me show you how the prohibition law is enforced in the State of Maine," and there was more business doing at that bar than I have seen doing at any bar in Boston for some time back. I asked the proprietor of the bar if he was connected with the hotel and he said, "No, I lease this place from the hotel, and I run it every day in the year." "Do you pay any license?" I asked him, and he said, "No." And I asked, "Do you run this place openly and with the connivance of the authorities?" He replied, "Yes." I said, "Are there other places in Portland like this," and he answered, “Yes, there are sixty places permitted."

This man told me it was all over Maine the same way, and yet the intelligence of the men of Maine, its business interests, its newspapers, countenance that kind of situation, and I am told that in the inland towns, where the proper character and quality of goods cannot be had, they manufacture the worst kind of liquor and that it is sold to hundreds of thousands of men every year and sends many of them to the insane asylum. There you have the situation in the State of Maine.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS ABROAD.

Last year I went across the water with the members of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and we visited the big cities in Europe. There were men and women of various States included in the party, amongst whom were some men who had never seen beer drunk as it is in Europe, and they were simply astounded and their vision was broadened by what they saw in the public parks in Berlin, in Paris and throughout the continent. They were astounded on the Sunday that we visited Berlin to find thousands of people in the beer gardens. There was music galore; as soon as one band stopped, another one three hundred feet away commenced. I think we saw but one drunken person in all Berlin while we were there. The music gardens were crowded until ten or eleven o'clock at night and later.

We were entertained by the Burgomaster and the Board of Trade and city government of Düsseldorf, and after the speechmaking was over and the banquet had been concluded, at one o'clock in the morning, we went down to the beer garden attached to the City Hall at Düsseldorf Even at as late an hour as that there were four or five hundred people present. The festivities were participated in by the principal men there; and let me tell you

this, gentlemen, Düsseldorf is considered the best governed city, the most modern municipality in the world! It owns its own waterways, its slaughter houses; it conducts its own tramways; it has municipal lodging houses, and it has a great big municipal building establishment that cost four or five million dollars. If you go there you will find that Düsseldorf is a model city, and yet you will find that its City Hall adjoins its beer garden, which is conducted under the best and most orderly circumstances, and everybody in the town goes there. Frankfort and other cities conduct breweries.

You gentlemen are accustomed to hear Europeans and Americans criticize the conditions in our larger cities, such as New York and Boston, saying that they are terrible places, and that we should go over to Europe and see the model cities there. Your reply to them should be, "Yes, but do you know that all of those cities have beer gardens? Do you know that they permit beer to be drunk on Sundays? Do you know that they allow the largest amount of personal liberty consistent with good order, and that in those cities there is less drunkenness than anywhere else in the world?" (Applause.)

PROHIBITION AND THE FARM.

As I traveled through Germany in my automobile, right into the heart of the country, I did not see a foot of territory where there was not an opportunity to get a glass of beer, and this struck me very forcibly. I want you gentlemen to get this thought in your minds, that the farm laborer has access to those places where he can get his glass of beer, and while the conditions in the farming districts are critical over there in Germany, the question is not so acute as it is here, because the Germans can get what they want to drink and are reasonably content. But leave Boston, and in some directions you will go fifty or a hundred miles before you can legally get a drink. You know the difficulty the farmers are having now— they complain that there is no good farm labor to be had. I have before me a clipping cut from this morning's paper. It says, "Brewers open meeting. A million dollars loss per county in bad crops." And it goes on to tell what could be accomplished if there were intelligent cultivation of the soil. One of the great difficulties in intelligent cultivation of the soil, not only in growing hops but in raising cattle and other products of the farm-in the

State of Massachusetts we have fewer cattle by fifty thousand than we had ten years ago, although cattle was sold yesterday in Chicago at eleven or twelve cents, on the hoof, the highest price in the history of the country-as I say, the great difficulty is that you cannot get men to work on the farms. Labor in this country today comes from those places in Europe which I have mentioned. Men have grown up from their infancy where they could get a good glass of beer without its being considered a crime, and when they come over here at twenty, twenty-five or thirty years of age, and they find that to get a glass of beer legally they have to go fifty miles, of course they do not stay on the farms and they crowd into the big cities. When you get a situation like this, where prohibition obtains in all but a few of the big cities, and the farm laborer has come from those countries where the right to drink is not questioned, you will find that the hop crop will be a failure and that the raising of cattle will be a failure and that the price of beer will be higher, because you do not make country life attractive to the man who has got to dig in the soil. (Applause.)

