MISSISSIPPI'S EXPERIENCE WITH PROHIBITION

By James Hancock

Mississippi was one of the first States in the South to adopt prohibition in a movement which had for its announced purpose the keeping of intoxicating beverages away from the negro population through the instrumentalities of a statute law.

At the outset of the prohibition movement in Mississippi, the reformers boldly declared that their purpose was to deny to the negro population of the State the opportunity to buy intoxicants in a licensed saloon or wholesale house, and they asserted that this denial would end practically all drinking on the part of the colored man. They let it be known that the white population would have no trouble securing all of the liquor they wanted; that it could be purchased in other States and stored for personal use. The great planters of the Mississippi Delta were led to believe that prohibition would practically wipe out crime; that it would stop loafing, abolish the shiftless and vicious habits of the lower class of negroes and thereby give them dependable labor on their cotton plantations. The land owners were also led to believe that prohibition would result in an economic blessing; that the cost of government would be less and taxation lighter.

Under these assurances and conditions, the people of the State elected a Legislature pledged to enact the prohibition legislation. It would seem that no State in the union was better adapted to give the prohibition experiment a more faithful trial than Mississippi. The political equation was negligible for the reason that since the reconstruction period there has never been but one party in the politics of the State. The prohibition law could not be made a football for politics. The "outs" in State politics could not organize, with any hope of success, a campaign against the "ins" with the prohibition law as the issue. With political peace thus assured, the advocates of State-wide prohibition expected much and promised more of their law.

It is a part of Southern history that the prohibition movement in the South began in Mississippi, with the purposes in view as already described. From Mississippi the movement spread to other States, with the result that almost the entire South, east of the Mississippi river, is under prohibition laws. But Mississippi is the garden spot of Southern prohibition, and a study of its experiences will supply the investigator with the best things that prohibition can possibly accomplish.

Official records at Jackson do not bear out any of the promises made by the advocates of prohibition at the outset. The law has not abolished crime. On the other hand crime is increasing. It did not change the habits of the colored population to any appreciable extent. The shiftless negro is still shiftless; the vicious element of that race is yet vicious. Labor is no more dependable now on the cotton plantations than it was before the new regime. Taxation has not been reduced; rather it has been much increased. The cost of government shows no reduction. Taxation is higher now and bond issues more frequent.

STATE AND COUNTIES ON CREDIT BASIS

The State of Mississippi and many of its counties are to-day running their fiscal affairs on a credit basis. The man or firm who receives a State or county warrant to-day for services rendered or supplies funished, does not know when he can convert the warrant into cash without standing for a ruinous discount at his bank. This discount ranges from fifteen to twenty per cent.

Contractors who bid on any public work, such as road building, levee construction, the erection or repair of public buildings, furnishing supplies to a charitable institution and the like, first ascertain what the warrants of a county or State department are worth, and add the discount to their bids. There is no way to ascertain what this credit system is costing the people of the State, but it is very large each year in the aggregate.

The heaviest part of this burden falls on those who receive warrants for their labor. The big contractor anticipates the discount when he makes his bid, but the public school teacher in many coun

ties must work for thirty dollars a month and lose a discount of 20 per cent on his warrant, which reduces his monthly income to twenty-four dollars. The same rule holds good with other employees of the bankrupt counties, and in some instances of the State. In his last biennial report, discussing this credit system, the auditor of the State exclaims: "Think of a public school teacher having to lose twenty dollars out of a warrant for $100!" However, public school teachers of Mississippi are forced to sustain this heavy drain on their earnings.

