tax as liquor-dealers in prohibition States-let alone the numbers who avoid such risk-and of the immense growth of illicit distillation which the Federal government seems unable to check.

"Here is the festering sore spot which prohibition so far has failed to heal. It is caused by the presence of large hostile minorities (sometimes turning into majorities), some of whose members may believe in prohibition to the extent that they frown upon the legalized saloon while demanding a supply of liquor for private use. Unfortunately, prohibition rarely, if ever, as enacted nowadays, is the expression of an untrammeled public conviction. The methods of the ordinary prohibition campaign do not require this. The paid propagandists who have assumed leadership are content to cajole where they do not persuade, through threat of social and trade boycott, or of political extinction, and by a hundred other devices not necessarily calculated to instil conviction but effective in gathering votes. They seldom fail to recruit strength from self-seeking politicians who would ride to preferment and office on the 'water wagon,' although they secretly despise it. This blunt but truthful speech by no means ignores the very many men and women who vote and work for the extinction of the liquor traffic with perfect single-mindedness. We are merely seeking adequately to explain why prohibition victories are usually such short-lived triumphs for temperance.

"Perhaps no more disquieting illustration of the point to be driven home can be found than the frequent political contests in prohibition States centering in the question whether the law against drink-selling shall be enforced or not. Governors, state legislatures, and numerous local officials are frequently elected on a platform of non-enforcement. It would be shallow-minded to blame such exhibitions of callousness to the dictates of law solely to the machinations of those pecuniarily interested in drink-selling, or to the degradation of this or that political party. No, it is rooted in the fact that so many differentiate between violation of prohibition and ordinary transgressions. In passing, it may be said that we touch here upon one of the fundamental ills engendered by unen

forced prohibition, namely that it focuses political thought and activity of the community, not upon policies for civic advancement, but, mirabile dictu, upon the question whether constitutional and statutory enactments shall be respected!

"Let us examine a bit closer this ultimate panacea for the drink evil, not in the spirit of belittling its honest advocates, but as those who would sound for possible shoals upon which temperance reform may yet be stranded. The procedure by which national prohibition might become a reality is pretty well known. The Congress must by a two-thirds vote in both its houses submit an amendment to the Constitution forbidding for all time the manufacture and importation for sale of intoxicants of every kind; then the amendment must be accepted by three fourths of the States. Already sixteen States are counted in the prohibition column, and that the twenty others necessary for the required majority can be won over is of course possible.

"But let us note that the sixteen prohibition States are mainly agricultural communities, only twenty-seven per cent of their populations being urban, and that they have outlawed the drink traffic through the rural vote; that is, the areas which under normal conditions would not be encumbered by saloons have held the balance of power. The large cities invariably reject prohibition; thus in recent elections otherwise successful, Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Portland, and Denver voted against prohibition. The likelihood of winning over the greater centres of population elsewhere is far less.

"In short, the more urban a State is, the greater the probability that it will oppose in particular national prohibition. Now comparatively few States contain an overwhelming or preponderating urban population and one somewhat generally distributed. Among them must be counted Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and California; also the District of Columbia. These States, sixty-eight per cent of whose population is urban, with the District of Columbia, contain more than forty-five million inhabitants, or very nearly one half of the total number in the United States, as against twenty-six million in the avowed prohibition

States. Yet, under the rule governing the acceptance of a constitutional amendment dealing with a matter of public morals, these twelve 'sovereign' commonwealths might be coerced to accept prohibition, and that principally by a more or less remote rural vote! "Moreover, it may conservatively be assumed that even in the prohibition States one third of the population is opposed to forced abstinence, and that the same proportion holds good in the twenty States which it is necessary to win over to secure national prohibition. These thirds, added to the number in the States one must anticipate as opposed to prohibition, would equal sixty-three millions of the total population. Thus a constitutional amendment might be secured against the expressed will of a large majority of the citizens of the United States. This is by no means a fanciful speculation, but a condition confronting the intelligent voter which should lead him to ask whether such temperance reform by compulsion does not carry the germ of its own destruction.

