The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1909-09-03

surface, and study this problem in its
deeper aspects, we find that its roots
are ineXtricably intertwined with those
OF other social problems SO that genu-
= inc and thorough temperance reform
must be conducted along many differ
ent lines.
The liquor problem is not exclusively
nor chiefly II legislative problem, and
hence it cannot be solved by legislation
alone The evil of incompetence is not
caused, though it may be aggravated, by
bad legislation, and it cannot be re-
moved, though it may be lessened, by
good legislation. The main lines of tenn
perance reform, the most potent agen-
cies for the building up of moral char
acter land moral character is the basis
of temperance in all things), lie wholly
outside the scope of legislation. Lgis
lation has, of course, its part to play
and a not unimportant part-in any
comprehensive program of temperance
reform; but when legislation encroaches
on the domain of the church and the
home it ventures to act as a substitute
for purely social and moral agencies, it
not only fails to accomplish any good
but causes the greatest harm. Speaking
generally, the work that legislation can
do in the moral sphere is of negative
character-preventing and suppressin2
the evil-while work of a positive char
acter must be done through other agen-
cies. In undertaking temperance reform
work along any line, we must learn
to be patient, and to be modest in our
expectations. We must bear in mind
that temperance reform is very largely
matter of moral and social evolution
Liquor legislation must necessarily fol-
low one of two general policies. 1t may
aim at the abolition of the liquor
traffic, or at the regulation of the
traffic. These two policies are extreme
oppostes at every point and in every
feature The object of one is to kill,
that of the other is to cure. 1t is on
this broad question of general policy
that the people are divided today.
No legislative system has ever been
more extensively nor fairly tested than
that of prohibition. During the last
sixty years it has been tried on the
statewide scale in many different sec
tiOns of the country and under the most
diverse social and political conditions,
the periods of trial ranging from three
years in Nebraska to fifty-three years
in Vermont. By its record, by what it
has done and by what it has not done,
prohibition must be judged. On every
page of that record from beginning to
end, are written the words failure, folly,
farce. Nowhere and at no time in all
its history, has prohibition accomplished
a single one OF its avowed objects No
where has it abolished the liquor traffic;
nowhere has it prevented the consump-
tion of liquor nor lessened the evil of
intemperance. Neither as state wide
y stem nor under Local Option has pro
hibition ever made the slightest contri-
button toward the solution of the liquor
problem. The one solitary service that
it has rendered to society is that of fur
nishing a warning example of the SUI
preme folly of attempting to legislate
virtue into mems lives.
There could be no stronger evidence
Of the failure of prohibition than the
fact that seven of the eight states that
adopted the system fifty years ago
have since abandoned it and gone back
to the policy of license and regulation
The people of these states adopted pro
hibition in good faith. They honestly
and earnestly desired to wipe out in
temperance They realized that intern
perance was directly or indirectly the
cause of much crime, poverty and dis
ease; that it was a financial burden on
the state; and that it was a hinderance
to material prosperity and to moral pro
gress. They thought it was a better
policy to abolish than to license and
regulate a traffic that seemed to them
to be the root and source of this evil
Now, to claim that prohibition was even
measurably successful in these states,
that it accomplished even a little good
is to insult the intelligence of the PEG
pie OF New England. No sensible per
son can believe that these seven states
would have deliberately repudiated a
system that they had adopted in high
hopes and with high moral purpose, if
they had found that that system was
making for sobriety, prosperity and
good citizenship.
In view of the fact that it is always
easier to secure the enactment than the
repeal of laws of a reputed moral pur.
pose, the reputation of prohibition by
these states is all the more significant
III be only conclusion consistent with
reason and common sense is that the
people, after years Of bitter experience,
found that they had built on false hopes,
and that conditions were not only no
better but far worse under prohibition
than they had been under the license
system 1t is also very significant that
the states that were swept off their feet
by the prohibition wave fifty years ago,
are among those states that are being
least affected by the present agitation.
And even Maine, which is the only one
of these states that has retained pro
hibition all these years. il actually