The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-02-04
FIGURES THAT LIE.

FIGURES THAT LIE.
The Saloon Keepers association OF
Chicago is preparing to send out some
in places where prohibition is en-
forced. Members of the organization
profess to believe that they can show
that there is more drunkenness in
places where liquor is not sold than in
places where saloons are permitted to
run wide open at all hours of the day
and night, on the first day of the week
as we'll as on every other day.
The figures show that there were
1925 arrests for drunkenness in Port
land. Me-, a city of $1,000 population.
In Bangor. with $4,000 population,
there were 1926 arrests In Peoria,
H., 5000 population, the greatest
whisky making center in the United
States, the arrests totaled SAL. The
comparison based on arrests per hun
bred thousand shows that 254 men
were arrested in Maine: out of that
number during the year covered by the
report IA in Kansas and so in Illinois.
The first two states are, as is well
known, prohibition states. In Illinois
liquor is sold very generally from one
end of the state to the other. At
the first glance the figures are strik-
ing; they seem to uphold the conten-
ton of the liquor men, that there is
more drunkenness in prohibition states
than in whisky states, but it will take
something more than these figures to
convince the general public that the
theory of the liqIor sellers has any
real foundation.
In prohibition states the laws against
drunkenness are very much more rig
Idly enforced than in states which
possible every man who gets drunk is
arrested. He is not warned and eau
toned repeatedly by the policemen he
passes that he must go home; that he
must go to his hotel: that he must re-
tire from public view. The man who
is drunk is arrested by the first police
man who meets him, and he is taken
to the station and locked up.
If every man who gets drunk in
Salt Lake. should be arrested, the to-
tai of arrests for drunkenness would be
swelled to five or ten times it's present
aggregate. We believe the same thing
is true of Illinois. A drunken man is
not an unusual sight in Illinois cities;
he is not, unfortunately, an unusual
sight in Salt Lake. We are inclined, in
communities in which liquor is sold, to
condone the offense of drunkenness,
especially if the offenders show a dis
position to get out of sight.
In prohibition communities the
drunken man is more of a novelty: the
police make it their duty to arrest
him, because it is also their duty to
ascertain if possible where he got the
intoxicant. There is q double motive
therefore. in incarcerating them, and
the unusual number of arrests is not
remarkable, mr. are the figures pre-
scented fair.
The showing is on par with the
glee of the liquor men over the an
nOuncement recently published that
the men in a European army.who were
given a drink of stimulant, shot more
accurately in rifle practice than the
men who had not been given drink.
II is a well known fact that men who
are accustomed TO the use of intoxi-
CENTS have steadier hands and clearer
| eyes after they have had one or two
drinks. but they do not average as high
| in efficiency, either at the target prac-
/ tice or in the other departments of the
army. as the men who refrain abso-
/ lutely from stimulants