The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-08-01
APROPOS OF AUGUST "A
Citizen Writes on Success of the St.
 Louis Excise Commission

| To the Editor of The Age-Herald. l Having lived in Memphis for over a year, where liquor was sold in all the
 grog shops, fancy bars and popular hos
 teries in that city as openly and which
 TOW is sold as openly if prohibition had never been in vogue in the state of | Tennessee; also having seen the beer that
 the citizens of Milwaukee, St, Louis and l Chicago drink sold in Atlanta, Ga, as near beer" and none to say it nay, and witnessing the visitation of the blind | tigers upon your beautiful, thriving citN, which visitation equals in numbers the visitation of the plague of grasshoppefs 1 in Kansas, I want to call your attention | to the splendid regulation of this traffic under an excise commission in the city
 of St Louis, which they had in that city
 during my residence there in 1905, 1906 and
 1907, and still have,
 Joseph w. Folk, while governor of Mis-
 souri. appointed Thomas E. Mulvihill ex- l else commissioner, and during the term l of his office l make the assertion, and do not fear contradiction, that St. Louis was
 the best regulated, best governed, and had fewer violations of the liquor laws than any other city in the Union. and neither did the saloons extend into the residen-
 tial section anymore than they will here under careful surveillance and the watch full eye of a. representative excise com missioner
 Under the excise commission in the city of St Louis the commissioner was re- snonsole to no local authority. not swerved by threats or cajolery of local politicians and saloonkeepers, ward heel CTS etc, but was directly responsible to the governor, and he of course responsi- be to the whole people.
 If the voters of this locality can get together and bring order out of chaos and choose something better than the condition that is breeding evils of political corruption and has stultifed manhood without. altering the capacities of the peo- ple, now is the time for them to do it. Prohibition in this city and in others has
 made, not only more drunkards but per
 jurers liars and grafters out of men who otherwise would not have been attempted. When men arise as they are doing now to tell the truth about 1t, our beloved AHLlS get DS1lHu Aiicii ifoSA and accuse us of the basest motives and claim immunity from attack in return be- cause of their cloth. I may be little se- were. hut if there is one thing 1 know about, it is the farcical attempt at the enforcement of law that is handicapped at the outset by having public opinion against it. Why cannot we agree upon | some middle ground. such as that we have | offered us that will make more men sober and less men hypocrites? One New Eng iand state tried enforcement of the pro hibition law at the cost of a practical de- u,etion of it's treasury, and the city of Birmingham has now nearly 20O0 cases to try against blind tigers, which will in crease the criminal cost of this state to untold thousands of dollars more than the state will realize in fines and forfetures, let alone the debauching of our manhood by perjury, deceit theft and graft in their efforts to secure a privilege that the average citizen has believed was privi- lege handed to us from the inception of | this government.
 l The biggest corporation in this state is the state itself, and as a citizen, l am a stockholder. and when a stockholder