Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1908-04-22
PROHIBITION PRESS BULLETIN,
BY John A. Shields, Minneapolis.

Beginning Jan. |, and ending
April II. 1908, 1O8 consecutive
days, the liquor traffic in Minnesota
has made the following record :. IS
dead, e injured, Z insane. The
comparative records made by the
liquor. business in License Mime
sofa and Prohibition Kansas, begin
ming March l and continuing 48
days, is: Minnesota dead, 81
injured, 3 insane; Kansas dead,
2 injured, l insane.
A news dispatch says that Wor-
cester, Mass. a city of $50, 900 pop
ulation, has voted to close 118 sa-
looms and 2 breweries or May l.
This will be the largest prohibition
city in the nation.
No longer does the phrase cover
the hill to the poorhouse strike
dread to the heart Of the Jayhaw-
kers. There is little fear of reach
ing the stage Of actual restitution
in Kansas any more. The poor
houses are being forced to quit
business. Their doors are being
closed and cobwebs are forming in
the rooms. In q of the counties
there is not a poorhouse inmate.
The State Board of Control has pre-
pared figures showing what cities
and counties support paupers and
how many inmates there are. It
has found 749, but that nearly all
Of these are the overflow of insane
and feebleminded asylums. The
state has a population estimated at
l, 300, 900. This means only one
pauper to every 1900 population.
News Dispatch from Topeka,
Kansas, April 10, 1908.
A Prohibition cyclone struck I(li-
nois April Z, which closed forever
500 saloons and left IS counties
dry, and but one saloon town each
in II other counties.
The Minneapolis Daily News fell
into a mellow brown study, or
some other relatively harmless sub
stance, the other day and pulled up
a few wise cogitations about drink
crazed preachers that ought to make
the editors fame mortal. With
the commercial instinct of the age,
the editor gets the sniff of the
|DOLLAR and can no more compre-
bend the stature of MAN. The
monopoly that has charged him a
fraction too much for car fare, tele-
phone service, gas or water rates,
looms up large; the institution
which during the first hundred days
of 1908, according to the current
prints, killed IS people in Mime
sofa, he says, is a small business,
and the preacher who cares more
for manhood than for money, he
says, is drink crazed. The editor
sharply castigates the preacher for
not DESERVING his quest for souls
and joining the money-mad pack in
crying "stop thief to the fran
chise scalper and monopoly monger
who steals DOLLARS while the sa-
looms fatten by sapping the nation S
MANHOOD. In his needless hurry
he has no time to inquire after
facts. He quotes those things
which he wishes were facts, and
SO labels them. In attempting
to show that liquor drinking bears
no relation to anarchy he states that
in Scandinavia, "where the in
crease Of drunkenness is looked up
on as a great national DANGER
there are but few anarchists. He
doubtless overlooked the fact that
the Scandinavian countries are and
always have been in the lead of the
European nations for prohibition;
that Scandinavia today has larger
proportion of prohibition territory
than any other section of Europe
save Finland; that in Sweden alone
the production Of spirits has fallen
from $4,000, 900 gallons in 1850 to
II 900, 900 in 1905, and that the per
capita consumption of alcoholic liq.
uors has steadily fallen until today
it is lower than in the United
States. Again, he says 1.-THE 1tal-
ians, who furnish most of our anar-
chists are one of the most temper
ate peoples in Europe" whereas
the per capita consumption of aIco-
holics in Italy exceeds that of all
the leading European nations save
two. Scandinavia, which he would
have us believe is drunken nation,
comes near the bottom Of the list;
it consumes 2.54 gallons per capita
Of 80 per cent spirits" while Italy
consumes more than twice as much,
or 5.56 gallons Of equal alcoholic
strength. Unlike Scandinavia, TIA
ly has never been a prohibition