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 Prohibition: 
 
 With the People 
 Q Behind It 
 
 By John G. Woolley 
 

 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 BY THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 LL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
Prohibition: 
 
 With the People 
 
 Behind It 
 
 By John G. Woolley 
 
 An address delivered at the National Convention of the American Anti- 
 Saloon League, December nth, 1911, in Washington, D. C. 
 
 At the time has come when a speech against 
 the liquor business can begin, and must 
 begin, with a strong, high note of cheer. 
 Not that the deep, dark pathos and 
 outrage of the thing havei greatly dimin- 
 ished ; they have not ; but because the 
 apathy, the ignorance, the subserviency of decent citizens, 
 in the matter, is disappearing like the valley mist at sun- 
 rise; and the sparse and sorrowful prohibition militia of 
 former clays has grown to an enthusiastic army of in- 
 vasion, keen and fit for war to the finish. 
 
 To those of us who bore the heat and burden of the 
 movement in the lean, gray years of preparation, this day 
 has seemed a long time on the way. 
 
 When Doctor Billy Clark promoted the first tem- 
 perance society of modern times, in Saratoga County, 
 New York, he did not dream of anything so extravagant 
 as a campaign to stop the trade, that lawfully, respect- 
 ably, and as a matter of course held out the cup that 
 curses while it cheers, to all ranks and conditions of 
 society. Even the expectation of a little human salvage 
 in his own neighborhood seemed fantastical. 
 That was in 1808. 
 
 It was a forlorn hope of all but ruined men that 
 formed the Washingtonian society, in the forties. And 
 in the fifties, when that movement burst into a flame 
 of righteously indignant legislation, that would have 
 
 i 
 
 272305 
 
swept the liquor business from the map of trade and 
 did in fact abolish it in fourteen or fifteen of the states, 
 the earthquake of civil war came and engulfed it in a 
 tidal wave of blood and beer and graft and bossism. 
 
 That was in the sixties. 
 
 How vividly we can still recall the sound of tears 
 in Frances Willard's voice when, like a glorified Peter 
 the Hermit, she went sweeping from state to state, half 
 angel, half nemesis, pleading, arraigning, inspiring. 
 
 That was in the seventies. 
 
 The Prohibition Party, with set, sad countenance, 
 did a great work greatly. It built a road for politic- 
 al liberty of conscience, from the bi-partisan quag- 
 mire that followed the Civil War, to the open sea of 
 actual, ethical, intellectual, effectual, Christian Democ- 
 racy. 
 
 If there is any human activity in civil or moral 
 engineering entitled to be called fundamental and eter- 
 nal, it is that of casting up highways for the people. 
 The Roman Empire has been dead for centuries ; but 
 Roman roads still stretch their brawny arms in full, 
 beneficient efficiency, untouched by age; for kings may 
 come and dynasties may go, but roads rule on forever. 
 
 A road is an atonement, laid in economics. The 
 spirit of God is the togetherness of men, in the name 
 of progress "two or three," or a billion. It was no 
 accident that Jesus never said, "I am the vehicle, or I 
 am the organization, or I am the man," but "I am the 
 way." 
 
 The Prohibition Party was the bridge builder of 
 the great reform ; a rough mechanic, but its work 
 abides and will abide. It fixed the hated word "prohibi- 
 tion" in our political language and put its sneering rival 
 "personal liberty" in deep and permanent contempt. It 
 drove the tough, straight-grained and seasoned tree 
 trunks of accomplished knowledge, conscience and con- 
 viction into the shifting sands of party politics, down to 
 the hardpan. Its persuasions fell like blows, vexing 
 and spattering the Christian voters encamped supinely 
 
 2 
 
by the party streams, until for very shame, they stood 
 erect, at attention, caught the key and rythm of the 
 pile-driver, enlisted not in the party but in the minute- 
 men regiments of the Anti-Saloon League, crossed the 
 rubicon of Christian-democrat belligerency, and threw 
 their party badges in the stream. So that tonight we 
 stand before the very gates of victory. 
 
 But that means only that we have got a chance 
 to fight. This is the net achievement of a hundred 
 years, that we have made the enemy come out from his 
 distilleries and breweries, his warehouses and saloons, 
 his clubs and speakeasies, his drug stores and canteens 
 his gambling houses and brothels, into the open and 
 into battle form. 
 
 And this is why we cheer as we go forward ; not 
 because the fight is finished, but because, after a baffl- 
 ing century of challenging and skirmishing, it has 
 begun. 
 
 But our present cheers must not shut out the 
 voices of the future. We shall have hot work, from 
 now on. Villainy takes naturally to strategy ; cruelty- 
 dies hard. This cowardly, low-browed, foul-breathed, 
 cold-blooded, false tongued degenerate of trades, driv- 
 en farther and farther into a corner, will fight like hell. 
 That is to say, will strangle with the brimstone fumes 
 of slander, will mine the thoroughfares with murder, 
 will trap and torture with the flying cavalry of lies. 
 
 Yet we do well to cheer, in celebration of the sim- 
 plified conditions of the conflict. After all the cark- 
 ing years of tricks and bribes and betrayals and com- 
 pounded political felonies, the liquor trade, hemmed in 
 by mountains of public sentiment and rivers of popular 
 knowledge, turns at bay, takes up our gage of battle 
 and with satanic, idiotic impudence, proposes a "cam- 
 paign of education." 
 
 This itself is victory, and the beginning of the end. 
 And if democracy is not a failure our complete tri- 
 umph is assured. 
 
