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otherwise, doubtless here and there see a good deal of "hootch." Of course the cartoonists seize upon the subject as one furnishing a rich vein for their pleasantries. We believe, however, that the sober facts show a very remarkable indication on the part of the people at large to respect law and a remarkable improvement in the conditions of crime and disease which, as physicians and scientists have always known, result from the indiscriminate use of alcohol. It is extraordinary how even in the big cities, which might have been expected to rebel with violence against prohibition, the mass of the population have accepted the new conditions. Open saloons have practically vanished from cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. The alcoholic wards of the city hospitals show a great reduction in both emergency cases and chronic patients suffering from alcoholism and its attending diseases. In the recent terrific hot spell in New York City the heat prostrations were almost nil, whereas in the days of the corner saloon the hospitals kept the ice-pack going day and night for patients overcome by the heat on the street.

A fair-minded man will not say that the millennium has come because of the Eighteenth Amendment. But it provides an opportunity for an extremely interesting and probably valuable experiment in the progress of civilization. If the experiment is going to be a success, the home-brew saucepanites cannot stop it. It is the duty of the Government vigorously and rigorously to punish and prevent the manufacture and importation for sale of alcoholic beverages. This work, if honestly carried on, will give the Government all it can do, and it can afford to ignore the saucepanites so long as they do not commit crime or indulge in disorder.

HENRY FORD AS A
RAILWAY MAN

YEAR ago Henry Ford purchased the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton Railroad. He paid sixty cents on the dollar for the road's bonds, five cents on the dollar for its preferred stock, and one cent on the dollar for its common stock, and the owners of the road were glad to turn it over to him at this price. Professor Hoagland, of Ohio State University, gives the facts of this purchase and a summary of the condition of the road at the time of its purchase in a recent issue of the New York "Times." He also reports concerning the development work carried on by Henry Ford and his associates since the road came into their hands.

It appears that when Henry Ford bought the road it had a history liberally sprinkled with a succession of receiverships and reorganizations. The

last reorganization took place in 1914, and at, this time the bondholders turned into the treasury of the company almost as much money as they received from Mr. Ford. In the year of this reorganization the road spent for operation and maintenance more than half as much again as it earned. According to Professor Hoagland, Mr. Ford has completely reorganized the personnel of his company, has placed the road on an eight-hour basis, has filed an application with the Inter-State Commerce Commission calling for a flat decrease of twenty per cent on all rates local to its lines, has put new capital into equipment and laid down heavier rails and better ballasted roadbed.

Mr. Ford has cut the force of railway employees from 2,700 to 1,650, in the face of more traffic than the road has ever handled before. He has materially reduced the number of damage claims, has cut the expenses for clearing wreckage in half, the fuel bills for yard locomotives by one-third, and has established a ratio between the money received for revenue and the cost of operation and maintenance of 100 to 53.

Railway men have not been slow to point out that Henry Ford's experiment is by no means proof that similar methods and similar management applied to the great railways of the country would be similarly effective. They have pointed out the fact that Henry Ford himself is in a position to give his new railway some $2,000,000 freight revenue every year, and that his road by a judicious transfer of this traffic to other lines is in a position to invite, if not to compel, the routing of traffic of an equal amount over its line, which might possibly otherwise have been sent elsewhere. Of course such a "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" policy has not been unknown in American railway practice prior to the advent of Henry Ford.

The success of Henry Ford in taking a desperately sick road and infusing it with the blood of new capital and new energy to the advantage of the public and his own pocket-book proves that the Detroit wizard has lost nothing of that shrewd imagination and vision which have raised him financially from the status of a mechanic to a multi-millionaire within the space of less than three decades. Henry Ford's financial vision may be defined as the power to see big things simply. It is a power which he has applied with astounding success within that narrow field of intellectual endeavor limited by his experience.

IRELAND'S FUTURE

T

HE whole Irish situation is full of anomalies. The most striking is the dual government in Southern Ireland-one existing by British authority and with British police and army behind it, the other the secretly organized Irish Republic, with a President, an army that boasts in its favorite song that "Active Service Means Being on the Run," and a Parliament, the Dail Eireann, issuing edicts from furtive meetings. To-day, however, the Dail Eireann is in open session in Dublin, its main purpose to consider and act upon the terms of peace proposed by Lloyd George for the British Government. Whatever results from the negotiations, it is evident that the Sinn Fein will claim it has at least been recognized as an organized belligerent, while heretofore it has been treated as a band of murderous conspirators.

