The Alaska citizen., 1916-07-17
BY ThE REV. G. G. BRUCE.


 not come out again to expose others. i If our Personal Liberty" man owns fine lot in the city and wants to erect a building for which he can and will pay. he must get a permit to build on his own lot and if he builds wooden structure in the and fine or Imprisonment. And { don't suppose our man who doesn't want to be good by law" would want the authorities 10 prevent his neighbor from exercising his Per sonal Liberty" by burning up his l Che neighbor's) house, even if Ii might set fire to our mans" prop erty. and so on. ad infinitum.
 am for Prohibition for the kid dies sake am for Prohibition because the age-old question. Am l my brothers keeper9" should eve, te answered in the affirmative. | am willing to forego a privilege IT the exercise of that privilege would injure others. am proud to be ProhibitiOnist. like the friends of Total Abstinence"-its victims suf- fer less thar do its enemies out. casts. Prohibition does not mean stopping the men from drinking but rather, preventing the youth from starting. After Prohibition laws are passed 1t will take years to secure dry" officials to enforce them, because the liquor element admit that they will continue to break the law, and thereby stamp themselves as "lawless."
 Our fearless champion of the sa- loon says much of Liberty" How much liberty has the poor wretch who Is a slave to drink? How much | coholic parents with a lifetime of disease before it because the parents exercised their Personal Liberty?"
 If there is any thing 'un-Ameri- can" in striving for the divine right of the children to be well born, to have sober parents, and clean moral ly healthful environment in which to develop. then something must be | wrong with my conception of Am erica.
 IL seems necessary to remind Doc l tor Roberts that "one mans liberty | ends where the other mans begins" and while he doesn't want to be virtuous 'by law" still we, the | people" have a perfect right to re- strain him from thrusting the re suits of his actions on us, when such results are inimical to the wei fare and prosperity (not to men tion again the Liberty" of the com- | nunity. But enough.
 Prohibitionists are human beings and subject to the Law of Averages, and as such are just as honest just as sincere, and just as capable of thought as their opponents, and with just as high motives urging l them onward.
 SAMPLES TESTIMONY (The editor of the Seattle Times, Maj c. B, Blethen, interviewed at the Coates House gave the follow | ing to the Kansas City Times). | My paper fought it's damnedest against prohibition. We fought it on economic grounds alone We be- lieved that in seaport city with population of upwards of 300,000 would bring on economic disaster. We believed that under our system of licensed saloons we had the liquor traffic about as well controlled as it could be and we wanted to let 1t alone, and so we fought as hard as we could against it. Prohibition Washington January l. We have had month of it now, And how has it worked out?
 1 We already know that it is great benefit, morally and from an economic standpoint. Its moral bene fit has been tremendous. Seattle had 260 saloons and we had an average ol 2,600 arrests month for crimes and misdemeanors growing out of liquor drinking. In January We had only 400 arrests and 60 of 1 those were made January l and were the results of hangovers from the old year That in itself is enough to convince any man with a con science that prohibition is neces- sary There can be no true economy in anything that is immoral. And on top of that great moral result, we have these economic facts: In the first three weeks of January the saving deposits in the banks of Seattle increased Is per cent There was not grocery store in Seattle that did not show an increase of business in January greater than ever known in any month before in all the history of the city, except in holiday time. In all the large grocery stores the in crease was immense In addition to this every dry goods store in