous element in the situation. He laughs at the picture until a dynamite bomb startles him into action f>r his own safety and the public peace. Would it not be well for him to recognize betimes that in these saloon habitues the liquor trade is educating and drilling a vast reserve army, ready for any bloody enterprise, deaf to riot acts, contemptuous of constitutions, fanatics of license and lust, and helots of sensuality, infidelity, and chaos ? When

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PLEAS FOB PEOHIBITIOX.

the long-roll is sounded, as one day it may be, calling the friends of the liquor saloon to its defence with force and arms, there can be mobi lized out of these dens such armies as Satan himself might hesitate to lead, and hell re fuse admission to, unless they should disband and enter singly and disarmed. The "next rebellion" may be an enlistment of the saloon slaves to fight battles for the perpetuation of their own bondage.

THE SOUTHERN RACE TROUBLES.
From time to time the country is informed that "a race war" has broken out in some part of the South, and, in the political strain between the parties over sectional issues, this alarming char acterization is given to almost every noteworthy conflict between white men and men of color in the South. The absurdity and injustice of this partisan treatment of such broils, in a majority of cases, have been repeatedly and clearly proven. That such conflicts do occur in the South is not only true, but they are logical sequences of con ditions this government has no power to remedy, and more such conflicts may be expected in the

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future. It is not the purpose here to discuss the general relation of the two races in the South. The conflicts between them, however related to prejudice and politics, are simply referred to that the fact may be emphasized that liquor drinking supplies the most frequent spirit of and occasions for these embroilments. The men of the two races stand in such relation toward each other in the South that slight inflammations cause general disturbances. , A._dj"uuken _white man and a drunken negro meet as flint meets steel over an open keg of powder.^ It is fairly a miracle when their meeting does not end in collision, riot, and murder. (One gallon of whiskey, " good or bad," is_enpugh to raise "a race war" wherever the whites and blacks are congregated.~>Banish^the" liquor trade from any of the districts of thejSputb., and_among the firstirjiits.of the prpMbition^are PP^CR fl^d forbearance JjetVEeeiL-the races. ^ I do not believe an instance of recent years can be shown, where a race riot has happened in the prohibition districts of the South, except a recent case at West Point, Ga., where, within a few hundred rods of the town, is the free whiskey territory of the adjacent State of Alabama, j This

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PLEAS FOK PROHIBITION.

proximity enabled the idle, drinking mob to get the liquor which was the spirit of the rioting and the cause of the killing that followed. It is the candid conviction of the writer, who has ample knowledge of Southern conditions, that prohibi tion of the liquor traffic in the South will prove a peacemaker a thousand-fold more practical and effectual than all the munitions of war, the enact ments possible to Congress, and the enforcement of penal statutes.

SOME VALUABLK EXPERIENCES.
A notable instance of the value of prohibition of the liquor traffic in a temporary crisis was fur nished in Forth Worth, Texas, during the mem orable Southwestern Eailroad strike. A great number of railway employees, who had aban doned their work, gathered iu Fort Worth to await the settlement of their grievance against the railway company. Jn the interim of the negotiations they frequented the saloons of the city, and many of them became drunken. Under these conditions, their passions \veve easily in flamed, and they lost sight of all obligations of self-restraint. They became a mob, threatening

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life and property, and the whole community was aroused to fear of the possible consequences of a sudden outbreak by these drunken and desper ate men. The politicians of the city, to curry the favor of this great voting company of men, were inclined to allow them nil bearable liberties. But mild protests and conciliatory counsel soon lost their force, and bloodshed and incendiarism were imminent perils. In this emergency, the mayor ordered the rigid closing of every liquor shop in the place. He took care to see that the order was obeyed to the letter. There was great in dignation on the part of the traffickers in liquor, who were reaping a vast harvest from the pockets of the strikers. The strikers themselves were angered by the order. But the public peace was at stake. The mayor stood firm. The men soon became sober and ashamed. . The strike was settled, and the danger-point passed.
Another very noteworthy effect of prohibition in an emergency was witnessed on the day in April, 1889, when the new Territory of Oklahoma was opened to the throngs of eager settlers gath ered around its borders. There were thousands of determined, greedy, and desperate men, adven-

132

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

turers from every part of the land, among the colonists who swept into the Territory that day. There -were many disputes and contentions ex pected. Many did occur. But the absence of liquor, of which the caravans had been stripped by government direction, had eliminated the dynamite from the situation. The officers in charge were enabled to effect the peaceable set tlement of the country, and they unanimously tes tify that their task would have been impossible, without much bloodshed and rioting, murders and assassinations, had there been liberty for the liquor traffic among the new-comers.
Again, at Johnstown, Penn., when the awful flood of 1889 swept down the Conemaugh Val ley, there were hundreds who perished because of their helplessness through drink. After the besom of death had passed, and the work of rescue and rehabilitation was in progress, it became necessary for the States military officers in charge to establish prohibition for a season, that sobriety might be forced upon the workers among the debris, and peace might be kept even over the coffins that were waiting for the dead.

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133

These are suggestive examples, and ought to teach men the duty and value of universal pro hibition.
THE TRINITY OF EVILS.
I Canon Wilberforce calls intemperance, gam bling, and lewdness "the trinity of evils." J They are not only such a trinity, but an indivisible one. They have a law of interdependence. The liquor traffic is the body of them all. Intemperance is the greatest of this trinity, in extent and power, but we are told it should not be made a crime. Yet both the other members of the copartnership are so denounced by all honest and decent gov ernments. Drunkenness would stand so denom inated and treated in this country, and be even less tolerated than gambling and lewdness, if the criminalization of it did not also require the denunciation of the manufacture and sale of liquors as criminal also. The punishment of one requires, by parity of logic, the punishment of the other.
A few months ago one of the leading journals of the country sent circular letters to the chief police officials of the larger cities of the Union,

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PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

asking their testimony concerning the increase of crime and the offences which are most prevalent. The consolidated replies were published, and revealed the striking fact that these officials almost unanimously agreed that crime is on the increase; that drunkenness, gambling, and lewdness are the most numerous offences; and that the liquor traffic is the responsible cause of these evils. That report, in itself, contained a sufficient statement of facts on which to base, and with which to justify, a national statute, abolishing the liquor trade throughout all the length and breadth of the land. The nation must, in time, come to such action. Municipal misrule is the problem of the American cities, for they seem, after many efforts, powerless in themselves to correct the growing and onerous evil. The vicious powers and classes, the rings and corruptionists that have grown up in the cities and now misgovern them, are also powerful enough to perpetuate their supremacy. At last, it seems, the remedy must be found in that accommodation possible to our system, whereby the State becomes responsible to municipal constituencies for the honesty of their officials, the wise and safe appropriation of

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

135

their funds, and the preservation of their peace and dignity. The day of such sovereign remedy is rapidly approaching, and already it has had a partial and successful trial in some of our larger cities. One chief result of it will be the prohibi tion of the saloon.

