West Virginia:-The State Commission of Prohibition has ruled that express companies, organized solely for the purpose of operating between West Virginia and Ohio towns in handling alcoholic beverages, are entitled to all the privileges of any other common carrier as long as they live up to the law. They may carry shipments of liquor into the State so long as they do not refuse to carry other goods.

The State authorities have declared that Bevo and White Ribbon Brew, two alleged temperance drinks, must not be sold in the State as they can produce intoxication.

The Governor has announced that there is a shortage of over $66,000 in the State treasury and, unless new resources are created, the deficit will be over $1,250,000 by the end of the year.

Wisconsin:-Final decision by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin on the Baker law has considerably disturbed the trade in this State during the past year. This law was passed in 1907 and limited the number of saloons to one to each 250 inhabitants.

It further provided, however, that in localities where this ratio was exceeded at the time of the initiation of the law that the privilege should be given to those locations and persons who were in business at that time, until through the retirement of licensee or change of business by these locations, the number should be reduced to the prescribed ratio. Many retailers, under a mistaken interpretation of the law, opened stands which are now, by the ruling of the highest court, declared illegal.

Since the decision of the Supreme Court, the Wisconsin Brewers' Association has taken a firm stand for the observance of the law, which cannot fail to have a beneficial effect upon the standing and bearing of the industry before the public. Over two hundred saloons were closed because of this ruling in the city of Milwaukee alone.

ELECTIONS

Wet and dry elections were held in 141 cities, villages and towns in the State in April, and there was little change in the result. Desperate efforts were made to carry Madison, the State Capital, into the dry column, but they were checked by a small margin. Beloit and Janesville went strongly for license.

Other towns and cities voting for license were: Alma Center,

Bay City, Boyceville, Chilton, Cobb, Clinton, Cornell, Darlington, DeSoto, Downing, Edgerton, Fox Lake, Galesville, Iron River, Linden, Maiden Rock, Manawa, Manston, Menominee, Oostburg, Palmyra, Purple Lake, Reedsburg, Rice Lake, Ridgeway, River Falls, Shawano, Sparta, Stanley, Trempealeau Waupun, Westcott and Whitewater.

Canada: The two provincial general elections which have been held, one in Ontario and the other in Manitoba, in which the question of the abolishment of the bar figured, have not resulted in favor of the prohibitionists.

In Ontario the issue was fought out almost entirely upon the question of the abolition of the bar, the Liberals having pledged themselves in favor of abolition, while the Government adhered to its local option record. After a campaign which was notable for the number of ministers who took part in it as partisans of the Liberal party, the result was the defeat of the Liberals by an overwhelming majority. If the history of the liquor licensing legislation in Ontario since 1906 is reviewed, there will be found a lengthy list of measures which restrict the trade, and even in this election the issue was not temperance versus the licensed trade, but one temperance policy against another. Naturally enough members of the trade supported the policy which was the least unfavorable of the two, conscious all the time that their action would not be regarded as entitling them to immunity from further restriction. The local option policy has decreased the number of licensed places in Ontario without decreasing crime and disorder; while the most serious inconvenience that it causes business interests is the extinction of good hotels in dry districts, where it is almost impossible for the commercial or pleasure traveller to secure proper accommodations.

In Manitoba the issue was not put so fairly and straight forwardly before the people. The temperance question was only one item in a long programme with which the Liberals essayed to gain votes. As far as the abolition of the bar was concerned, after a great deal of negotiation, and no little quibbling, the Liberal party in Manitoba undertook, if returned to power, to submit the question of the continuance of the licensed bar in the Province to a vote of the people. What was to be done afterwards was left in a discreetly vague position. The reduction in the Government vote is in no sense

a temperance victory; it was due to other causes altogether, although the temperance organizations will likely hail the result as a moral victory for their cause.

As far as the Dominion is concerned, the progress of antiliquor legislation is not making any headway, and one has only to look at Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to find ample corroboration of this assertion.