 All the signs are auspicious. In the first place, 
 3 
 
a finer braver spirit runs through our own ranks. The 
 critical attitude among ourselves is dying out. It was 
 excusable and inevitable in the boom days of mere agi- 
 tation, and did little harm. 
 
 Looking back, we see abundant justification, and 
 even abundant credit, for us all. Every move, how- 
 ever roughly made, was well worth while. Every riv- 
 alry promoted zeal and sharpened the focus of the 
 public mind. But the period of mere agitation has 
 passed, and the methods and manners of the mere agi- 
 tator should pass with it. The accent has shifted 
 from salvage to conservation, from agitation to con- 
 struction, from zeal to efficiency, from benevolence 
 to business. And looking* forward, we see that divis- 
 ions would be illogical and hurtful. Cooperation is 
 the key-note for the future. The right hand of fellow- 
 ship among ourselves is the best formation we can use 
 against the enemy. A man that can't fight beside an- 
 other man who differs from him incidentally is not a 
 good soldier now. 
 
 Shaking-hands is good training for the grip and 
 heart muscles, and these are what we shall use mostly. 
 With hearts of oak, we must close our ballots, the 
 white fingers of our Christian citizenship, on the 
 throat of the liquor traffic and squeeze its accursed 
 gullet till it quits forever. 
 
 There must, of course, be a few cavilers where so 
 many are engaged. They are hard to understand. They 
 are impossible to reconcile. But we who compose the 
 great free, untrammeled working body of the move- 
 ment ought to adopt and are going to adopt as a great 
 working commandment, "Thou shalt not whine at the 
 success of a comrade." 
 
 In the second place, we have learned slowly and 
 reluctantly, but surely, that economics is the bones of 
 public morality : clothes, shelter, food, efficiency, di- 
 version, justice, man to man. Moral muscles and 
 religious nerves that do not articulate to these pro- 
 duce mere political hysteria. The present turn of the 
 
 4 
 
tide, in this long war, came when the Blucher of "busi- 
 ness" brought its burly reinforcements of argument 
 into action. And now at length, we are as willing as 
 \ve are able to meet the economic argument where it is, 
 without any show of condescension or affectation of 
 superior virtue. 
 
 The economic argument is on the ground, on the 
 counter, on the bench, on the desk, in public service, 
 not public services. The organized liquor trade is base 
 and crooked to the core; but many a citizen who 
 knows that, is yet dimly but honestly persuaded that 
 the license system, poor as it is, is all the prohibition 
 that is practicable at present. Such men are not now 
 to be belittled, or railed at. They must be met and 
 brought into our camp with facts. 
 
 In the third place, the height and the length of 
 our endeavor, no longer blind us to the breadth of it. 
 The variations of local sentiment and local symptoms 
 have come to be recognized as clearly, and taken as 
 seriously as the great central purpose. County-man- 
 ship is seen to be as worthy in its way, as statesman- 
 ship, and primarily more necessary in a democracy. 
 The doctrine of the parable looms large in reason and 
 experience, as well as authority, that the faithful over 
 a few things is in the true line of honorable service 
 and promotion. 
 
 It is a pity that the charge may yet be heard, 
 sometimes, that local option is immoral. For one 
 thing, the statement is rank nonsense unless democ- 
 racy is immoral ; and for another thing, some of the 
 best work in the world is of the masonry of honest mis- 
 takes corrected ; and the sure and inevitable correc- 
 tion of the weaknesses of local option is state and 
 national prohibition. The critics of local option as- 
 sume a false definition of the term. They take "local" 
 to mean "little." They have no warrant for that. Lo- 
 cal option means progressively town democracy, 
 county democracy, state democracy, and federal sov- 
 ereignty. The key-note is union, one and indivisible. 
 
 5 
 
There are no state, county or town lines dividing the pur- 
 pose of the people. But the John Brown days are past 
 and gone. This is the Lincoln period of our reform, 
 and the Lincoln breadth and charity should pervade it. 
 
 ,In the fourth place, the ugly old phrase "whisky 
 party," in its time accurate enough, has gone to the 
 scrap heap. There 'is a whisky party, but it has now 
 no relation to the political parties save that of a high- 
 wayman to the stage-coach to hold them up and rob 
 them. The political parties are very disappointing, 
 mixed and human, but they are fundamentally patriot- 
 ic. Human weakness and selfishness abound in them, 
 but strength and loyalty much more abound. I am no 
 good friend of either party. But I am ready to certify 
 to the general deep down honesty of both. And to call 
 either a "whisky party" in the light of Anti-Saloon 
 League history is baby talk. At any rate, party lines 
 are fading out, in the light of the new national moral- 
 ity, and we have outgrown the period for wounding 
 men to win them. 
 
 In the fifth place, the lampooning of Congress is 
 going out of fashion. It is high time. To keep it up 
 would be to advertise our ignorance, or malice, as well 
 as to obstruct our progress. Congressional action is 
 absolutely necessary in aid and recognition of the 
 police power of the states. The Internal Revenue law 
 and the interstate commerce law are in effect ac- 
 cessories of the organized treason to everything from 
 the cradle to the flag. To bring them to our side, or 
 shame them into standing up for fair play, is the most 
 important work we have on hand. 
 
 Meanwhile Congress has become friendly toward 
 our work. Any reasonable statute that is surely con- 
 stitutional, in aid of state prohibition will pass the sen- 
 ate and the house, by a broadly and splendidly non-par- 
 tisan majority, once it can be got on the floor for pass- 
 age. The bill noAv pending for prohibition in Hawaii, 
 and the bill amending the Interstate Commerce law so 
 as to honor the popular will and judgment in prohibi- 
 
 6 
 
tory states will pass congress and be signed by the 
 president. The peril to such bills is in committee, 
 where unfriendly minorities may be powerful for de- 
 lay. I speak from personal and recent knowledge 
 when I say that we can look to Washington with confi- 
 dence, if only we are sane enough and just enough to 
 be patient with the slow turning of the great federal 
 millstones that have to work on such enormous crops 
 of public sentiment and grind the grist so fine. 
 