CHAPTER X.

PROHIBITION AND PRISONS.

And thus they plod in sluggish misery,

Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,

Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,

Bequeathing their hereditary rage

To a new race of unborn slaves!

BYRON.

THE PENALTY PAYERS.
A prison may be a proof either of the laxity of the laws or of the fidelity of their enforcement. The penitentiaries of the States are the demon strators, also, of the forces which make for anar chy, and advertise the right directions in which further legislative reforms should be prosecuted. Those who have charge of these institutions, and have acquired a genuine interest in the great con cerns of prison reformation and of law and order, bring to our knowledge, from time to time, many grave and teaching truths. The National Prison Reform Association, at its annual sessions, gives opportunity for the making of such revelations,

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137

and the discussion of those measures which ex perience and philosophy dictate yet to be ex ploited. It would be a decided gain to the energy and wisdom of our legislators if they could beinduced to carefully study the published trans actions of that association. The men who tell these truths have had experience in the investiga tion of the causes of crime which constitute them valuable counsellors as to future legislation. The addresses of Ex-President Hayes, who is the president of this national organization, delivered by him at the sessions of recent years, are sum maries of facts which are too important to be ignored. They reach down to the foundations of our social system, and discover to us the solu tion of many mysteries in individual delinquency and public lawlessness. He is supported by the

reports and recommendations of that important body of specialists and philanthropists over which he presides. The speech which he made, at the opening of the latest session of the association at Nashville, Tenn., in December, 1889, contains some pertinent matter revealing the relations of the liquor traffic to the criminal phenomena of the country.

138

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

THE PRISONER'S PLEA.
The disposition of the prisoner to explain his predicament, and find a convenient excuse for his deeds, is undeniable. But it is not true that the monotonous iteration of the plea of drunkenness by these unfortunates is either idiosyncratic or concerted. Such an idiosyncrasy would be one of the most unique revelations of the human mind ever recognized, for it is met with in prisoners of all countries and all classes of men, from the cul tured to the totally depraved, from the accidental offender to the chronic criminal. Nor can it be the result of agreement, for this would be a more incredible claim than that of idiosyncrasy. It must be referred to the facts, and accepted as the truth. The writer, who was for ten years a con stant stenographic reporter of criminal trials, knows indisputably that such pleas are supported by the sworn testimony in almost every case where they are entered in extenuation of the crime. Each case has its own peculiar circum stances, and each prisoner gives an entirely in dividual experience, unless his case happens to be one of those numerous instances where the

PLEAS FOK PROHIBITION.

139

crime was done in a state of absolute drunken ness. The lesson to be drawn by the humane citizen and the careful legislator from these facts is the emphasis they give to the old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." It has been contended by some very earnest men that in cases where the proof establishes drunken ness as the direct cause of the crime, the drunk ard maker, as well as the drunkard defendant, should be made to suffer for the deed. But, however much this plan might harmonize with the idea of poetic justice, rational philanthropy demands, "Why have two criminals been pun ished, when a wise precaution would have avoided the necessity for either becoming a criminal?" The true and right thing to do, in response to this state of facts, is to prohibit the traffic which makes for crime. Many essays and medical monographs have been written to demonstrate that inebriety is a disease, and the subject of it, though the author of an unprovoked and bloody crime, should be treated as a sick man, and not as a male factor. Edward C. Mann, in the "North Ameri can Review" (January, 1889), makes this broad declaration : " Science demonstrate8 conclusively

140

PLEAS FOR PROHIBITION.

that society and the law should cease to regard the inebriate as a moral delinquent, and look upon him as a sick man, demanding proper medical treatment to remove the diseased conditions of his organism." This is a plausible plea. But it is an unnecessary one. If science has wrought out any such conclusive demonstration as that contended for, there must be reliable data and methods of proof by which to clearly distinguish and segregate such cases out of the general mass of criminal instances. Provision is already made in statutes, in every State, most probably, for science to take the witness-stand and procure for a genuine case of the character portrayed a humane amelioration of the rigors of the violated laws. The courts, however, are alert to the pe culiar fallibility of the proofs and hypotheses so often relied upon in such cases. The rule of law so aptly formulated by the distinguished Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of one of our States, is an effectual deterrent to fraudulent pleas along the line of this so-called scientific revelation. He declared that drunkenness could not be considered as an extenuating element in a case where the proof develops that the criminal

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141

(for instance) "shot to kill, and killed the very individual against whom he had the malice that prompted the assault and dictated the murder." It is not medical treatment that is needed to stop the floods of crime that flow out of the fountains of drunkenness. The devil that makes drunk ards must be exorcised, prohibited a place in the land, and criminalized upon every attempt to renew his presence.

PROHIBITION PREVENTS CRIME.
That crimes diminish in violence and criminals in number under prohibition is a much more widely proven fact than any of the claims of sci ence concerning dipsomaniacal irresponsibility. However this latter theory may come in to mod ify the treatment of individual instances, it cannot be seriously thought of as a general palliation for the crimes of the liquor-inflamed. But if it could be proven that all crimes committed by persons incited by liquor are patients, and not fit subjects for penalties the reasons for prohibition attaching to this fact would be overwhelming. As mat ters are, we must judge from the results of expe rience, and they demonstrate that prohibition does

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diminish crime and cat down the number of criminals.
With the enforcement of prohibitory statutes in such States as have them, the penitentiary records show a steady and gratifying decrease of convicts. This is notably so in Iowa and Kansas.
This fact, it will be perceived, is not "a manu factured tale" of the "fanatical Prohibitionists," but rests upon testimony the public cannot dis pute. In the South, in those States where local option prevails largely, the testimony is to the like effect. Crimes of violence soon become ex ceptional, and the courts and county treasuries feel the relief of many burdens lifted by the oper ation of this local statute. In Georgia there are accumulated records of the good effects of pro hibition which make indisputable the claim that crime is the natural fruitage of the liquor traffic, and the suppression of the latter leads to the pre vention of the other. One of the most strik ing facts in this connection is traced in certain acts of legislation which have become peculiar to the South. In some States, where the convicts are let to contractors for a stipulated price for