SLOW PROGRESS IN DEVELOPMENT

The State Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Mississippi lays it down in his biennial report as a self-evident proposition that education stands at the head of all State development. While Mississippi is, of course, making some progress in educational work, it does not in any sense satisfy the public, or the men and women engaged in the work. The teachers and the schools are denied the financial support that everybody admits they ought to receive from the State and counties. With a fiscal system that would supply them the needed revenue at the proper time, the growth and development of the public school system would be more satisfactory. But the average Legislature of the State seems to labor under the delusion that with prohibition in operation, all other blessings should come of their own motion like water from a mountain spring. The State appropriates about $1,500,000 to educational purposes, but under the credit system already described, it is difficult even to approximate how much of this sum is lost to the teachers and the schools. The State and county officials themselves do not know how much is lost by these discounts.

Funds are lacking all over the State with which to erect modern school buildings and equip them in modern fashion. At points. far removed from each other throughout the State, the traveler sees some modern school buildings, but if he travel through the eastern and middle sections of Mississippi, he sees the most primitive schoolhouses-small houses in the main, built of rough lumber and con

taining but one room into which children are crowded to get their education under conditions that prevailed when the South used the Blue-back Speller before the Civil War. Ignorance among both black and white is a result of this archaic condition in the public schools of Mississippi.

During the last session of the General Assembly of Mississippi, school men, and those in charge of the charitable institutions of the State, made a desperate effort to secure more money for their work. The needs of all such institutions were described as acute and the Legislature was asked for appropriations to relieve the most pressing necessities. It was shown that there was not sufficient room in most of the rural school houses, and many not so rural, to accommodate the pupils; that more and better school houses were absolutely necessary to take care of the increased attendance. State and county asylums of all kinds were reported to be crowded with inmates, without the proper facilities for safeguarding health.

A sympathetic member of the Legislature would introduce a bill to appropriate $15,000, for example, to install a heating system at an asylum, but the watch-dog of the treasury would immediately rise in his place and oppose the appropriation on the ground that if made it could not be paid from the State treasury. Upon a dozen. like occasions this member warned the assembly that appropriations already exceeded the anticipated revenue by a half million dollars. These incidents are duly recorded in the newspaper reports of the legislative sessions and appear on the minutes of the House of Representatives. All of the charitable and eleemosynary institutions of the State were begging for money to meet the demands upon them and to care for the unfortunate inmates in a humane manner. As a matter of dire necessity, however, petition after petition was turned down, and there is hardly a public school district in the State, and certainly not a charitable institution, but suffers for lack of money properly to care for children who desire education, and otherwise discharge its lawful functions. There was no secret about these conditions, and no attempt to cover up the fact that the State and many of the counties were practically bankrupt.

REPORT OF THE STATE AUDITOR

Official verification of these observations and much more, may be obtained from the biennial report of the State auditor. This report covers a period from October 1, 1913, to October 1, 1915. In 1888, the State had a bonded debt of only $103,000 and was taking care of its liabilities, less some that had been repudiated, when due. However, bond issues soon became necessary to cover deficits, and the report of the auditor shows that the bonded debt is now $5,102,000.

With a bonded debt of only $5,102,000, it would seem that the State ought to be in better financial condition, but that it is running on a credit basis is not denied in any of the official reports. Two years ago the property assessment for taxation in the State was $441,000,000. The assessment for the current biennial period shows a decline of about $21,000,000, and the auditor estimates that this decline in values loses to the State treasury about $125,000 in taxes. The tax rate now in effect is six mills on the dollar, the highest rate ever known in the State and among the highest ever known in the South.

MORE BONDS MUST BE ISSUED.

The bonded debt of Mississippi was necessary in the main to pay deficits in State revenue. That another issue will be needed at an early date for the same purpose, is shown by the report of the State auditor. In this report he says that there were practically no "extraordinary obligations" to take care of during the biennial period. At the end of the period covered by the report, or on October 1, 1915, the deficit in the revenues of the State was $891,752.18. For the biennial period ending October 1, 1917, a year hence, the estimated deficit, as set out in the auditor's report, is $1,379,270.49. On that date Mississippi will be compelled to sell bonds to cover the deficit, running her bonded debt to about $7,000,000.

Addressing himself to the Legislature, the State auditor says: "The legislator has been liberal in making appropriations to carry