The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-17
PROHIBITION AS A BUSINESS
 POLICY

discussing the temperance situation il
 their state in connection with a recen report issued by the United States com
 missioner of internal revenue. Accord
 ing to this report Kansas produced 29,
 46S gallons of distilled liquors in 1901 as
 against 2,137,75 gallons in Nebraske
 and 166,097 gallons in Missouri, both o
 the latter being high license states
 For each one thousand of her people
 Kansas distilled fifteen gallons, Ne
 braska two thousand gallons and Mis-
 souri five hundred gallons.
 Of fermented liquors Kansas pro- ! duced 9,O22 barrels, Nebraska 255,7 | barrels and Missouri 2,699,7SS barrels | Per one thousand of inhabitants Kan
 sas produced six barrels, Nebraska two | hundred and thirty barrels and Missou-
 ri eight hundred and forty barrels.
 Commenting on these statistics, the
 Lawrence Journal holds that from a
 business standpoint they show very bad
 for Kansas. Kansas" it says, drinks
 hundreds of thousands of barrels of
 beer and whiskey every year, and all | most every drop of it is made outside | the state and our good money is sent
 elsewhere to pay for it. As a business
 proposition, the prohibition of the man
 ufacture of liquor in Kansas is a fool
 ish and costly experiment. We raise | the grain, ship it to Illinois, sell it to | distillers, and then buy it back, paying { three or four dollars a bushel for it. It | is foolish for us to buy it back but | then We do, as the manufacturers and | the statisticans will tell, We give all | the profit of it to the manufacturers in | other states, and we pay the freight | both ways, and then give our good mon ey for their benefit
 In sustaining it's "business" proposi- ton, however, we. observe that the Journal does not quote other significant figures put out by the revenue commis- sioner, These bear upon the amount of liquor consumed in the three states compared. The Journal will admit no doubt that liquor drinking is the whole sale curse of the world. We have never
 known a liquor thinker or liquor sell CT who would not freely admit that the
 individual the town, the county, the state the country, would be better off if intoxicants were an unknown quantity
 The best stroke of business the world could do for itself would be to forget the art of making liquor, and we as- sume that all intelligent people will
 agree that anything which makes for less drinking anywhere is pretty good business policy. The big question with respect to prohibition in Kansas, then, is whether or not it is making for so- briety among her people at a rate which pays for the troubles and trials in- cured in an effort to enforce the law.
 The commissioner of internal revenue reports that for manufacturers stamps and liquor sellers licenses during 1901 he collected from Kansas $115,S ,S43; from Nebraska $2,776,9 90S, and from Missouri, $5,57s,945. Per one thousand inhabi- tants this amounted to seventy-seven dollars for Kansas, s2,520 for Nebraska and s1,740 for Missouri, High license Nebraska. though numbering far less in population, has many more retail li quor licenses than Kansas, and the pre- sumption is of course, that she drinks more liquor And this presumption Is made certainty by the annual report of the Brewers association, which shows that the consumption ol beer in Nebraska is double that ol Kansas.
 It will be admitted readily enough that Kansas might establish a flourish ing business in the manufacture of IT, | uuors were it not for her prohibition law. However. this does not lend | weight or verisimilitude to the Law renee Journals idea that her business | bar gain is fed to cattle instead of being | distilled into intoxicants It would be | easy enough to show that the gain to her business interests would not | amount in ten years to what the excess liquor drinking in Nebraska costs that state in six months. We do not mean by this that Nebraska is worse than other license states, but that the which she expends for liquor m excess of the amounts expended by Kansas would make the alleged profits of liquor manufacturing seem like a oagatele in comparison.
 We doubt if it is generally understood what a bearing upon the material con- lition of a community liquor drinking 1as. or what an enormous amount of HlDNlCalltS tne RTltTthI people pour | Town their threats. The total of alco- lolic liquors consumed in 1901 in this was valued at sl094. 614 ,l55. or bout the amount of the combined 'alue of the corn and wheat crop. We frank 1927, ,4b4 gallons of beer, and ur whiskey bill was about four hun Ired million dollars. Of ntoxicants of II kinds we consumed last year more n value than the total interest bearing ebt of the United States. It is the reatest single problem in material as yell as moral existence, and compre ensive arguments about it must take he broadest scope. Yet the question as relates to prohibition in Kansas is implicitly itself. If prohibition is mak- lg for sobriety among the Kansas peo- le, as all the facts seem to prove, it is business policy of inesti- lable value and one which the rest of : he country might well adopt-Kansas , ity Journal
 THE MEN OF NESS.