was made that the majority rule. Yet everybody knows the rabble rule is no more reliable today than in the days of Pontius Pilate. It may be just as true to say the majority is always wrong, as to say the majority is always right. Throughout the country, the reports of Juvenile Courts, of Welfare Societies, the Parole System, and the Reformatory Records go far to show that prohibition is a joke, if not a tragedy. Newspapers, cartoons, vaudeville and moving pictures find nothing more laughable than to illustrate Uncle Sam rolling off the water wagon. European wiseacres relegate us to the company of total abstainers in Turkey and Russia, surely not much for proud Americans to boast of. They are following in the wake the Mohammedans. Statistics like comparisons are odious. They prove nothing, but are conveniently quoted because they give people a chance of getting at each other. The New York Herald and the Philadelphia Ledger, two of the most reliable newspapers in the United States, lately conducted a nation-wide survey into the workings of the prohibition law. Their conclusion was:-There is not a scrap of trustworthy evidence to prove that crime has decreased within the last two years. In fact new crimes and new criminals, especially in banditry and prohibition violation have developed which far outnumber any old ones eradicated. The fact is, prohibition puts a premium on law violation, whereas common sense demands a premium on law observance. Absolutely there is nothing in human experience to justify the faith that prohibition will, if given time, prove itself and be accepted by the world at large. It inculcates a contempt for law; it teaches men and women, young and old, to cheat the law and to be rather proud of what they regard as a silly attempt of government to regulate the social lives of the people. This resentment too is often as strong among those who do not drink as among those who do drink in moderation. Along the Atlantic and Pacific seaboard, along the Canadian and Mexican borders, up and down through the country, what with smugglers moonshiners, home-brewers, bootleggers, whilst there may be a local or temporary enforcement of the law, the reaction makes the abolition of intemperance look no better than robbing the ocean of a bucket of water. The official report shows that nearly a million gallons of alcoholic spirits are withdrawn every month from bond. In Maine, as in other states, every county is only as dry as its sheriff. The Boston Herald calls it compounding a crime. In truth, Maine has been so long under the rule of so-called prohibition that it has been called the state of hypocrites,-where men with flasks on their hips and casks in their cellars talk loudly about prohibition. The whole country is getting perilously near to national hypocrisy. Travelers from Montreal say it is common to see as many as one hundred and ten thousand cases of real Scotch whiskey all in one pile, on a steamship pier, with armed men marchgni around it, as if they were sentinels picketing a fort. The district between Port Huron and the mouth of the Detroit River is especially notorious. On a strip of eighty miles a thousand cases of liquor, pass over the line every day. Not long since a posse was formed to hunt up a criminal of some sort in the woods of Virginia; and it is said that in sixteen miles they uncovered seventy-seven illicit stills, not to mention homebrews. Again, not only in these remote regions but in the great city of Chicago, liquor is so easily and so abundantly made in the homes of working men that the ability of government to suppress it, even with search and seizure provisions, is yet in question. In our own state of Iowa the prohibition director (Brunson) lodged a complaint with the Federal Prohibition Commissioner at Washington (Haynes) that he needed to double the number of assistants if the law was to be more than a dead letter. The law-makers say, what's the matter with the people? The people say, what's the matter with the legislators? One of the peculiar findings of the investigators is that out of fortyeight states in the Union, eight were dry before the prohibitory amendment; some of these dry states now contain admittedly the wettest spots in the whole country. Kansas was the dryest state of all; it is not so dry now. Iowa ranks about as a medium state; neither very wet nor very dry. The following is taken from a Cedar Rapids paper of recent date; "Last September the parents of Leopold Garcia, an Englishman, sent him to Kansas, in the United States to get him away from liquor. Now Garcia is asking United States government officials to deport him in order that he may get away from the bad booze that flows in Kansas."' The spectacle of an Englishman coming to Kansas to cure himself of the liquor habit, and then going to jail to rid himself of the hootch habit is one to which only Charles Dickens might do justice. Within the last month in the little town of Marion, Linn County, the County grand