Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1907-11-08
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1907.
Can Prohibition Prohibit.

Newspapers like 'The Louisville Cour
Ter Journal which are combating the
rapid growth of prohibition sentiment in
the Southern states, lay much stress on
the argument that prohibition does not
prohibit. They contend that prohibition
is impracticable and non-enforceable,
that the agitation for it is pharisaical in
motive and that the experiment, if made,
must result only in secret evasion of the
law and the cultivation of a spirit of
sham morality and odious hypocrisy.
Colonel Watterson is convinced that the
prohibition crusade is a conscious piece
OF charlatanry managed by "puribanical
reformers' or discriminating politicians
greedy for office. He said caustically
the other day:
Our assailants (the advocates of prohi-
bition) either do not realize the enormi-
ty of lying, else they do not care, or-in
many cases we doubt not-they fancy
that they can lie without detection, pre-
ferring to lie than to tell the truth.
The editor of "The Courier Journal
holds that "the distillation of strong
drink and the pursuit of the liquor traffic
have never been extirpated anywhere ex-
cept in the lands of Mahomet" and that
it is a gross delusion to think that they
can be extirpated in the United States as
whole or in any single state in the
Union. State prohibition he broadly as
serts, has, wherever tried, worked not
good but evil to the people. There are
doubtless many who will agree on theo-
retical grounds with this general argu-
ment. Prohibition is extremely difficult,
perhaps impossible, to enforce in large
towns and in communities, either urban
or rural, to which its desirability is not
apparent. Yet theory has often to be
corrected by experience, and it will not
do to jump at the conclusion that all
non Mahometans have an invincible de-
sire to consume alcohol when they feel
like it, and are incapable of divesting
themselves of the alcoholic habit.
The Charleston News and Courier, ut
self an anti-prohibition newspaper, gave
some interesting testimony recently on
this point. 1t was considering the ques-
ton whether or not prohibition had been
enforced, or could be enforced, in South
Carolina. 1t admitted that the use of
intoxicants could not be wholly stopped,
though prohibition really does not aim
that, but only at stopping the manu-
facture and sale of intoxicants within
site jurisdiction. Under state prohibi-
ton an individual is still free, of course,
to import liquor in original packages for
his own private consumption. Charles
ton has still its "blind tigers" where
liquor is sold illegally, and few cities
and counties still maintain local dispen-
saries. But as to the alleged ineradi-
cability of the traffic "The News and
Courier frankly said:
If the entire disappearance of the
whiskey traffic from public view, the
reduction of retail sales to one. fiftieth or
one-hundredth part of their former vol.
ume, the complete obliteration of sta
tionary whiskev shops and the destruc-
ton of the treating habit constitute pro.
hibition enforced, then it is enforced in
the rural counties of South Carolina
in the state where one may spend weeks
without seeing, hearing of or smelling