PROHIBITION IN KANSAS

By Albert Jay Nock

(In North American Review, August, 1916)

The State of Kansas has experimented with constitutional prohibition for a period of thirty-five years. The amendment was submitted by the Legislature at the session of 1879, adopted at the general election of 1880, and the enabling statute became effective May 1st, 1881. At this time Maine was already under Statewide prohibition, but prohibition was never taken very seriously there except as a political issue, and is at present scarcely more than nominal,-in fact, Governor Curtis, in his inaugural address, recommended that the whole pretense be given up. But in Kansas, prohibition has always been taken seriously and its enforcement has commanded the utmost efforts of the State; so while Kansas is not precisely a pioneer in the policy, she doubtless represents the very best that State-wide prohibition can do.

From the standpoint of constructive reform, it is regrettable that students of the alcohol problem usually take so absolute a view of it, tending to isolate it from other social issues and regard it as detached and unrelated. This tendency, so generally observable in most that has been written about Kansas, vitiates many arguments and nullifies many conclusions drawn from her experience. Propagandists on both sides of the question generalize freely from particular features of this experience, in a fashion that is utterly discredited by acquaintance with the history and make-up of the State. This is particularly true of attempts to apply the experience of Kansas to other States, though it also holds good of many attempts to interpret the course of prohibition in Kansas itself. The claims, for instance, of prosperity, public health, sanity, the absence of crime, and such like, are often interpreted in a preposterous relation to the State's policy of prohibition. Most of this sort of thing, of course, comes from public officials with axes to grind; for politicians in Kansas are quite what the majority of

them are elsewhere-quite as hamstrung and time-serving, and quite as prone to compromise. But much of it also comes from studies that purport to be disinterested and even scientific. Only the other day, for instance, I saw a newspaper announcement of an article dealing with Kansas as "a State without saloons and without slums." The title sufficiently indicates the tenor of the prospectus. It would seem that the most derelict editorial judgment must be aware that under any liquor policy in the world, Kansas could not possibly breed slums. One might as easily think of her as breeding white bears. Slums are an immediate product of industrialism, not of drink. If there were never another drop of liquor in New York, Pittsburgh, Paterson, or any of our industrial centers, the slums would remain as they now are. Kansas has no relatively industrial life worth mentioning, and the wage-earning population of her largest cities is only about equal to the population of the Woolworth Building in New York.

Many Kansans recognize the disservice done the State by these exaggerations, and wish to promote a more intelligent view. One of them said to me that "there are many good things here with which prohibition has nothing to do, and many bad things that it is not responsible for; but, on the whole, it has helped." This is, I think, a very just estimate. The only question is whether the same result might not have been reached, at less expense of reaction and drawback, by some other method. I must say, too, that I never saw a fairer entertainment of this question than by these men who were supporting the State's policy with all their might. They discussed the weaknesses and drawbacks of prohibition, as well as its excellences, with conspicuous candor. So far were they from fanaticism and the pestilent temptation to generalize from the experience of their own State, that they gave explicit warning against the expectation that even the results obtained there could be reproduced satisfactorily elsewhere. "We have had a terrific fight for thirty years," said one of them, "and we have won and are satisfied. But any other State that tries it must make up its mind to the same struggle, and without our initial advantages."

These initial advantages are the most important thing to be kept in mind by the student of State-wide prohibition as a general

policy. They should be especially scrutinized by the legislative bodies of other States, who are under pressure to inaugurate a similar policy. We shall consider them presently; but before doing so, it is proper to show the net result of prohibition in Kansas at the present time-to see what the conditions are with which these advocates of the State's policy express themselves as satisfied.

The one direct result is the suppression of the saloon. On the positive side, this is the whole upshot of prohibition. It cannot be too clearly understood or too constantly borne in mind that prohibition in Kansas does not mean the prohibition of drinking. It is not directed against drinking. It is directed against the traditional method of retail distribution. There is no objection, apparently, to the method of handling direct to the consumer. The law does not interfere with it, and one hears no complaint. There is no trouble about getting anything one wants to drink, by the simple expedient of having it shipped in. It seems to be well understood in Kansas that the intention of sentiment is fully met by the suppression of the saloon, and there is no attempt to go beyond it. A leading merchant said to me, with the greatest candor: "I have everything in my cellar, just as my neighbors have, from champagne to ginger ale. I drink beer every night. My children drink it whenever they want it. I hope the Federal Government will never make it impossible for me to get it. But I don't know, really, whether I would shoulder a musket sooner to repel a foreign invasion of America, or to keep the saloon out of Kansas!"