On both sides it is constantly said that if negotiations fail the war will be resumed. If what has gone on in Ireland the past year or two is war, it is a new kind. The revolutionists have no forces in the field. Since the organized outbreak of April, 1916, in Dublin, the only act which may be regarded as open warfare was the attack on the Dublin Custom House last June. Even the phrase guerrilla warfare does not describe the facts. On the Sinn Fein side there have been innumerable assassinations, burning of houses and kidnappings; on the British side there have been thousands of arrests, the killing of those who resisted arrest, and some unauthorized reprisals by armed constabulary whose comrades had been shot from ambush. If this is the kind of war that is to be resumed, the prospects of self-government in Ireland are dark. But it may fairly be hoped that the present effort to substitute reason for violence, even though it fails for the time, may make the anarchy of the recent past an impossibility for the future.

Ulster as the point of disagreement still looms in the discussion. This takes the debate back to the point reached just before the Great War broke out-Ulster refusing to be included in the Home Rule scheme for all Ireland, Southern Ireland insisting that Ulster should be included, willingly or not. The other day Mr. De Valera said that there was no Ireland mentioned in Lloyd George's terms, "only two broken pieces of Ireland." Yet there still remains hope that the Dail Eireann may consent to a dual dominion plan, relying on General Smuts's faith that in the end Ulster would find a way to accept the idea of a United Ireland. The threats of economic pressure amounting to a boy.

cott against Ulster products by Southern Ireland are, however, injuring the chances of a solution of the Ulster difficulty.

Lloyd George's declaration before Parliament that the concessions offered by him to the Sinn Fein leaders were liberal to the possible limit was firm and clear. The next move, as we write, is with the Dail Eireann and Mr. DeValera. The latter at present seems to be laying stress on his assertion that the Dominion proposed would be less free and

Yet

independent than that of Canada or Australia. General Smuts thinks differently. In one speech De Valera declared, "We cannot, we will not, on behalf of this people accept these terms." other of his utterances indicate a hope that something may be found less than absolute independence or acknowledged right to secede on Ireland's part, which may insure what he described as an opportunity for the Irish people "of working out for themselves their own national life in their own way."

When we consider how enormously more liberal are the concessions now offered to Irish national sentiment than those contained in Mr. Gladstone's two Home Rule bills of 1886 and 1893, it seems deplorable that the great Liberal statesman could not then convince Parliament of the need of some recognition of the Irish ideal of "Ireland for the Irish." A little spirit of concession and mutual friendliness at that time might have saved long years of bitterness and bloodshed.

T

HIS morning I read in "Prayers of the Ages" the following prayer to Jupiter, said to have been written by Cleanthes about 210 B.C.:

"O Thou who hast many names, but whose power is infinite and uncommunicated! O Jupiter, first of immortals, sovereign of nature, who governest all, who subjectest all to thy law, I worship thee; for man is permitted to invoke thee. Everything that lives or creeps, everything mortal on earth is from thee, and of thee but an imperfect image. I will address to thee my hymns, and will never cease to celebrate thee.

"This universe expanded over our heads, and which seems to roll around the earth, is obedient to thee alone; and at thy command are its motions in si lence performed. Thunder, the executioner of thy will, is launched by thy invincible arm. Endowed with immortal life, it strikes, and nature is appalled. "Thou directest the universal mind that animates the whole, and that exists in all thy creatures; so unlimited and supreme is thy power, O king! Nothing in heaven, on the earth, or in the sea, is produced without thee, except the evil that proceeds from the heart of the wicked.

"Thou bringest order out of confusion, and by thee is the jarring of the ele

KNOLL PAPERS

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

TWO PRAYERS

ments composed. Thou hast so mingled good and evil, that general and universal harmony is established. The wicked alone, amongst all thy creatures, disturb this general harmony.

