The Maui news. [volume] (Wailuku, Maui, H.I.) 1900-current, 1921-08-12
PROHIBITION ENFORCEMENT

Honolulans may expect to have a taste of prohibition enforce
ment if it be possible to enforce prohibition. The dry period may
not be a protracted one, but for a time, at least, it promises to be diff
ficut for seekers after "hard stuff to have their orders filled. Pub
lie sentiment is to be aroused in favor of enforcement and a strenu-
Gus publicity campaign is to be conducted, and the incentive is one
of the most powerful that could come to such a community as Homo
lulu, an appeal from the army head of the department.
1t is not necessary, generally, for the army to make more than
q reouest for Al alteration of conditions in Honolulu. demands or
threats are not usually awaited. There are some $4,000 soldiers on
Oahu, with a monthly payroll that mounts high. Honolulu business
men recognize that if the department commander considers condi-
tons in Honolulu dangerous to the health of the men under his COM
mand he can keep those $4,000 men on the military reservations until
sucb time a the laws or military requirements hall be enforced or
recognized. Facing a monthly loss of business of hundreds of thou
sands of dollars in such an event, the business men of the community
sit up promptly and take notice when IN appeal or request comes
from the army. Such a state of affairs is not peculiar to Honolulu
ii tt is found in any city contiguous to a large army post.
Even a remote possibility of losing, even for a period of a few
weeks, such a large and important business revenue as the sol
diers furnish is appalling to the retail business houses, and the fear
their clerks, to the banks, to the restaurants, to the hotels, to the
taxi drivers, spreads throughout the city. 1t is such an arousing
that Honolulu now faces. When tolerance of law breaking. even if
the law be an unpopular one, means loss of business to the store
keeper, possible loss of position or curtailment of salary to the en-
ployees. then they forthwith become ardent advocates of law en-.
forcement. The business community has then been touched at its
heart. 1t cannot be conceived that Honolulans have not known the
volstead Act has not been enforced with anv degree of yigor: it has
been there, as in many other communities, that the residents did not
particularly care to have it enforced. 1t was not that they were less
law-abidng than residents of other places, but that enforcement was
less convenient than letting things slide. Now a different aspect has
been put upon it and the city wakes up.
At a conference in his office, Governor Harrington suggested a
campaign of publicity, and it has been started by the newspapers
The Governor believes publicity is one of the strongest weapons that
known that much of the okoehao that has been sold was rank poison
that some of it was conducive to blindness, some to insanity and some
to other disorders. Mere repetition of that would not rouse the COM
munity, change the members into prohibitionists and abstainers. 1t
takes something more than the probability of those foolish enough
to drink the stuff suffering serious consequences. The dread of the.
appeal being made a demand by the army is the inspiration needed
to bring home recognition Of necessity for action.
1t may not be pleasant to think that ones community is indif
ferent to law enforcement. 1t may not be selfsatisfying to recog-
nze that oneself and his ~neighbors are permitting stuff to be sold
practically openly that may blind or craze some poor unfortunates
But it takes more than ethics, more than talks n morality to bring
action to replace inaction. Only through the arousing of the COM
munity can law enforcement be secured, and it is because a large
nar Of III DOnulatjOn has nj yantad tha law onfOrca6 to tbiro un
Inconvenience and a still larger proportion are more or less indif-
ferent that the Vostead law has become more noted for the viola
tons of it than for it's enforcement.