that this constitutional prohibition will not prevent the individual citizen being his own distiller or brewer and making for himself, in his own home, all the intoxicating beverages that he can manufacture for his own consumption and gifts to his friends. This does not deceive me, and only adds to my resentment, in the name of our Constitution and of our people, against the colossal fraud which the advocates of this prohibition Amendment would commit in the name of temperance.

"The leader of the prohibition advocates in this House pretends to represent the religious people of this country as a sort of new John the Baptist preparing the way for compulsory constitutional reformation.

"He preaches a doctrine of moral coercion in the home and incidentally advocates the construction of a thousand battleships for defense against a host of enemies who are the figment of his own brilliant imagination. The mythical Don Quixote has a fitting successor in the present hero of the prohibitionists. Capt. Hobson has traveled the Chautauqua routes of the country, fighting windmills with windy oratory, finding a Samuriai warrior in every inoffensive Japanese servant in America and a great destroyer in every beer bottle that decorates a German laborer's dinner table. He wants to take upon his shoulders the task of Hercules and do what no mortal man has done since time began. In his brief life he would reform the habits and customs which began with Genesis, came down through the history of the sons of Abraham, the records of the children of Israel, and the Acts of the Apostles. He is willing to reform the teachings of the Scripture and prohibit the turning of anything into wine. And he is determined to accomplish this thing. not by teaching, not by persuasion, not by moral reformation, but by amendment of that greatest secular document in history, the Constitution of the United States. Capt. Hobson fails to realize, however, that his American people cannot be coerced even by the supreme law of the land. They may be taught, but they cannot be forced.

"I am a doctor of medicine by profession. The Hobson Resolution begins with the statement that 'Exact scientific research has demonstrated that alcohol is a narcotic poison.' As a physician I state that this is either a play on words or an outright misstatement. In either event it is misleading, and flies in the face of medical practice and physiological science."

Mr. Gallivan, of Massachusetts, said: "Prohibition has been an utter failure wherever it has been put into practice. It cuts off revenue and leads to all sorts of dishonesty and hypocrisy. Prohibition can never be enforced by law. Dispassionate investigators of the liquor problem have, almost without exception, pronounced prohibition no solution for it.

"Those who conceived this remedy for the drink evil were unquestionably sincere, and there are doubtless some among them who are sincere today. They are honest, but, in many instances, so also were persecutors under the Spanish Inquisition."

Mr. Morgan, of Louisiana, said: "It certainly occurs to me that the Hobson Resolution, which contemplates the removal of the internal-revenue license, and at the same time legalizes the manufacture of spirituous liquors, is not in the interest of temperance, but, on the contrary, I verily believe that it will appallingly increase the consumption and dissemination of liquor, and this belief would make it rather difficult for me to subscribe to the Hobson Resolution, even if I were inclined to favor nation-wide prohibition."

Mr. Hobson supported his Resolution by attacking what he calls the Liquor Trust from every conceivable side. He denied that alcohol has any food value; claimed that it was a habit forming drug, which undermines the will power; estimated that there are 5,000,000 heavy drinkers and drunkards in America; stated that liquor is the deadly enemy of labor and capital; is the chief cause of industrial accidents; the chief cause of crime, pauperism and insanity; that it corrupts elections; creates a menacing degenerate vote; grips the throat of government; degenerates the character; and brings about disease and untimely death. The moderate drinker, he claimed, shortens his days by one-third; the heavy drinker shortens his days by two-thirds. 'Alcohol,' he states, 'carries down to a premature grave every day more than 2,000 American souls.' It is more destructive than war, pestilence and famine. It is a blight upon children and the 'millstone of degeneracy.'

"After my first investigations as to the truth about alcohol," he said, "I introduced the results of my labors and put them in the Congressional Record in a speech called the 'Great Destroyer' and proceeded to send this speech systematically to the youth of America. I estimate that I have sent out about 2,500,000 copies and have sent out more than a million and a half individual letters to the youth on

this subject. It is this work that has brought down the arm of the great liquor interests in their efforts to destroy me politically."

Mr. Mann, of Illinois, referred to the Hobson Resolution as "sumptuary legislation."

"I am opposed," said Mr. Mann, "to any proposition which will bring before the country all the time an issue which will make everything else in the country, at every election in the country, swing around the enforcement of a prohibition amendment which cannot be enforced. If we are to submit to the people and have them pass upon the question of prohibiting intoxicating liquors in the country, I am in favor of submitting to them that proposition and abiding by their judgment. The gentleman from Alabama wants to submit a proposition which, if it shall be adopted as a part of the Constitution, will cause more misery, more 'blind pigging,' more 'bootlegging,' the consumption of more liquor improperly, more temptation to the youth of the land than is now the case. If we are to prohibit, let us prohibit."

