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PROHIBITION
MOVEMENT
IN ITS BROADER BEARINGS
UPON OUR SOCIAL, COMMERCIAL
AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTIES
Addresses and Writings of
PERCY ANDREAE
Published by
FELIX MENDELSOHN
Peoples Gas Building
Chicago
Copyrighted 1915
by Felix Mendelsohn
Printed by
THE COMMONWEALTH PRESS
Chicago
Contents
| 45
.
Page
A Glimpse Behind the Mask of Prohibition..... 9
The Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D., and His
Divine Master-A Contrast..
20
From The Crown, Newark, N. J., May 1909.
Some Reflections on the Moral Aspects of Prohi-
bition
From The Crown, Newark, N. J., May 1909.
The Brewer and the Retail Liquor Traffic.
72
Address delivered at the convention of the United States
Brewers' Association in Atlantic City, June, 1909.
Address in Support of a Proposed Amendment to
the Rose County Option Law.
86
Delivered in the Senate Chamber of the Ohio General Assem-
bly, February 22, 1910.
Truth from a Brewer's Standpoint.
105
From Leslie's Weekly, June 2, 1910.
Some Fallacies and a Moral....
.. 128
Address delivered before the convention of the National Whole-
sale Liquor Dealers' Association, at Cincinnati, Ohio, May 25,
1910.
Address Before the Committee on Temperance of
the Ohio House of Representatives in Support
of the Dean Amendment to the Rose County
Option Law
142
Delivered in the Ohio House of Representatives, February 9,
1911.
Opening Address Delivered Before the Second In-
ternational Brewers' Congress, Chicago, Oc-
tober 18, 1911..
162
Argument on Constitutional License
182
Made before the Liquor Traffic Committee of the Ohio Consti-
tutional Convention, 1912.
Argument on Proposed License Codes.
198
Before the Joint Committee of the General Assembly of
Ohio, delivered in the House of Representatives, January 20,
1913.
285224
Contents-Continued
Page
Why a Brewer Is Proud of His Business.
219
Address delivered at the farewell banquet tendered to the
Hon. Charles J. Vopicka, minister plenipotentiary to Bulgaria,
Servia and the Balkan States, October 11, 1913.
Open Letter to Dean Walter T. Sumner.
228
From the Chicago Inter Ocean, April 27, 1913.
Political and Personal Liberty
... 241
Address delivered at the annual banquet of the American
Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, New York, Feb-
ruary 7, 1914.
Comments on Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address... 251
From the American Leader, June 11, 191-1.
Nation-Wide Prohibition and Its Effects Upon
the American Hotels and Their Patrons..... 263
Address delivered before the American Hotel Protective Asso-
ciation of the United States and Canada, at the Waldorf-
Astoria, New York, on April 14, 1914.
Personal Liberty
280
The Need of a National Liberty Day.
318
Address delivered at the Annual Outing of the Personal Liberty
Leaguc of Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, Ohio, July 22, 1914.
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
340
An address delivered bcfore a mass meeting of citizens at
Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 30, 1914.
When the Majority Is King..
.. 356
From the American Leader, October 8 and 22, 1914.
When a Minority Is the People.
.. 370
From the American Leader, November 12 and 28, 1914.
Some Reflections on the Relation Between Liberty
and Law
387
From the American Leader, March 25, 1915.
Liberty, Race Culture, and Our Balance of Profit
and Loss
400
An address delivered before the New Jersey State Chamber of
Commerce, Newark, N. J., April 13, 1915.
A Glimpse behind the Mask
of Prohibition
Somewhere in the Bible it is said: “If thy right
hand offend thee, cut it off.” I used to think the rem-
edy somewhat radical. But to-day, being imbued with
the wisdom of the prohibitionist, I have to acknowledge
that, if the Bible in general, and that passage in it in
particular, has a fault, it lies in its ultra-conservative-
ness. What? Merely cut off my own right hand if it
offend me? What business have my neighbors to keep
their right hands if I am not able to make mine behave
itself? Off with the lot of them! Let there be no right
hands; then I am certain that mine won't land me in
trouble.
