The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-26


 From the New York Commercial. Commenting on an interview in the Birmingham Age-HeraId with an intelli- gent, observant and dsinterested north
 ern man who has been travelling through
 the south and expressed the opinion that
 the prohibition wave there is fast sub siding because the laws were made too
 radical and drastic, the New Orleans States says
 Georgia passed a statewide prohibition law, but we are told that the saloons in
 Savannah are running with open doors; and the same is true of Atlanta. In Bir-
 mingham as much liquor Is being con
 sumed now as in the days before prohibi-
 tion was established by law; while in
 North Carolina, where many men for po- litical reasons supported the dry cause,
 they get themselves exceedingly wet"
 by patronizing the blind tigers.
 One of the most interesting statements
 made by the northern observer is that
 the internal revenue receipts establish the
 fact that the quantity of liquor now be- ing consumed In the United States is
 greater than it was before the prohibition
 movement began to sweep over the
 south; hence either other sections of the country are consuming more than their
 usual volume of liquor or the prohibi- tion laws enacted by the southern states
 have failed of their purpose. The trouble is that all prohibtionists are not total abstainers. If they were, the cause of temperance, which is so dear to many wel-meaning persons, would make an infinitely better showing than it does. Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and
 dozen or so other prohibition states are
 simply repeating the experience of Maine
 making their laws so stringent and un-
 reasonable that they cannot be strictly
 enforced and soon become unpopular and dead letters. Maine has strengthened"
 her liquor laws from year to year for more than half century, even going so far as to inject the principle in her con- stitution so that no legislature can enact a law permitting the sale of intoxicants | or modify an existing law so as to permit | it-and every time the strengthening"
 has been followed by more general viola
 tions of the statute. Prohibition is only repeating itself in the soyth.
 As to internal revenue collections in- creasing this northern man states the facts, and the States argument is unan- swerable. They call to mind the fact that very early in the present session of Congress bill was introduced in the House providing that in states where the sale of intoxicating liquors is prohibited by legislative enactment 1t shall be un- lawful for the federal collector of inter- nal revenue to issue licenses for such a purpose. It has long been an anomaly of statute law that the United States government may sell a man a permit to deal in liquors and the next minute the town constable may put him in jail for having the permit in his possession But here is a bill, whose purpose presumably is to promote prohibition and the cause of temperance, that in operation as law would lift a tax burden from the sl.vul- ders of rumsellers in prohibition states and at the same time deprive the federal government of millions of dollars of revenue every year, thus forcing 1t to raise the money through other forms of taxation.
 A better scheme to depopularize prohi- biton could hardly be devised.