The Mayor then told of his successful effort to repeal the eleven o'clock closing law as applied to hotels and to substitute therefor the present twelve o'clock law. In conclusion, he said:

I hope you will enjoy yourselves in the next three or four days -the machinery is in operation for you to have a good time. We have the best of roads, and you can go out of Boston in fifteen or twenty different directions, but remember what I said about prohibition and do not get too far away! (Laughter.) You will find as good roads for automobiling as in any part of our country, and of course the whole section is full of historical interest. Here you have Concord and Lexington within twenty miles, Cambridge and its great university, and then there is the north shore where we have the President as a neighbor, although Congress does not give him as much time here as he would like. Here in the city you have the Old South Church and Paul Revere's home, the Old North Church, Faneuil Hall, and the Old State House. Right in these very streets you visit today, liberty was given its birthright, and I hand you the keys of the city, through my personal friend, Col. Ruppert, and I hope that you will enjoy yourselves. (Prolonged applause.)

Mayor Fizgerald's address, given with all the vivacity and magnetism for which he is famous, was heard with the greatest enjoy

ment. At its close the Convention "rose at him" and he was the recipient of a genuine ovation.

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE GIVES WELCOME.

MR. NICHOLSON:-Gentlemen, we had hoped the Governor of the Commonwealth would be here to greet you in the name of the State, but unfortunately he cannot be with us this morning. He has been ill, but attended a political rally at Worcester last night and had planned to return to the city and welcome you this morning. His Secretary has notified me, however, that to his great regret he could not spare the strength to come in from Worcester, in view of urgent campaign calls upon him.

The first suggestion that we should invite the United States Brewers' Association to hold its convention in Boston came from the Committee on Conventions of the active and efficient Boston Chamber of Commerce. It seems fit, under those circumstances, that the Chairman of the Committee should be here today and welcome you in behalf of that commercial organization. It seems to me there is no better way of getting the right sort of advertising for a city than through those who have attended successful and enjoyable conventions within its gates. It follows, therefore, that one of the most important committees of a commercial organization is the committee which secures conventions for a city and looks after the welfare of those who are attending the conventions after they have secured them.

The Boston Chamber of Commerce is a most effective organization, and it is particularly fortunate in having so active and willing a worker, one so energetic, able and self-sacrificing as the Chairman of the Committee on Conventions, who is to welcome you on behalf of that committee. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Mr. D. Fletcher Barbour, the Chairman of the Committee on Conventions of the Boston Chamber of Commerce. (Applause.)

MR. BARBOUR:-I am very glad to be here, gentlemen. It is unfortunate for you that the President and Vice-President of the Chamber are out of town, or they would certainly greet you, because we recognize that only the best is good enough for you and such as you, who come to Boston to meet in conventions. But as Mr. Nicholson has said, it perhaps is fit that the Chairman of the Committee on Conventions should welcome you, and I do so most

heartily, representing the Boston Chamber of Commerce in doing so. We certainly are very glad you are with us, and the fact that we did not have to work very hard to get you to come shows the good sense which is apparent on your faces.

I was in Connecticut yesterday, and, by the way, had on a derby hat, but you may have noticed when I came in this morning I had a straw hat, because I thought it would be particularly appropriate, as the Mayor was going to give you a warm welcome, and if there was not a hot time in the old town last night there will be to-night, because I am sure things will warm up toward you and you will be received on every hand by good fellows. (Applause.)

In closing his remarks Mr. Barbour expressed his satisfaction with the size and importance of the Convention, saying that it pointed to an awakening of business men everywhere to their interests and possibilities, of which a capital instance was the recent formation of the National Chamber of Commerce. His little speech was cordially appreciated.

BOSTON BREWERS' GREETING.

MR. NICHOLSON:-Gentlemen, the City of Boston and the Chamber of Commerce have extended their welcome to you. There remains for me the pleasant duty of welcoming you in the name of the brewers of Masachusetts, and I assure you that no pleasanter task has or can come to me, as President of the Massachusetts Brewers' Association, than that of welcoming here the members of this national organization, our fellow brewers from all over the country.

It has been a good many years since you have visited us, as an organization, but I am hopeful that we shall succeed in making your stay here so pleasant that you will never again allow so long. a time to elapse before selecting Boston as your convention city.

I am sure that your stay amongst us and our association with you will benefit us; that it will give us, as an organization and as individuals, increased strength to meet the difficulties which confront us, and to overcome the obstacles that we have to meet.

It seems to me particularly fitting that you should hold your convention in this State, because here the art of brewing has been practised for nearly three hundred years, dating from that time, in 1620, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, influenced very largely thereto, as history says, by the fact that their supply of ale