EFFECTS OF PROHIBITION IN AMERICA

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2977, 15 January 1917, Page 6

EFFECTS OF PROHIBITION IN AMERICA

Sir, —Tho progress of Prohibition in America is phenomenal. It is more a State political organisation than a social betterment movement; From a paragraph you published on Saturday it appears from the "Literary Digest" tliat• the.number of States under Prohibition is now 23—or almost one-half the area of the Union. That is a great victory. But as in New Zealand, where tno plaacing of one-twelfth of the area in "dry" districts has not diminished the aggregate consumption of alcoholic liquors, so in the United States the increased consumption of these liquors with the spread and growth of Prdi hibition is remarkable. During these ; sixteen years past the capture of vari- ; ous States has not done any good from 1 a temperance point of view In 1900 1 the total production and consumption of ; beer in the States was thirty-six mil- » lion gallons. In 1915 it was sixty-six • million gallons; and, as in New Zea-. 1 land; that showed 1 a larger consump- ; tion per head of the population under 1 Prohibitionist so-called successes.' And 1 the consumption of distilled spirits in ' the United States has increased _ to J nearlv double per capita what it is in 1 Now 'Zealand. The effects, then, of the

Prohibition propaganda in tho United States are not in the direction of promoting temperance and its practice among the people. A Great Authority once observed of a tree, "By its fruits yc shall know it," and so judged by its fruits, Prohibition from a temperance viewpoint is only fit for destruction. I am confident wo shall havo yet to.-re-vert to the old plan of inculcating temperance by prayer and moral suasion. Human nature will not bo bludgeoned into asceticism, any more than Europe will suffer being forced under the heel of Prussian militarism. —I .vm, etc., O.S.