Never Again! by B. P. Foote

Pacific Press Publishing Association

FromSigns of the Times, Prohibition Special

Never Again!

By B. P. Foote

RUSSIA is so well pleased with the results of the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of vodka, the Russian national drink of the past, that she says its sale will never again be permitted. Prohibition in Russia has proved to be one of the greatest reforms in the history of the country, equaling if not exceeding that of the abolition of serfdom in 1861.

Since the outbreak of the war in 1914, at which time prohibition went into effect, the nation has been transformed mentally, morally, physically, and financially, almost beyond recognition. And why?—Because the consumption of vodka decreased in one year ninety-eight per cent. Those who have investigated for themselves say the change is marvelous, almost beyond comprehension. The number of professional beggars has been reduced about seventy per cent; crime has decreased two thirds in most places, and has disappeared entirely in others; prostitution has dropped almost one half; efficiency in all lines of work has greatly increased, and wages have been raised accordingly; savings deposits have risen enormously, being $12,150,000 more in the month of September, 1914—only a few weeks after the new order of things began—than for the same month the year before.

The story of Russian prohibition is truly stranger than fiction. The blessings that have come as a direct result of this wonderful temperance reform would fill more than one volume.

Although the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of vodka took from the Russian government a yearly revenue of $451,980,000, the officials are more than satisfied with the change. M. Bark, minister of finance, in behalf of the government, says:

"I find it necessary to announce categorically that all suspicions that the government intends to renew the sale of vodka, are unfounded. I categorically announce that the government will support prohibition, and that there is no chance of a return to the former state of affairs."

At another time, this same prominent government official gave still another reason for the continuance of prohibition, in the following statement:

"If I should propose to annul prohibition, there would be a revolution in Russia."

Dr. Rudnev, vice secretary of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, is reported to have said:

"Any one agitating for the return of drink in Russia ought to be lynched."

Even the terrible war is considered a blessing; because it brought prohibition. One of the peasants expresses his sentiments thus:

"The war has taken much from the village, but has replaced it by something new and beautiful; we see each other always sober."

China rose up and swept the opium industry off her map with astonishing celerity. The stroke of a pen has changed Russia from drunkenness, crime, and poverty to a sober, law-abiding, prosperous nation. Shame on us if we allow China and Russia to lead us longer in the matter of reforms! Let us strike this terrible drink curse, and strike it hard, and continue to strike it until it disappears forever from our fair land!

"The purpose of all government is the preservation of the public morals, the public health, and the public peace. But the liquor traffic destroys public morals, health, and peace."

Sober Facts for Grape Growers

STRONG moral and financial influences are working against the wine grape business, and it is decreasing in California. A few large manufacturing growers make all the money at present, and are raising all the fuss against prohibition.

Profit of the ordinary grower per acre is generally $0.00, minus the value of his labor. See Prof. F. T. Bioletti's statement in State Horticultural Commission bulletins for March and April, 1913.

Even successful manufacturing growers have had to depend largely on Asiatic and pauper labor to make a good showing. The future of the industry depends on increase of pauper labor and lowering the per capita wealth of the state. It cannot pay the American unemployed a living wage. In many cases, to let the hogs pick the grapes is the only way to make the grapes pay for the picking, such are the low prices offered.

Grape sirup, which can be made with simple apparatus, will net the grower more than wineries pay at present. Alfalfa, a quick-growing crop, will nearly everywhere yield more to the grower than wine grapes ever do, even when fully established. Wine grape stock can be profitably grafted with other grapes, even if prohibition fails to carry.

Regular prices of wine grapes are from $6.00 a ton ($30 an acre) to $22 a ton ($66 an acre), with next to no profit at best, while table grapes sell at not less than $30 a ton ($150 an acre), and give a good return. Profit on raisin grapes to the grower is from $12.50 to $135 to the acre. (Bioletti.)

In fewer years than the wine industry has had for growth, with no particular favor from the viticultural commission, with less acreage still than the wine vineyards, raisin and table grapes yielded a gross income of about $20,000,000 last year, as compared with less than $6,000,000 from wine manufactures. Of the former sum, a good profit went to the growers, while the payment of about $3,000,000 to the wine grape growers for their crop left them no profit at all.

The saloon is the indispensable vehicle of the white slave traffic; and without the saloon, the traffic could not endure. When the saloon was banished from Kansas, the licensed segregated vice district went with it. The dens were closed and boarded up.

Demand for raisin and table grapes is increasing, and may keep on indefinitely; while demand for California wine, to judge by output, is growing less and less. It is only inertia that now keeps the wine grape grower who is not also a distiller from changing to other crops. Thousands of acres in different parts of the state are being turned over from wine grapes to orchard and forage crops.

The last acre of the Vina Vineyard, in Tehama County, once regarded as the largest in the world, and till lately second in the state, was turned over to forage crops in April, because thirty years' trial has proved that wine grapes do not pay.

Even taking the liquor men's claim of $150,000,000 for the value of the wine industry investment at a conservative discount of 50%, and assuming two thirds of that to be in land value, it may be calculated that while 2.5% of the land value of the state (about 1.3% of improved farm acreage) is devoted to wine grapes, it is yielding the agriculturists only 1.5% of the total crop income—and that without margin of profit, be it remembered. This is a relatively small item, but it represents just so much waste.

Prohibition in the state works to increase the sale of harmless orchard products,—fruit juices, and canned, dried, and fresh fruit. Where harmful luxuries go out, helpful ones come in.

Alcoholic wine is a curse, and not a temperance drink. The sparkling products of the grape do more than their share in greasing the flume that speeds youth of both sexes to the maw of vice.

"We stand for the total abolition of a system inherently wrong, not for its reformation."

Among the Newspapers

METROPOLITAN dailies like the Philadelphia North American, the Chicago Herald, the New York Tribune, the Boston Record, the Kansas City Star, the Los Angeles Express, and more than eight hundred other papers having a combined circulation of more than five and one half million copies a day, together with hundreds of weekly papers, and the great majority of the magazines, refuse to accept any advertisements of alcoholic liquors.

"When the partnership of the liquor traffic with the civil government is dissolved, then those who ruin their fellow men by the sale of liquor will be alone responsible for that crime."

"It is not true that 'if you let the saloon alone, it will let you alone.' The saddest victims of its pitiless power are women and children who never cross its slimy threshold."