The Carlisle independent., 1920-07-01
PROHIBITIONS TEST
Normal Conditions Needed to Draw
 Final Conclusions

l 615,000,000; Scotland, $180,0O0, ,000. and Ireland, $13O,000.000. Per capita, the drink bill for 1919 was about $45 for England and Wales. $3S for Scot land and S31 for Ireland.
 Booze is and has been cheaper in Europe than America.
 Before prohibition went into effect in this country our expenditure for liquor approximated $2,500, 100000 annually, or about S25 per capita. In 1918 the American consumption per annum per capita was 1.12 gallons of distilled .29 of a gallon of wines and 14.59 gallons of malt liquors.
 It would appear that 10 years of prohibition would effect a saving in the United States equal to all our monetary expenditures in the world war and our loans to the allies includ- ed. There are offsets, however. One Is the very large increase in the con- sumption of sweets. Men accustomed to liquor.o tobacco become eaters of candy. although previously they had no use for candies. That is one ex- planation of the pronounced increase in the candy business in this country.
 There is nothing peculiar in this turn to candy. Sugar is stimulant. A person accustomed to alcoholic stimulation and suddenly deprived of liquor craves substitute and suffers in nerve or body until he gets it. Can dy does not satisfy the alcoholic ad- dict, but it helps him trife, of rather soothes him a trifie, for candy, unless eaten in modification, plays the deuce with the teeth and some of the parts of the human machine.
 It is too early to obtain solid facts on which to base judgment as to the effect prohibition has had upon the worker. The confident prediction of prohibition advocates was that the production of the worker would be increased. Production has not been increased, but this can be attributed to the unsettlement attendant upon such a convuision as the world war. There has been the same epidemic of strikes and the same general unrest in labor circles in Great Britian. France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and other European countries that are wet as in America, where 1t is dry, and fully as much if not more of de- cline in production per man. There has been the same extravagant spend ing by labor and the same insistent demand for higher and higher wages.
 Until conditions become approxi- mately normal it, therefore, will be impossible to judge accurately prohi- bition in its economic phase.
 One thing made clear, however, is that prohibition advocates and liquor people were both wrong in their prog nostications. The drys predicted a and a great improvement, in home con- much increased production by labor ditions. The vets predicted labor would not tolerate without violent protest such an invasion of it's lib critics as to deny it the right to drink or not to drink, as the individual pleased. There has been no increase in labor's output and there has been no wild protest from labor for repeal of the prohibitory amendment In fact a questionnaire addressed to labor leaders brought more replies favora- bic to prohibition than to liquor, but the majority of the answers were rather noncommittal.
 An odd sidelight on the whole ques- tion is that in Puritan New England there IS a more pronounced demand for repeal of the prohibitory amend ment, or rather for the right to have liquor, than is manifested in any other part of the country In many towns in that section of the country the vets have triumphed in recent local cleo tions for the first time in many years. At the same time there is evidence that in the British Isles the action of the United States in banning John Barleycorn has made a profound i'm pression. This fall throughout Scot land the people are to have local op- tion elections. A dry Scotland would be startling.
 From moral viewpoint prohibition seems to have scored heavily. There has been remarkable decline in the number of arrests for minor infrac- tions of the law The police stations, which formerly were overcrowded on Saturday nights with ''drunks" and "disorderlies,' are doing little busi- ness now. The number of cases be- fore the domestic relations courts, too, has slumped. There has been in various cities an incroaea in c1.ipoac of