Bisbee daily review., 1907-03-16
ALCOHOL AGE"
 PROPER TERM

war-making-o peace-preserying- material. The tourist abroad wonders why he can have his camera plates
 developed and purchase photographic materials so much cheaper than in
 the United States. It is because al cohoi is such an essential in the mak- ing of photographic material and in the darkroom. The transparent soap
 we use in the batah owes it's clear ness to this Hquid. Many a perfume contains it. Without alcohol the druggist would have to give up his business, since it enters into so many prescriptions and so-called patent medicines" on account Of its remedial properties.
 With the chance to distill alcohol from the vegetables of the garden, the grain of the field, and the fruit of the orchard, the farm boy with merely a smattering of chemistry may De tempted to repeat the experiments to which we have alluded; but it is ob- vious that economical production is only by means of modern distilliDg plants. As to location, they can be built in every state and territory, since the bases of the spirit are grown in the valley made fertile by nature or in the heart of the desert rendered prolific by irrigation. It is, indeed, curious coincidence that one of the most abundant crops which comes from irrigated soil-the sugar
 beet-should contain such a large proportion of the element of alcohol, when it is remembered that as a source of power the spirit can be uti- lized to pump water for flooding the beet field. Thus the irrigator can pro duce from the soil the energy needed to maintain its fertility. But the po- tato patch of New England, the corn fields of the western pariries, the rice and sugar-cane belts of Louisiana, af- ford sites for the industry enabling the consumer to secure his supply of alcohol for whatever purpose as con veniently as his supply of food and other necessaries.
 You may say that twenty years is q short time in which to accomplish such an industrial revolution as has been foretold. Is it2 What did we know of the telephone a quarter of a century ago? Those who saw the huge ugly looking leather disk that was shown at the centennial exposi- ton in 1876 ridiculed the assertion of the designer that it would convey words beyond the ordinary range of the human voice. Today the tele- phone has reached everywhere that civilization has reached. It is indis- pensable in modern life. Less than thirty years ago the first exchange was established in America, and now some of them have subscribers con- nected with central" by the barb wire fences which not only bound the farm but form the telephone line. Twenty years ago the oil stove was a curiosity, but as the fact became known that the surface of the coun- try concealed an underground sea Of petroleum the coal age was replaced by the petroleum era in many states beyond the Mississippi. The possibil- ity that twenty years hence we may live in the age of alcohol is no more wonderful than the advent of the tel ephone. the oil stove, the cotton gin or the combined harvester and thresher.
 Back in the '60s "A. Lincoln was the name signed to a document which caused the bells to ring and the bon fires to blaze from one end of the northern states to the other, for it freed 100000 people from slavery. Cautiously enough, it was partly to de- fray the expenses of the civil war abolishing slavery that alcohol was literally placed in bondage. How this step has crippled the United States may be understood when 1t is known that in 1861. prior to the enforcement of the revenue tax, we were using ov- CT thirty million gallons, although our population at that time was but 32,- 000, 900. Had the farmer and the man. ufacturer been permitted the free use of the liquid as beverage, today our consumption would doubtless have been more than ten times this quan- tity, for Germany alone makes over 100, 100000 gallons a year, largely for industrial purposes, also tenfold more than we have manufactured annually under the oppression of the revenue law. There is good reason for calling the law which at last gives us free alcohol for our industries the second act of emancipation, for it is in truth a release from bondage-Day Allen, in Appleton's Magazine.