The theory is, largely, that by this means liquor is kept out of the general consciousness, and particularly out of the consciousness of the young. There is a great deal to be said for this; yet it ought to be remembered, too, that there is a negative as well as a positive approach to consciousness. A score of times I heard it said in Kansas, and always with a curious air of finality, "Our boys have never seen a saloon in their lives." One appreciates the full value of this, and yet one cannot help wondering what they will do when they do see one, as at some time they almost inevitably will. But without wishing to whittle down an achievement of prohibition by this or any other speculation, the point to be remarked is that the achievement itself is thus sharply defined;

and, while very conspicuous and valuable, must yet appear, from the absolutist point of view, somewhat attenuated.

Now, to abolish the saloon (which, I repeat, is the whole upshot of prohibition in Kansas)-to attain this very considerable result, the State has made sacrifices, in virtue of the method employed, which go far toward counterbalancing the value of the gain. It is distasteful to speak of evasions of the law; they are the stock-in-trade of the propagandist, and perhaps in their nature may not be handled quite scrupulously by any one, at least in any detail. But speaking as broadly and guardedly as possible, Kansas has repeated the history of every absolutist enterprise since the world began. Promptly with the attempt to enforce prohibition, evasion began to run its squalid course. After the open saloon came a period of indirect licensing. In 1883, two years after prohibition was established, there were forty open saloons in Topeka, doing business under a license to sell certain specified liquors "and other drinks." A town the size of Fort Scott had as many as thirtytwo places operating under such licenses. There was a period of the "original package saloon," of the club system, and the institution which became known the country over as the "Kansas drug store." Along with all these, went continually the masked saloon or "blind tiger," maintaining itself more or less precariously by alliance with local politics, frequently licensed by a schedule of raids and fines, until this was stopped by the repulsive expedient of the "ouster" law, whereby public officials can be put out of office incontinently for failure to enforce the law to the satisfaction of the State's attorney. Illicit retail distribution is now chiefly effected by the method known as "bootlegging," and this industry has assumed large proportions all over the State, especially on the southern Missouri border. Bootlegging, unfortunately, has been the principal factor in changing the traffic from lighter drinks, such as beer and wine, to spirits; because the lighter drinks are too bulky to be easily handled. One of the most extensive evasions is in the sale of fortified cider. The Kansas State Board of Health publishes analyses of something over thirty bottled ciders taken from the open market, showing from four to twelve per cent. of alcohol. It is questionable whether as many could be found on

the market in the three States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, put together. Probably these ciders furnish the poorer citizens with the stimulation afforded to the transient by the ministrations of the bootlegger and to the more affluent by those of the railway and express companies.

One asks oneself whether, after all, the open saloon would not be almost a fair exchange for the reaction produced upon any society by this kind of thing, by the perjury induced, the encouragement of furtive habits, the general spirit of fraud, deceit and hypocrisy, the abeyance of personal responsibility. And even in the direct view, if Kansas children have never seen a saloon, New York children have never been approached by a bootlegger. But too much may not be made of this. The chief point is that New York children may grow up with a just sense of moral values, in this particular, while Kansas children may not. Indeed, the most serious failure which a critic detects in the proposal to enforce temperance by prohibition, is in its utter upsetting of the sense of moral measure and proportion; and Kansas offers the best possible example of a community thus affected. Her intense preoccupation with alcohol has raised the problem in far too high relief and sunk other matters of social policy out of focus; in short, it has exercised the debilitating and retarding influence of any monomania. Undoubtedly the alcohol problem is great and difficult; undoubtedly it needs the direction of much more simple and sincere thought than has yet been put upon it. But to admit it as even a social problem of the first order is making a very handsome concession; while to let it monopolize the field of social thought and the output of social energy is the mere vicious pottering of fanaticism. As early as 1882 one of the public men of Kansas gave warning that "there is no other question either of State policy or economy that absorbs so much public attention. In fact, I believe that I state only the truth when I assert that all other State questions have been and are now completely ignored by the people of the State." There is, unfortunately, no doubt of this; and I repeat that this engrossment, this persistent "intending of the mind" upon alcohol, is the most deplorable by-product of Kansas' long campaign. There are citizens of a more cosmopolitan type