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143

each convict per annum, it has beeu found that, through the operation of prohibition laws, the whole number of convicts has often fallen below the number agreed to be furnished by the State to the contractors. This produced a dilemma for the State. The contractors wanted the convicts, and the State had calculated her expenditures upon an inclusion in her expected resources of the price of an agreed number of such convicts. The failure of the requisite corps of convicts to materialize in the penitentiary threatened a loss to both the State and her contractors. In order to keep up the supply of convicts, therefore, a system of " raised felonies " was inaugurated. A " raised felony" is an offence which at common law and in the general scheme of State statutes was simply a misdemeanor, but by an amended statute has been raised to the grade and pen alties of a felony. Felonies only are punisha ble by penitentiary sentence in most States, and the " raised felony " thus changes the term of the convict from the jail to the penitentiary. The theft of a hog in Georgia was, for a hundred years, only a misdemeanor; now it is a felony. So with many other offences; and thus the law is

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manipulated and penalties enlarged in order to profit the penitentiary and the public treasury. This is a curious result of prohibition, but it demonstrates its effects on crime.

PROFITS AND LOSSES.
The revenue fallacy is the strong plea of the liquor traffic. It bleeds so freely from its reser voirs of blood-money to help the poor public bear its burdens. But how much longer will the poor public continue to be deceived by this witch-gold that turns to ashes in the hand ? There is not a city or State in this broad land where the saloon pays a tithe of the burdens it imposes upon the body politic. Nor is it in the power of mathe matics to calculate the financial cost of these burdens, no more than it is in the power of the whole receipts of the saloons to recompense them. The writer has known a dollars worth of liquor to lead to crimes that cost the community many thousands of dollars to punish. \ The best that can be claimed for liquor taxes and license fees is, that they get from a trade, by compromise, a sum of money which is the price of public sanction to a commerce that would be persisted in lawlessly

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otherwise. In plain terms, we agree to hold " hands off" from a thief and public spoliator for a part of his ill-gotten goods. There is no logic or sophistry that can change the nature of the transaction. Here is tho verbatim colloquy: -- / The PUBLIC. -- " Saloon-keeper, your business is damaging to the people, productive of crime, and imposes heavy expenses upon the public purse."
The SALOON-KEEPER. -- "I know all that, but what are you going to do about it?"
The PUBLIC. -- "We propose to prohibit your business."
The SALOON-KEEPER. -- " But I will continue to sell liquors, in spite of your prohibition law."
The PUBLIC. -- "Then we will punish you for violating the law."
The SALOON-KEEPER. -- " But I have political influence, the best lawyers at my service, and friends always on the jury list."
The PUBLIC. --" Nevertheless, we cannot afford to suffer from the things produced by your traffic."
The SALOON-KEEPER. --" Therefore, let us come to terms. I will agree to help you pay

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the expenses of them. I cannot indemnify you for all f them, but I am willing to pay you n reasonable sum not to raise this warfare between us. Let us have peace !"
The PUBLIC. -- "I suppose that is the best I can do. How much will you pay for your privi lege and peace?"
The SALOON-KEEPER. -- " Say, two hundred and fifty dollars a year."
The PCBLIC. -- " Oh, no ! I ought to have one thousand dollars a year."
The SALOON-KEEPER. -- K That's too much. It would be cheaper to fight your prohibition laws."
The PUBLIC. -- w Let us compromise on five hundred dollars."
The SALOON-KEEPER. -- " With the greatest pleasure." ^
And BO the bargain is struck, and the public becomes the silent partner in the firm of SaloonKeeper & Co., Limited.
To claim that such a transaction -- called " the license system " -- is not a sanction of the traffic, but a burdening and restriction of it, is to juggle with words and play skittles with the truth. If

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a license does not "sanction," what does it do? And when the public " sanctions " a business, how is the sanction expressed ? The ordinary citizen has a right to be treated with plain and honest speech. He cannot see a license in any other legal aspect than as a sanction sold for an agreed price. And such it is.

PROHIBITION A PAYING INVESTMENT.
It is abundantly proven that prohibition is a paying investment for the community at large. It lessens the demand for police vigilance, reduces the forces and appropriations set apart for the preservation of order, shortens the terms of courts, empties the jails of many prisoners, and leaves the citizen at a larger liberty from enforced service upon juries and court attendance. AH these results, with the consequent relief to the tax-payers, have been reaped by hundreds of communities in the land. The honest people have more rights in such directions than the idle and vicious have, to both sell and drink liquor. The first concern, we are told, of all good government is to conserve these rights of the earnest, patient, and profitable citizenry, and to hedge their homes

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and families from evil-doers and evil times. By this token, government discounts its own strength, wisdom, and integrity when- it yields to the socalled necessity of sanctioning the liquor traffic. It imposes burdens upon the wealth-producing classes which it cannot make the saloon reimburse; it doubles the public duties and sacrifices of the good for the profit and pleasure of the bad, and exposes the home and helpless wives and children to the cruel consequences of the liquor trade. f Civilization is a failure when it cannot prevent these evils, and government is only a makeshift when it is compelled to buy its own peace in bar ter and dicker with the liquor traffic."^

CHAPTER XI.

PROHIBITION AND PAUPERISM.

Poor, naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Yonr loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?

SHAKSPUARE.

