EVIL FOLLOWING PROHIBITION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 936, 13 February 1908, Page 21

EVIL FOLLOWING PROHIBITION.

Many evils have followed prohibition wherever it has been tried. The habitual disregard of the prohibitory; law engenders disrespect for all law. It benumbs the moral sense and leads to evasion, subterfuge, and hypocrisy, resulting not infrequently in perjury. Its blighting effect on the material prosperity of. the people is strongly marked.

It cuts off from the community the revenue derived from the liquor business without lessening the evil of intemperance. It largely increases public expenses in the vain effort to enforce the law.

It adds seriously to the burden of taxation.

It depredates the value of real estate and throws many out of emp’oyment.

It drives away many citizens and prevents others from immigrating to the State, and thus checks growth in population. Maine and New Hampshire were prohibition States. This might seem accidental if it were not given significance by the more general faci that all the States, without exception, which have adopted prohibitory laws, have increased in population less rapidly after their adoption than before, and also by the fact that in a majority of the States the repeal of the law was followed by an increased percentage of growth in population over that enjoyed by them under prohibition. Among States similarly situated, geographically, and with the same density of population per square mile, the prohibition States have shown, during the period in which they were subject to the law, an increase in population much smaller than that of the non-prohibition States. It discourages investment. Capital has earned to shun prohibition localities. It is tyrannical and interferes unwarrantably with the rights of the citizen. The long list of States which have tried and repudiated prohibition shows it to be destructive of moral welfare and prosperity. Prohibition is wrong in theory, because force is not a proper or - successful instrument of moral reform. It is impracticab 1 ? and results in the free and unreguated traffic of liquors. It will not prohibit. Experience everywhere demonstrates that the regulation which can be made effective is better than prohibition, which cannot be enforced.—“ The Champion. ”