PROHIBITION DOES NOT PROHIBIT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1063, 21 July 1910, Page 22

PROHIBITION DOES NOT PROHIBIT.

“There is one thing that prohibition in Tennessee and the rest of the South does not prohibit, and that is the sale and consumption of liquor. More of it is being disposed of in Tennessee than before the State went ‘dry,’ ” said Fred. P. Striker, of the Hofbrau Haus, who has spent the last six weeks in Hot Springs and the South“I went to Memphis and Nashville to see the conditions. At a leading hotel ■at Memphis I found that they work) /six . bartenders . and make no bones ' about running. It happened to'be oh Sunday when I was there, and there was a convention or-meeting of some sort in town. ,The head bartender told me they iwght to take in about 600 dollars tlfdt day.

“As to doing away with the dives and low saloons, State-wide prohibition has increased the number of them. One man who had recently been paroled after serving years for a terrible crime was doing a big business in Memphis. “They say that the commissioner of police of Memphis has an order on the wall of the central station to the effect that any policeman caught taking a drink in a saloon will be fired from the force —rand the law says there must be saloons. “No complaints are made, because the public does not want them. The people of the cities do not believe in the law as it is- I heard that out in the Sate a man was tried for selling liquor and that the jury stood nine to three for acquittal. Next day the three men who held out for conviction were killed, so nobody cared to do duty on a saloon case.

“Prohibition in Tennessee allows the hotel and saloon men to do business without paying any license. It causes men to break a law, something they would not do otherwise. It is a farce; and men who live in Georgia tell me the state of affairs there is the same.” —“Bonforts.”