MISUSED CAPITAL.
The stupendous amount of capital which is now required to conduct the organized liquor trade of the United States is so gross a misuse of money as to deserve the severest condemnation. This fact alone should set all wise publicists in favor of prohibiting the trade which requires it. We have no reliable statistics of the exact number of mill ions of dollars invested in the various enterprises of this traffic, but they are so many and so mani festly misused, as to amaze the casual explorer who runs upon their figures. When the brewers of New York City can, by a simple appropriation of ten cents per barrel upon one year's output

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from their devil's stewpans, subscribe $446,000 to the "World's Fair fund of that city, some glim mering of the enormous sum of money which their trade withdraws from helpful enterprise, and cen tralizes in their vicious business, is given to us. The Whiskey Trust is doing its work upon a cap italization of $45,000,000, and paying monthly dividends as great, sometimes greater, than the most needful and laudable industries of the nation. These two, the liquor and beer makers, have often piled up tremendous boodle funds, amounting to as high as $400,000 for the single State of New York, to defeat candidates, punish a party, or defend their trade against prohibition. The money which is actually invested in plants and stock is comparatively small, but $750,000,000 is the close government calculation of the money which is wholly withdrawn from regular channels to make the whirl, the wealth, and the destructive power of the national whiskey maelstrom. This trade has given to the national government, as its share of the clear profits from spirits and fer mented liquors, since 1865, the enormous sum of $1,668,663,169,--a sum greater than the entire national debt on the 1st of December, 1889. The

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government's share for the year 1889 alone was $98,026,723.24. This indicates an indirect tax of $1.50 per capita for the whole (estimated) present population of the United States, " includ ing babies, idiots, and Indians not taxed." But, since the most liberal calculation places the num ber of persons in the nation, who actually buy and use liquors of any sort, in any quantity, large or small, at 7,000,000 individuals, the true statement is that the government levies, for its own account, n direct tax of $14 per capita upon the liquor con sumers of the land. How much more the liquor traffic taxes this class is a matter the dealers are scrupulous to conceal.

THE RAGE AGAINST TRUSTS.
Those combinations of capital and industries which have come to be known as "trusts" are the beter noir of the American masses. They denounce these combinations as unlawful, their conductors as robbers, and demand of the parties and political powers that the most vigorous prohi bitions be enacted against these gigantic "pools." It is fair enough to prohibit such "trusts," as combinations contrary to good morals and public

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policy, and the people have a right to demand such laws as will destroy them. So great has been the clamor over these " trusts " that the very name has come to have an odious significance to the public ear. Even the Whiskey Trust, one of the first and most unholy of the order, has been alarmed by the public outcry against " trusts" in general, and is trying to escape the infamy of the name. A press dispatch, Jan. 20, 1890, from Cincinnati, says that the trustees of the Whiskey Trust, on account of the odium attaching to such organizations, have decided " that it might be well to change the plan of their organization without de stroying its effectiveness," and will formulate a plan " whereby the trust may be converted into a stock company." Yet we have heard scarcely anything, amid all the wide-spread clamor against trusts, of a demand for the prohibition of this Whiskey Trust. It is the most greedy, the most success ful, the most dangerous of them all, and robs the people of more actual cash dollars per annum than do all the other great trusts combined. Take the Sugar Trust, as the one against which the most general anathemas of the people are hurled. The entire profits of the Sugar Trust for the

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year 1888, including the legitimate and so-called "illegitimate" profits, were $14,000,000. The consumption of sugar per capita was estimated closely at fifty-four pounds. A rough calculation (discarding fractions) would give us, on the entire profits of the trust, these results: --
Annual consumption, per capita ... 64 Ibs. Annual profits of trust, per capita... 22 cents.
This is less than one half cent per pound of sugar and about one fifteenth cent per day per capita. Yet the consumer who patronizes the trust has no advantage over the one who buys of the nontrust trader, since the trust fixes prices and all the others sell up to the trust prices, and tell the growling consumer "to swear at the trust." And the consumer straightway howls vigorously against the "robbery" perpetrated upon him by the aforesaid trust. Is it not a pity that this indignant patriot, who is "robbed" of nearly seven-fold more cash by the government alone, through the Whiskey Trust, does not howl also against that great iniquity? If he drinks beer, doubtless five glasses per day would be a reason able calculation of his absorption, and for the five

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glasses he expends more money in one day than would pay the whole tax which the Sugar Trust " robs" him of in a year. There is no justifica tion for the scheme of the Sugar Trust to make an extraordinary profit, bat when this particular burden is placed over against the more stupen dous one of the Whiskey Trust, one cannot have a surging sympathy for the perspiring patriot who rends his garments about the iniquity of the one, while he hugs to his bosom and votes to perpetu ate the other and greater of the two.

THE PUBLIC PENSIONERS.
The records of the State, church, and asso ciated philanthropies of the country reveal the ceaseless and lamentable crop of pensioners thrown upon public and private provision by the liquor traffic. Our reform schools for juvenile delin quents are witnesses to the greedy malignity with which the liquor seller will consent to debauch the wayward youth of the country. The paupers, the sick, and the little children, orphaned, in fact, or far worse in effect, who daily come into the poorhouses, asylums, and homes provided for

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their refuge, constitute a continuous protesting procession against the damnable work done by the saloons. The sufferings of the poor women and children of the slaves of the liquor-pot are incalculable; and, strangely enough, by their very burden of unvarying testimony, they have lost their power to arouse universal interest and poten tial indignation. Here is the marvel of the mat ter, that strong drink has reached the ultimate of its power for evil, and always attains it in individual cases when given free opportunity. If it could be worse than it is, if it could incite to deeds unheard of before in all human history, if Satan could give it some new manifestations, some unexpected powers, there might be aroused a sudden and perhaps effectual storm of indigna tion against it, that would lead to its prohibition. But it has done its worst ages ago, and can only repeat itself on millions of new victims. We look upon its work now as the doomed subjects of the plague in India looked upon the work, when they drank
"A toast to the dead already-- And here's to the next who dies!"

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A BAB TO PROGRESS.
To say that the liquor traffic is a hinderance to individual progress, would be accepted as a mere threadbare platitude; but to say that it is a bar most effectual against the progress to thrift, inde pendence, and good citizenship of whole classes of our population, is to emphasize a truth which should have weight with the law-makers of our country .( In the South, the liquor-bottle has done more to keep the colored people poor, dependent, and rejected in the domain of political action than all other forces combined.^ The sober, in dustrious, and law-abiding colored man does not lack for friends, nor suffer the deprivation of the common rights of citizenship."^ But he is not able to lift up his whole race, the enormous majority of whom are the slaves of the bottle and all the evil things which follow upon its use. The col ored race in the South has earned money to sup ply all its necessities and to have provided a comfortable, unmortgaged home for four families out of five of their population* since they were emancipated. This surplus, and much more that belonged to the provision for necessaries, has

