TABLE No. IV.-Farm Values of Agricultural Products Used in the Production of Distilled Spirits and Fermented Liquors in the U. S. During the Fiscal Year 1913. TABLE No. IV (Continued).-Farm Values of Agricultural Products Used in the Production of Distilled Spirits and Fermented Liquors in the U. S. During the Fiscal Year 1913. Washington (3). Wyoming.. (1) Breweries only; see Table III. (2) See Table III, Fruit. (3) See Table III, Molasses. (4) Includes the equivalent in corn, at its farm value, of corn sugar, corn syrup, and other corn products used in brewing. PROHIBITION, PERNICIOUS SOCIAL WASTE Presidential Address at the Annual Banquet of the American Society of Brewing Technology, March 18, 1914, by Dr. R. Wahl. No one will dispute the great uplifting influence of the technical and scientific achievements of man during the century past, which period may be called the dawn of the reign of intelligence when man had come to realize his dominant power over the forces of nature, which he was learning to control and utilize to his various advantages. Methods of transportation of man and merchandise; of intercommunication; of agriculture; of industrial pursuit; of engineering, mechanical, civil, mining, chemical and electrical; of treatment of diseases, have been revolutionized and perfected to a degree not even imaginable before. Slowly and laboriously through the ages past the intelligence of man has evolved and has finally triumphed over all obstacles, over earth and water and air, over distance and time. But while we record an undreamed-of advancement in these technical and scientific pursuits because of the application of principles born of the intellect. and based upon the unalterable laws of nature, we find in other fields of human endeavor the efforts of man towards progress seemingly futile. Questions of the greatest moment to civilization and problems concerning the welfare, happiness and liberty of the people are treated in the most haphazard and arbitrary manner without regard for the teachings of history, of science or of common sense, but purely out of sentimental and emotional promptings; an attitude that reflects upon an enlightened people and which belongs to the past when society was at a lower level of evolution. So it is with the problems connected with the traffic in alcoholic beverages which we find dealt with in a most unfair spirit. And it is regrettably true that in this country public opinion is more readily influenced by sentimental considerations, and is, therefore, more readily misled by demagogical and fanatical agitations, to incline towards and encourage the puritanical viewpoint that the traffic in fermented beverages of any kind is responsible for all of man's physical degradation and moral turpitude and that nothing more is necessary to reach the millennium on this earth than to prohibit the manufacture, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages by putting the brewery and saloon, which are held up as the offenders, out of business. And in the light of the success of prohibition, north, south, east and west, public opinion seems to be succumbing, without much resistance, completely to this unscientific, illogical and perverse viewpoint. Township and county, state after state go dry, seemingly irrespective of any considerations of personal liberty or property rights guaranteed by our Constitution, and that this attitude of the public is becoming fixed and solid is shown by the fact that no arguments based on reason or a sense of justice have any longer any effect on these biased minds. These arguments are not even considered, but simply ignored. You can make no impression on these minds, it seems, by pointing out the many benefits derived by the government, by states and municipalities through the liquor traffic on account of revenues received through taxation and licenses; by demonstrating the commercial importance of the trade; the many millions invested in manufactories, the number of acres planted to brewing cereals and hops, the number of men and families depending for support on the manu-facture and sale of alcoholic beverages; or by pointing out the intolerable encroachment on personal liberty or property rights; or proving the historic fact that alcoholic beverages stood at the very cradle of those races which have made the greatest progress technically and sociologically; beverages that have been the solace of man at his best through the ages on his upward course to an ever brighter and higher civilization. And compare this with the civilization reached by those peoples who, like the American Indians and Australian bushmen, did not learn how to produce them, or to the Mohammedans who have prohibited them, the Buddhists who are abstainers in this respect and the Chinese who are addicted to opium. And all this knowledge of no avail! Saloons must be destroyed, alcoholic beverages expunged, the manufacture and sale made impossible because they are a convenient scapegoat to explain man's downfall, the prevalence of crime and the admitted failure of the church to influence the masses as of old! And let us be just, even to the point of generosity, and admit that if these people were right, and the liquor traffic were an unmitigated evil and its abolishment justifiable, none of the advantages |