I have met many active prohibitionists, both in
this and in other countries, all of them thoroughly in
earnest. In some instances I have found that their
allegiance to the cause of prohibition took its origin in
the fact that some near relative or friend had suc-
cumbed to over-indulgence in liquor. In one or two
cases the man himself had been a victim of this weak-
ness, and had come to the conclusion, firstly, that every
one else was constituted as he was, and, therefore, liable
to the same danger; and secondly, that unless every one
10
The Mask of Prohibition.
were prevented from drinking, he would not be secure
from the temptation to do so himself.
This is one class of prohibitionists. The other, and
by far the larger class, is made up of religious zealots,
to whom prohibition is a word having at bottom a far
wider application than that which is generally attrib-
uted to it. The liquor question, if there really is such
a question per se, is merely put forth by them as a
means to an end, an incidental factor in a fight which
has for its object the supremacy of a certain form of
religious faith. The belief of many of these people is
that the Creator frowns upon enjoyment of any and
every kind, and that he has merely endowed us with
certain desires and capacities for pleasure in order to
give us an opportunity to please Him by resisting
them. They are, of course, perfectly entitled to this
belief, though some of us may consider it eccentric and
somewhat in the nature of a libel on the Almighty.
But are they privileged to force that belief on all their
fellow beings? That, in substance, is the question that
is involved in the present-day prohibition movement.
For it is all nonsense to suppose that because, per-
haps, one in a hundred or so of human beings is too
weak to resist the temptation of over-indulging in
drink-or of over-indulging in anything else, for the
matter of that—therefore all mankind is going to
forego the right to indulge in that enjoyment in
moderation. The leaders of the so-called prohibition
The Mask of Prohibition.
11
movement know as well as you and I do that you can
no more prevent an individual from taking a drink if
he be so inclined than you can prevent him from scratch-
ing himself if he itches. They object to the existence
of the saloon, not, bear in mind, to that of the badly-
conducted saloon, but to that of the well-regulated,
decent saloon, and wherever they succeed in destroying
the latter, their object, which is the manifestation of
their political power, is attained.
That for every
decent, well-ordered saloon they destroy, there springs
up a dive, or speak-easy, or blind tiger, or whatever
other name it may be known by, and the dispensing
of drink continues as merrily as before, doesn't disturb
them at all. They make the sale of liquor a crime,
but steadily refuse to make its purchase and consump-
tion an offense. Time and again the industries affected
by this apparently senseless crusade have endeavored
to have laws passed making dry territories really dry
by providing for the punishment of the man who buys
drink as well as the man who sells it. But every such
attempt has been fiercely opposed by the prohibition
leaders. And why? Because they know only too well
that the first attempt to really prohibit drinking would
put an end to their power forever. They know that 80
per cent of those who, partly by coercion, partly from
sentiment, vote dry, are perfectly willing to restrict
the right of the remaining 20 per cent to obtain drink,
but that they are not willing to sacrifice that right for
themselves.
12
The Mask of Prohibition.
Its real purpose
And so the farce called prohibition goes on, and will
continue to go on as long as it brings grist to the mill
of the managers who are producing it. But the farce
conceals something far more serious than that which
is apparent to the public on the face of it. Prohibition
is merely the title of the movement. Its real
is of a religious, sectarian character, and this applies
not only to the movement in America, but to the same
movement in England, a fact which, strangely enough,
has rarely, if at all, been recognized by those who have
dealt with the question in the public press.
If there is any one who doubts the truth of this
statement, let me put this to him: How many Roman
Catholics are prohibitionists? How many Jews, the
most temperate race on earth, are to be found in the
ranks of prohibition? Or Lutherans? Or German
Protestants generally? What is the proportion of
Episcopalians to that of Methodists, Baptists and
Presbyterians, and the like, in the active prohibition
army? The answer to these questions will, I venture
to say, prove conclusively the assertion that the fight
for prohibition is synonymous with the fight of a cer-
tain religious sect, or group of religious sects, for the
supremacy of its ideas. In England it is the Non-
conformists, which is in that country the generic name
for the same sects, who are fighting the fight, and the
suppression of liquor there is no more the ultimate
end they have in view than it is here in America. It is
The Mask of Prohibition.
