an abundant harvest of widows and orphans. The battle thickened. The movement spread like wildfire. Towns and cities rapidly deserted the liquor camp, thirty-three States wheeled in line, the pillars of the saloon fell away, and Prohibition was here. Nobody could make a case for liquor. It had failed in every test, and could lay no legitimate claim upon anything or anybody. The theory of its necessity for medicine had been exploded, and its evil effects had become commonplace. A new industrial day had made it taboo. Railways would no longer employ drinking workmen. In business places signs were put out that no drinkers were wanted.

Nor would the plea of personal liberty or sumptuary law avail. With some a sincere protest, yet the cry of personal liberty was mainly the appeal of appetite or of lust for gain. There could be no personal liberty to injure others, and that which protected the community was not a sumptuary, but a social, regulation. The moral assizes of the nation held intoxicating liquors an alien enemy, wrote their judgment in the Constitution, and Prohibition became a national creed. The people thought it a sound policy then, and, despite disappointments, they believe it a sound policy now, and a plebiscite tomorrow would no doubt confirm their judgment by a five to one vote.

How much progress has been made in enforcement, we do not know, but that progress has been made, we know. Too much was expected, and results are not rightly appraised. That there is unlawful liquor and disgraceful drinking, none can deny, but conditions are better. There are no official surveys and we are left to individual judgment and the teachings of sense as to accomplishments, and although but little can be statistically proved, beneficial results are everywhere apparent. First of all, is the disappearance of the saloon. This is a gain of tremendous importance. The removal of an institution so anti-social and degrading is of incalculable worth to the nation, and particularly to its youth. In some places there are organizations of children under ten years of age who never saw a saloon. What a glorious heritage for youth!

In many sections there is practically complete enforcement, as compared with average general law enforcement, and throughout

the nation there is, I believe, an average of 70 per cent. enforcement, with everywhere a notable decrease in drunkenness. Rarely now are drunken men seen in public places. Recall a large outdoor public meeting of ten or fifteen years ago, and you will see scores, even hundreds, of drunken men, while today it is a rare thing to see one. In a city of 50,000, prior to Prohibition, from thirty to forty drunken men might be seen on a Saturday afternoon, while today months pass and not one is seen. In industrial centers the change is even greater. Monday morning failure to report for work because of Saturday night's drunk is almost a thing of the past. For ten years before Prohibition, 130,000,000 gallons of intoxicating liquors were withdrawn annually, mainly for beverage purposes, while last year 2,000,000 gallons were withdrawn, and if 3,000,000 were unlawfully withdrawn we have only a total of less than one twenty-fifth of that formerly consumed, while the price has advanced in most places from one dollar to ten dollars per quart, a price prohibitive to many. The laboring man emptied his pay envelope at the saloon and left his wife and children hungry, but he now has no saloon at which to loiter, and even if his inclinations have not changed, he cannot afford the price. Overshadowing all is the fact that the national habit is leading away from drink. It is rapidly becoming neither fashionable nor respectable. He who was once called a milksop because he would not drink in company, is becoming a cad or a vulgarian because he does. The fruit of Prohibition is abstinence; of abstinence, temperance.

Upon the whole, the progress made has justified the hopes of all familiar with the history of great reforms. At the beginning many thought it would take a generation to effect the end. We are dealing with human aptitudes deeply ingrained and long abiding. It took more than three hundred years to lead the people of Israel from the practice of idolatry, and more than forty years for the American people to stop the slave trade after Congress had made it unlawful. In the light of human experience, we should not expect complete Prohibition for some time yet, but that it will come, and be a part of the nation's order of life, let none doubt. Nor has Prohibition injuriously affected respect for law in general. The charge is a gratuitous assumption made for anti

Prohibition propaganda. There is no logical connection between the alleged cause and effect.

The writer asked that keen observer, Secretary Mellon, whether, in his opinion, Prohibition is responsible for the prevailing disregard for law, to which he replied: "I think not. I believe it to be due, at least in part, to the general let-down and disorganization following the War. Of course, the Prohibition law has suffered in the general breakdown in common with other laws." Unbiased opinion everywhere supports this view.

That there is a general increase of lawlessness, all know, but it has no connection with the Prohibition Amendment other than as all laws are involved. It is due to the general lowering of morale following a war in which the moral props of centuries were removed. In very truth Satan was loosed for a season, nor has his recapture been too vigorously undertaken. America, with the rest of the world, was tremendously shaken, and has not yet regained its former steadiness. The let-down is universal. A distinguished European publicist recently declared that since the war there had been a three-fold increase of crime on the Continent of Europe, with a like increase of cost of enforcement. Since all European countries are non-Prohibition, this can hardly be attributed to the Eighteenth Amendment.

