Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1914-12-10
PROHIBITION is A BLESSING
TO WEST VIRGINIA.
(From the Union Signal.)

tons are everywhere apparent even
though it has been in effect only since
July |, 1914. Reporting three months
enforcement of the Yost law, Mr..
Fred O. Blue, state tax commissioner,
has statistice of various kinds to
proev that it has been big success.
The first report of Chief Clerk Rath-
bone, who has charge of the enforce
ment of the law under Mr.. Blue, has
recently been made public. A COM
parative statement of the number of
arrests and number of charges of
drunkenness in seventeen of the larg-
est cities and towns in the state indi-
Gates that not only is intoxication on
the wane, but under prohibition the
number of arrests has been greatly
reduced. AS evidence, he cites the
number of arrests for July, August
and September, 1914, 726, as com
pared with the number for the CORE
spending year, 1881, decrease of
1,105 under prohibition. The total
arrests for drunkenness in the same
three months of 1913 were S56, while
for the corresponding period of 1914
the number is only 205, decrease of
651.
Other Industries Prosper.
"The saloon people say the prohib-
tory law has hurt business" says Mr..
Blue, but con Market street in Wheel
ing people are getting more money
out of the stores than they did when
the saloons were in the same rooms"
and he tells of children in the mining
regions of West Virginia who for the
first time are wearing shoes. Cloth
ing for the family is being purchased
in place of liquor.
Nor is Mr.. Blue the only official of
West Virginia who finds that the Yost
law has been an immense benefit to
the state. The testimony of Stuart
F. Reed, secretary of state Of West
Virginia, given in addresses in the
state of Ohio, enumerated the benefits
accorded to his state because of the
prohibition law. He said:
WEST Virginia has $4,000 men en-
ployel Iii 32o mines. The mine oper-
ators were the most pesslmistic re-
garding the results of statewide pro-
hibition, but after two years trial
they find the miners twenty-five pei.
cent more efficient and with immense
ly better conditions surrounding
them.
when the saloon in the mining
town made it easier for men to obtain
liquor it was necessary to have man
at the entrance of the shaft to see if
he could detect liquor on the breath
of the men who were entrusted with
the dangerous work. You remember,
as all West Virginia remembers,
few years ago, how man under the
influence of liquor went down into
shaft and ignited the deadly gases,
and the result was loss of one hun
dred and eighty lives and of mine
valued at million dollars.
Children Comfortably Clothed.
"This is one of the economic phases
of the prohibition movement, but the
humanitarians see with qualification
children of miners going to school
well shod and comfortably dressed.
They see money that went to the sa-
loon going to the grocery store and
they see men who went around rag
ged and tattered going about in real
clothes now"
West Virginia citizens are already
SO well pleased with their prohibition
experiment that they are urging other
states to follow their example. A
resident of Bluefeld, West Virginia,
Fl. B. Lee, writes to his brother in the
state of Ohio as to his satisfaction
with the statewide prohibitory law.
Concerning improved conditions in his
home city of Bluefield, he says:
This city is peculiarly situated. 1t
has population of about $4,000 and
is IN the extreme southern part of the
state, lying directly on the Virginia
West Virginia border, with the town
of Graham on the Virginia side and
the town of Pocahontas, Va, with
about twenty saloons, less than ten
miles away. Moreover this city of
Blueaeld is railroad center, and the
shipping point for the great Poca-
hontas coal fields.
The Law Well Enforced.
1--WE have had saloons for about
twenty years, and many people have
come to believe that the city and bus
mess could not survive the abolition
of the liquor traffic. Others predicted
and believed that the sale of liquor
in the state could not be prevented.
The state has now been dry for three
months, and there is not a law on our