13
the fads and restrictions that are part and parcel of
their lugubrious notion of Godworship which they
eventually hope to impose upon the rest of humanity;
a Sunday without a smile, no games, no recreation, no
pleasures, no music, card-playing tabooed, dancing
anathematized, the beauties of art decried as impure-
in short, this world reduced to a barren, forbidding
wilderness in which we, its inhabitants, are to pass our
time contemplating the joys of the next. Rather
problematical joys, by the way, if we are to suppose
we shall worship God in the next world in the same
somber way as we are called upon by these worthies
to do in this.
To my mind, and that of many others, the hearty,
happy laugh of a human being on a sunny Sunday is
music sweeter to the ears of that being's Creator than
all the groanings, and moanings, and misericordias that
rise to heaven from the lips of those who would deprive
us altogether of the faculty and the privilege of mirth.
That some overdo hilarity and become coarse and
offensive, goes without saying. There are people with-
out the sense of proportion or propriety in all matters.
Yet none of us think of abolishing pleasures because
a few do not know how to enjoy them in moderation
and with decency, and become an offense to their
neighbors.
The drink evil has existed from time immemorial,
just as sexual excess has, and all other vices to which
14
The Mask of Prohibition.
mankind is and always will be more or less prone,
though less in proportion as education progresses and
the benefits of civilization increase.
Sexual excess,
curiously enough, has never interested our hyper-
religious friends, the prohibitionists, in anything like
the degree that the vice of excessive drinking does.
Perhaps this is because the best of us have our pet
aversions and our pet weaknesses. Yet this particular
vice has produced more evil results to the human race
than all other vices combined, and, in spite of it, man-
kind, thanks not to prohibitive laws and restrictive
legislation, but to the forward strides of knowledge
and to patient and intelligent education, is to-day ten
times sounder in body and healthier in mind than it
ever was in the world's history.
Now, if the habit of drinking to excess were a grow-
ing one, as our prohibitionist friends claim that it is,
we should to-day, instead of discussing this question
with more or less intelligence, not be here at all to
argue it; for the evil, such as it is, has existed for so
many ages that, if it were as general and as contagious
as is claimed, and its results as far-reaching as they
are painted, the human race would have been destroyed
by it long ago. Of course, the contrary is the case.
The world has progressed in this as in all other respects.
Compare, for instance, the drinking to-day with the
drinking of a thousand years ago, nay, of only a hun-
dred odd years ago, when a man, if he wanted to ape
The Mask of Prohibition.
15
his so-called betters, did so by contriving to be carried
to bed every night “drunk as a lord.” Has that con-
dition of affairs been altered by legislative measures
restricting the right of the individual to control him-
self? No. It has been altered by that far greater
power, the moral force of education and the good
example which teaches mankind the very thing that
prohibition would take from it: the virtue of self-
control and moderation in all things.
And here we come to the vital distinction between
the advocacy of temperance and the advocacy of pro-
hibition. Temperance and self-control are convertible
terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the
direct negation of the term self-control. In order to
save the small percentage of men who are too weak
to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains
on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if
this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects?
Yet, what would one think of a proposition to keep all
men locked up because a certain number have a pro-
pensity to steal? Theoretically, perhaps, all crime or
vice could be stopped by chaining us all up as we
chain up a wild animal, and only allowing us to take
exercise under proper supervision and control. But
while such a measure would check crime, it would not
eliminate the criminal. It is true, some people are
only kept from vice and crime by the fear of punish-
ment. Is not, indeed, the basis of some men's religious-
16
The Mask of Prohibition.
ness nothing else but the fear of Divine punishment?