"O God! from whom all blessings descend, whom the storm and the thunder obey, preserve us from error; deign to inform our minds; attach us to that eternal reason by which thou art guided and supported in the government of the world; that being ourselves honored we may also honor thee, as becomes feeble and mortal beings, by celebrating thy works in an uninterrupted hymn; for neither the inhabitant of earth nor the inhabitant of heaven can be engaged in a service more noble than that of celebrating the divine mind which presides over Nature."

I asked myself could any prayer surpass this pagan prayer in its expression of reverence for the Great God, sovereign of nature, who has many names, but whose power is infinite and uncommunicated. Then I turned to that prayer with which we are so familiar that its inner meaning is often lost to us: "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily

bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

The pagan reveres the power and wisdom of the Creator and Ruler of the universe and confesses the littleness and meanness of human ambitions contrasted with the life of Him who brings order out of confusion. The Christian also reveres the Great King and consecrates himself to a service with the Great King in this work of bringing order out of confusion upon the earth. And then he nestles into the arms of a providing, pardoning, and protecting Father.

The difference between paganism and Christianity is not a difference of names and titles, nor a difference of creeds and rituals. It is not that the pagan calls God Brahm and the Christian calls him God, nor that the pagan worships in a temple with sacrifices and the Christian worships in a church with prayers and hymns. The difference is one between stages of spiritual development. Paganism reveres the unknown Ruler of the universe; the Christian reveres a heavenly Father, his constant Companion, his nearest, dearest, and best-known Friend. Paganism is the outer court of the temple; Christianity is the Holy of Holies in the same temple.

THE ARMS CONFERENCE AT WASHINGTON

N 1920 William Edgar Borah, United States Senator from Idaho, offered a

dent to begin negotiations looking to a disarmament parley.

In May and June of the present year the Senate and House passed the resolution. In

July President Harding approached Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan with a view to holding a conference to consider the limitation of armaments and issues relating to the

A POLL OF THE PRESS Pacific Ocean. This addition of the problems of the Pacific went beyond the purview of the Borah resolution, as did the inclusion of other countries than Great Britain and Japan in the President's invitation. Mr. Borah's reported manifestation of displeasure was thus treated by the St. Paul "Pioneer Press:"

Clearly, what Senator Borah wants to do is to tackle the symptoms without bothering with the disease. He wants to quash the effects without removing the cause. . . . But the fact

is that the linking of disarmament with the unsettled problems of the Pacific was a statesmanlike conception. For those problems are the key to the whole situation. . . . Japan, once the questions in dispute between her and the United States are settled, can abate her naval burdens, as it is this country alone that she fears. And the United States, keeping remote from European bickerings, and on terms of friendship and mutual confidence with Great Britain and France, and with no policies in the Pacific and the Far East not sus

ceptible to satisfactory adjustment, needs only to convince Japan thereof to modify its own naval programme. In August the President sent formal invitations to the above nations and to China asking them to meet in Washington on November 11, Armistice Day.

JAPANESE OPINION

From no nation was the answer more anxiously awaited than from Japan, and Japan was the one country to send a qualified acceptance. This attitude was not unnatural: The Kobe "Japan Chronicle," doubtless thinking of Yap and Shantung, somewhat acidly said that the Pacific has "received rather more attention of late than it deserves." An additional irritation was found in the fact that the American Government invited China to take part in the Arms Conference. Japan insisted upon excluding from the Conference certain "alleged accomplished facts." According to the Tokyo "Asahi Shimbun" (the Morning Sun), twenty-one topics, including Yap, Shantung, and Siberia, would be excluded by Japan from the Conference on this ground. The Tokyo "Nichi Nichi" (The Daily) declared that "peace and prosperity form the world's ideal" and that "reduction of armaments must be the first step to attain this purpose." "The demand of the people grows continually for relief from the burden of armament," according to the Osaka "Asahi Shimbun." The Tokyo "Jiji Shimpo" (Current Problems) declares that "the intelligent elements of Japan are sincerely anxious that the object of limitation of armaments be attained," at the same time warning the disarmament leaders that "they must also pay close attention to the manner of controlling the movement lest they be suspected of some ulterior motive."

