The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1921-11-02
PROHIBITToN-WHY IT CAME
From The Commercial.Appeal.

sixteenth century that distilled liquor
became beverage Of any Importance.
The general manufacture Of distilled
spirits-rum and gin, usually-coin-
cided with the great maritime dis
coveries and the opening of ocean
trade. The commerce in spirits was
born about the same time as the slave
trade, and the two curses grew up
together. Many Bostonese fortune
today reaches back to the triangular
transactions by which New England
cod went TO the West Indies to be ex-
changed for rum, which was exchang-
ed for negroes on the Guinea coast
and back again. There were no cross
freight in that traflic--every mile
sailed earned profits
But still the traffic in distilled
spirits did not greatly affect the mass
of the white race. In Europe the
peasant could not raise enough grain
to pay his rack rents, to keep UP the
landlords and the armies, and have
any left for distilling. Here and
there he got little sour wine along
the Mediterranean, or made a little
ale in Northern Europe-but Natures
memorable Ia per cent limit on fer
mentation kept him from the worst
form of alcoholic degeneracy.
1t was in America that the COM
mon mantle backbone Of the race
first came in contact with plenty of
land and crops which sprang up in
such abundance that food was no
longer a serious question. And it was
here that men, armed with the
knowledge of distillation, had plenty
of grain to distill.
The result was that in America
drunkenness first reaehed the pro-
portions Of menace that threatened
racial degeneration and death.
Thomas Jefferson and other states |
men recognized it over century ago.
BY 1881 the temperance movement
was started. About this period sugar
came into general use and displaced
any dietary use that alcohol may have
ever had.
From that time on the prohibition
in America followed a |
logical course occasionally losing
ground, but on the whole advancing
to meet the growing scourge.
For time the distilled liquor men,
ace was alleviated by the invention of
artificial refrigeration in the fifties.
This made large scale brewing pos
sibility, and the development of the
brewing industry was one Of the mir
acles of the nineteenth century, but /
it brought with it train Of evils !
scarcely less formidable than distilled |
after brief period the |
of distilled liquor resum-
ed its terrifying increase, despite the
growth of the beer trade.
Beer as a check to alcoholism PROV /
ed a failure as early as 1896. The |
Internal Revenue figures show this
clearly.
While this history was being en-
acted in America, Europe had be-
come industrial and capitalistic. Men
were massed off Of the manors into
the cities. The hardy, sober peasant
stock, which had not been exposed to
the liquor menace was suddenly con-
fronted with huge floods of distilled
grain liquors and gin from the cane
Of the tropics,
Even in the time Of the Wesley
brothers in Britain, drunkenness was
to excite protest. By 1885
the British government sought to
,heck the racial degeneracy from
drunk for a penny" gin, by tighten
ing the beer tax. That proved a
failure. Europe began to swim in
1ooze, and by 19l4-the year of the ;
continent was described by $
impartial scientists as alcohol sick" :
Under the baleful glare of the bat
lie fronts, the wreckage wrought by
)ooze became apparent, and every t
government, in self-defense, clamped '
m the lid to some extent. S
Since the war the movement to n
.rohibit the poison has grown in pow S
II and although there have been back a
yard steps in France and Britain, the
ightening up movement has so alarm h
ID the alcohol trade that it is now q
olming an international alliance to :
ght prohibition. That is probably n
he sign of its early end. 4
When booze began TO organize in 4
america, booze began to die. $
g