New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1914-07-01


Whatever the cost, it may be too much
Let the moralists attend to that phase o
the question. Fidelity to fact, however
demands that we charge up nineteenth
of that two billions annually to tn,
account that absorbs the dollars and moi
to the drink addiction. Drinkers pay it
doubtless, but not for drink. They pa,
!. it in order to overcome the obstacles that
stand between them and qualification 8
!, desire.
Strictly speaking, if strictly speaking
be not barred, most of those two billion.
are blackmail, levied under the guiseqo
benevolence. He'll is paved with tn,
material of just benevolence. The in
tention may be good, but this may alst
be said of that animating the kindly
chap who threw his drowning friend 6
crowbar.
Where strong drinks are free from
adulteration and from the enhancement
in price due to meddlesome restrictions
the effects would not justify the lurid
diatribes of the Prohibitionist. One
rarely sees a resident of the wine growing
regions Of France who drinks to excess.
Treating A Good Thing Per-
verted =
AS for the treating" habit: it has
met with an altogether undeserved
measure Of detractjon. Treating" is a
fine manifestation of neighborliness,
hospitality, generosity, good-fellow-
ship. That evils have grown out of
such expressions Of goodwill is not at all
due to the animating motive. Such
s'evils'' are obtruded upon good-fellow-
ship because governmentally perverted
processes have forced generous impulse
into dangerous channels. Were there no
far more serious Indictment against
reliance upon Caesar, this alone were
sufficient to condemn our blind idolatry.
To turn friendliness from its natural
current into a slough of debauchery and
debasement is natural effect of the
superstition that obsesses the mass of
contemporaneous mankind.
Were whisky as cheap as buttermilk
and were drinking places not fostered by
the very processes designed to curb them,
treating would still persist, but would
find more wholesome expression.
Prohibitionists profess to find that the
drink habit is cause of poverty. Others
that poverty causes the habit. Only
empiricists divide on this phase of the
issue. It is mark of superfciality to
look for various causes for involuntary
poverty. There is but one. It can be
found in the primitive difference we pay
to land titles. That, of course, is not
within the scope of the present discussion.
Nor shall l consider here the argu-
ments for or against the propriety of in
Guiding wines and beers within the general
objurgation heaped upon stronger spiritu-
Gus drinks. For the sake of brevity4I
confine myself to saying that if there are
no restrictions and no inducements to-
adulterate them, they are better if other
wise good, and not so bad if otherwise
blameworthy.
What I have here set forth is sufficient
to condemn me, off-hand, in the eyes of
any Prohibitionist as a debauchee. a
drunkard, and an enemy of society,""
Yet I am free of the drink habit and have
a decided preference for associating with
temperate and intelligent people; especial
ly with such as are free from the intem-
perance of meddlesomeness.
Governmental activities have done
more than all else to produce the deplor-'
able conditions under consideration.
The Cure More Liberty
What then, is to be done? Nothing.
We must quit doing as we have been
doing. And thus give, normality it's
opportunity. Macaulay tells us that
the so-called "evils of liberty are merely
evidences that there has not been liberty
enough. Liberty is the freedom of each
person to do whatever he will at his own
cost. Nor is, ''at his own COST limi-
tation upon liberty. It is of the essence
Of liberty. For who so does anything at
another's cost is not exercising liberty but
violating it.
The abstraction we call the State,
exercising sovereignty over subject class
and this is as true Of democracy as in in
monarchy or autocracy, has in all ages
sought to mold, curb, or stife desire.
Every page Of history teens with in
stances. Failures all! Surely in an
array so multitudinous we should find a
single record of success. We look for it
in vain. Yet always this infatuation
persists that what has always baffled
Il 4. e. .