Recent Temperance Campaigns by S. B. HORTON

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 24, 1914

Recent Temperance Campaigns

By S. B. HORTON

At the recent election throughout the United States four Western States went dry,—Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona. These make fourteen States which have State-wide prohibition laws, the others being Maine, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Dakota.

The Colorado Springs Gazette asserts that public sentiment makes possible now the enactment of a federal prohibitory amendment, and says that “the liquor interests may succeed in delaying its passage by Congress for another year or two, but the issue is assuming such proportions that Congress will not dare hold it up much longer. The liquor men might as well save their money and cease further efforts to educate the public in an appreciation of the greatness of John Barleycorn. He is a permanently discredited hero.”

While some hold that prohibition means the facing of additional tax burdens, there are papers which do not so believe. The Spokane Chronicle thinks that a new era of prosperity will come to the State of Washington as a consequence of its prohibition law. It says:— “Washington has chosen the lasting kind of prosperity by deciding to eliminate its most conspicuous form of waste. To say that prosperity will be lessened by abolishing a business that employs thousands in labor which is not only useless, but destructive of property and earning power, is to make an argument that is not only fallacious, but absurd.”

The campaign in Ohio was most interesting. The prohibition forces had purposed bringing the matter of State-wide prohibition before the electorate in 1915, feeling that the question should be separated from the State and national election, which was held the fore part of November. But the liquor forces felt that it would be an advantage to them to decide the question this year, and so they proposed an amendment to the constitution, as follows:—

“ARTICLE XV, SECTION 9a.—No law shall be passed or be in effect prohibiting the sale, furnishing, or giving away of intoxicating liquors operative in a subdivision of the State upon the option of the electors thereof, or upon any other contingency, which has force within a territory larger than a municipal corporation or a township outside of municipal corporations therein. All laws in contravention of the foregoing are hereby repealed. “Nor shall any law hereafter be passed prohibiting the sale, furnishing, or giving away of intoxicating liquors throughout the State at large.”

To meet this move on the part of the liquor men, the Anti-Saloon League proposed the following amendment:—

“ARTICLE XV, SECTION 9.—The sale, manufacture for sale, and importation for sale of intoxicating liquor as a beverage is hereby prohibited. The General Assembly shall provide for the enforcement of this provision, and enact laws with adequate penalties for the violation thereof.

“The foregoing amendment shall take effect one year and six months after the date of the election at which it is adopted, at which time said original Section 9 of Article XV, and all statutes inconsistent with the foregoing amendment, be and the same are hereby repealed.”

The liquor men's proposition was styled “A Home Rule Amendment,” the purpose of which was to repeal the Ross County Option Law, under which forty-five of the eighty-eight counties were placed in the dry column, and to nullify all regulatory legislation of the liquor traffic. It is stated by the press that as a result of the success of the liquor amendment, more than three thousand saloons will be immediately opened in the dry territory of the State.

As soon as it was certain that the whisky forces had won at the polls, the prohibition forces at once inaugurated a campaign for another try out next year. In Ohio an amendment to the constitution may be proposed through a petition signed by a certain percentage of the voting population of the State, and there is no doubt that the required number of petitioners will be secured. It is thought by the conservative student that Ohio will go dry in 1915.

It is interesting to note that the question of eliminating the liquor traffic is of present moment in other parts of the world. The Altoona (Pa.) Times of November 19 prints a long Associated Press article dated Petrograd, Russia, November 18. The headlines of the article reveal the substance of the telegram: “Prohibition in Russia Is Fact and Not Theory. Wonderful Transformation Has Been Effected Since Imperial Edict Banished Strong Drink From the Czar's Dominions. Miracle Is Work of Solitary Man. Destitute Character of the Homes of the Poor Has Been Replaced With Something Akin to Order and Thrift, It Is Said.” Among the interesting points of the Altoona Times article, we quote the following:—

“There is prohibition in Russia today, prohibition which means that not a drop of vodka, whisky, brandy, gin, or any other strong liquor is obtainable from one end to the other of a territory populated by 150,000,000 people, and covering one sixth of the habitable globe.

“The story of how strong drink has been utterly banished from the Russian Empire was related to the Associated Press by Michael Demitrovitch Tchelisheff, the man directly responsible for putting an end to Russia's great vice, the vodka habit.

“It should be said in the beginning that the word prohibition in Russia must be taken literally. Its use does not imply a partially successful attempt to curtail the consumption of liquor, resulting in drinking in secret places, the abuse of

medical licenses, and general evasion and subterfuge. It does mean that a vast population who consumed $1,000,000,000 worth of vodka a year, whose ordinary condition has been described by Russians themselves as ranging from a slight degree of stimulation upward, has been lifted almost in one day from a drunken inertia to sobriety. The nation has been compelled, virtually overnight, to abandon its enormous daily consumption of vodka, a liquor that contains a particularly large percentage of alcohol, and become abstemious to the extent of letting no liquor pass its lips.

“On that day when the mobilization of the Russian army began, special policemen visited every public place where vodka is sold, locked up the supply of the liquor, and placed on the shop the imperial seal. Since the manufacture and sale of vodka is a government monopoly in Russia, it is not a difficult thing to enforce prohibition.

“From the day this step was taken, drunkenness vanished in Russia. The results are seen at once in the peasantry; already they are beginning to look like a different race. The marks of suffering, the pinched looks of illness and improper nourishment, have gone from their faces. There has been also a remarkable change in the appearance of their clothing. Their clothes are cleaner, and both the men and the women appear more neatly and better dressed. The destitute character of the homes of the poor has been replaced with something like order and thrift. In Petrograd and Moscow the effect of these improved conditions is fairly startling. On holidays in these two cities inebriates always filled the police stations, and often they lay about on the sidewalks and even in the streets. Things are so different today that unattended women may now pass at night through portions of these cities where it was formerly dangerous even for men. Minor crimes and misdemeanors have almost vanished.”

Mr. Tchelisheff ran for alderman and a position in the duma, on a prohibition platform, and was successful. Failing, however, to secure the legislation at once, he appealed to the czar, through whom the plan for nation-wide prohibition was finally carried out.

“The 30,000,000 rubles a day that had been paid for vodka were now being spent for the necessities of life. The average working week increased from three and four days to six, the numerous holidays of the drinker having been eliminated. The working day also became longer, and the efficiency of the worker was perhaps doubled. Women and children who seldom were without marks, showing the physical violence of the husband and father, suddenly found themselves in an undreamed-of paradise. There were no blows, no insults, and no rough treatment. There was bread on the table, milk for the babies, and a fire in the kitchen.”

It is hoped that at the coming session of Congress the Hobson-Sheppard amendment, providing for nation-wide prohibition, will be considered. There seems little doubt that the people of the United States will have an opportunity, sooner or later, to vote upon this very important matter. S. B. HORTON.