 Finally, we realize better a fact selfcevident, but 
 often overlooked by reformers, that we scouts and cap- 
 tains of the movement can go no faster than the people. 
 They are interested in many things, and different 
 groups place the accent of precedence differently ; but 
 they have taken up the subject; and the prohibition 
 movement, now, has no warrant to demand the right 
 of way and a clear track. It must simply take its place 
 with the rest and put its trained and mighty shoulder 
 to the wheel of general progress. 
 
 One still hears, now and then, that we must have 
 "prohibition with a party behind it." That, I think, is 
 precisely what we must not have. Parties, while not 
 intrinsically unrighteous, are the weakest engines of 
 righteousness. They run by weathercock power. 
 Their cardinal doctrine is "Thou shalt follow the mul- 
 titude to do whatever will round it up in the party 
 corral." "Thou shalt first observe the wind and then, 
 sow." Their message to their young men is : "My son, 
 if enough sinners entice thee, consent and be quick 
 about it." 
 
 Minority parties are exceptions. But when they 
 begin to come to majority the Delilah of dalliance with 
 power crops their hair. So party government is always 
 weak government ; and no weak government will ever 
 stamp out the liquor banditti. 
 
 This, I think, is the rationale of the present situa- 
 tion. We have won our fight to get our question to the 
 people. The liquor trade has lost its fight to keep it 
 away from the people. The party boss, our enemy 
 
 7 
 
and the liquor dealers' friend, has been Jonahed over- 
 board by the insurgent crew of the ship of state, and no 
 political whale appears to have the stomach for a proph- 
 et of that flavor. The party constituencies are running- 
 together upon issues of vital morality. Government of 
 the people, by the people, and for the people, that is to 
 say, clean, strong government, has begun to arrive. 
 
 In the present forward movement we have every 
 advantage cf equipment. The breath of victory is in 
 our nostrils.' The truth of history is with us. The 
 voice of science is heard in our camp. The sanctions 
 of religion gird us for battle. The press corroborates 
 our message. The daily walk and conversation of the 
 business world slant to\vard us. And the license sys- 
 tem is itself a plea of "guilty," both on the part of the 
 trade and the people. 
 
 In the past, until the advent of the Anti-Saloon 
 League, we scorned the critical study of the construc- 
 tive value of methods. Our work was not education 
 but appeal. "Stand up and be counted for the good 
 you know and have published" was what we said and 
 all we said. Drunkards and drunkenness were the self- 
 evident proofs we offered, and our whole demand was 
 made upon the Christian voter, not to think, but to do. 
 
 We won that fight, and that brought us to the 
 present point of departure. 
 
 But let no man fool himself with the thought that 
 we have whipped the liquor traffic. I know the splen- 
 did gains that we have made, and to my own heart I 
 boast about them. But I know also, all too well, that 
 we have made little difference in the volume of the 
 liquor business. 
 
 We recall how General Braddock, able, brave, 
 proud of his country, loyal to his King, marched with 
 his little army into the Western wilderness against the 
 French and Indians at Fort Duquesne. The Indians 
 met him first. From every British point of view they 
 were contemptible. He could have wiped them out 
 before breakfast if he could have laid hands on them. 
 
 8 
 
They were there but he scarcely caught sight of them, 
 in one respect they were anything but contemptible 
 tenacity and singleness of purpose. They knew noth- 
 ing about honor. They knew nothing about military 
 form. But they knew the value of a lawless wilderness, 
 to savages, and they were there to defend, possess and 
 enjoy it. They were not too proud to crawl like snakes 
 in the grass. They dodged from tree to tree. They ran 
 like hares but they came back like flies. They shot 
 straight. They staid by the stuff. And the general 
 got into history as the author of "Braddock's defeat/' 
 
 Our enemy is like that. But we are not like that. 
 The advance guard of the liquor trade are moral, in- 
 dustrial and political savages. They are lawless and 
 pitiless. They get their pleasure out of the pain of 
 others. Their profits are the losses of others. They 
 crouch like cats upon the bosom of society and suck 
 the gasping lips of failure for their breath of life. 
 They are out for pelts and scalps and plunder. They 
 sneak; they crawl; they burrow; they murder while 
 they run ; they torture the captured, they rob the dead. 
 
 But ours if not better soldiers than our kinsmen 
 at Fort Duquesne knew their enemy better. Baffled 
 and checked by treachery, they kept right on. Shot in 
 the back they fell forward, and we stepped over them, 
 and sounded the advance ; until by sheer devotion we 
 have torn the blanket savages of the liquor trade from 
 their cover. And now, at last, they form in the open, 
 under the walls of their twin citadels, the brewery and 
 the distillery, where the sleek and epauletted field mar- 
 shals of the business are in council and command. And 
 now these heroes of hops, these moralists of malt, these 
 sour mash patriots with their feet in the fountain of the 
 public right, have set up a bureau of fake statistics and 
 ordered "a campaign of education." It is a dirty battle, 
 for clean-fighting men, but we have no choice but to 
 accept it. 
 
 So then, at last and finally, after all the chasing- 
 and cross-firing, after all the camp-fever and discontent, 
 
 9 
 
we face the issue and the enemy, and the ancient, eter- 
 nal general orders for righteousness run along the line, 
 "Say unto the children of progress that they go for- 
 ward." 
 