The influence of the "intelligent elements" to which "Jiji" refers was recognized by the two principal political parties in appointing committees to investigate the reduction of armament expenditures. Even more significant is the action of the Kosei Party in the House of Peers of the Japanese Parliament in voicing the opinion that the public favored limitation of armament because of the increase of taxes and declaring high prices would not fall until reduction could be made in armament expenditure. The Tokyo "Asahi," commenting on this, points out that heretofore the House of Peers has always emphasized and endorsed plans for the country's military defense and that its present step is therefore a turning-point in the country's history.

As the result of the campaign led by Yuzio Ozaki, late Minister of Justice, showing that nine-tenths of the voters, who could be reached by a system of straw-voting, favored armament limitation, the popular approval of President Harding's invitation was evident.

FRENCH OPINION

In France, like Japan, the opinion was also favorable and acutely expressed.

The "Journal des Débats," always somewhat skeptical, and assuming that the real reason for the Conference was to discuss the Pacific problem, remarked that the American invitation saved the British Cabinet from a very bad situation. That was to say, that a roundtable discussion of Pacific problems would relieve the tension concerning the renewing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, also that the United States would be quick to grasp the opportunity to iron out the knotty Pacific problem. It added: "Let us note that, if in convoking the Powers to discuss Pacific affairs, President Harding also proposes to discuss disarmament, it is above all because the American masses demand practical measures."

The widely read Paris "Matin," in the course of an evidently inspired editorial, declares that there are two aspects to the Washington Conference. It agrees with the "Débats" that “at first glance it is a meeting, suggested by the British Dominions, to associate the United States with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, or at least to prevent this Alliance from being regarded as a menace by American opinion. But President Harding has changed the character of the Conference toward limitation of armament."

The Paris "Temps," as usual reflecting the main body of intelligent opinion in France, proposes this practical question:

What new guaranties are going to be established to prevent war in Europe? That question proposes itself right at the beginning, if land disarmament is to be discussed at Washington. . . . The day the Treaty of Versailles was signed, two guaranties were created against a European conflict-one that the Covenant of the League of Nations made all the signatory Powers guarantors of the new frontiers of Europe, and, second, that the Franco-British and FrancoAmerican agreements promised armed aid to France in case she was again attacked by Germany. The second of these guaranties has vanished, and the first is not very dependable. Nevertheless, these papers and all others unite in the statement that President Harding's invitation is good news and that there is nothing in it to threaten the legitimate rights of France. It is indeed natural that the first and foremost reserve in French opinion is that there can be, no reduction of their army so long as they have no other guaranty than that army against German aggression.

ENGLISH OPINION

In England the Harding invitation was received with far greater wholehearted enthusiasm than in either Japan or France. The London "Daily Mail" declares that the President's message surpasses in importance all other current doings of whatever moment. The "Daily Express” says that “it is a bright augury for the peace of the whole world that the President has now dissolved the fog of mystery which has hung over the question of international disarmament. This country will gladly respond to the

call." The London "Evening News" assures us that "if the President's de sires are realized by a fair and perfectly possible limitation of armaments, the British people will be as ready as America to do him honor." The London "Times" affirms that the statement is both "momentous" and "timely," that it opens "a new and hopefully fruitful phase of the Pacific problem," and that:

The task of the proposed Conference will be as delicate and, unless I discerningly approached, as dangerous as any that any conference ever essayed to discharge. Not even the Peace Conference at Paris had to face issues vaster or fraught with greater possibilities of good and evil to the world.

Referring further to the Paris Conference (and with evident implication as to Washington), the "Times" adds:

Its lack of method, its practice of approaching haphazard the most complicated problems, and its errors in allowing the heads of Governments to address themselves first hand to matters that ought to have been carefully threshed out in advance by expert subordinates, made it a by-word among all who understand the importance of sound method and careful procedure.

The London "Daily Telegraph" concludes that President Harding's invitation to the Washington Conference is "an act of the first historical significance," adding, as do the other papers, that "the President's breadth of vision and earnestness of purpose will be received with the warmest tribute."

AMERICAN OPINION

The English press has been “pouring superlatives," as the New York "Times" says, over President Harding's plan. . . . They speak of it as an 'earth-shaking event,' a 'turning point in history,' and so on." These characterizations, the "Times" thinks, "are only partly born of the enthusiasm and eagerness which now exists in England for co-operation with the United States. They reflect also the pervasive concern over the failure, up to the present, of the Great War to make an end of war." In this attempt, as the "Times" concedes, "time is on the President's side," and "a standard has been raised to which all who long for peace with security will repair.”

