THE PROHIBITION MIND.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1151, 2 May 1912, Page 20

THE PROHIBITION MIND.

u TOTAL ABSTINENCE PROPER FOR CHILDHOOD —BAD FOR MANHOOD.’* We have recently read with considerable interest an article on prohibition published in “Harper’s Weekly,” that is well worthy of consideration, as indicating how absolutely unreliable are the, statistics and arguments usually put forward by those bigoted people who stand as the champions in the relentless campaign against the Trade. The article opens with the remark that the prohibition mind is an interesting, and in these times a pretty serious, subject of consideration. It holds habitually to the view that whoever disputes the superior efficacy of State prohibition over all other methods of regulating and restricting the trade in alcoholic drinks, is the enemy of all that is good and the hireling of the liquor interests. Its deductions from facts are wonderful. The article then goes on to. quote from a pamphlet entitled “Facts proved by Figures, Showing what Prohibition has done for Kansas,’ the following extract: —“Three years ago open saloons were abolished in Wichita. Since then the weekly clearances have increased from 1,400,000d01. to 3,200,000d01. last week. There were 1800 new houses built in Wichita last year, and I was told there the other day that there are now 800 new houses and 5,000,000d01. in public improvements in process of construction. According to latest estimates its population has increased in the past three years from 31,000 to 62,000 inhabitants. The story of the growth and prosperity of Wichita is the story of general business conditions in Kansas.” Here is another “argument” from the same sources — “'Eleven hundred years before Christ an Emperor’ of China decreed that all the grape-vines be. pulled up by the roots and burned to ashes. China has been a sober nation ever since. Centuries before Christ, Lycurgus, the great law-giver of his people, did precisely the same thing in Greece. The Carthaginians, prohibited drinking army 300 years before the era. Draco, in his laws, mai® “drunkenness a capital offence. history you will find it, findijw'herever it was observed the nations became greater and the people more virtuous.” In reply to this the writer in Harper’s Weekly” remarks: —Does Kansas hope for a Chinese civilisation? Most of the Chinese are extremely poor. Great masses of the population find the utmost - difficulty in- getting food enough to support life. They cannot afford to drink, nor yet to fight, yet we have heard that opium is a good deal used in China. And the Chinese drink wine when they can get it, and sake; and they have tea, an admirable stimulant, which ought to make more headway against alcohol in this country than it does. As for Lycurgus, he is dead and all his Spartans. His system did not work as well as the more liberal and intelligent system at Athens. The Cartha-

ginians are all gone, too, beaten and cleaned out by the wine-drinking Romans. Draco was a failure as a law-giver. He was too repressive. “Draconian,” applied to a law nowadays, means that it is too severe to be tolerated. The Prohibitionists seem not to have been fortunate in historical citations.

Proceeding to treat with the subject on broader lines, the writer says: —“When Prohibitionists ' say that the manufacture, sale, and consumption of all alcoholic beverages is wrong, and should be suppressed, and pass laws to suppress it, they are wrong, and good will not result from their effort. They do not seem to estimate justly the value of what they get by prohibition, nor yet the cost of it. They get rid of the open saloon; that/ is something. If they really divert a large proportion of the money spent for is a good, big item. Even if they refuse to save their drink money and spend it for

automobiles, that is an improvement, because the Kansas women will get some good out of the automobiles, but. mighty little out of alcohol. The simple life, so much applauded, is apt. to need a jolter of scjme sort to keep it from stagnation. Nb doubt rum is much employed for this use. No doubt the automobile does the job better. The simple life ameliorated by the automobile is very popular in Kansas, which, as everybody may not remember, is the richest, or next to the richest, State, per capita, in the Union. “But prohibition, while it closes some saloons, and, perhaps, promotes motoring, and saves the State and its people some money, does not really make the Kansas crops grow, or raise the price of agricultural products, or increase the value of farming lands, or do the other things so important to Kansan prosperity, the credit for which the Republican party and the protective tariff have long been used to divide between them every four years. If prohibition really did as much for Kansas the Kansas folks might as well save what they have been spending on churches, for with a universal cure-all and guarantee of prosperity on their statute-book they don’t need religion to keep them good. The great de-

feet in prohibition is that it undertakes to force abstinence on responsible people against their will. It is not content to abolish the ‘evils of intemperance.’ It seeks also to abolish temperance, and, though it seems to succeed pretty well, that is a mistake.”