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been ruthlessly thrown by them into the tills of the venders of liquor. In nearly every instance where they have accumulated property, it has been by those individuals who kept away from the saloon, or in those districts from which the liquor trade had been rigidly expelled. In one county in Georgia the colored people increased their real-estate holdings in four years of prohibi tion four hundred per cent over all they had obtained title to in the twenty years previous, dating from the close of the war. Whenever the average colored citizen can be divorced from the saloon and the liquor-jug, he immediately turns his thoughts upon the problem of getting a home. Help him to save himself and his money from the dram-shop, and he will almost invariably begin to pay for a little farm in the country, or humble cottage home lot in the city. The best friend the negro of the South has among men is the Prohibi tionist, who is seeking to deliver him from the vampires of the distillery and the brewery, who debauch him, embroil him, slay him, and despatch his soul an untimely exile into outer darkness.
What is here written concerning the colored people of the South is equally true of thousands

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upon thousands of the daily wage-workers, with white skins, in the North. The number of liquor shops that gather about the vicinity of large em ploying industries, in the mining districts, and in the tenement districts of the cities, show that these condors of civilization have found where the carcasses are most numerous. The appeals of Grand Master Workman Powderly, of the Knights of Labor, that the men of that organiza tion should boycott the saloon, is a testimony to the dangers with which it menaces the best inter ests of the laboring classes. His words of wisdom and good counsel have been corroborated and re iterated by many other labor leaders, scarcely less distinguished than himself. The long strike of 1889 at the mining town of Braid wood, 111., whereby thousands of families came to dire dis tress, and were fed for months by the contribu tions of sympathizers throughout the land, was one of the awful examples of the helpless condi tions which the liquor saloons can produce. The following press report from that town, during the time of the strike, tells the story with sufficient plainness to enforce the truth that the saloon is the worst foe the laboring man has to combat: --

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"Like the majority of mining towns, Braidwood has spent a large proportion of its earnings in the past over the bare of saloons. In this little town, which in its best days numbered but 6,000 or 7,000 souls, there has been an average of from thirty to forty saloons. It should be remembered that each of these saloons pays $500 yearly license, besides rent, the cost of the stock, and other ex penses. It is on record that all did a fairly good business, and some of the saloon keepers made money. These figures are introduced for the sole purpose of showing that there is another and gloomier side to the story that the miners have for years subsisted on starvation wages. Give an impoverished miner double his usual wages, and the residue, after his family has barely existed, goes to the support of the saloons. In a crisis like the present the first applicants for relief come from the ranks of the improvident."

TBE SALOON AND TBE SOCIETIES.
Those benevolent organizations which perform so much of philanthropic work among the masses, such as the Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and a score of other such brotherhood

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and insurance societies, have come to recognize the pernicious influence of the saloon upon the characters, health, and independence of their membership. They are taking brave and effec tive means to purge their ranks of the debauched and the debauchers. In some States the Masous refuse to receive candidates for membership whose habits with liquor are bad, or who deal in the stuff; and in some States they refuse longer to retain in their lodges those who persist in the trade. This is also, in many places, the deter mination of other of the bodies above referred to by name and in general. This is a significant movement, calculated to become universal in the country, and will do much to put the brand of contempt and social ostracism upon those who engage in the liquor traffic. The sooner they are forced to abandon it, or wear the public brand of Cain, the sooner will it come to that odium which will work its downfall.

CHAPTER XH.
PROHIBITION AND THE PUBLIC PUESE.
Hope of Ill-gain Is the beginning of loss. DEMOCMTCS.
FOB REVENUE ONLY.
The discussion of the phases of the drink prob lem moves in a close spiral; the facts involved so interdepend, that the argument touches the same subjects again and again as it progresses. Thus we are brought, again, to the revenue feature of the traffic. It is so ready and liberal a payer of the public levies made upon it, when it sees its existence jeopardized, that the average man in authority looks upon it as a convenient well-spring of cash, when the treasury is needy, and the people are hard pressed, and slow in paying their taxes; the liquor money is usually ready on de mand, and enables the government to tide over happily many rough places in the finance of municipal management. This method of getting money can be so plausibly defended, it seems to

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come with such relief to the tax-payers, it assumes the sackcloth of a penance for an ineradicable evil, and altogether makes itself so indispensable to the pressing needs of the community, that it is tolerated often at the expense of good conscience and common-sense.
It is one of the absurd assumptions of the un reasoning public that the money is paid by the liquor trade ; but the trade itself testifies that it has so organized its business as to tax every cent of the tax back on the consumer. The money comes out of the pockets of the people ; they simply transfer a large amount of their wealth to the till of the saloon, and then graciously accept back a tithe of it " as a restrictive tax upon the pernicious traffic." Under this system the saloons are inaptly named, and it would be a wholesome and startling revelation to the public if some one of those mythical " honest " saloon-keepers would substitute for the word " SALOON," on his street signs, the more truthful words,
LICENSED ASSISTAHT STATE TlX-COLLECTOR.
Such a sign, advertising his true relation to the State, would excite popular attention, and draw

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down upon the system which sustains him in his vicious business a cyclone of public indignation. Every license-voter, not a patron in person of the saloons, would thus be brought daily to face the proclamation of his copartnership in raising reve nues by the agency of this disgraceful and de bauching traffic. The fact remains just that way, whether the saloon-keeper will so audaciously advertise it or not.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT.
The philosophy, if the reasoning can be so dignified, on which rests the scheme of license is in itself disreputable. It is a tax, levied by a fiction of substitution, which places the vender in front of the consumer who finally pays the tax, upon that part of the community least able to pay the great excise. They are the men who, by reason of poverty, are exempt from the ordinary and direct levies. But the State does not dis charge them thus handily. She perceives that they are the victims of an eager, depraved, in satiable thirst for the liquors of commerce, and she immediately concocts a scheme to assess their appetites, and thus collect from them an extraordi-

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nary tax. Of the seven millions of purchasers of liquors' in the country, fully five millions are men of this class, every cent of whose money should go to meet their actual necessities.
Large property owners connive at the iniquity because it seems to raise a great revenue, and, by so much, relieves their property from paying that amount of the necessary taxes. They are making the poor carry the burdens which belong upon their own shoulders. The poor drinkers do not see that every dollar they pay into the saloon in cludes a considerable tax for the State, to reduce the payment naturally and logically due from property. They fail to appreciate how truly the license system establishes " a rich man's revenue and the poor man's tax "!
Take the case of a Southern community. A city has a population of 10,000. Of this number, 6,000 are white and 4,000 are colored. There are 2,000 voters. The white population owns ninety per cent of the property of the city; seventy-five per cent of this is owned by 500 of the white tax-payers. This latter class, seeing that, under normal conditions, their property must pay three fourths of the taxes to support

