The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-04-09

Not least among the many novel fea
lures which will make the campaign
of 1908 a memorable one is the grow
ing Importance of the propaganda o
the Anti-SaIoon League. Louis Brown
low, newspaper man of Washington
who has been in Honolulu for the pas
two weeks, for the Frederic ]. Haskir
Syndicate, has made a study of tht
political features of the Battle of the
Bottle He is Southerner and is
familiar with conditions in that part
of the Union where the Anti-saloon
movement has made it's greatest head
way,
THE news that twenty counties in
Illinois had voted dry in one day is
| significant" said Mr. Brownlow 1T is
refutation of the oft-repeated state
ment that the anti-sa1oon victories
in the South were the result of an effort
to solve the social perplexities of the
negro question. 1t is true that the
negro has had much to do with the
prohibition sentiment in many Southern
communities, but the real reason for
the remarkable growth of that idea lies
much deeper.
1T is an economic question. The
South suffers from an insufficient sup
ply of labor 1t is important that the
laborers who are there keep at work
six days in the week. In a town where
there is whisky the average weeks
work is five days for white labor and
three for negro labor Thus it came
about that capitalists projecting new
cotton mill went to Chambers of Com
merce and like organizations with this
proposition: We wish to put up a
cotton mill in your town. We viii do
it if you will vote out the saloons. We
will not build in wet town
|'One North Carolina town has the
largest cotton mill on earth as the price
of its taking the pledge. Added to
such things as this is the attitude of
the great employing corporations which
require a water-Wagon certificate with
every application for job. They have
put premium upon sobriety.
Still later in the chronology Of each
Southern community which went dry
came another factor. Greensboro. N.
c., is one Of the most prosperous of
the new manufacturing towns Of the
Piedmont region. 1t is dry. When I
was there last autumn / heard about
the hotels and clubs that if another
vote was taken the city would go wet.
had occasion to be present at meet
ing of the bankers of the city. / asked
them if It wasn't true that the saloons
would be back again in a little while.
They laughed, and one of them said:
lin prohibition fights which side
usually has the money and which the
sentiment?' Of course I said that the
liquor interests were generally the boys
with the wherewithal. Just So as
scented the banker But when the ques-
ton comes up again here, if it ever
does. the bankers have agreed to cover
every dollar of whisky money with two
of prohibition coin. We fought local
option because We thought it would
hurt business. The town went dry
Now we send runners from our saw
ings departments into the mill villages
on Saturday afternoon and the weekly
$4,000 or $1,000 that used to 60 for
booze comes into our vaults. We pay
the mill hands two per cent. on 1t
and we manage to get a little better
than that for the use of it. This town
will never go wet if the banks can
prevent it,
This is a sample Of the thing one
meets with all over the dry areas Of
the South. It is an economic movement
which is sustaining the Anti-Saloon
League.
However, it is mistake to credit
all it's force to this dollars and-cents
reason. The economic force is an effect,
in part, because as the Greensboro
banker indicated, the business men for
merIy fought prohibition Neither is
the movement new one. 1t started
in the South about twenty-five years
ago in rural communities. Little by
little it crept into the small villages,
than the towns, swelling until it was
thrown back by the liberalism of the
cities. This movement was a moral
and religious one, and its leaders were
the pastors of the churches which still
have so much influence in the purely
Saxon communities of the South.
But it was discovered that the labor
problem was not nearly so vexing in
the small dry towns as in the wet cities.
Capital which needed labor to develop
resources saw this and demanded dry
towns for factory sites. That started
the economic campaign. The preachers
are still leaders in the fight, but they
are being rapidly crowded out of the
way by the Democratic politicians who
are clambering on to the band-Wagon
and the water-wagon simultaneously
with more haste than grace.
1T is as impossible to find Demo-
cratic politician in the South who is
not a prohibitionist as it is to find an
anti-Taft postmaster. They are all on
the wagon. Georgia, Alabama, Missis-
sippi have adopted statewide prohibit
ton Tennessee is all dry but three
cities, thanks to a complicated local
option law. Kentucky has but four
counties that are all wet and ninety
per cent. Of the people of the state
of shoots and booze can't buy legal
dram. North and South Carolina are
ninety per cent. dry. Texas and Lou
isiana are three-fourths arid, and it is
a crime to take a drink on a railway
train in the Lone Star State. Okla
homa came into the Union with white
~Sh MIN 70