Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-07-07

tions of eating, talking, wearing clothes or wha not, and by his excessive zeal for indulgence | any one of them makes himself a public hui sance Yet, strange as it may seem, neithe the glutton nor the excessively voluble has eve been made the object of an organized and hos tile crusade. Because some misguided zealo has abused the functions of eating or talkin it has never to our knowledge been proposes that these factors for occasional comfort b done away with, or even prohibited in the mild CT sense that the word has come to have in con nection with the drink question.
 Now fundamentally, to hark back to fits principles from which the reformer is all too ap to stray in his frenzied desire to bring the stan dard of the human race up to his own precon ceived notion of what it should be- the corner stone of our governmental structure is the free dom of the people, collectively, to make thei own laws To be sure, with the imperfectol that must of necessity mark all legislation, tn elevated ideal of our republic has never beel quite realized, nor do we expect that t eve will be. If 1t was we would be treated to tn spectacle of the creation of something peifec by human being and an event of this orde belongs to the period of the millennium, which like mirage in the desert, is always just ahea' in the line of progress.
 Now when law in it's impossiblity of en forcement is manifestly not supported by tn general public, it would not be radical depar ture from logic to call it impractical, admittin. all the while, perhaps, that in theory it is beauti ful.
 To deny that drinking to excess is productiv of world of evil, would be worse than futile In legislation to discourage drinking there is though, hardly any middle course that leads t desirable goal. To forbid the manufacture o spirituous liquors would doubtless be effectua provided the enforcement of such law con be assured But experience, to which we loo for world of wisdom teaches us that it's en forcement in any given locality mas never ye been proven possible. To go to the other ex treme, and encourage drinking would not be a all advisable. And so the prohibtionist re former is left lodging between the horns of formidable dilemma His inability to make right decision is probably due to no mental ob tuseness of his own, unless it is that he ha failed to discount frailty of human natur that makes it seek what is not always best. Blu that this frailty is so common to humanity that with inconsistency truly human, it vii legislat against drink and then betake itself from tn forum to the saloon to violate its own law makes anything effectual in absolute prohibi tion almost impossible.
 To protect the people from their own weak nesses may be advisable and it may not. An. virtue that needs to be guarded by a troop o militia or squad of police is surely of a doubt ful character. That mans family should be protected from the suffering entailed by hi innate falings is only justice, but when all thi is granted, the means of insuring an Utopia1 atmosphere in every household are diverse but are alike only in one respect, namely, tha none is wholly adequate
 And so the advocates of both sides of tn drink question remain in chaos. And 1t is cer tain that any attempt to make people good sim ply by legislation will always fail of accomp lishment To so hedge in the individual wit laws that to sin would be impossible, may a some very remote date be effected But grant ing even this slender possibility it is still certainty that strength of character will no be noticeable asset of that age. The abilit to fend for ones self, to meet the gorgon o temptation and put it to flight, is what distin guishes the man of strong character from tn vulnerable adult. But passing observation has it is safe to say, never yet brought to light tn man of no weakness. The frailties of differen men vary in violence and kind, so that huma perfection at this period of evolution is simpl a matter of degree. And not all prohibitionist have taken this truth to heart.
 THE QUEST OF HAPPINESS