THOUGHTFUL TESTIMONY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19441, 29 October 1925, Page 3

THOUGHTFUL TESTIMONY

GENERAL EVASION AND CORRUPTION. (By tho Hon. Oscar Terry Crosby, author of “International War, Its Causes and its Cure,’’ and other volumes.) “Let us assume that the power of government is to be exercised in restraining the conduct of individuals when such conduct becomes in jurious to others. Because a large number of citizens believe that this restraint is one not properly exercised by government, we now arc witnessing a very general revolt against the law in question.

“These evasions of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) result in the sudden affluence of thousands of men otherwise not competent to earn more than the wages of the unskilled. They familiarize the industrious poor with the discouraging fact that higher rewards are obtainable by illegal bootlegging than by the most assiduous and honest efforts in their various callings.

“Thousands of officials throughout the land are being corrupted because they are undertaking the execution of laws which are not approved by vast numbers of citizens who, in respect to other laws, stand for learning and light. And we can scarcely cherish the hope that, if present laws remain on the statute book, these bad conditions can be bettered.

“The lure of the gin cocktail as forbidden fruit seems to have largely increased the number of young people of both sexes who turn to intoxicants in their social gatherings. “It is probable that the number of those now drinking injuriously is about what it was before Prohibition days.

“May we not ask that our neighbours should not concern themselves with how we spend our money, so long as we do not spend it in ways injurious to them? And when I say ‘we,’ let me include all classes of citizens. I, for one, shall take no part in the absurdly snobbish attitude of many people of my acquaintance, who excuse the Eighteenth Amendment in all its tyranny, because it presumably imposes upon the so-called ‘working classes’ particular methods of spending their money. Heaven help us! Let us have done with what may be indeed a sincere form of meddlesome-Mattie activity, but what often seems to be a mere affectation of superiority.—“ North American Review,” 1925. Evidence from those who have had ACTUAL EXPERIENCE of Prohibition is the only evidence worth considering. Strike out the two bottom lines. (Advt.) 15