The Alaska daily empire., 1922-01-13
The Fight Against Prohibition.
(New York Evening Post.)

(New York Evening Post.)
 Nine deaths from wood alcohol poisoning thus far during the holiday season are an indication the heavy price which is being paid in this community by violators of the Prohibition Law. Persons who wish drink faced by what ought to be sobering dilemma either they must pay staggering prices for liquor of quality they must take the chance of swallowing bootleg 'Npoison. Some of them choose one these forbidding alternatives; some choose the other. Those intrused with the enforce ment of the law have the task of keeping illegal bev erages of the hands of either of these classes That is, they have to combat both smuggling and do nestle manufacture. Huge quantities of liquor are intercepted, but quantities huge admittedly The seizure of thirty complete sets of forged with drawal permits for liquor in bond each calling for a minimum of 1000 of whiskey, the total having
 value of $2,o00,000, is pointed to by officials them selves less triumph of law enforcement than sign of the extent of the illegal traffic
 Violation of law this scale Is not individual but organized. is nothing short of vast business The Government is engaged not in experimenting person group of persons here and there but in expressing profitable industry, profitable that officials themselves occasionally take advantage Of their position to conspire with those whom they sworn to deliver to justice. How shall this deter mined opposition to the law be met? If it eral, if it nation wide. it could be in only one way-by repeal of the fouted law But it is not general. All this tremendous machinery for making smuggling and delivering liquor exists for a few spots the map New York, Chicago, San Fran cisco, Boston-paces like these wet they dare to be- But the great stretches country in which the mass of people live know of the spectacular
 
 know of any other distant event Over most of the country Prohibition is commonplace fact. Not all New Workers are yet aware that the United States did not go dry all at once. It had been going dry fer generation before the Eighteenth Amendment completed the movement. The spirit of violation which is so conspicuous in few centers like New York is absent from the rest of the country.
 Hcw, then, shall the determined opposition to Prohibition in these places be met? By opposition as determined Bootleggers will have to be convinced that the law is energetic and persistent they Every fresh tightening of the net increases the like
 hood that such liquor is offered sale deadly stuff. This incidental consequence of enforcement will tend to diminish the zeal of drinkers who value liquor above life. The chief reliance however must rest upon the Encouragement illegal opera tions which inheres in fines and jail sentences. It must be made more and more difficult and dangerous to make smuggle liquor. To suppose that in fight to finish the Government will be defeated and the bootleggers be triumphant is absurd. The only possibility of such result lies in abandonment the fight by the Government The officials have an ad- vantage in the very fact that the illegal traffic is localized It is matter of plugging up a few holes one or two of which inconveniently large When the booteggers realize, they must in tme that the Government is sernly in they are and that it proposes to fight until there nothing more to light about, their courage will begin to away