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the government for the 1,500 voters, representing 7,500 of the population, cast about for a method of making this latter class pay more than the legitimate proportion of taxes, calculated on a property-value basis, that could be assessed against them. At this point, the liquor traffic affords its easy plan for solving the problem. It steps in, and shows that it can obtain from the wage-earn ing, non-property-holding class a large sum of money annually in exchange for its liquors. Out of this sum it proposes to pay into the tax-treasury of the city as many times $500 as the people will support places for the vending of liquors. If it happens that twenty such places can be so sup ported, the city gets $10,000 in cash, and the property owners are relieved of that much taxa tion. Thus the poorer whites and the large body of the colored people are made to bear a burden properly belonging to the rich property owners. This tax is collected from the appetites of the people, and is of the real essence of sumptuary legislation.
This same scheme is popular in those Northern districts where dense, wage-earning, non-propertyholding populations are to be found. Mill-owners,

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manufacturers, corporations, and large estate hold ers find this liquor-license system their only and convenient method of shifting a part of their tax dues off upon the pockets of their poorer laborers and tenants. It is a system that needs vigorous and determined exposure, that the poor may be aroused to boycott the saloon, and this infamous scheme worked through it, and save their scant earnings from this species of robbery.

TOI! FRAUD OF BIOS LICENSE.
To properly and adequately deal with the sub ject of " high license," as applied to the treat ment of the liquor problem, would require a separate volume. Here we refer to it only as one of those propositions, arising out of the prob lem, which must needs be exploited in order to develop its fallacious character. It is a popular scheme, supported by plausible arguments and promising results, which the surface-thinking citizen is quick to esteem desirable. It is a most lucky avenue of escape from prohibition to the liquor dealer and his ally, the politician. In it they have a system which caters to the greed of the tax-payer, to the desires of the drinking

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classes, and secures the safety of the liquor traffic. It is an opiate to the conscience of the average voter, vrhose sense of duty is at war with the evil of the liquor trade, but whose cupidity and political ardor are eager for some compromise which will measurably satisfy all three motives. The only merit of high license is the revenue it creates. Prof. Richard T. Ely, of Johns Hopkins University, in his admirable work on "Tax ation in American States and Cities," says: --
"From a narrow, financial stand-point, high license is an undoubted success. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that there is reason to look with apprehension upon the large revenues derived by high license. These are a bribe to the public."
Undoubtedly, as we have already sought to show, any scheme of license is purely a revenue measure, and is " a bribe to the public" to the amount of the money realized. No one will question the fact that, if the main concern of the government is to raise revenue, high license would prove one of its most lucrative and facile methods. But revenue raising is only a necessary concomitant of government, provisional in aim, and never ought to be pursued as a matter

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of speculation or recoupment. When high license is made to subserve either of these last-named ends, it is an arbitrary, autocratic, and despicable misuse of governmental functions. We do not seek, primarily, in our system of government, compensation for the public damages that ensue from evils; but we seek, or should seek, to reduce and abolish the evils, to the end that the least money should be taken from the people to repair the damage accidentally done by crimes and criminals. High license, therefore, proceeds upon a reversed idea of the purpose of govern ment, and is both un-American and unjust to all parties interested. It violates the accepted prin ciple which should obtain in all acts of taxation, that the taxes should be " proportional and rea sonable, and uniform as to the things or persons upon which they operate." Upon what principle of law or logic the liquor trade can be equitably singled out from the mass of commercial enter prises, and burdened with these extraordinary taxes, is one of the enigmas of the present situa tion in our country. If the commerce in strong drink is necessary, is legalized as such, and is classified as a natural right, the scheme of taxa-

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tion which arbitrarily segregates it from its logical, legal associations, and forces it to contribute a disproportionate, unreasonable, and extraordinary sum to the public treasury, is simply an organ ized injustice. It is doubted by many able legal minds whether any one of the high-license laws of the United States could stand the test of a trial of their legal logic in the Supreme Court of the land. No question involving their constitution ality has, as yet, been made before that tribunal. When such an issue shall be made, it must, inevitably, result in either the nullification of every high-license statute, or a new classification of the liquor trade, placing it outside the category of natural commerce, and standing it among those immoral enterprises which are clearly the sub jects of police regulation. In either event, the claims now urged for high license will fail of corroboration, and the system come to the univer sal disrepute which it deserves.
High license is being tried in various parts of the Union, and with developments that are in no degree encouraging for its permanency. What ever of good it has produced anywhere has been purely negative, principally temporary, and, in

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some places, prominently quite the reverse of the anticipation with which it was adopted. Its ultimate failure to satisfy the public conscience is certain. The records which are accumulating from its use in cities and States show such varia ble results and disappointments, that its friends can no longer support it, except upon the plea that" it gets revenue from an evil which would else exist without recompense to the community." Thus far they state the truth, and thus far only can they state it. It does not cure any of the evils of the liquor traffic; it does not perma nently affect the consumption of liquors; it does not diminish public expenditure on account of the effects that flow from the evil. It only gets a larger fine from the producers of these burdens, with which to defray the expenses of bearing them. This is not wisdom in government: it is weakness and compromise. That cities do not gain financial advantage by high license, has been forcibly demonstrated in the case of the city of Atlanta. In 1887 that city was under a localoption prohibitory law. The police expenses of the city were only $52,865 for an estimated popu lation of 65,000 plus, or about eighty cents per

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capita. In 1888 the high-license law, $1,000 for general saloons, was adopted in lieu of prohibi tion. One of the swift results was an increase of crime, from brawls to murders, with an increase of police force and expenditures. The force has been raised from sixty to one hundred men, and the police appropriation for 1890 is a round $100,000 for 80,000 population, or about $1.25 per capita. The increase is forty-five cents per capita, and is chargeable to high license wholly. That States do not improve financially under the high-license policy is evident from the face of the reported figures. In 1887 the bonded debt of Minnesota was $3,964,000; in 1889 it had grown to $4,215,000. This State has been under a stringent $500 to $1,000 high-license law for the liquor traffic.
Nebraska has had a stationary bonded debt, as to amount, since 1880 and before; her heavy highlicense law has not yet operated to reduce it any figure.
On the other hand, note the results in States with prohibition: --
In 1880 Kansas had a bonded debt of $1,181,975. Prohibition went into operation -in 1882,

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The bonded debt of Kansas in 1889 was $803,000, showing a very comfortable reduction.
In 1880 the bonded debt of Iowa was $270,435; in 1884 the State adopted prohibition; in 1889 it paid off every dollar of its bonded indebtedness, and owes only its current accounts and balances.
So we might easily produce figures to prove that the financial interests of the people are never really, but only apparently, benefited by the money paid by the liquor traffic. Some of the State and city treasuries that receive most of this sort of revenue are the ones that are nearest bank rupt, or deepest in debt. Those communities from which the liquor element has been expelled, their absorption of wages stopped, and the people encouraged to home building, have reached the largest gains in actual wealth and made the largest payments upon their public debts.