Quebec investigated the whole matter of the sale of liquor, and has enacted legislation of a character which tacitly admits the impossibility of prohibition, and the Royal License Commission, in its report, directly asserted that impossibility. Ontario has turned down a "Banish-the-Bar" proposal, and Manitoba has done likewise. There seems to be in the Dominion a preference for “tapering-off" by means of local option, instead of "swearing-off" by the artificial and impracticable method of prohibition. For, it is not liquor which the temperance advocates are fighting against, but the sale and the sellers of liquor. The temperance people declaim against the use of liquor, but the net result of the conversion of their propaganda into a legislative enactment is simply to change the method of sale from a lawful to an unlawful vendor. We would point to the Maritime Provinces for proof of this statement. Liquor remains, it is sold, drunkenness and other abuses increase, all under the operation of this so-called reform legislation. Compare wet Saskatchewan with dry Nova Scotia. Taking the figures for drunkenness as given in the Criminal Statistics of Canada for the years 1908 to 1912, the following results are apparent:

Nova Scotia with only one licensed centre, namely, Halifax, had 50 per cent. more convictions for drunkenness than Saskatchewan in 1912. The convictions per head of population in that year were: Nova Scotia, 7.38; Saskatchewan, 4.56.

Two other comparisons from the same report are:

New Brunswick also has considerable illicit traffic in liquor, and the same thing is true of the unlicensed portions of Ontario.

The Premier of Nova Scotia refused to close the bars of Halifax, because he was of the opinion that harm instead of good would result.

REPORT OF THE LABOR COMMITTEE

The Labor Bureau, under the direction of the Labor Committee, during the twelve months elapsing since the Fifty-third Annual Convention, has assisted members and non-members in the following cities: Detroit, Mich.; Boston, Fall River, Pittsfield and Springfield, Mass.; Albany, Troy, Syracuse, Hudson and Middletown, N. Y.; Hartford, Conn.; Ogden, Utah; Kansas City, Mo.; Washington, D. C.; Alexandria, Va.; Portsmouth, N. H.; Springfield, Ill.; Davenport, Ia., and Memphis, Tenn. Assistance was also rendered to the members of the Lehigh Valley Brewers' Association, the Lackawanna and Luzerne County Brewers' Association, and the Rhode Island Brewers' Association.

The work has been of the usual routine-assisting in contract negotiations, and the adjustment of casual disputes.

Twenty-one strikes have occurred, involving a few more than two thousand employees (less than 5 per cent. of the total number employed) and a loss of 9,814 days; making the average time so lost less than five days for each striking employee. Nine of these

strikes were due to failure to reach an amicable settlement of questions of contract renewal; the others arose from minor disputes of one kind or another. All were of short duration. But one strike remains unsettled, namely, that at Harrisburg, Pa.

More than two hundred cities have entered into new contracts -which fact throws into bold relief the fewness of strikes in our industry. It is to be regretted, however, that of the strikes reported almost half of them are claimed by the Brewery Workmen to have been due to "contract violations." Without expressing an opinion on this charge against the employers, your committee is at a loss to understand why strikes should be resorted to for alleged violations when every contract—at least those entered into by our members contains within itself means whereby to adjust in a peaceful and rational manner not only questions of interpretation but also all disputes of an ordinary nature. If this be not the case, then the arbitration clause in the given contract is but a mere grouping of words without merit or substance. Under the arbitration clause all disputes lying within the purview of the contract, and not specifically exempted from such clause, should be amenable to the peaceful adjustment so provided. The Union, no less than the employer, which takes a different view not only rejects a self-evident proposition, but, what is of more importance, violates its contract in a most vital particular and strikes a blow at the good will and mutual confidence upon which the Labor Agreement as an instrument of industrial peace and progress is predicated.

Nor do we concede that when the Union claims that an employer refuses to arbitrate such disputes a strike should be resorted to. The controversy should be made the subject matter of an official report to the national executive officers, who should at once lay the matter before the Labor Committee of the United States Brewers' Association, which committee would not hesitate to urge upon the employer the necessity of his keeping inviolate his labor contract. This would be your committee's course, not with the purpose of saving him from the consequences of his own actions, but rather to preserve the industry's reputation as one singularly free from strife as between employer and employee, and always intent upon treating employees considerately and justly.

And that, we believe, should be the procedure and the consideration when arbitration is refused by the Union. The employer should feel confident that he may at all times be guarded against