 Prohibitionists in Bands of Hope and Loyal Le- 
 gions, with gentle -insistence getting little boys and 
 girls to sign the pledge of total abstinence. Go for- 
 ward ! 
 
 Prohibtionists in Rescue Missions, throwing the 
 life-line to half-dead derelicts of the saloon, Go for- 
 ward ! 
 
 Prohibitionists in the Woman's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union "doing everything" to save and build up 
 womanhood, Go forward ! 
 
 Prohibitionists in leagues and federations, mar- 
 shaling the troops of trade and health and order against 
 exposed positions of the enemy, Go forward ! 
 
 Prohibitionists in bureaus at Washington carrying 
 ammunition for the heavy ordinance on Capitol Hill, 
 Go forward ! 
 
 Prohibitionists in press and pulpit keeping watch 
 over the springs of civic righteousness and justice, Go 
 forward ! 
 
 Prohibitionists at large, enlisted but voteless home- 
 makers, bearing the ark of the covenant of liberty and 
 democracy, Go forward ! 
 
 Is that all? Yes that is all. Heaven is only a di- 
 rection forward. Hell is an adverb "back." For- 
 ward ! Everybody ! That is good politics. That is the 
 law and the gospel. That is knowing God. That is 
 immortality. 
 
 Now, what are the branches taught in the liquor 
 dealers' campaign of education? I shall take that up 
 presently. What is not taught is most instructive. 
 
 Who teaches that a saloon, a brewery, a distillery, 
 a liquor store, is a good thing for any community? 
 
 Who teaches that the liquor seller grades up to 
 the level .of the baker or the carpenter, in the scheme 
 of business life? 
 
 IO 
 
Who teaches that it is a hardship that the saloon 
 must pay a thousand dollars a year for the mere priv- 
 ilege of showing its painted harlot face among the 
 decent stores? 
 
 Who teaches that it is a short-sighted social policy 
 to forbid the sale of liquor to men below the age of 
 twenty-one ? 
 
 . Who teaches that the best patron of the saloon 
 acquires the best judgment for such buying? 
 
 Who teaches that in advertising the attractions 
 of a community saloons should be set down with 
 churches, schools and factories? 
 
 Not a man, drunk or sober, in all the motley mul- 
 titude of teachers and pupils in the "campaign of edu- 
 cation" was ever heard to claim one atom of virtue or 
 patriotism or righteousness for the business. 
 
 Call up the grocery and challenge it, "What right 
 have you to live?" "The right of being honest and 
 useful and helpful. By so much as my merchandise 
 goes out into the homes of the community, it is made 
 a better place to live in."' 
 
 Call up the saloon : "Why should we not tar and 
 feather you and ride you out of town upon a rail? 
 Why should we not hang you by the neck at the edge 
 of the city as a warning to others of your kind?" And 
 it answers solely and finally : "My license." Year after 
 year it shuffles to the city hall and buys a permit to live, 
 like a dog, by virtue of the tag of bloody gold upon its 
 neck. 
 
 Affirmatively, the liquor "campaign of education" 
 includes about a dozen propositions. They are mere 
 effigy epigrams set up to look like arguments ; and 
 every one a lie. 
 
 "Prohibition is sumptuary legislation ; it violates 
 personal liberty ; it hurts business ; it increases taxes ; 
 it attacks vested rights ; it causes "blind pigs ;" it makes 
 men sneaks ; it discriminates against the poor; it creates 
 a demand for drugs ; it is unscriptural ; it does not pro- 
 hibit ; yon cannot make men sober by law." 
 
 II 
 
Where is the proof in support of these proposi- 
 tions? There is none. They are not set up to be 
 proved. They are not meant to be studied, but to be 
 swallowed holus bolus. They are not meant to instruct 
 but to stultify. They are mere iteration directed at 
 weakness, prejudice and ignorance. Who are the iter- 
 ators? Simply the advertising agents of the trade, 
 garnished with a handful of unfortunate preachers who 
 have lost their bearings. 
 
 The liquor trade's own classification of itself is 
 with the brothel, the rat-pit, the faro bank, the prize 
 ring and the race course, as a necessary evil a safety 
 valve for native, and incorrigible brutism. 
 
 But let us surprise these new educators by taking 
 them seriously as seriously as possible. 
 
 And first: What is a sumptuary law? It is, or 
 was, a law directed at the buyer, attempting to regulate 
 his conduct, in matters of mere indifference, without 
 any good end in view. For instance, in the reign of 
 Edward IV a statute was enacted prohibiting anybody 
 "under the degree of a lord," from buying shoes having 
 points over two inches long at the toes. The idea was 
 to discourage habits of luxury among the common 
 people, but it was manifestly unjust and foolish. 
 
 A prohibitory liquor law is directed at the business 
 of selling poison as a beverage and of maintaining a 
 rendezvous for temptation, dissipation and disorder. 
 It says to no man : "Thou shalt not buy nor drink"- 
 though it may, and may well, come to that. It is in 
 the nature of a quarantine regulation, which never 
 says : "Thou shalt not catch yellow fever," but : "Thou 
 shalt not spread yellow fever." Incidentally a law that 
 restrains a man from selling liquor to his neighbor di- 
 minishes the neighbor's liberty to spend his own mon- 
 ey and experiment with his own body, but that does 
 not make it a sumptuary law. 
 
