PROHIBITION FALLACIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6593, 19 September 1899, Page 1

PROHIBITION FALLACIES.

v (Published by arrangement.) iVwHO MISREPRESENTS? In'-Qieir wild but futile endeavours to discount the force of the evidence agajnst pro*hibition, obtained from those placed where the system has had a long trial, the professional coercionists invariably resort to the. dishonesty of deceiving their hearers by asserting either that such evidence has been concocted by their opponents, or that the actual facts have been wilfully or ignorantly misrepresented. What now are the facts? Dealing with Maine, the- oldest of the prohibitory States, official figures prove that prohibition has justified no single prophecy of those who clamoured so persistently for it. It has not only failed to empty, but it has not even diminished the number of intpszs in the -State's gaols, lunatic asylums and poorhouses. In the city of Portland, the home of General Dow, who for years ■was the life and soul of the prohibitory movement, drunkenness is more prevalent than in many cities under license and with larger populations. In one year this city, with 33,810 inhabitants, •; had 1428 arrests for drunkenness, or one .arrest for every 23 Of her population, while Chicago had but one arrest for every S3 of her 600,000 inhabitants. If it be urged that the greater proportion of arrests in Portland was due to the superior activity of the police as compared with Chicago, then it would be well to ponder over statements made by the Rev Dr M'Keown in the city of Portland itself. He said : " The city was in a bad ' way, it was under the rule of rum, arid the Marshal's order that the law against liquor selling should be executed, against those who Bold on Sunday and after ten o'clock at night on other days was virtually saying that the law might be violated with im-. punity at other times. It seemed to him that arrests for the violation of the law had well-nigh ceased to be made by the police. He asked whether, when drunkards were reeling through the streets and intemperance swept the city, if the Church should be silent." After thirty-five years of prohibition in Maine it was necessary for the clergy of Portland to petition the Council of the city to compel the saloons to close their bars on Sundays. Yet General Dow said about the same time: "The volume of the liquor traffic has not been at all reduced within the last twenty years. In every city in Maine, except Portland, the law has been and is absolutely ignored."