jury in regular session sworn under their following oath, brought in a charge and placed it on file that the city police, the state officers, and even the federal officers were making wilful discrimination in regard to liquor violators. They shut their eyes to open guilt, and positively avoided the beats where "royal highballs flourish." Opinions are divided as to whether prosperity or poverty is the mother of crime. The real truth is that economic conditions have nothing whatever to do with it. Any man rich or poor, can lead a moral or an immoral life just as he wills. Will power and religious training pave the pathway to right and righteousness, as well as to wrong and ruin. The Lord knows there is evil enough and more than enough in the world.-Many men of good intentions stumble from the steep and narrow path, prisons are overflowing, but prohibition has little to do with it, either pro or con. The crime is bred by neglect of the teaching at the mother's knee.-Train up a child in the way in which he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." A questionnaire was recently sent out to the medical doctors in thirtythree states, inquiring,—"Is, or is not, whiskey a necessary therapeutic agent in the practice of medicine?" A majority of the physicians answered, "yes,'as necessary as quinine or belladonna or digitalis or any other medicine. New York physicians were two to one in favor of whiskey. And two thousand reputable physicians declared that they can cite cases within their professional experience during the past two years where death and suffering have resulted as an effect of the enforcement of prohibition. In the face of all this prohibition costs the goverment a loss of three hundred and fifty million a year in taxes alone. Enforcement last year totalled over six and a quarter millions of money, and the commissioner this year makes a demand of eight millions four hundred thousand dollars, not to speak of additional expenses of court. "Prohibition" says the Literary Digest, is one of the causes of crime,'-"men otherwise law abiding," says the same Digest, "Commit crime to get liqour." (August 21st, 1921.) Meanwhile bootleggers are accumulating wealth, peddling so-called "hootch," or "white mule," distilled whilst the owner sleeps, out of a common wash boiler, and sold at the enormous rate of $16.00 a pint. In the face of this, not a citizen will raise his hand in favor of the law. A few weeks ago, a man was found dead, by this rankest alcoholic poison, in a subway at the Monticello railroad depot. The man had been blind-actually blind. Manifestly, somebody furnished him the means of killing himself. The County Attorney went up to investigate. He walked down one side of main street, and up the other. Could he find a single man to give him a word of information? His inquiry brought one and the same answer from everyone,-"It's none of my business; let George do it." At the same time these were bound, as citizens, to obey and to help enforce the laws. A few words more; To borrow a phrase from Ex-President Wilson, "may I not" be a little bit personal? I am the oldest officer in our institution. All the officers and all the prisoners whom I met there in the early 80's of the last century, are passed and gone. Some of them passed over the river and are gone to the "shores where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." They are no longer prisoners of hope. Hope is changed into fruition. "A few more days to tote the weary load. A few more days to totter on the road.'' It cannot be long until I join the great silent majority. Past the scriptural period, I am waiting on borrowed time for the sound of Gabriel's horn. For the many years, and the scenes, and changes, I have witnessed I hope I am not unthankful. Often as I pass about the solemn gray walls I am reminded of the word of one of my countrymen:-Tom Moore. "When I remember all The friends so linked together I have seen around me fall Whose lights are fled Whose garlands dead, "What brought you, my lad, around here?” I once asked a newcomer whom I noticed with fresh clothes and a bright face. "Well, sir," he replied, "I am here for having exercised the rights and privileges of a free born American citizen that I am." "Your answer," I said, "will bear a little explanation. ""Here it is. I was taught from my earliest infancy,and long before it, as Oliver Wendell Holmes advises that my education began 200 years before I was born, that I was endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I enjoyed life, I enjoyed liberty and I tried to exercise the pursuit of happiness. '' "Did you keep your quest within the limits of law?'' "My dear sir, I never forgot the law. My earliest lesson was that 'self-preservation was the first law of nature' and my second lesson was that necessity know no law.' If these two laws are not a sham and a hollow mockery I am undeservedly garbed in these stripes. It may be that I broke a so-called law. So did you. So