CHAPTER V

EFFECT ON CAPITAL

No one who knows Americans would attempt to explain the success of the prohibition movement by dwelling upon its purely moral aspect. They are a matter of fact people, used, in the first and last instance, to subjecting everything to the acid test of "Does it pay

Americans banned alcohol because they felt convinced that the consumption of liquor did not pay-from the point of view of either individual or national efficiency and prosperity. Efficiency is the god they worship. Nothing short of the conviction that drink, even in moderate quantities, handicapped the individual and the nation in the race of life would have compelled them to take the action that they did.

Prohibitionists had, for decades, based their agitation against the liquor traffic upon purely moral and sociological grounds. They had

declared that alcohol destroyed the soul, broke up homes, and bred brutality and crime. Such arguments had, however, failed to secure universal state-wide, let alone nation-wide prohibition. As soon as they began to show the employers of labour-the big-business menthat drink lowered working capacity and led to accidents in the workshop, and cost them money to compensate the injured workers or the dependents of the employee killed in such accidents, they at once began to enlist in their favour a force which eventually helped them to victory.

About twenty-five years ago the American Railway Association, upon which the owners of 250,000 miles of railways in all parts of the United States are represented, framed a series of rules which they strongly urged the railway companies to adopt. One of these rules forbade any employee engaged in "operative work". that is to say any engineer (driver), fireman, conductor (guard), brakeman, signalman, etc.from indulging in liquor while on or off duty.

Many of the companies readily adopted that rule. Some, however, refrained from enforcing it when the workers were off duty. A few of

them would have nothing to do with it, because they considered that it unwarrantedly interfered with the private habits of their employees.

Among the latter, perhaps the most unbending was the Lackawanna Railroad Companyone of the most powerful corporations in the country, with lines running through several of the Eastern States. Some years ago, however, it had to change its policy. Through the muddle-headedness of an engineer who, on his way to work, had looked upon the wine when it was red, a collision occurred near Corning (New York) which resulted in the death of 71 persons, including the entire "operating crew" of the train. The shareholders of the system were called upon to pay $1,500,000 as compensation for the killed and maimed.

That accident converted the railway company. Thenceforward it enforced the rule most rigidly.

"Pussyfoot" Johnson relates the following incident to show how employers of large masses of workers were converted to prohibition. He went, in 1916, to Butte, Montana, to assist in the fight then going on to ban liquor from that State. Soon after his arrival there he decided that it would be advisable to secure

the co-operation of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company-the largest copper mining company in the world, employing thousands of workmen.

The prohibition leader went straight to the manager of the of the company.

During a talk lasting almost two hours the manager admitted that his company's pay roll in the City of Butte alone amounted to $1,500,000 per month and that the inefficiency caused by drink cost them one-tenth of that amount. If he could prove to his satisfaction that there was a chance for the "drys" to carry the State, he would promise that his concern would defy the liquor interests, who had got a strangle-hold upon their employees, as well as the State officials and politicians, and give whole-hearted support to the cause of prohibition.

The temperance crusader succeeded in convincing the manager, who proved to be as good as his word. The prohibitionists, in consequence, won by 30,000 majority.

Even before nation-wide prohibition came in, employers were beginning to realise how the banning of liquor from individual States was improving the efficiency of workers. The 4,000

workers in the Santa Fe railway shops in "dry" Topeka, for instance, maintained the highest standard of efficiency of any shops in the system, turning out more work, " consistently and promptly the year round, than the men of any other railroad shops ".

Shortly after national prohibition came in, the leading manufacturers of Detroit issued a circular in which they declared that it had proved "a most valuable contribution to industrial efficiency, higher productivity and conservation of man-power".

The statistics relating to attendance issued

the Cadillac Motor Car Company showed that, under prohibition, there had been a decrease of 33 per cent in lateness among its employees, who numbered about 8,000 men, while there had been a decrease of 69 per cent in hours lost by absence on Mondays, and 44 per cent in time lost on other days. Similar testimony was forthcoming from all parts of the country.

The Voorees Rubber Manufacturing Company of Jersey City, New Jersey, and the Standard Underground Cable Company of Perth Amboy, in the same State, found that