TSE INTERNAL REVENUE.
No inconsiderable discussion has taken place, in and out of government circles, over the relations of the internal revenue system to the liquor traf fic. It will not be profitable here to advertise the arguments made on either side of the controversy,

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Whatever necessity may have once existed, under war exigencies, to justify the government in lay ing a tax upon the manufacture and sale of liquors, that necessity has long since ceased to operate. The government is now in receipt of more rev enue than its just administration demands, and the surplus is often greater than the revenue re ceived from the distilleries, breweries, and liquor stamps. The Prohibitionists are opposed to this internal-revenue system, and have agreed to demand its repeal. They have moral scruples with reference to it, but the real political consid eration which moves them to this demand is the fact that the system has come to be the bulwark of government protection to the liquor trade as an organized evil. It is the real foundation on which is built the whole system of the Whiskey Trust, and the general traffic allied to it. It is the Inter nal Kevenue Bureau and its employees which con stitute the standing army for the protection of the liquor traffic from disastrous competition. It stands, also, as a bar to definitive and effectual State legislation against the manufacture and sale of liquors. The government license is an encourage ment to the lawless to defy the State laws. Once

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the general government ceases to be a partner in the traffic, and it becomes open to all men, each several State will then be compelled to legislate more stringently upon the subject, and the legis lation thus inaugurated and pressed will soon drive the traffic into isolated sections and States, and produce the necessity for its abolition in toto by national action. Additionally, the government of the United States, which bears none of our ills from the liquor traffic, should not collect these $100,000,000 annually from the traffic simply as a matter of "division of the spoils." If the traffic can pay such enormous sums, they should go to the States that have to bear the burdens imposed upon them by the trade. If the government purposes to continue this tax, it should, at least, in common justice to the States that have repudiated the traf fic, refuse to sell its licenses to men who can have no other use for them than to be safe from Federal power while violating the statutes of the several States. The bills in Congress to put an end to this iniquity should be promptly enacted into law.
The government also ought to interdict the transportation of liquors into prohibition States by those common-carriers who are amenable to

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the laws regulating interstate commerce. Rail road and express companies should have no right to thus become the general agents of the lawless elements of the State, who seek to nullify its statutes and bring its authority into contempt.

A DISHONORABLE PLEA.
It is pleaded in behalf of the internal revenue from the liquor trade that the money raised by it is still necessary, as a continuing "war tax," to pay the pensions of the soldiers who are de pendent upon Federal provision. This ought to be regarded as a most humiliating and dishon orable plea. The liquor traffic is not chargeable with the war, or its results, and no equity exists to tax them for the remaining burdens of that great struggle. Besides, the maimed, disabled veterans of that war should not be made to feel that the government has shifted their support from the pockets of the people to the pockets of the saloon-keepers of the Union. Grant that the people, in the long run, pay these taxes; they are collected by a disreputable system, through a disreputable channel. They are thus made to come from the pockets of the debauched

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and helpless, instead of the rich and competent. It is a disgrace to the nation to say that the people at large must drink damnation to them selves, to support the pensioned heroes of their wars.
The old soldiers themselves should arise and repudiate the degrading idea, and demand that no such disgraceful theory should be offered to support this revenue scheme. The shame of the matter is so enormous that one cannot think of it without intense indignation. It is a his tory our children will blush to read in the days of the Republic yet to come.

CHAPTER

PROHIBITION AND POSTERITY.

H who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a

general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak

of color.

HORACE MANN.

SATE TBE BOYS.
A correct environment of youth has much to do with the future of the race, and its civilization. United States Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, com mends the prohibition law of that State, because it is enabling the people there to bring up a genera tion of young men to whom the open saloon and its influences are uuknown. To secure such a re sult is an object worthy of the wisest and most strenuous legislation. Whatever may be said against the efficiency of the Maine law, this much can be truthfully claimed for it: that the leaven of its educational effects is felt to-day in all parts of the Union. Wherever Maine men and women are found in other States, there they are a force, and examples of the benefits of the pro*

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hibition law. A lady iu a Western State testi6ed to the writer that she was reared in Maine, and until she was twenty years of age had never seen a man under the influence of liquor. Thou sands of like testimonies arc given by the sons and daughters of Maine who are now workers for prohibition in their later homes in Southern and Western communities. Our duty to our chil dren, to similarly surround them with sober in fluences, and train them to abhor the evils of the liquor traffic, should be paramount. One who merely seeks prohibition as a cure-all for present evils is sure to be disappointed in the results of the measure; but he who seeks it for the sake of the future, for the bringing up of a sober genera tion, for the exaltation of the public opinion, and the establishment of a system of sobriety, may know that he is guaranteeing the welfare of his race and the glory of his nation. Prohibition can and will produce a preponderance of sober men, give place and pre-eminence in law to the principles of righteousness, and elevate the tone and trend of ensuing civilization.

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NOW IS THE DAY OF SALVATION.
Hence it follows logically, that the best time to enact prohibition is now. To postpone the enactment is to postpone all the good results which flow out of prohibition, and, finally, to make them impossible. There is a point in national development where opportunity may cease. How near we American people are to that point in our experiences with the liquor evil, no one can tell. But certain it is that we cannot be recreant to this great principle of its prohibition much longer with safety. The growth of the liquor traffic, the increase in the numbers of those who drink, where it is accessible, and the enormous wastage of resources therefrom, all admonish us to be vigilant, persistent, and aggressive in the work demolishing the drink traffic. A few more years of saloon domination in politics will find our civil polity wholly dic tated by the vicious elements which centre upon the saloon. A few more years of toleration of the traffic, and our legal system will be recon structed by the drinking majority, who believe in the dogma of the "personal liberty of de-

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bauchery." A few more years of silence and compromise, and the church must surrender to the gospel of Gambrinus, and the pulpit be dumb before the agnosticism of alcohol. This is the day of our danger; but under God, with true courage, it may be made the epoch of victory for the right and salvation for our sons. Shall we, then, longer palter about methods, and seek to palliate the great evil with "the hair of the beast"? Let us strike while we are yet strong and can achieve our own redemption from this curse, rather than cowardly deserve an ig noble epitaph to be scrawled upon our infamous tombs by our debauched sons.

