p. 14 | Portland's Forward Step

Pacific Press Publishing Association

FromSigns of the Times, Prohibition Special

Portland's Forward Step

By Mayor H. R. Albee of Portland

Mayor H. R. Albee of Portland

IN police circles, most tangible results are in evidence. The records show for the first two months of 1915 a total of 1,789 drunks and vagrants arrested; for the same period in 1916, a total of 450 arrests. Both county and city officers have been on the alert for violations; and where these have been discovered, if followed by convictions, as has been largely the case, heavy fines and jail sentences have been meted out.

As indicative of the business situation, a prominent merchant has just declared to me that collections are much better now than prior to the advent of prohibition; and, of course, I know this to be entirely true of general business. All the arguments that were used to defeat the prohibition measure, with which we are all so familiar, have proved to be no arguments at all, and have been thrown into the discard, never being referred to just now. I am reliably informed, for instance, that business men—merchants, etc.—are enjoying a greater volume of trade than formerly, financial conditions being considered, traceable to prohibition enforcement.

Men who used to drink up their earnings are now buying food and clothing and other necessities for their families. Stores with clean, new stocks are taking the place of old buildings which were formerly rented to saloons. Some of these ancient shacks, which could be rented only for saloon purposes, have been torn down, and replaced with new and substantial types of buildings.

As to moral conditions, they are much improved also. Underworld characters, both men and women, have been leaving Portland for other fields more to their liking, thus ridding this city of their presence and the results of their illegal workings.

There is no denying or gainsaying the good that is to result to this community from prohibition. The citizens cannot yet comprehend what a great forward step they have taken in this regard. It is one of the most wonderful advances Oregon ever made.

"The undeviating trend of civil government in the direction of human deliverance from the curse of the licensed rum shop must continue until that unspeakable iniquity is forever at an end."

Why Prohibition?

"BECAUSE it gives the drink-maddened man an opportunity to escape from the thraldom of the liquor traffic.

"Because it erects a barrier between the unpolluted lips and the intoxicating cup.

"Because it severs the shameful partnership between the government and King Alcohol.

"All who have the welfare of humanity at heart can ask for nothing else than the utter abolition of the traffic. May God hasten the day when the nations of both hemispheres shall be divorced from the infamous business of making drunkards."

"WE should demand that civil government perform its proper function of branding the liquor traffic as an outlaw, and driving it from beneath the protection of the law."