To this Mr. Hobson replied: "Elections today do revolve about the great Liquor Trust of America, and the object of forbidding the sale is to avoid even a suspicion of any desire to impose sumptuary legislation upon the American people or invade the rights of the individual and the home. We do not propose that the gentleman from Illinois, either now or at any future time, shall prescribe to the friends of temperance and prohibition and the moral forces of America how to bring about prohibition in this country."

MR. MANN. "Mr. Speaker, if I had done no more for the moral forces of America than has the gentleman from Alabama, I would not speak. I have accomplished more in this House for the good morals while the gentleman was drawing pay on the Chautauqua circuit than he ever has or ever will. . . . Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Hobson] a few minutes ago referred to the fact that I called attention to the number of resolutions which he had introduced on this subject, commencing, I believe, last April a year ago. There were nine of those resolutions. We were told during the day that the ninth resolution was perfect, and would be offered as a substitute for the resolution which was made in order; but when my friend from Alabama offers his substitute for section 2, it is not taken from the ninth resolution, but is a tenth proposition. Ten distinct propositions in less than two years! And this great legislative body is called upon to vote upon an amendment to the

Constitution where, since morning, the gentleman from Alabama has changed it, and gives as the reason for the change that he has it in private conversation from a Senator of the United States!

"I knew that this House had largely deteriorated in public opinion, but I had not supposed that we had gotten so low that, after a Member of this House had tried it ten times, he would ask a Senator, privately, to change it, so that it could be presented correctly to this great body. Have we no one left in the House of Representatives who can prepare section 2 after nine trials without appealing to one Senator to put it in proper shape? I am ashamed of the House temporarily if that be the case." (Applause and cries of "Vote!" "Vote!")

Mr. Underwood, of Alabama, said:

"The fact cannot be successfully contradicted that prohibition established by law does not produce temperance or stop the liquor habit where the public sentiment of the local community does not sustain the law. It merely makes men outlaws instead of encouraging a respect for law and order. I contend that there is no law written on the statute books that is stronger than the sentiment of the jury in the jury box. In the last analysis the law in this land is enforced in the jury box. In most of the States of the Union, if not all, the jury is drawn from the jurisdiction of the county within the State, and when public sentiment in the county is adverse to the statute men who go into that jury box, or at least 1 in 12, will be found who are not in favor of enforcing the law, and you will have a law on the statute books which, instead of producing the desired results, brings about a condition that puts all law into contempt and substitutes outlawry for a just administration of the law of the land. In fact, the resolution itself is not for temperance. It does. not contend or propose that men shall be forced to cease drinking liquor. It merely proposes that it shall be unlawful to sell liquor. Nothing in this amendment would prevent any man from manufacturing his own liquor and drinking it when he pleased. It is not difficult to manufacture whiskey. If the law does not prohibit it, it can be manufactured on the cooking stove; and I say to my friends from the South that if you merely want to prohibit the sale of liquor and not prohibit its use, and that is as far as you are going, then, so far as this Resolution is concerned, you encourage blind tigers throughout the length and breadth of our country. Of course the answer to that would be that the State laws would prohibit, but

you are proposing to go beyond the State law. Some gentlemen have argued that you can enforce prohibition by the State law and by the Federal law. . . . In conclusion let me say that this is not a question of temperance; it is not a moral question; it is merely a question as to whether you are going to substitute for the authority of your State to enforce its laws against your own people the authority of the Federal Government, that may or may not be in sympathy with the sentiment, the character, and the history of your people. (Applause.) In my judgment, there is but one way to work this question out, and that is by education sustained by local laws. The one Government in the world most without prohibition laws is the Empire of Germany. There has been a greater growth of temperance societies in Germany than in our own country, where we have more prohibition statutes than any other civilized land.

"Let our judgment be guided by the light of experience, and we have had much experience in attempting to secure temperance by prohibition legislation. That experience has proved that, as a rule, the smaller the unit of local option the more effectively has the sale of liquor been prevented and the greatest progress to complete sobriety obtained.

"Let us not forget that every law intended to regulate the sale of liquor is a farce when it does not embody the sentiment of the community in which it is to be enforced. It is a breeder of fraud and corruption and of contempt for constituted authority."

The press of the country in its editorials shows a remarkable unanimity of opinion on the amendment. Practically all of the papers agree that the issue is a local and not a national one, that it is a matter for the states to decide and not a matter for a Federal enactment.

(Item, Mobile, Ala., Dec. 23, 1914--Dem.)

HOBSON AND PROHIBITION GO OUT TOGETHER

"Yesterday's vote should be of sufficient significance to discourage prohibition lobbying in Washington for at least one session of Congress, however, especially in view of the reduction of prohibition representation which occurred in the November election.

"The whole question hinges on the right of the states to selfgovernment, as Mr. Underwood demonstrated in his logical and forceful argument against the Hobson measure."