Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1897-10-21
VOICES OF The PRESS.
The Shell and the Kernel.
IN. Y. SUM-

We may safely leave them the shell.
wrote Henry George in his prospectus en-
titled Progress and Poverty ''if W,
take the kernel 1t is not necessary t.
confiscate the land: it is only necessary t,
contiscate the rent
Private property in land says tn,
same philosopher. has no warrant il
Justice The philosopher would there
fore gladly by one stroke abolish al
private titles and declare all land public
property But he does not think that is
necessary. simpler. easier, and quiet
r. method of confiscation, in his author
.tative opinion is to let land titles stand
rs empty and meaningless forms and to
cave the shell while taking the kernel by
eonfiscating the rent instead of the land
itself.
Henry George. the confiscator. is actu-
ally running for mayor of the second
city of the world!
This candidate is honest enough and
arrest in his wild dreams of social revO-
luton. He is trying to promote his idea.
Prohibition in France!
On. Y. Press.)
1t used to be a stock saying of those
-raveled Americans who still find on
very hand abroad ready solutions for
very i'll that native flesh is heir to-.
why. you never see drunken man in
france. Light wines, my dear sir; light
wines. that's the secret of temperance"
OF course the fact that in the quarters of
great cities, at home and abroad, where
social conventions rule one rarely sees a
drunken man was at the bottom of this
superficial contrast. Travelled Americans
we're contrasting the Bouevards with the
I5owery. In the Fauborg St. Antoine they
might still have found the populace
scraping up the wine dregs of the broken
eask as in Jacques Lafarges day. In
Fifth avenue one rarely sees a drunken
man. though light wines are not the
secret of this appearance of temperance
But, though France was never pecu-
liarly sober state-being little worse or
better than her neighbors-she is becom-
ing today a state besotted enough to
alarm her thinkers. The question is not
a new one at all. 1t is fifteen years and
more since there was enough of it for NJ
Zola's treatment in "LAsommoir.'
Coupeau was the type of the absinthe
soaked French workman. But the new
phase is that Frenchmen are calling, as
Frenchmen always do when an evil
reaches an acute stage, for the govern
ment to take measures"
Now, the only measures which govern
ment can take in depressing drunkenness
is. so far as has been ascertained, prohi-
oition. The exercise of moral suasion''
Is not a governmental function. Regula-
ton under government monopoly has il is
true. been tried in Sweden. 1t is said to
have succeeded there; but somehow the
aPSihiShe idS Ilol peeI repeated elSe-
where, if we except the dismal failure in
South Carolina. We have sometimes
suspected that with the people of Goth
enburg it was a case OF reform or die
Nothing could have made drunkener
community. Nearly anything would have
made soberer one. which is all that the
"Gothenburg system has DONE But if
France, for lack of q better way of "brac-
ing up turns prohibitionist-and if she
does she will do it thoroughly-what is to
become of the romance of drinking? Be-
ing astonishingly thorough when she sets
about extirpatory reform, she Wilt as
suredly make short work with all her
vinous literature. from Villon to Beaude-
laire. And imagine Paris Portlandized
Bordeaux "going dry in a local option
election. and Burgundy under Maine
law! Scarcely would the departed spirit
OF Neal Dow exult in such triumph of
correct but strangely inap-
propriate principles.
Yet 1t Is to be feared that until govern
ment takes some such measures the trav-
eied Americans averment will never be
verified, and more and more drunken men
Will be seen In France by those who look
Tor them In drinking places. Certain it is
mat the French appetite has Switched
from light wines to absinthe. Just as our
temperance orators tell us the American
appetite does switch from cider to
whisky.