The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-20
RAMSAY ON PROHIBITION.

From the Nashville Tennessean. l A good deal of talk is being handed
 around notwithstanding from the ] liquor people-about how prohibition has
 hurt" Birmingham, Ala. | Having their slanderous statements
 about Atlanta drying up on the stick" I disproven by reliable and truthful men
 who went there and investigated actual
 conditions the whisky men are now hold
 ing up the Magic City as a horrible ex ample"
 Erskine Ramsay, one of the wealthiest
 and most representative men of Birming ham. Is in Nashville. the guest of Col. A. NJ Shook. He is fully as well qualified
 to speak on conditions in his own home as are the liquor dealers of Nashville, who haven't been there.
 MT. Ramsay Is president of the Pratt | Consolidated Coal company. the second ! largest employer of coal mining labor in
 the great Birmingham district. This com pany employs several thousand men. MT Ramsay is also the second largest
 holder of real estate fin the city of Bir-
 mingham. and his investments run up into
 the hundred thousands.
 He is a young man of great business
 ability, who has acquired fortune in the coal and iron belt of Alabama, and Is one of the reputed mllionaires of Birming ham.
 What he says on industrial and trade conditions in Birmingham, as prohibition has affected them, is worth at least as much as the irresponsible twaddle of the ! Nashville whisky dealers. A reporter of the Tennessean talked with MT. Ramsay last night and he said:
 Prohibition has not only not hurt Bir-
 mingham, but it has helped it. There
 is a great deal less crime there now than
 has been known in years, and the work ing classes are in much better condition.
 They are spending their money on their
 families for clothing and food, instead of
 in the saloons and the families of work
 ing people are better clothed than they
 ever were.
 The price of real estate has not
 dropped It Is as firm as ever. I pre-
 sume I ought to know something about
 this, as I am the second largest holder of real estate in the district.
 When the saloons went out of Bir- mngham a few months ago 125 business houses became vacant. They are now all occupied with possibly three or four ex- captions in the suburbs.
 They are filled with various lines of legitimate business and the owners are doing well. A few saloon keepers may
 have suffered to some extent in being deprived of their particular vocation, but the average business man and working man has been helped. I don't know of a
 single business house in the center of the city that is idle.
 Negro labor is much more satisfactory
 and profitable both to those employing
 it and itself. Where heretofore the ne- groes have worked two or three days in week and the laid around the negro dives the remaining four days. they are now working steadily and making much more money and spending more. They are much more law-abiding. and the ben eficent change prohibition has wrought among them Is remarkable.
 "So far as 'bootlegging' is concerned, I don't know of a place in Birmingham
 where man can go and buy whisky. There may be few such, but there is so much secrecy connected with their operation that the average workingman has not time to look them up. The aboli- tion of the saloon has destroyed four ffths of the whisky drinking in the dis trict, and Birmingham is more orderly today than 1t has been in years. "The police arrests have fallen off, should say, 40 per cent.
 "The panic last fall hurt Birmingham and threw a good many men out of work, but prohibition has not hurt us It has helped us in many ways. q was an advocate of prohibition, and
 [ am entirely satisfied with what it has accomplished. I would strongly oppose going back to the saloon, as would every man who voted to put the saloon out.
 Many who were doubtful about it have already been converted to the good results of prohibition.
 "The talk that Birmingham is sorry she drove the saloons out and wants them back Is absolutely without foundation. while the people of Birmingham voted the saloons out, they did it before the legislature passed the statewide prohi-
 bition bill The legislature saw that the popular sentiment of the state was Tor prohibition and it passed the law in re- sponse to the peoples demand. Birmingham has been much more pros
 porous without the saloon-eliminating the effects of the panic-than it would have been with it."
 e.