did that officer keeping watch over me. So did every man outside those walls, as well as inside. No person can cross the street without breaking a law of some kind. No man can drive a motor vehicle, much less park his car on the street side without running counter to some crazy law."' A man's house is no longer his castle, the most sacred reservations under his roof are liable to unwarrantable intrusion. Lord Northcliffe, editor of the London Times-The Thunderer -perhaps the greatest man in England, lately expressed his contempt for what he pronounced an "unfortunate law" which would prohibit him the use of a "reviving stimulant" which he said he finds sometimes neces sary in his exacting duties. "Stupid" is the word which a noted French author and leader,-Jean Finot properly applied to the prohibition system in America. Fools and feather-heads delight in making laws no weightier than themselves, but always intended for the other fellow. If 99 percent of our despicable laws were junked on the scrap pile, the remaining one might be worthy of observance as it is in Canada.. Officers in New York city are paid for enforcing the law and they take double pay for conniving at the violation of the law,-making money both "going and coming." To the fire with such laws! To the horse trough with such legislators! Ex-President Taft, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, than whom there is no higher authority in the United States pronounced the administration of law in this country a farce. It is worse than a farce. A farce well enacted is worthy of some admiration. Does any one ever suspect for a moment the result of the trial of Harry Thaw for cold blooded, deliberate, malicious murder; or of Clara Smith for shooting Mr. Hamon in Oklahoma; or even the outcome of the trial of "Fatty" Arbuckle. Why the movie managers offered them money beyond measure to appear on the stage for the edification and enlightenment of the growing generation of America. Perhaps after all such accusations are not altogether unreal. Under the shadow of the state Reformatory, some time since, a banker was brought to account for mis-appropriation of money. Widows working at the wash board until the red-blood ran out of the tips of their fingers to provide a few dollars against the day of distress, deposited their savings in this bank. The bank failed. "What is the charge, prosecutor? "Malfeasance of money."'"'Honorably acquitted" from the bench. The washwoman went to the poor house. Again, within the past two months, two boys driving out of our town one evening met a farmer coming in to buy his week's provisions. Knowing that his house was vacant, they went in to make search. One of them took away an old holster, that is, a leather pistol-case that would not sell for more than five cents at any auction sale in the state. He had been married not more than a few months previously and was just starting to make a home. His wife was standing by to see the outcome-young and beautiful and bathed in tears. "Consistency thou art a jewel." Is it any wonder the law is held in contempt I was not only acquainted with, but I was really intimate with every administration of the additional penitentiary, or Reformatory, as it is now called, at Anamosa,—with the exception of the first warden who served only a short time. The only criticism I have to make of them all is that they treated me exceedingly kindly, far and away better than I deserved. Sitting in the Warden's office one day, I saw a gentleman, evidently well educated, faultlessly dressed and apparently in very independent worldly circumstances. Having made the rounds of the establishment in every department, accompanied by the usher, as he passed by the office door, he looked in and remarked to the Warden: "You are treating them too kindly; that's all." The big man slowly arose and walked over with this for a retort: "You would not say that, sir, if your own son was one among them.", Seeing the visitor's amazement, he went on: "There are children of just as good a father as you or me, reared in just as good a home as yours and mine who are clad in those tiger stripes. You may see them marching with lock-step in yonder gang' (there were no grades then.) The visitor went away. The Warden looked into space: "Oh! Holy Moses, where is your meekness?" and then his soul spoke out. "If I must be dammed I should rather go to hell for showing too much mercy than for showing cruelty." He continued as he paced up and down the floor: "No one knows better than I do that there are men within those walls who should not be here, and I know perfectly well that there are other men outside the walls who ought to be here, but if I allowed such considerations to prey upon my mind, either one of two things should come to pass. Either I should go out and suicide, or I should go to the insane asylum. What can I do? God knows I am giving every atom of my brain and blood to the honest discharge of my duties as I see them." |