Lawlessness and Prohibition Laws
By Editor
The San Francisco Chronicle of November 9 contains a lengthy editorial upon the increasing lawlessness of the times, and draws attention to many open and flagrant violations of laws long existing upon the statute books of the country, but without existence so far as enforcement is concerned. It makes much of the alleged non-enforcement of the prohibitory laws of Maine and Vermont, and uses this as a text to show reason for the increase of lawlessness in general to-day. The Chronicle is certainly right in admitting the increase in lawlessness; it is seen on every hand. It is a sign of the times, a characteristic of these times; but that journal is as certainly wrong in the estimate which it places upon the work accomplished by the prohibitory laws of the States referred to, as it is right in the matter of increased lawlessness. We have been there, and we know the difference between the conditions which exist in those States and the conditions which exist in States where the sale of liquor is countenanced and protected by the laws. The liquor interests, while doing all in their power to break down those laws, are using every infraction which they are able to produce as an argument to prove that the laws are not good; and newspapers paid for pandering to the liquor interests are doing all they can to throw discredit upon those wholesome laws, encouraging laxity of enforcement, and making all they can of every such laxity. There is probably not a greater systematic lawbreaker in the country than the liquor power, and to try to make it appear that prohibitory laws are blameworthy for the increasing lawlessness witnessed to-day is certainly an assault upon common sense, a desperate expedient to convict the innocent. The prohibitory laws of the States that have them could be better than they are, without doubt; that they should be better enforced is true; but that they are responsible for the spirit of lawlessness which is so rife to-day is an untrue and unjust charge. The nations are forgetting God and turning to the service of self; they have turned away from God’s law, and pastors are teaching its abrogation. In such teachings as that is the root of lawlessness, and the crime of the day is the fruit it bears. The conditions are sad enough; but let the blame rest where an impartial judge must place it, and where the Judge of all the earth will one day place it—upon those who have taught men to disobey the laws of the Most High.