 Prohibition rebukes personal selfishness. But how 
 does it violate personal liberty? Personal liberty, ac- 
 cording to Judge Cooley, our greatest writer on con- 
 
 12 
 
stitutional questions, is simply that condition in which 
 rights are established and protected by means of such 
 limitations and restraints upon the action of individual 
 members of the political society as are needed to pre- 
 vent what would be injurious to other individuals, or 
 prejudicial to the general welfare. That is to say: 
 "Obedience to law is liberty," and the liquor dealer is 
 incorrigibly a traitor in the camp of law. 
 
 Absolute liberty exists only where the person pos- 
 sessing it is powerless to injure others. A shipwrecked 
 man, alone on a raft in mid-ocean, has it, but would 
 give the whole world to swap it for the limitations, 
 that is to say, the enlargements of civil liberty the 
 only kind of liberty that anybody but a fool or a villain 
 counts worth having. In short, absolute liberty is only 
 the obverse side of vital bankruptcy. 
 
 The liquor business is injurious to everybody, in- 
 cluding the owner, and prejudicial to every public in- 
 terest. Nobody denies that. Prohibition is not tyr- 
 anny, but protection for all men, women, children and 
 domestic animals. 
 
 Does prohibition hurt business? Yes, all the busi- 
 ness that tends to ruin brothels, gambling dens, the 
 white slave trade, vagrancy, begging, pawning, divorc- 
 ing. But it helps every business that makes for "more 
 abundant life." 
 
 There is plenty of answers to the complaint that 
 prohibition increases taxes. In the first place, there is 
 no limit to the right of the people to increase taxes for 
 the general welfare. In the second place, the people 
 never object to increased taxes, if the money be honest- 
 ly spent for the public betterment. If prohibition 
 sometimes increases taxation, the people's ability to 
 pay is much more increased. The tax rate does some- 
 times rise, when prohibition is adopted, but the rise 
 is only temporary. The assessed valuation of property 
 increases, industry revives, earning power improves ; 
 court, police, poor-house expenses decrease, and, after 
 a year or tw r o, the rate swings back to normal or 
 
 13 
 
below. If not, it is because increased school attend- 
 ance compels new schoolhouses and teachers, or the 
 higher plane of living, or the quickening of civic pride 
 demands better roads and public buildings, or new pub- 
 lic works for light, water, transportation, sewers and 
 the like, or because the public business is poorly or dis- 
 honestly conducted. 
 
 As to the destruction of property. A liquor license 
 is not property. It is a badge of beggary and infamy, 
 and a disgraceful but temporary waiver of the in- 
 alienable duty of the state to protect life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness. Even if it were property, prohibi- 
 tion does not destroy it, but only declines to resuscitate 
 it when it dies; or if prohibition does destroy it, it is 
 only the tearing down of an infected shack to save a city. 
 
 Does prohibition discriminate against the poor? 
 Never. It knows no rich or poor or good or bad. If 
 the liquor business is good for the poor, a poor man 
 ought to be able to engage in it. But it is the license 
 system that squeezes out the poor. The chief charac- 
 teristic of high license is that it favors the applicants 
 that have the most money. 
 
 Does prohibition make men sneaks ? It simply forces 
 a moment of decision to be a man, or a sneak. It segre- 
 gates the sneak into his own class, apart from men who 
 will not sneak. It did not put the sneak sheriff and the 
 sneak mayor in office at Newark, Ohio. It only coagu- 
 lated the bad blood in the body politic so that the surgeon- 
 governor could cut out the embolism and save the city's 
 life. 
 
 Does prohibition cause the use of other drugs? The 
 disease and depravity induced by alcohol doubtless seek 
 solace and excitement in other equivalents of poison ; but 
 that argument proves too much. It would cut out pro- 
 hibition of opium and cocaine, which are indeed less 
 dangerous on the whole than alcohol. 
 
 Does prohibition breed "blind pigs?" High license 
 is the cut-snouted, swill fed mother of that breed of 
 
swine. Prohibition puts out of business the argus-eyed old 
 razor-backs that can see through anything from a police- 
 man to a president, from a candidate to a church, from a 
 bunghole to a bishop, and makes them and their litters 
 game for the sheriff. "Blind pigs" are hard to catch. 
 But they do little harm as compared to their open-eyed 
 dams. The blind pig suckles its own scrub sort, but 
 makes no strong bid for the better born. Its dirty dugs 
 are uninviting to the more cleanly animalism. Prohibi- 
 tion kills the open saloons and chases the blind pigs. 
 License protects the open saloons and carries legal gar- 
 bage to its blind relatives. 
 
 But we shall still have the blind pigs, under prohi- 
 bition! Yes, any good housekeeper may have a few 
 cockroaches in the kitchen. But no good housekeeper 
 would agree to keep a few extra large and capable cock- 
 roaches in her kitchen. 
 
 Is prohibition unscriptural? Who says it is? The 
 brewery. Who says it is not? The church. Which 
 should know best? Which has the best character as a 
 witness? The whole area of scriptural endeavor, from 
 Sinai to Salvation Army, stands for prohibition. Paul's 
 advice to Timothy, to use a little wine as a medicine, is 
 irrelevant. That Jesus made wine if he did at Cana, 
 for guests who after hours of festivity, and having "well 
 drunk," were still so clear-headed and clean-mouthed 
 that they detected and enjoyed the new, fine flavor of 
 a better article, does not bear. We are not dealing with 
 medical prescriptions or ancient oriental hospitality, or 
 wine miraculously made, but with twentieth century 
 breweries and distilleries that organize dissipation into 
 trusts to exploit the weak and ignorant and vicious, to 
 the tune of billions annually. The scripture that, is in 
 point is "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink." 
 
