The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1928-12-01

$50 far automobile accidents are due to chance
alone they increase in faster ratio than the in
crease in cars; for example, when the cars in COM
munity are increased three times in number, the
number Of times two cars pass each other is in
creased nine times. Of course, the human element
enters, SO that increased danger Is offset among
sober drivers by increased skill and caution. It is
the moderate drinking driver who takes the
chances"
While deaths from automobile accidents are de-
creasng relatively in Connecticut, they rising in
Ontario, Canada. The book quotes c. S. Henry, Min
lister OF Highways of Ontario the record of that
province for 1927 saying: Reckless driving con-
victions increased from 1890 to $780, and driving
while drunk, from 277 to 480" J. E. Hetherngton
is reported in an address at the Century Club of To-
ronto as saying: IF you would abolish accidents,
then you should abolish Government Control Acct
dents due to drunkenness have increased tenfold
since Government Control was introduced"
ENFORCEMENT OF PRIVATE PROHIBITION
In the concluding chapter the authors comment
on the attitude of employers in enforcing private
prohibition, as follows:
I'm recent years employers liability laws have
been placed on the statute books of most of the
States of the Union. The situation has brought
about more absolute form of prohibition privately
enforced, than that embodied in the Eighteenth
Amendment or the Vostead Act. Yet, no voice save
that of the licensed liquor traffic has been raised in
protest against it, Private prohibition restricts the
personal liberty to drink of countless thousands.
The champions of personal liberty on the side of
wetneSS and defiance of public prohbition-Gover-
Alfred E. Smith, John j. RaSkob, Clarence Dar-
row. Nicholas Murray Butler, and Mr.. duPont-face
the practice Of private prohibition enforced under
penalty of loss of livelihood with explicit or silent
assent.
THAT the brewers did protest, systematically and
by methods that fair and foul is manifest from
the record of the Senate hearings of 1918. Along
with the KeSSler report dupont prohibition in the
dupont works, there submitted at those hearings
evidence that the brewers had blacksted some fifty
corporations In the List of Firms Who Are I'm
friendly to Our Interests, taken from the files of
the United States Brewers Association stand the
names of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the
United States Steel Corporation the Western Union
Telegraph Company, the Goodrich and Goodyear
Rubber Companies, the Carnegie Steel Company, the
Pittsburgh Steel and Coal Companies the SherWin-
Williams Paint Company and individual firms like
that OF John Wanamaker who defed the brewers to
do their worst. Many heads Of these and other COM
panies who today oppose the wet program of Gov
ernor Smith and his candidacy are reluctant to go
back to any form of licensing the liquor traffic which
boycotted them during the great war.
RAILROAD VS.. AUTO
"The reasons for government prohibition are
summed up adIniniStratively by Robbins StoeckeI
Commissioner of Motor Vehicles of Connecticut
when he says that the driver who is quite drunk is
usually not dangerous because he is so easily de-
tected or incapacitated but that the really danger
driver is the who has had one or two drinks
only who still thinks he is in possession of his facu
ties but whose driving Judgment has been impaired
moderate drink, slight SWerve in the wrong d-
rection colliding with any one of the twentythr
million motor vehicles that crowd the nations high
ways may result fatally.
"If the Pennsylvania Railroad can arrogate to it
self the right to forbid its locomotive engineers to
drink drop, when off duty, may not the Amer
lean people, through it's legally authorized repre-
SentatveS forbid all automobile drivers to do the
has steel track to steer his course for him. and the
train he passes has another. But lie who drives an