PROHIBITION COLUMN

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 23

PROHIBITION COLUMN

[Published by Arrangement with the baited Temperance Reform Council.] The man who votes for license ought to bo willing that his son , should die a drunkard. The open liquor shop, which his vote < helps to establish, he knows will ensnare the feet of somebody’s boy 5 why ■should it:';not - be, .-in the eternal law of fitness, his own child? RESULTS FROM LICENSE IN U.S.A. - The appalling number of deaths is insignificant compared to the numbei caused in former . Gays by the saloon. On Christmas, 1915, the following list of casualties were reported;—2. liquor murders, 18 liquor suicides, 150 woundings as the result of drunken brawls, 31 deaths from drink-induceu exposure, 3'drunken fathers killed b.v their children to save the lives of their mothers, and 12 wives and 6 other women murdered. Every year under the old saloon system hundreds of thousands of people died, yet probably not a word of protest was ever uttered. Humanitarian enthusiasm in the present situation is therefore somewhat belated. REFERENDUM RESULTS. To the Editor of the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’: Last November several States held referendums on, Prohibition. A comparison of the results with previous referendum discloses a remarkable trend of public opinion in favor of the dry laws. Missouri voted for Prohibition by a majority of 265,543, as compared to a majority of only 61,299 in 1920. The vote was 569,931 to 294,388, whereat, in 1920 it was 81.880 to 420,581. The dry vote, therefore, increased by 88.051, while the wet vote decreased by 126.193. ■ California voted for Prohibition by a majority of 63,617 as compared to a majority of 33,943 in 1922. The total dry vote was 435,076 in 1922, while in 1926 it was 565.875, an increase 01 120.7^9. Though Illinois wets registered a victory in the Illinois Prohibition referendum, the vote discloses a groat slump in the’ number of wet ballots since 1922, when a similar proposition was submitted. The vote was 80,631 to 556.592, while in 1922 it was 1,065,242 to 512,111, The dry vote, therefore, increased by 44,481, while the wet vote fell off by 22,611. Even in Cook County, antiProhibition stronghold, the dry vote showed a gain of 6,365, while the wet vote suffered a loss of 64,840. Massachusetts in 1922 voted wet by 103,876, but in 1924 it_ reversed this result and gave a dry majority of 8,183. Last November this same State gave a 200,000 majority to Alvan Fuller, bone-dry candidate for Governor, over his wet opponent, Mr Gaston. Now York ■- re-elected Alfred Smith, widely known wet, for a fourth term as Governor. His majority, however, was only 247,478, as compared to a majority of 385,945 in 1922, the last off-year election. This decrease of 138,467’ votes does not indicate that his wetness has increased his popularity. —L.E.F., in 1 Christian Science Monitor.* PROHIBITION AND CRIME. At the sixty-fifth annual convention of the American Prison Association, held at Pittsburgh, Pa., in October. 1920, Mr. Sanford Bate (president), Prison Commissioner of Massachusetts, stated in his address on ‘ Crime .Since Prohibition ’:, “ The so-called crime wave has not increased. There- are certain spectacular crimes such as bank hold-ups, but the general volume; is decreasing; especially is this the case ir> reference to vagrancy and drunkenness.’’ LORD BUCKMASTER.

In Toronto, Ontario, as the guest; of the Canadian Bar Association, after several months spent in the United States, Lord Bnckmaster, former British Lord High Chancellor, said ho wa« favorably impressed by the Prohibition laws of the United States. "I saw no strong drink or drunken men during the time I was there,” he stated in an interview. “If all the fact 1 - brought forward by the Prohibitionists in the United States are correct, as I have no doubt they are, then I can only draw the conclusion that Prohibition has proved an excellent measure for that country. “ Hospitals and prisoas are being closed, and the country a prosperous: these things speak well for Prohibition,” DRY DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS. The general Press of the world should not assume, as it seems to, that the Republican Party is the dry party, and the Democratic Party the wet one. This is not so, ns may be proved by the vote on the Prohibition amendment ns follows:—Senate: For, J'6 Democrats. 29 Republicans; against, 12 Democrats and 8 Republicans. House of Representatives: For, 141 Democrats, 137 Republicans; against, 64 Democrats and 62 Republicans. The results of the recent contests go to show that the dry majority in both Houses of Congress will bo fully maintained. Of 35 Senators elected 26 are dry, and of 435 Renresentatives elected 311 are known, either by their votes in former Congresses or statements since, will support dry legislation. HENRY FORD ON PROHIBITION AND EFFICIENCY. “Modern civilisation wantsincreascd speed because it» increases efficiency, but a high standard of efficiency cannot be attained or maintained without clear thinking and quick action. Prohibition is one of the means by which clear thinking is accomplished. “ Every measure that has been for the benefit of mankind has had to pass through a stormy period, and this is just what is now happening to the Eighteenth Amendment. “ After its five years of trial. Prohibition is not a failure. It is the people who have neglected to correspond with it that are the failures. The good that has already come from it infinitely outweighs the evil, and the evils that are do not arise from Prohibition, but the failure to practise it.”

After the adoption of Prohibition the Washington Home for Inebriates in Chicago had to bo closed for want of patients. The trustees of the home disposed of their large buildings (used for men) and with the proceeds built a general hospital costing 250,000 dollars (£50,000). Judge J. Kent Greene, the_ president, stated that before Prohibition they cared for some 1,700 inebriates every year. Only Prohibition can be responsible for that change. Sir Arthur Newsholmo, ex-president of the Society of Medical Health Officers, states that though there has been in Great Britain a reduction of about one-third the amount of whisky and brandy, and one-half the quantity of beer, drunk since 1891, drink remains a serious evil, and 90 per cent, of the cases of child neglect are caused by it. The New York police, in the districts of Manhattan and the Bronx (with a population of some 3,500,000) report that from Saturday night, October 2, to Sunday .morning (9 a.m.), October 3, 1926, not a single arrest had been made, or a single crime reported. Veteran police officers state that this is unprecedented. Prohibition’s share in this clean record was undoubtedly considerable.