lation was 127.3 enumerated in almshouses. This was almost as high as New York State's 132.0 per 100,000 population, the poverty problem in which State has long been intensified by the enormous inpouring immigration, much of which remained to congest the cities still further. Maine's 127.3 of paupers per 100,000 population was considerably higher than the proportion in many of the license states. It was higher than Indiana's 115.3; it exceeded Pennsylvania's 125.3 and Michigan's 105.7 per cent; it was manifestly far higher than Illinois' 96.1 and even still higher than the number of paupers per 100,000 population in many other nonprohibition states. It need not be said that pauperism is the result of varied social, industrial and personal causes recognized by all students of the question, and that it has existed in every successive phase of society. But if the threadbare assertion of the prohibitionists that drink and the saloon are the main causes has any weight, a classic example of proving that prohibition would remove it was afforded in the State of Maine, where statute and constitutional prohibition has been written in law for decades. And if, moreover, results are tests, then the prohibitionists have completely disproved their own pet contention. This fact is additionally illustrated in considering the case of Kansas, which has been under constitutional prohibition since 1880. The 1914 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows that the number of paupers per 100,000 population enumerated in Kansas almshouses in 1910 was 43.5 as compared with 41.6 per 100,000 population in that State in 1890; after twenty years of prohibition in Kansas there was more pauperism there, whereas, if the contention of the prohibitionists is sound, there should have been strikingly less. As for persons confined in penal institutions, the number in Maine increased from 77.4 per 100,000 population in 1890 to 98.3 per 100,000 population in 1910. In this respect, despite the extravagant promises of the prohibitionists that the adoption of prohibition would at once hugely reduce the number of prison inmates, Kansas in twenty years showed only a very slight reduction from 98.4 per 100,000 population in 1890 to 91.1 per 100,000 population in 1910. But North Dakota, under prohibition since 1890, shows a very decided increase in prisoners—the number in creasing from 53.1 per 100,000 population in 1890 to 63.6 per 100,000 population in 1910. These are the returns set forth in The Statistical Abstract of the United States based upon United States Government investigations. Another Federal Government investigation has recently shown that the assertion that the greater part of taxes is used up in police, court, charity, correctional and similar functions is fantastic. Bulletin 126 on Financial Statistics of Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000: 1913, issued in 1914 by the United States Bureau of the Census, completely disposes of that hoary assertion by showing in a summary table covering the entire 199 cities in the United States investigated that the per capita cost of police is $2.00, and that for charities, hospitals and corrections is $1.11. In percentages, police payments are only 11.6 per cent, and charities, hospitals and corrections 6.4 per cent of the total expenditures. These figures show how small a proportion of the whole has to be spent for institutions dealing with crime, poverty and allied factors. Elsewhere in Bulletin 126 the figures for the various cities are given in detail. It is especially worthy of note that these figures show that in a number of cities such as Atlanta, Memphis and Nashville the cost of either police or charity departments or both is considerably higher than in license cities of the same population such as St. Paul, Columbus, Toledo, Dayton, Paterson, Omaha, Spokane, Fall River, Grand Rapids, Bridgeport and other cities. It is equally worthy of remark that an official leaflet issued recently by Comptroller William A. Prendergast of New York City, giving in detail the figures of how every $100 in taxes is spent, shows that only $8.25 in every $100 goes to the support of the police force (a considerable part of which, by the way, is employed in regulating street traffic). Comptroller Prendergast's leaflet further shows that only $2.70 of every one hundred dollars taxes is spent for criminal and civil courts, which added to the amount expended for the cost of the District Attorneys and their staffs for five counties, makes a total of only $3.20 for all judicial purposes. Still further, Comptroller Prendergast's leaflet states that a total of only $4.96 of every $100 taxes goes to the Department of Public Charities for charitable insti tutions, state and private, and only 68 cents of every $100 taxes for the maintenance of city prisons, penitentiaries, etc. Although the Government figures cover the expenses of municipalities and do not include those of states, they unquestionably are, making every allowance for their incompleteness in that respect, a very valuable indication of the allotment of expenditures, and they self-evidently show the rashness of the wild exaggerations of prohibitionists that the cost of police courts, prisons and charities consumes the greater part of taxes. With this assertion disposed of, we can now enter into a review of the financial condition of affairs in many of the prohibition states. KANSAS As a State which has been under prohibitory laws for thirtyfive years, Kansas ought, according to prohibitionists' promises, to reveal a highly gratifying financial condition by this time. From the inception of their movement, the prohibitionists have fervently proclaimed that if prohibitory laws were adopted, finances, both public and private, would be vastly improved, and that this improvement would speedily show itself in the lessening of public and private debt, and specifically as far as private debt was concerned, in the practical effacement or minimizing of farm and other mortgages. It was particularly a favorite argument on the part of the prohibition advocates to arouse public opinion on the subject of farm and home mortgages. Every well-advised person knows that mortgages are the result of many interwoven causes and cannot be attributed to any one single factor, yet the prohibitionists always connected them with the drink question, as though liquor were either the principal or exclusive cause. But what do the government returns show? On the score of families having homes the facts are available. The 1914 Statistical Abstract of the United States sets forth that in 1910 of the total of 228,594 families having homes in Kansas, 148,141 homes were free of debt, 76,726 homes were mortgaged, and the facts as to 3,637 homes were unknown. Thus, after thirty years of prohibition, by 1910, fully one-third of the Kansas homes were mortgaged. This fact is all the more impressive when it is considered that the |