The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-08-04
PROHIBITION.

The presence here of Mrs. Hatcher the prohibition evangelist directs again attention to this movement A significant phase of it is that the women have been it's most ardent supporters, although we believe when the vote was taken in Nome as to whether or not the town would have saloons, the vote that saved. the boozeries was the wom- ems vote
 The Industrial Worker is opposed to the saloon not with any object of saving mems souls. We don't care a rap about that phantom, but because drink has time and time again interfered with the labor movement. It has lost strikes, and been again and again the medium through which the bosses made to- lerable conditions that would other wise be considerable.
 Just as the capitalist politician shoots few jolts of hootch into the victims of his eloquence, and makes him his supporter, so also again and again has the saloon recruited men for scab camps and been the means of perpetuating industrial slavery on that account.
 Our opposition to the saloon is based upon purely material reasons. There is nothing sentimental or spi- ritual about it. We know that the man with a clear head and the steady hand is the man above all others who is a necessity to the labor movement. and the man who is stewed half the time is good to neither himself nor his fellow man.
 It is with some very great inter- est that we read wherein recently has been formed aN organization named the Trade Union League for Liberty. This bases it's existence upon the fact that by the inception of prohibition many workers who are union men have lost their jobs. We believe that is quite true. lr fact the brewery workers have been hard hit wherever prohibition showed it's head, and union bar tenders also have felt the pinch of unemployment.
 But these things form no very sound argument against prohibition. Take a great improvement in indus trial appliances-these things take the place of the skilled craftsman, and one machine does what four or what twenty-four did before. Yet it would be absurd to denounce the use of these improvements In technical equipment for they are part of industrial progress.
 No prohibition movement has thrown as many men out of work as have technical improvements and vet it would be considered quite out of place to insist upon abandon ing those improvements in order that the men would not lose their jobs.
 The liberty to have a glass of beer is all right and very real. But un- fortunately also it means also the liberty to take several glasses of beer until one becomes nothing bu' a social menace, a social pest and a social nuisance.
 We have never yet heard man say good word for the saloon with any reason. We know that there are laws and ordinances preventing saloons supplying men with drink to an intoxicating extent, yet day after day we see the jags brought up be- fore the judges and fined. Whoever heard of the judge turning these soaks loose and telling the cops to discover the booze man who sold the liquor to the intoxicated ones and have him Up for violating the ordinance? Never that we recall. Time and again the miner who wanders to town and who under the privilege of that extent of personal liberty which he enjoys, gets drunk, is haled before the court to be fined thirty five or whereabouts.
 Did you ever hear of a saloonman kicking because the victim of his bottled jag caused the miner to lose his freedom to the police. And it is queer sort of joke to uphold