AMERICAN PROHIBITION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19969, 10 December 1926, Page 15

AMERICAN PROHIBITION.

AN AMAZING SPECTACLE. BRITISH JOURNALIST’S VISIT. Mr John St. Loo Strachey, for many years editor of the Spectator, a position he recently resigned when the ownership of this well-known weekly paper changed hands, visited the United States early in the .present year; and has now recorded his impressions of that great country in “American Soundings’’ (Hodder and Stough ton, London). He writes enthusiastically of America and Americans, for he was so overwhelmed with hospitality during his visit that ho is in no mood to criticise his hosts, their country or their countrymen. But the observations of such an able journalist are necessarily of interest, though most of these soundings “in . the shore waters of America, social, political,, literary, and philosophic,” are not deep. In dealing with the controversial subject of prohibition he writes: — , “Prohibition, though meant to soften and refine manners, has often brought, if not u sword, at any rate a police baton, instead of better ways into faJnily life. That is bad; but perhaps as bad is the way in which prohibition is tending to produce 1 class consciousness and a sense of angry division between rich and poor—an evil from which America, was almost entirely exempt in pro-prohibition days. At present, speaking generally, the poor, are the people who on this important point keep the law. The rich and the well-to-do are those who break it.” He points out that prohibition has the support not merely of the teetotallers ahd social reformers, but of the lawless boot-legging industry, in which millions of dollars have been sunk “Not only has a valuable vested interest in lawlessness been created in the United Slates,” he writes, “but the said vested interest is taking steps to protect itself, like other interests of its kind. The millions of profit made by the. bootleggers, and the dark organisation which has grown up to shelter the trade by which they live, has actually made the breakers of the law the friends and supporters of statutory prohibition 1 There it qtlite a large and important body of people willing to work with the temperance party to maintain prohibition because thev know that if prohibition were banished Othello’s occupation would bo gone, and, what is more important. Othello’s 70 or 80 per cent, profits nn tbs money invested in a shady business. Therefore, wo get the amazing spectacle of prohibition being buttressed not merelv by the ardent enemies of over-indulgence in in•oxirants, but by persons who pass their lives and devote their energes to pandering to those who not, only break the law, hut are inclined to damage themselves by a vicious use of spirits.” The negro question, the American woman, American literature, and American newsnaoers are amoncr the other interesting puhiects discns cp d hv l\Tr St. top Strachey*