Kansas City daily journal., 1897-01-30
THE MISUSE OLE ..pRoHIRIrIoN. :,

! 1t was boastfully claimed by the intro
! ducer of n certain bill in the Kansas legis-
| lature the other day that it would effeetual-
| Iy prohibit the collection of usurious in
| terest upon borrowed money. If it does it
will accomplish more than any similar
measure which has been tried in Kansas or
| elsewhere. No state has ever succeeded in
devising u law which prohibits the practice
| of usury. The nearest that any has come
10 it is to limit the interest which may be
collected by law from a debtor upon the
face of note or other certificate of in
debtedness. The man who has money to
lend has never yet been successfully pro-
hibited from privately making such terms
as he wished. and from the very nature of
the transaction it is a power which can
not be taken from him. He has the money
which the other fellow wants, and before
the terms of the lender.
None but dreamer ever believed in the
efficacy of a prohibitory law, at least in
the sense that it actually prohibited the
thing it was directed against. Much of the
trouble over the prohibitory liquor law in
Kansas grows out of the fact that it is
known by that name AS a matter of fact,
neither the constitution of Kansas nor the
laws which have been passed to sustain it
ever contemplated the prohibition Of either
liquor selling or liquor drinking. 1t ought,
on the contrary, TO be known as the liquor
regulation law, and then much of the OPP
position would be siIenced which is based
upon the charge that prohibition does not
prohibit" When regarded in the aspect OF
Il regulation system it must be admitted
that prohibition in Kansas comes nearer to
perfect enforcement than any liquor license
law the state has ever had.
Many of the states have started out with
the Utopian purpose of prohibiting some
evil which afflicted the people. They have
succeeded in Furnishing and reducing the
evil, but never in prohibiting it. For ex-
ample. Kentucky has a. stringent law for
the prohibition" of dueling, but every
reader of the daily papers knows that Ken
lucky is to-day the home of the code duello.
So strong is this law that people who have
engaged in dueling are debarred from po-
litical honors and from membership in sew
erai of the professions. The other day Miss
A'Dl'iAioAAiSp1 lue5Sf huNSillCl III lllS
Kentucky ex-congressman, was compelled
to testify under oath that she had never
taken part in a duel, and to soiemnly prom
Use that she would never engage in such
an affair. She was seeking admission TO
the Lar, and under the Kentucky law no
person can be so admitted who has ever i
even so much as acted as second to a
duelist.
In West Virginia, too, there is law
which recites in its title the prohibition of
mob lynchings 1t goes SO far even as to
compel the county in which such an affair
takes place to pay the family of the victim
s2,0cG, but lynchings are perhaps more nu-
merous in West Virginia than in neighbor-
ing states which have no such law.
In short. prohibition is bad word TO
use in connection with any law. The Kan
sas man with his anti-usury bill is a poor
student of human nature, and a worse one
of the history of criminal Jurisprudence, il
he believes that he has invented a prohibi-
ton which will prohibit. This is not cap
tious criticism upon the misuse of words,
but statemsH of principle which is well
grounded. There never yet was n law which
bore the title of prohibition which was
not weakened by the claim of its opponents
that it did not prohibit.