National Prohibition as Proposed in Congress
By S. B. HORTON
The Liquor Traffic a National Menace—Responsible for Most of the Crime, Pauperism, and Degeneracy of the Race—Alcohol Kills Two Thousand Every Day—The Splendid Conditions in Prohibition Kansas
"We have the proposition before us of whether we are going to give the American people a chance to save life, their own lives; to save homes, the foundation of the state; to save their children, the hope of the future; are going to give them a chance to perpetuate our government and perpetuate our civilization, or not," said Representative R. P. Hobson, in the House, December 11, in presenting the petition of national organizations, religious, civil, and social, praying Congress to pass legislation submitting an amendment to the Constitution providing for national prohibition. Mr. Hobson dealt with the scientific, moral, and civic phases of a question with which the American people, yea, the world, is becoming better acquainted, and the solution of which the nation will erelong have to face. Space will allow but brief references to the speech, the full text of which may be found in the Congressional Record, December 11, pages 640-648. Mr. Hobson said: "Humanity has unquestionably by its own hands brought into its life a great destroying principle such as does not exist in any living organism. Science has definitely established that destructive principle as alcohol. In hearings that will be conducted in systematic form before the committee having H. J. Res. 168 under consideration, evidence will be introduced showing beyond any peradventure of doubt that science has established simple, elemental facts about alcohol as completely as it69established the law of gravity,—facts vital to the survival of humanity, facts which unfortunately even men of the highest education do not know, and facts that are cut off substantially from the popular means of education, but facts that are true. . . . so that alcohol stands out on the start as a protoplasmic toxic poison. The form of life that produces this is the yeast germ, the lowest form of life with which we are acquainted, so that all forms of life with which we are familiar are higher. This is the reason why you can put any organic matter into alcohol and nothing living can get into it. We can then say that alcohol is a poison to everything that has protoplasmic principle of life. . . . "Let me ask you in passing to note how the question of criminality is thus absolutely bound up in this matter of alcoholic degeneracy. You can take a white man in the highest forefront of evolution and apply these processes to him and it will be absolutely scientific in the results. You can watch it, you can measure it. If you keep up the process, he will revert to the qualities of the semicivilized and go down to the semisavage. He will, indeed, descend below the brute. . . . "The American people are now consuming alcoholic beverages at the rate of twenty-five gallons per capita every year. As a consequence, Americans are dying at the rate of 1,000 to every 61,000 of the population every year. Records show that where total abstainers are involved the mortality is only at the rate of 560 per 61,000. I recognize the limitations of the statistics thus far as bearing chiefly on adult males, but further investigation shows that the shortening of life of the adult male entails stupendous mortality in the offspring, far greater than the shortening of life in the male, so that these figures are under instead of over, meaning that forty-four per cent of the deaths in America are premature, cut short by alcohol. It means that alcohol kills between 600,000 and 700,000 citizens every year, about 2,000 every day that the sun rises. There is no question that deals as vitally as this with the preservation of human life." Senator Morris Sheppard, of Texas, delivered an appropriate address in introducing his measure on the subject of national prohibition (S. J. Res. 88) into the Senate, the full text of which will be found in the Congressional Record, December 10, pages 560-562. Among other things, the senator declared: "One of the fundamental duties of the American people is the extermination of the traffic in intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. Experience has demonstrated that the only safe way to handle this traffic is to destroy it. In the United States it has reached such proportions that the nation must join in the struggle against it. It is a menace to the integrity and the progress of this republic. The fact that alcohol undermines the brain and paralyzes the will of man, planting in him and his posterity the seeds of physical and moral degeneracy, the seeds of disease, the seeds of poverty, the seeds of crime, makes it a peril to the very existence of free government. . . . "It is gratifying beyond estimation to note the fact that the world is waking as never before to an acute sense of the danger of alcohol. In every country the same terrible indictment stands against it. From every land ascend the cries of the multitudes it has damned. Among almost every people it is the chief source of the murders, the suicides, the thefts, the debaucheries of body and mind. Before the popular judgment of almost every country the dealers in this frightful drug must answer the following arraignment: Your traffic crushes every moment some home, some heart. The poison you distribute is an ever-spreading pestilence. It impedes the physical and mental growth of children, distorting the moral sense, promoting disobedience of parents and disregard for law. It curses the future generations of its victims—the crazed, the maimed, the palsied, and the blind—into whose blood the fatal taint is inevitably transmitted. It wrecks domestic happiness, and betrays the most sacred vows. It contains no nourishment, it gives no strength. It impairs the vital processes, the vital tissues of the human organism. It destroys moderation and self-control, releasing every low and savage impulse. Instead of satisfying thirst, it leaves a greater thirst, suggesting the agonies of hell. It is the cause of practically half the accidents in industrial occupations. It lowers the efficiency of labor and weakens the foundations of industrial progress. It increases the liability to disease, particularly to infectious maladies like tuberculosis. It diverts the earnings of mankind into channels of economic waste, causing a loss that far exceeds the revenue it provides for governmental use. It is an obstacle to human advancement that should be no longer tolerated." In seconding the measure proposed by Mr. Sheppard, Senator Thompson, of Kansas, called attention to the favorable conditions existing in his state by reason of prohibitory legislation, saying: "The closing of the saloons and 'joints' in the state has had a most excellent effect upon the morals as well as the material interests of the people of the state, so much so that no one with the best interests of the people and the state at heart desires to go back to the old order of things under the saloon. Among the most beneficial results of the operation of the law are better homes, happier and wealthier families, higher standards of education and intelligence, and a large reduction in crime. These are natural and inevitable results of prohibition wherever effectively enforced. But the best result of all is in the fact that of the half million boys and girls in Kansas only a very small proportion have ever seen an open saloon. Children are growing to manhood and womanhood without the temptation or evil influence of the saloon. "During the thirty-three years of prohibition the illiteracy of our people has been reduced from forty-nine per cent to two per cent, and this trifling amount is almost entirely among the foreign element in the mining section of the southeast. With 105 counties in the state, 87 of them have no insane, 54 have no feeble-minded, 96 have no inebriates, and what few there are come from the cities which defied the law until recent years. There is only one pauper to every 3,000 population, and there are 38 county poor farms which have no inmates. In July, 1911, 53 county jails were empty and 65 counties had no prisoners serving sentence. Since the establishment of prohibition the population of Kansas has increased more than any of the surrounding states, and her wealth has increased until it has become the richest state in the Union per capita. Although we suffered one of the worst droughts in the history of the state last summer, recent statements from the banks show that in the 930 state banks there is on deposit belonging to the people of Kansas about $120,000,000, and on deposit in the 213 national banks about $90,000,000, making a total of $210,000,000, or about $123 for every man, woman, and child in the state."