Not only this Independent Democratic paper, but the dyed-in-the-wool Democratic New York "World" praises the President and his Secretary of State who is doubtless the real author of the Conference-as highly as do the journals of his own party, and that is saying a great deal. The "World" even asserts that the proposal for the Conference “is not only the most important action yet taken by this Administration, but it is the most important undertaking in the way of international relations since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles." Despite the fact that our Senate has rejected the League, “Mr. Harding is working with four of the principal members of the League to

carry out one of the League's great objects."... To the "World" Mr. Harding's invitation is "doubly gratifying. There were times when it seemed as if the President failed to appreciate the gravity of the issue or to understand the

seriousness of the question of competitive armament in respect to the associated economic life of the world. . . . He did nothing to further the general course of disarmament until it was plain that Congress could no longer be re

strained. . . . The President has now generously atoned for any mistakes that he made in the earlier stages of the discussion. . . . Mr. Harding's invitation is a manifestation of statements of the first order. It is world leadership."

...

T

THE BOILING-POT OF ITALY

SPECIAL

HE daily press publishes reports of riots and disturbances in Italy on the scale of warfare. Yet from Italy come repeated assertions of recuperation and progress. What explains this paradox? What are the actual conditions obtaining?

But a short time ago I was jolting down the Rettifilo of Naples, the driver of my carozza threading his way with shouts and threats through the indescribable confusion of vehicles careening over the cobbles. The mouth of an alley opened a short, dark vista into the labyrinth of congested buildings crowding upon the thoroughfare.

Suddenly a commotion swirled on the corner about something hidden in its vortex.

Traffic halted. Passers-by sprang even from carriages to dive into the mêlée. There was a babble of shouting voices above an ominous undertone. As from between the paving stones, the picturesque police of Italy rose into presence. Short, sharp words and energetic prodding with rifle butts disintegrated the mass, from which emerged a triumphant cortège, uncertainly piping the first notes of a song and then bursting into the national anthem as it marched exuberantly down through the stalled traffic of the highway.

Something was borne off and hurried away in an ambulance.

Muttered words and angry glances, promise of further trouble, followed the departing and provocative column.

What was it all about?

Immediately, it concerned a Socialist agitator, a Communist, run foul of a group of fascisti, ex-army men for the most part, neo-militarists, extreme nationalists. Followed a recognition, a beating, an impromptu parade of victors, while the pulpy mass of the victim was hurried off to the hospital.

Symptomatically, it was a collision of the two militant parties of Italy, Socialist and Nationalist, which seem determined, by their very bitterness and insistence, to divide the nation to extremes and to embroil the greater part of the population, wholly sympathetic with neither the one party nor the other, into civil war.

Three years ago the Chamber of Deputies at Rome presented a mere handful of Socialist delegates. To-day the Chamber of Deputies has become Socialistic in the majority!

CORRESPONDENCE

BY ELBERT BALDWIN

To-day the Socialist delegation is conservative in the majority. To-morrow, if the trend of events continues in Italy which is turning the voter and his delegate into the extremes of one camp or the other, Italy as a nation will be split between the radical wings of opposing parties.

On the one hand is Socialism; it is the music but not the meaning of the word to which the mass of the Italian proletariat responds, moderated by individuals of greater intelligence and maturity. On the other hand is the Nationalistic party, the fascisti, offspring of the war, organized, ambitious, protagonists of the present form of government, of the present social order, and of Italian territorial expansion which cannot but be considered excessive.

Of the two parties, the fascisti are comparatively the more extreme, in so far that the party represents the educated classes, unintelligently and bitterly opposed to greater class equality. It must be admitted that the fascisti have shown courage in suppressing extremes of social eruption. It must, however, further be admitted that they have used means as brutal and atrocious as those to which the least advanced of their opponents might resort, and that the antagonistic attitude of this party has sharpened the social issue in Italy and hindered its more normal evolution.

