The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-26
DRASTIC MEASURES
 ARE INADVISABLE
JEROME A. TUCKER THINKS EX- FERENCE OF OTHER CITIES SHOWS THAT PROHIBITION WILL BE A FAILURE.
To the Editor of The Age-Herald

To the Editor of The Age-Herald:
 Is prohibition ever right, and if ever right, is it advisable and will it prohibit in Birmingham at this time?
 ''The extravagant zeal with which some people advocate certain reforms may be accounted for by the proverb that Tine aburnt child dreads the fire The devo- 7 ton of good women to temperance work if often pathetic It is a sister. perhaps, who has seen drink make her brother brute, or a mother whose heart has been broken by drunken son. Such wom- ell cannot any more see clearly. Their vision is forever colored by their sui ferngs. It may be, indeed, that only such suffering can make truly real the degra- dation of the drink habit. Those who have been forced to undergo them are thereby fitted to be leaders of a crusade. In sense this is true, but there is ever present also the danger that when leader. ship is left to them, their lack of sense Of proportion will serve to hamper instead of promote the cause which they love- Christian Advocate (Nashville) August 30 1907.
 There is no doubt, I think, in the minds of all clear thinking people that the right to use liquors in moderation as a bever- age is inherent and this right or privil-
 
 ilege. is to be abridged or entirely abro- gated by governmental authority only when community life makes 1t necessary or advisable So I hold that society in it's organized form has such a right to abridge or abrogate this natural individ- ual right, when it appears to be neces- sary, or even expedient
 But such a right on the part of organ zed society should be cautiously exer- ffSeJ 1nd Onlv n last raSnrt lest we flee to greater ills that we know not of There Is always danger in the ex- tension of the paternalistic idea in govern- ment and self-government in the last an- alysis means individual self-restraint and self-restraint is more desirable than self-constraint. Prohibition can, there fore, be defended under certain conditions on the ground of community preservation. So when community is threatened by the abuses of the liquor traffic to the de- gree that it cannot protect itself through enforceable regulative measures, in the case of a sparsely settled district, where everybody knows everybody, and the constraning eye of everybody is upon everybody, or where the presence of a very large proportion of the community Is weak. vicious, ignorant and inexperienced. it appears to me to be permissible to trample upon inherent individual rights and privileges and constrain even the strong to restrain themselves for the preservation of society. But is recourse to such drastic measures warranted under this view of the case in Birmingham at this time? Is there a reasonable expecta- tion that if permissible, that 1t Is the best regulative measure or will 1t be eff fective? To me the experience of cities and communities which can be reason ably compared to this city say NO" The experience of twenty out of twenty-three states of the union which have tried it say NO" "The Outlook" of New York, a well known, ably edited, fair minded, semi-relgious magazine holds to the opinion that Prohibition does not pro- hibit," and it claims with great positive ness that even in Maine, so long the ex- ample of constitutional prohibition, the law is a farce in certain cities of the state, and that it is only in those locaii- ties where it is backed by reasonably unanimous sentiment that the enforcs- ment of the law is at all effective. Kan sas City. Kan, and Cambridge. Mass, have been instanced as large cities where II has been successful I concede for the sake of argument that where a law is retained that it is successful. But It should be remembered that neither or these cities are properly centers of pop ulaton. They are merely suburbs or larger cities, where the traffic is legal ized and there is consequently but little temptation for a violation of the law.
 JEROME A. TUCKER.
 Birmingham, September 20, 1907.