 When a man tells you that "you can't make men 
 moral by law," you may know that you are being in- 
 structed by a parrot, a fakir or a fool. He might as well 
 say you can't produce a bent tree by inclining the twig. 
 
 15 
 
He might as well tell you that you can't deepen a stream 
 by building a j etty. He might as well say you can't improve 
 poor soil by sowing clover. That is about all you can 
 do by law. Laws are almost never enforced literally. 
 Comparatively few receive punishment for broken law. 
 Not many give obedience to law through fear. A 
 remedial statute cuts comparatively little figure in the 
 first fifty years of its existence. It is the silent, unfelt 
 pressure of it on incoming generations that makes the 
 people moral by so much as it is moral. It is not the 
 sheriffs but the teachers that bring on the reign of obedi- 
 ence and order. And the law is the great schoolmaster 
 to bring us to itself that is to liberty. 
 
 The assertion that " "prohibition does not prohibit" 
 is a curiosity. It might, if one were not afraid of being 
 inelegant, be called a luminiferous lie. It analyzes a 
 well-hole of darkness, as accurately as the prism dissolves 
 a ray of light into the solar spectrum. 
 
 Who says: "Prohibition does not prohibit?" The 
 liquor dealer. Who profits when it fails? The liquor 
 dealer. Who makes it fail? The liquor dealer. Why 
 does it fail? Because the average liquor dealer is con- 
 fessedly and incorrigibly a criminal, a combination of 
 Pagan and Bill Sikes, in contempt of the popular will and 
 the popular right. 
 
 Does somebody resent that generalization on the 
 ground that many liquor dealers are men of good repute ? 
 I am not speaking of repute. I am speaking broadly of 
 character, and I weigh my words. Tell me wherein is a 
 fence for stolen goods worse than an office of big busi- 
 ness that knowingly and wilfully supplies liquor to 
 brothels and speakeasies, to the contempt and confusion 
 of law. Tell me by how much is the sender of obscene 
 literature, or lottery tickets, through the mails a meaner 
 degenerate than the merchant prince that establishes his 
 igents on the border and ships alcoholic liquor to illicit 
 dealers in prohibition areas ? Tell me what kind of traitor 
 is more dangerous to liberty than the liquor dealer who 
 
 16 
 
denies and prevents the right of the people even to vote 
 on the question of prohibition? For sheer damnable in- 
 solence if for no other reason the liquor traffic ought to 
 he killed. 
 
 These are the ugly high lights brought out in this 
 rough, brief analysis of the failures of prohibition. We 
 have in tlr's country an organized band of business out- 
 laws, the most compact, determined and efficient body in 
 American politics, business and crime, the crudest master 
 and the most generous rewarder of weaklings and crim- 
 inals in office. It is undeniably difficult to control them. 
 lUit unless this' is to be a government of liquor dealers, 
 by liquor dealers and for liquor dealers, this masterful 
 cabal of traitors, now seen so clearly and so unanimously 
 despised, is due for destruction. 
 
 And that is not prophecy, but living, growing fact. 
 The law abiding are already coming to their own. De- 
 cency and sobriety under law are gaining ground, and the 
 full-pocketed, red-handed, black-hearted conspiracy is 
 giving back, with snarlings and curses, to its fall. 
 
 Prohibition already works well in country places, 
 next best in villages and little towns, worst in cities, but 
 better and better everywhere. 
 
 In Maine notwithstanding its millions of summer 
 visitors from the cities, and the swarm of unruly men in- 
 cident to the present era of internal development, the 
 law makes headway. The people, the hardest-headed in 
 the union, loyally maintain the law ; the Congressional 
 delegation, the ablest in Congress, affirm the value of the 
 policy, and the governors certify to its increasing success 
 in practice. The shrinkage in the prohibitory major- 
 ity, shown by the recent election represents simply the 
 discouragement of cities, by the interference of the 
 interstate commerce law, which can and will be re- 
 lieved by a brief act of Congress classifying alcoholic 
 liquors with cow-ticks and renderpest and small-pox. 
 
 In Kansas, the plague spots of nullification are clear- 
 ing up. Kansas City, Topeka, Wichita and Leavenworth 
 
 17 
 
obey the law; the jails are nearly empty; and the poor 
 farms are rechristened "prosperity stations", and devoted 
 to agricultural instruction and experiment. 
 
 North Dakota shows a similar record. In every 
 prohibition state conditions of enforcement go visibly 
 from good to better. Still better conditions are near at 
 hand in Congressional relief, against the defeat of the 
 "dry" states by bad neighbors on their borders under 
 the unfair provisions of the inter-state commerce law. 
 
 Meanwhile the moral level rises and the civic fiber 
 toughens, in town, city, county, state and nation. The 
 day of the "good man" in office has arrived. The sun of 
 partyism is going down. And prohibition of the liquor 
 traffic after fifty years prohibits better than the decalogue 
 after five thousand. 
 
 This, briefly, but fully enough, is a study of the 
 liquor campaign of obscuration. It seems necessary to 
 treat it thus respectfully for the benefit of the great 
 number of vaguely favorable voters, for whom the old- 
 fashioned strong, bulk, arguments assume too much of 
 knowledge and of interest. It remains to present our 
 own case, briefly and summarily, in rebuttal. 
 