No middle party has yet gained popular support in Italy. The demand for such a party, though probably inarticulate within the nation, remains distrustful of the necessary compromise of issues. For Italy, like every nation governed by its heart and controlled too little by its intelligence, is in the hour of action a nation of extremes, all black or all white. Its life is the story of accession and recession, of waves of effort beating on a beach. A series of coalition Cabinets have come and gone. Such Cabinets will continue to come and go, to recombine and reproportion the elements at variance, while evolution and progress, which in Italy cannot be controlled and can be only partly guided by the individual, will work out its destiny with prevailing extravagance of effort, from the substance of the nation.

It is not in her action, but reaction, that Italy must be estimated. Her salvation lies in the native intelligence of the masses, an intelligence frequently submerged in moments of passion, re

acting with the surety of a spring when the pressure of feeling has been spent. The great industrial upheaval of a year ago ended through no action of the Government-an instance of inspired inaction which should become historicalbut through the reaction of the workers themselves, who had seized factories. converted them into an armed camp which only artillery could subdue, and defied the Government to oust them. The intensity of the Fiume issue, which led to the mad expedition of d'Annunzio, fizzled out with the reaction in Italy to national dignity.

If Italy and events in Italy are to be judged by the measure of less flexible nations, to-day Italy again borders close upon civil war. I could fill, not this article, but The Outlook in which it is published, with accounts of disturbances which have come to my knowledge, to many of which I have been witness during the past twenty-four months. Beneath a surface still for the most part orderly the blood of Italy is fevered with the illnesses following the war and common to the world, breaking into spasmodic eruption, to-day at Trieste, tomorrow in Naples, at the moment of writing at Sarzana, near Genoa, where, it is reported in a newspaper, twenty-five lives were lost as the result of an engagement between Communists and fascisti employing machine guns.

In the same daily paper is published the news that the new Bonomi Cabinet has received an overwhelming vote of confidence in its avowed purpose of suppressing just such disorders as have occurred at Sarzana, from whatever quarter they shall arise. One may well gasp at this typical contradiction to which Italy's national life gives expression. An understanding of the volatile Italian psychology may bring some understanding of her paradoxical ways.

If, as is indicated, the Government is now to step in between opposing factions, it has undertaken a task similar in many respects to that of Great Britain in Ireland. The outcome of actual measures is decidedly doubtful. It is quite conceivable that circumstance may eventually precipitate general civil war just as circumstance now provokes local eruptions of what is nothing less than civil war. Even in such event, however, though the pot boil over, it is again by the criterion, not of action, but of reaction, that Italy may be estimated.

A

RE the militant prohibitionists measuring up to their obligation and as whole-heartedly aiding in enforcement of the law for which they are responsible as they were in proselyting for its enactment?

Have they not ceased that active interest which was expected would persist and aid in the critical time of transformation of this country from a longestablished condition to the exact opposite of that which has prevailed since its institution?

What of the increasing crop of lawbreakers in letter and spirit-perjurers, liars, connivers, and accessories; the growing army of spies, informers, and enforcement officers upon the shoulders of the people?

What of the effect upon the children in many homes who are being taught violation and contempt for law by seeing the parents violate it by making "home brew" or home distillation, with the attendant secrecy, deceit, hypocrisy, and concealment?

Do not these things constitute as great a menace to the morals of the country-a more perniciously undermining influence of our citizenship-as the manufacture and sale of liquor under legalized conditions?

And, finally, is law enforcement adequately coping with the situation?

Alabama was one of the Southern States in which prohibition sentiment early manifested itself and grew until the prohibition element became the dominant force in politics. It is yet. A man could not be elected pound-keeper or beat constable unless he professed undying devotion to the cause. The head of the Anti-Saloon League in Alabama has been accused of dictating to

a

Governor and exercising the veto power upon gubernatorial appointments. Certain it is that Legislatures have been largely composed of marionettes when this person pulled the strings. So the situation in Alabama may be taken as somewhat typical of the Southern aspect of the present in other Southern States, modified more or less according to local conditions, but still reasonably typical.

The "dry law" of Alabama is perhaps the most drastic of any. A noted judge and lawyer who was a fanatical prohi bitionist drew the law. It has been ac cepted the country over as about the ultimate in sumptuary legislation, and other States have used this law as a model.

