It Saves the Boys

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 2, 1912

It Saves the Boys

THE best argument I have found in Maine for prohibition was from an editor of a paper in Portland, that was for political reasons mildly opposed to it. I had a conversation with him that ran something like this:

“Where were you born?”

“In a little village about sixty miles from Bangor.”

“Do you remember the condition of things in your village prior to prohibition?”

“Distinctly. There was a vast amount of drunkenness, and consequent disorder and poverty.”

“What was the effect of prohibition?”

“It shut up all the drink shops, and practically banished liquor from the village. It became one of the most quiet and prosperous places on the

globe.”

“How long did you live in the village after prohibition?”

“Eleven years, or until after I was twenty-one years of age. Then I went to Bangor.”

“Do you drink now?”

“I have never tasted a drop of liquor in my life.”

“Why?”

“Up to the age of twenty-one I never saw it, and after that I did not care to take on the habit.”

That is all there is in it. This man and his schoolmates were saved from drink by the fact that they could not get it until they were old enough to know better. Few men become drunkards who know not the poison until they are twenty-one.—Selected.