 It has been shown conclusively that the use of alco- 
 holic liquor tends to excess ; and on that word "excess" 
 the whole stress of former argument has been laid until 
 now. The strong, well-disposed, well-to-do, untempted 
 and unemotional man of affairs has confessed and avoided 
 the issue by answering: "But alcohol is a food, a medi- 
 cine, and a legitimate article of trade, to be sold under 
 careful regulations and used in reason. Nursing mothers 
 require it, the anaemic, the dyspeptic, the tuberculous, the 
 over-worked. We must forbid sales to minors and 
 drunkards. We must prescribe hours for the business. 
 We must police it rigidly. We must provide, at public 
 expense, for treatment or imprisonment for inebriates. 
 We must encourage the Salvation Army and private 
 benevolences in the interest of the weak and the de- 
 praved." 
 
 18 
 
This answer, if it were sound, was so narrow and 
 so shallow that it seems both heartless and stupid. It 
 made no account of the parents, wives and children of 
 the patrons and victims of the trade, nor of the economic 
 losses and injustices entailed upon the citizens who serve 
 the people in the useful trades and professions. But it 
 was not sound. Alcohol has practically no food value. 
 It is a dangerous medicine and a more demoralizing 
 article of trade than opium, cocaine and lottery tickets 
 all combined. 
 
 The old argument that centered on "excess" holds 
 good today of course, and strengthens with the years. But 
 the new century brings forth new challenges and broader 
 reasoning. And now the accent of the argument moves 
 up from "excess" to moderation, from weak men to 
 strong men, from pious men to business men, from 
 minors and drunkards to the mature and the sober. 
 
 This is part of the same. change that has taken place 
 in all the lines of moral and intellectual progress. The 
 histories that we older people studied were the geneal- 
 ogies of kings and the tragedies of martyrs and soldiers. 
 Those that children study now are plain stories of the 
 customs of the common people. 
 
 Almost the youngest of us can remember how the 
 patriotic speeches used to ring the changes on the evils 
 of monarchy ; the insolence of kings ; our escape from 
 old-world oppression ; liberty of conscience and the great, 
 raw rights of man. 
 
 But today we laugh at that kind of oratory. Popular 
 statesmanship consists no longer in twisting the British 
 lion's tail, but the American elephant and donkey have 
 fallen upon evil times for tail culture. Normal, present, 
 detailed matters of internal right and duty and prosperity 
 are at the bar of public opinion. The moral and mental 
 revolution that came in with the new century has for its 
 nucleus the new, great word "conservation." It concerns 
 not only the care of forests, mines and water power, but 
 also, and more, the preservation of health, opportunity, 
 
 19 
 
efficiency and man-power. Or, put negatively, for the 
 sake of greater clearness, since a great part of the busi- 
 ness of democracy today consists in throwing up de- 
 fenses against domestic pests and raiders and robbers, 
 the public mind is focussed now on problems of prevent- 
 ing waste, privilege, poverty, sickness and preventible 
 suffering. 
 
 Religion that used to thunder about heaven and hell 
 and damnation, today speaks quietly of a new earth here 
 and now, with salvation running in the streets in pipes, 
 on wires, in housing, sanitation and recreation. 
 
 Medicine that used to be anchored at the bedside of 
 disease is now the minister of health, and works in the 
 open, treating the streams and marshes where the pur- 
 veyors of sickness make their home. Law that used to 
 revel in breaches of contract, damages for torts, and 
 punishments for crimes, concerns itself today with coun- 
 sel for the avoidance of actions and trespasses, and the 
 devising of wholesale measures of reform. The great 
 charities that used to lay their emphasis on misery, now 
 put their millions into playgrounds, parks, schools of re- 
 search, with a keynote of happiness. Rescue work that 
 used to sit and scan the sea of life for wrecks, now 
 carries cheer and instruction to the homes where the 
 small craft of citizenship are outfitting for the deep. 
 
 Prohibition is simply a part of this revolution. And 
 it is only fair to say, the other way around, that this 
 revolution is in part the work of the prohibition move- 
 ment. 
 
 Many a strong, good man indulges a temperate drink 
 habit without fear and possibly without danger of be- 
 coming debauched. To him the horrors of the old- 
 fashioned argument are not impressive. But when we 
 know and prove by irrefragable authority, as we do now, 
 that no man can use alcohol as a beverage without suffer- 
 ing- an actual and measurable slowing of his reaction 
 time, reduction of his highest efficiency, and lowering of 
 his power of resistance to disease, we can command his 
 
 2O 
 
attention and his aid. This man, pent up in the midst of 
 terrific competition, demanding the hest, and keen to give 
 the best, is sure and ready to listen when we tell him that 
 alcohol is not only a habit-forming beverage, but also and 
 more certainly, a disease-breeding drug, the prolific 
 cause of Bright's disease, tuberculosis, insanity and 
 paresis ; that the whole liquor business stands for waste, 
 inefficiency, failure, sickness ; that it stands for race 
 suicide, milkless breasts in motherhood, and rickets and 
 epilepsy in children, even from the womb. 
 
 We claim this man for prohibition because we can 
 I > rove that the liquor business is the public school of the 
 drink habit, and the town pump of disease. 
 
 We claim this man for prohibition because we can 
 pnve that the menace of the liquor business is like an 
 iceberg, showing above the surface only a tithe of its 
 whole bad bulk. 
 
 We demand that this man read into the license 
 opium, or cocaine, instead of liquor, and then take the 
 bearings of his civic obligations. 
 
 We claim this man for prohibition precisely for the 
 reason that the Board of Health conscripts him into the 
 extermination of rats that carry bubonic plague. We 
 claim this man for prohibition on the same ground that 
 the state slaughters tuberculous cows, and .the munici- 
 pality taxes him to drain the marshes where the mosqui- 
 toes breed, in malaria and yellow fever. We claim this 
 man for prohibition for the same reason that we compel 
 him to clean up his stable, and cart away the dung hill, 
 where the housefly larva takes on typhoid fever for dis- 
 tribution when its wings have grown. 
 