A DOUBLE HORROR.
The necessity for immediate and tremendous action to overthrow the liquor traffic is nowhere so plainly demonstrated as in the fact that our women are in danger. Heretofore they have been the saviors of the nation. Had they been as much given to drink in the last generation as were the men, we would already be a nation of hopeless drunkards. But woman was then the faithful, sober element in our life, and -she preserved the

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principle of temperance from utter annihilation. But in these latter days our women are becoming more and more victims of the wine-bottle and the beer-mug. The number of arrests of women for drunkenness in some of our cities is already appalling. The delusion that beer is healthful, is a food, that it is peculiarly " a good tonic" for the female system, has won for the ranks of drink ing a marvellous number of women. What evils must come to this country when woman has no better character and principle in the matter of liquor drinking than man, it is not possible to estimate, nor even to imagine. It is time, there fore, to call a halt upon the liquor traffic, to con sider its past, its present, and its future work, estimate the strength of the race and the nation to bear all the evils it entails, and to unite eveiy good force in America to secure its immediate and eternal abolition from our country.

TSE PENALTY OF PATRIOTISM.
It is the almost inevitable penalty of the re former to be despised by the subjects of his sym pathy. In every age, the brave, the prescient and persistent souls, who have taken up in advance

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of public opinion the themes of righteousness, have won more frequently the contempt than the co-operation of their contemporaries. Power and pride are the pillars of the "established order," and he who would change that order is looked upon as a visionary, a lunatic, a public enemy. The Prohibitionist of to-day is the successor of all those who have thus suffered. His acts are heaped with scorn, his pleas are turned to jests, his faith is the burden of ribald ridicule. His name is cast out as evil, and his spirit, like that of his Divine Master, is said to be given of the Devil. Never theless, it is duty which moves him, and he must go forward.
The main opposition to prohibition comes from the ranks of the politicians. They do not want new issues, not of their own making, .injected into the political concerns of the day. They have their constituencies organized, indoctrinated, and drilled, and so feel their places and power secure. A new issue is a new enemy. They fear the re alignments which come with agitation, discussion, and division. A moral issue is* always charged with political dynamite. The politician fears it, and fights its introduction with all his might, but

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every just thing has in measure the omnipresence of its Eternal Author, and will find room for itself, despite all enmity. "Evil often triumphs, but never conquers," said Abbe Roux, and, he might have continued, " righteousness may be retarded, but never exterminated." So believing, the Pro hibitionist cannot do otherwise than hold fast to his faith, and push the issue of his loyal purpose into the field of affairs. It is not an issue for the church, the cloister, the closet, only: it is a casus belli for the great field of battle, where events are fought out for eternity.

TSE COMING DAY OF RECOGNITION.
To-day the blatent cries of " cranks," " Puritan ism," " blue laws," assail the friends of the cause of prohibition; but in the to-morrow of na tional history all this will be reversed. The continentalism of this period will have demon strated its unholy, treasonable, and un-American results, and there will be a violent and effective revolt of native patriotism against it. The people will awake to the fact that this trade in liquors is almost wholly in the hands of a foreign, heathen, and lawless combination of time-servers, political

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traders, and public debauchers. They will recog nize in their claims of "rights" and "personal liberty" the imported slogans of expatriated Eu ropean anarchism and disloyalty. They will find the safeguards of their higher and truer liberties jeopardized by every influence fostered and fed in the saloon, and the saloon will then be denounced as it merits, and abolished as it should be.
Surely, the politicians do not think they can forever outrage the public patience. They are making a long reckoning for the future. The agi tation for prohibition and the inherent importance of the principle will not be stopped or diminished by their silence and indifference. The first great battle for the abolition of slavery was fought and won in the halls of Congress, for the abrogation of slavery in the District of Columbia. Already there is coming a like issue in the prohibition campaign. The general government can prohibit the liquor traffic in the District of Columbia. The temper of the old parties toward this great national reform can thus be tested in the sight of the whole people of the Union, and become a part of the history of the times. We mean to push the question to a verdict. That verdict will be

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received by the people at large as significant, and will determine speedily the future course of the anti-liquor movement. It will be a day of judg ment for the present great parties, and perhaps the day of condemnation and casting forth of both.
The press, the prophet of all great coming events in the American polity, is already heralding the irrepressible issue. Says the Troy (N. Y.) Telegram: "It is as plain as the sun at noonday in a cloudless sky that the temperance question is to be the next great issue in American politics." The Chicago JVeics declares that " the rum-power has become a greater curse to the country than slavery ever was." The Brooklyn Citizen says: "Before many years have passed, perhaps before a second Presidential election is upon us, we are inclined to believe that prohibition will have formed one of the two great parties." The Phil adelphia North American gives this truth: "The movement roots in a moral revolt. No movement so rooted has ever been laughed or sneered down." Similar extracts from scores of leading journals arc at hand and might be quoted, but these show the thought which is pressing itself upon the attention of the country.

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HOW LONGt
Great movements among nations to higher things are slow in their beginnings; but, once be gun, they gather power first in the hearts of the good and true, until weight, not sudden impulse, starts the mass, and the readjustments occur, irre sistibly and completely.
The hope of prohibition for America resides in the fact that its pioneers and apostles are found in the ranks of the followers of Christ. They be lieve in him and in his triumphing power. They lean their backs against the impregnable truth of God, and, like Fitz James, declare,
" This rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I !"
Their faith and enthusiasm appear dispropor tionate and often absurd to those who live only on the lower planes of political action. The purblind do not see as they see, and so declare the mirages of the coming victories, yet uncjer the horizon, to be the vagaries of lunatic minds. But the faithful hold fast to the promises of God, that the wicked shall not prevail forever, that righteousness shall

PLEAS FO$ PHOSISITION.

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yet cover the land as the waters cover the seas, and that this glorious opportunity -- America -- is not to become a province of hell, but one of the kingdoms of our God aud his Christ.

THE END.