A man may not have even a teaspoonful of liquor in his house, sickness or no sickness. It is not procurable upon a doctor's prescription. A man is liable to a fine on up to $500 and a year on the chain-gang for merely having some

VIOLATORS

BY GARRARD HARRIS

in his possession. A drop, if proved, will sustain a conviction.

Should a person get in his automobile and carry a pocket flask with only a small "nip" in it, if the officers can catch him he is subject to the fine and imprisonment for having it in his possession. In addition, his automobile can be seized, condemned, and sold and the proceeds turned into the treasury.

Premises upon which liquor is made can be condemned and sold, as farms, houses, stores, and the like have been. There is a penitentiary sentence up to two years among the penalties for distillation. In addition, along comes the Federal Court and takes toll of punishment, and there are municipal ordinances to add the Pelion upon Ossa of legal pains and penalties.

There is a special flying squadron of "law enforcement officers" under the direct command of the Governor. They swoop down at unexpected times in communities where law enforcement on the prohibition question is lax, aid weakkneed local officers or those overwhelmed by the situation, and frequently are able to accomplish that which the local officials cannot.

In addition, there is a reward of $50 for each conviction of a liquor maker or seller for furnishing the information or evidence upon which conviction is had, and officers are not debarred from participating in these rewards.

There is the Federal Prohibition Law enforcement squad of eighteen men, and there is the great army of sheriffs, constables, and policemen of incorporated communities. And yet it is a matter of common knowledge that liquor is easily obtainable in all the larger towns and cities of Alabama and in nearly every community!

The Federal forces seem the only ones with accurate data upon activities. In 1920 these officers destroyed 1,343 stills, confiscated and destroyed 2,000 gallons of liquor, poured out 1,611,600 barrels of "beer," as the primary ferment later to be distilled is called, and made 1,043 prosecutions for illicit retailing of liquor. Fifty-two automobiles were seized and confiscated, 29 mules and horses, and 11 wagons. Of a certainty these eighteen Federal officers have not been idle, but they have no more made an impression upon the "moonshine" industry than the man who attempts to bail out Lake Michigan with a bucket can lower the water level!

Most of the sheriffs have endeavored to do their duty, and the total of State arrests, confiscations, destruction of stills, and prosecutions will be as large, as, if not larger than, the Federal list: the activities of various municipal police will swell the total to amazing propor

tions; and yet the industry is apparently undaunted.

The least the forces of the law can do is to hold the line somewhat-fight a rear-guard action in the slow retreat which is in progress. They do not realize that it is a retreat, but it is, for they are beginning to be obsessed by the futility of stopping it. They are realizing that, while it can be somewhat held in check, the forces of law are gaining no ground and it cannot be stopped.

The reinforcements of the militant prohibitionists have not arrived, and apparently are not going to arrive. A lecturer on prohibition can always get a good crowd and a fair collection; but officers privately complain that the prohibitionists will not co-operate to the extent of reporting violations or suspects, nor will they go on the stand as witnesses, nor do they furnish detectives to supplement the work of the officers, and, in general, give no more help than those who resisted the imposition of these laws and believe them infringements upon their liberties.

One of the country papers of Alabama reported in April the burning of a man's stock and barn, supposedly by "moonshiners" because, as the paper said, "he stood for law and order." The journal lamented that he alone was left to stand the brunt of evil-doers' wrath, and charged that if other citizens had his courage the community would be made clean and this one man not made the victim. He was deserted in his effortnot a hand was lifted to sustain him.

It begins to look as if the prohibitionists had laid the infant on Alabama's doorstep and then scuttled away from the scene, leaving it to be cared for by those it has been wished upon. At least, from the lamentations of officers it is gathered that this is about the situation.

Meanwhile, the newest, most widespread, and generally popular industry seems that of unlawful distilling, with growing interest in the ancient art of brewing something with a real "kick" to it and transforming anything fermentable, from blackberries to persimmons, into some sort of an alcoholic beverage. It is a fascinating sort of experimentation for the home brewer who feels that he is additionally showing his resentment against a law curtailing his freedom by infracting that law, and there is an element of danger to add zest to it. But if one-tenth of the "home brewers" were caught there are not jails enough in all Alabama to hold one-tenth of the tenth arrested.

For the producer of the so-called "moonshine" liquor it is a matter of dollars and cents, with a glittering reward for those who can escape detec

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