 This average man, dispassionate, calculating, hard- 
 headed, is our objective. He carries the keys of political 
 power, to legislate and to enforce the law. Every plan of 
 campaign must stand or fall, by its final effect gn him. 
 So tested out, through forty years of strenuous and mag- 
 nificent devotion, the Prohibition Party fails in these 
 constructive days. Tt was first to get a sure grip on the 
 
 21 
 
keynote of the movement, academically sounded by the 
 Good Templars, that the liquor trade must go, by the 
 votes of the people. It was pious, passionate, intelligent, 
 altruistic. As an agitator it stood head and shoulders 
 above us all. But like many another agitator, discoverer, 
 inventor, it broke down at its strong point. A Hercules 
 in the war for independent voting, it became blindly and 
 savagely partizan. Charity, the greatest grace and wis- 
 dom of democracy atrophied in its bosom. Its touch 
 became too heavy for constructive politics. It fixed its 
 clear, far sighted eyes on the delectable mountain tops of 
 national courage, truth, justice, righteousness, and scorn- 
 ed the lowly but necessary notches and circuits and zig- 
 zags of the upward trail. It won promptly and splendidly 
 a noble following of pastors, prophets, apostles, and 
 others who had felt the adder tooth of drink and got 
 away. But it never touched the mixed, refractory multi- 
 tude. It arrested the thought and compelled the attention 
 of practically the whole decent electorate to the folly and 
 infamy of the liquor situation, and the perfidy of party- 
 ism to official oaths. 
 
 It had the principle, the passion, the courage, the 
 endurance. But it could not get the voters. It stood 
 out, a heroic, lonely figure, on the plains, and pointed 
 all men to the heights of power. But it refused to walk, 
 heel and toe, with the common people up the seamed and 
 slippery sides. It was Moses without Aaron and without 
 Israel. 
 
 At its front, between its great ideal and its little 
 ability to lead, the Anti-Saloon League gathered, with no 
 bond but a common, patriotic impulse, and no pretension 
 but a desire to serve, and sounded its militant bugle for 
 the long, slow climb. It asked no man to belong to it. It 
 swore no man to persist to the summit. It proclaimed 
 the liberty of every man to work out his own definition^ 
 of loyalty. It simply pulled its belt tight, set its jaw hard 
 and started up, crying: Keep your head; keep clean; 
 keep sweet ; keep together ; keep on. God for us all ! 
 
 22 
 
The average citizen, who shrunk, as yet, from signing 
 the bulk program of national virtue, believed in it in- 
 creasingly. His purse strings, tied tight against the Party, 
 opened to the League. Communities that owned, as yet, 
 no responsibility for their neighbor corporations, follow- 
 ed its lead. Economists, and politicians of the better sort 
 who have an eye to balances and symmetry of progress, 
 gave their approval. Conservative churches, closed 
 against the Party, opened hospitably to the League. The 
 press that looked coldly on Party news opened its col- 
 umns to the League reports. Congress, deaf to the voice 
 of the Party, gave solicitous attention to the League. The 
 White House, closed, or scantily courteous, to the Party 
 leaders, welcomed the superintendent of the League. 
 Party lines, held taut against the Party, fell apart like 
 ropes of sand before the League. The liquor traffic 
 turned from sneering at the Party, gnashed its teeth and 
 howled, put up distress signals and organized against the 
 League, the only thing on earth it fears today. 
 
 The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the 
 National Reform Bureau and the Catholic Total Absti- 
 nence Society, are in full, efficient co-operation with the 
 League, and it with them. 
 
 The Federation of Churches is now organizing for 
 leadership. It is no disloyalty to the League for me to 
 wish it well. I pay no vows to an instrument. My oath 
 of allegiance is to God alone and my hand is for the 
 people and the cause. If the Federation of Churches 
 wins the decision of the country, confirming its opinion 
 of itself, I shall join it, without saying, "by your leave" 
 to anybody. I am for the best thing in the field to kill 
 the liquor traffic, and always ready for something better 
 when it comes. 
 
 But I am not hopeful for the new organization. 
 There is a strain of hatred in it for the League and the 
 League leaders, that will dwarf its growth. It challenges 
 the title of the League to serve the Church, on the 
 technicality that it has no ecclesiastical credentials. This 
 
 23 
 
is trivial, the League is not a missionary, but a righting 
 machine ; and its victories are its credentials. The Fed- . 
 eration bases its claims to lead the masses, on ecclesiasti- 
 cal regularity. The masses will never stand for a re- 
 ligious "union label," and the church voters themselves 
 will turn it down. Iri the terminology of the League, the 
 Church of Christ is far greater than the sum of all its 
 sects and creeds and committees, and the greater Church 
 is for service and not millinery. 
 
 I may, of course, be mistaken. If it turns out so, 
 I'll confess it and enlist. But today I think this is the 
 lay of the land: The Woman's Christian Temperance' 
 Union is Prohibition with 300,000 noble women behind 
 it. The National Reform Bureau is Prohibition with a 
 great scholar, statistician and gatherer of world news, 
 and 25,000 helpers behind it. The Catholic Total Absti- 
 nence Society is Prohibition with half a million Catholics 
 behind it. The Prohibition Party is Prohibition with 200,- 
 ooo uncompromising, all or nothing, agitators behind it. 
 The American Anti-Saloon League is Prohibition with 
 the people behind it, and in this land of democracy and 
 liberty the people can rule, ought to rule and are going 
 to rule. 
 
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