The Drink Traffic and Government
The influence that the drink traffic has on this world is one of the marked features of these times. It has so insinuated itself into the national life of this country that it has the regulation of law everywhere; and that amounts to legal sanction of the business. When the war revenues of the government were reduced by the present Congress, one of the first items to receive the benefit was beer. We would not argue in favor of the taxation of beer, for the reason that the only thing the government can consistently do with it is to prohibit its manufacture and sale altogether. Taxing beer is a tacit acknowledgment by the government that the business is all right. But when the government hastens to remove that tax, it thereby shows a friendliness to the beer interests, and a friendliness, too, that should not tend to strengthen the faith of those who think that this old world of ours is getting better. When officials that are members of the churches show such a warm feeling to the whisky and beer business, they show that they are governed by some other influence besides that exerted by the Author of the Decalog and the Sermon on the Mount.