"Nothing is simpler than to make and operate home apparatus for distilling spirits from potatoes or grain. The fruits of the orchard and the inexhaustible supplies of berries of the woods and fields, plus sugar, will yield alcoholic beverages of deadly strength. And let us bear in mind that the home manufacture of alcohol would be legal under the proposed amendment to the Constitution so long as the product is not placed on sale. The Federal government has already proved its inability to suppress 'moonshining,' especially in the prohibition States; and to assume that, at a time when even fiscal interest in preventing illegal distillation would be lacking, it could close the million avenues through which alcohol in its most noxious forms might find the way to the consumer, requires an optimism born of sheer ignorance. The era of home distillation was the period of the greatest intemperance Sweden ever knew. It was in part to prevent the ever-growing home manufacture of vodka and the consequent appalling drunkenness that Russia undertook the monopoly of the manufacture of this drink, which it has lately abandoned only to find that the illegal production is once more becoming a menace.

"Under national prohibition the illicit sale of alcoholic drinks would be proportioned to the ease with which they are produced. The lure of gain is stronger than fear of an unpopular law. Certainly the Federal government could not employ an army vast enough to prevent illegal selling, even if it had authority to usurp the police power of the local community or State. The local police would prove a vain dependence in the hundreds of municipalities. opposed to the law. They, too, would be set upon by temptation or cease activity in the face of juries hostile to conviction. This is not a fantastic picture of probable conditions, but one drawn from long experience of prohibition under circumstances much more. conducive to fair success.

"Still another uncontrovertible item in the catalogue of 'outs' about national prohibition must be mentioned. The real warfare over it would begin with the efforts at enforcement. We should then witness, on a nation-wide scale, the spectacle that we have already observed in miniature locally, the blighting power of avowed disobedience to law dominating political battles. The paralyzing influence that overtakes a community when it condones the violation of fundamental laws, the utter demoralization of public officials, and the corroding of the social conscience, are inevitable evils under prohibition not enforced; and it is for the conscientious voter to weigh how far they offset any measurable gains for temperance.

"The professional temperance agitator must perforce take an extreme stand. Fulminations against the inherent sinfulness of making and selling drink are part of his stock in trade, and for him to admit the possible morality of supplying liquor of any kind under any legal auspices would for self-evident reasons be a disastrous face-about."

ASPECTS OF INEBRIETY IN AMERICA

By Edward Huntington Williams, M.D., Author of "The Question of Alcohol," etc.

(Reprinted from The British Journal of Inebriety, July, 1915.)

The fight against inebriety in America presents some curious aspects. Liquor legislation is a dominating political element which has been gaining impetus for half a century, and is now acutely active in every State. Yet to-day the per capita consumption of alcohol, particularly the consumption of concentrated liquors, is greater than ever before. The official Government records on this point need no elaboration. They show that fifty years ago the annual per capita consumption of liquor was 6.43 gallons; in 1914 the per capita consumption had increased to something over 23 gallons. Yet these fifty years correspond precisely with the period of most active legislation against alcohol.

It is only recently, however, that it has become possible to measure the effects of liquor legislation with any degree of accuracy. Hitherto such legislation has been too desultory, too limited in time of application. Moreover, reliable statistics have been wanting. But the last Government Census Reports, covering every phase of social and economic conditions during recent years, are now available, and afford a basis for measuring the effects of legislation in the country as a whole, and in restricted districts. Deductions can only be made from indirect evidence in certain instances, however, since from a statistical standpoint liquor does not exist in legally "dry" communities. But the fact that the records of crime, disease, and degeneracy are complete, and that these conditions are dependent in a large measure upon the abuse of alcoholics, make the exhaustive Government reports a means of illuminative comparison. Conditions in America make such comparisons peculiarly per