Much of the misunderstanding arises from the fact that it is practically impossible for Prohibition to get a fair report. Nothing in all American history has been so misrepresentative as the attitude of the press. With a few honorable exceptions, it is impossible to obtain a correct news account or favorable comment on anything relating to the subject. It is the maxim of Amos Cummings over again, that if a dog bites a man it is not news, but if a man bites a dog it is the liveliest of news. Obedience to law, the sober conduct of the great masses, their quiet pursuit of industry, morality, and religion, furnish no headlines. A Prohibition orator addressed a suburban crowd of five hundred, among whom was a newspaper reporter. At the close all were asked to pledge themselves to law enforcement, and all rose. The reporter did not mention the meeting. The next night, at a like meeting, in the presence of the reporter, the speaker was heckled by an antiProhibitionist, and a humorous colloquy followed. The speaker

resumed his address and the incident was closed, but next morning the reporter had a four headline story with the conclusion that the speaker had been badly worsted and a near-riot barely averted.

There is an increase of murder, manslaughter, burglary, theft, false pretense, and other crimes, but is there anything in the Prohibition Amendment or statutes either countenancing or encouraging these crimes? It is not impossible that cheats, whose business is ill-gotten gain, seeing a larger opportunity in bootlegging, may have shifted from one crime to another, but Prohibition did not make them criminals; they were already criminals, and merely revealing their cloven hoofs in a different way.

There has, of course, been increased work for judges, prosecuting attorneys, and police officers, but this is a part of their day's work, at the behest of the nation, a worthy task in the common interest, and one to be joyfully performed.

At the Argonne, as a body of American troops were marching by on their way to battle, a French mother, who had lost her three sons cried out: "There go the Americans! There is victory where they go. They have never known defeat." Happily this is as true of our moral battles as of our military conflicts. In Prohibition there will be no turning back. The course of the nation is fixed. The Eighteenth Amendment will be honored, not in the breach, but in the keeping.

JAMES J. BRITT.

PROHIBITION AND CRIME

BY RICHARD J. HOPKINS

Justice, Supreme Court of Kansas

THE Sovereignty of this country was ably portrayed in its matchless Constitution, grounded upon the consent of the governed. The adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment followed the logical sequence of previous Amendments for the common weal or general welfare. Its adoption, like the Amendment prohibiting slavery, was the culmination of more than fifty years

of continuous effort in the face of alert, persistent and powerful opposition. The Prohibition Amendment was vitalized by the enactment of the Volstead law.

The liquor traffic has been the dominant cause of crime, misery and pauperism. Intoxicants, directly or indirectly, have sent more people to the jails, penitentiaries and insane asylums than any other cause. A large percentage of the crimes charged against persons arraigned in the courts is properly attributed to the use of intoxicating liquors. Such cases range all the way from the more serious crime of murder, committed by the individual in a drunken frenzy, to those of non-support, or to the simple charge of intoxication. The highest courts of the land have long taken judicial notice of these facts. Judicial notice means that courts consider, without evidence, those matters of public concern which are known to all well informed persons.

The relation of intoxicating liquor to crime was recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States as far back as 1847. In the License Cases (5 How. 504, 12 Law Ed. 256, 592), then under consideration, it was said by Mr. Justice Grier:

It is not necessary for the sake of justifying the State legislation now under consideration to array the appalling statistics of misery, pauperism and crime which have their origin in the use or abuse of ardent spirits.

In Mugler v. Kansas (123 U. S. 623), Mr. Justice Harlan, writing the opinion for the court, said:

We cannot shut out of view the fact, within the knowledge of all, that the public health, the public morals, and the public safety, may be endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact established by statistics accessible to every one, that the idleness, disorder, pauperism and crime existing in the country, are, in some degree, at least, traceable to this evil.

In Crowley v. Christensen (137 U. S. 86), it was said:

By the general concurrence of opinion of every civilized and Christian community, there are few sources of crime and misery to society equal to the dramshop. . . . The statistics of every state show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at these retail liquor saloons than to any other source. . . There is no inherent right in a citizen to sell intoxicating liquors by retail. It is not a privilege of a citizen of the State or of a citizen of the United States.

The Supreme Court of Ohio, in Adler v. Whitbeck (44 O. S. 539),