The doctrines of certain religious denominations not
entirely unknown in the prohibition camp make self-
respect, which is the foundation of self-control and of
all morality, a sin. They decry rather than advocate
it. They love to call themselves miserable, helpless
sinners, cringing before the flaming sword, and it is
the flaming sword, not the exercise of their own enlight-
ened will, that keeps them within decent bounds. Yet
has this fear of eternal punishment contributed one
iota toward the intrinsic betterment of the human
being? If it had, would so many of our Christian
creeds have discarded it, admitting that it is the pre-
cepts of religion, not its dark and dire threats, that
make men truly better and stronger within themselves
to resist that which our self-respect teaches us is bad
and harmful? The growth of self-respect in man, with
its outward manifestation, self-control, is the growth
of civilization. If we are to be allowed to exercise
it no longer, it must die in us from want of nutrition,
and men must become savages once more, fretting
now at their chains, which they will break as inevitably
as the sun will rise to-morrow and herald a new day.
I consider the danger which threatens civilized society
from the growing power of a sect whose views on
prohibition are merely an exemplification of their gen-
eral low estimate of man's ability to rise to higher
things by his own volition to be of infinitely greater
The Mask of Prohibition.
17
consequence than the danger that, in putting their
narrow theories to the test, a few billions of invested
property will be destroyed, a number of great wealth-
producing industries wiped out, the rate of individual
taxation largely increased, and a million or so of strug-
gling wage earners doomed to face starvation. These
latter considerations, of course, must appeal to every
thinking man, but what are they compared with the
greater questions involved? Already the government
of our State, and indeed of a good many other States,
has passed practically into the hands of a few preacher-
politicians of a certain creed. With the machine they
have built up, by appealing to the emotional weaknesses
of the more or less unintelligent masses, they have
lifted themselves on to a pedestal of power that has
enabled them to dictate legislation or defeat it at
their will, to usurp the functions of the governing
head of the State and actually induce him to delegate
to them the appointive powers vested in him by the
Constitution. When a Governor elected by the popular
vote admits, as was recently the case, that he can not
appoint a man to one of the most important offices of
the State without the indorsement of the irresponsible
leader of a certain semi-religious movement, and when
he submits to this same personage for correction and
amendment his recommendation to the legislative body,
there can scarcely be any doubt left in any reasonable
mind as to the extent of the power wielded by this
18
The Mask of Prohibition.
leader, or as to the uses he and those behind him intend
putting it to.
And what does it all mean? It means that govern-
ment by emotion is to be substituted for government
by reason, and government by emotion, of which history
affords many examples, is, according to the testimony
of all ages, the most dangerous and pernicious of all
forms of government. It has already crept into the
legislative assemblies of most of the States of the
Union, and is being craftily fostered by those who
know how easily it can be made available for their
purposes—purposes to the furtherance of which cool
reason would never lend itself. Prohibition is but one
.
of its fruits, and the hand that is plucking this fruit
is the same hand of intolerance that drove forth cer-
tain of our forefathers from the land of their birth to
seek the sheltering freedom of these shores.
What a strange reversal of conditions! The intol-
erants of a few hundred years ago are the upholders
of liberty to-day, while those they once persecuted,
having multiplied by grace of the very liberty that
has so long sheltered them here, are now planning to
impose the tyranny of their narrow creed upon the
descendants of their persecutors of yore.
Let the greater public, which is, after all, the arbiter
of the country's destinies; pause and ponder these
things before they are allowed to progress too far.
Prohibition, though it must cause, and is already caus-
The Mask of Prohibition.
19
ing, incalculable damage, may never succeed in this
country; but that which is behind it, as the catapults
and the cannon were behind the battering rams in the
battles of olden days, is certain to succeed unless
timely measures of prevention are resorted to; and if
it does succeed, we shall witness the enthronement of a
monarch in this land of liberty compared with whose
autocracy the autocracy of the Russian Czar is a mere
trifle.
The name of this monarch is Religious Intolerance.
The Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.,
and His Divine Master-
A Contrast
From The Crown, Newark, N. J., May, 1909
In the month of March there appeared in Appleton's
Magazine an article by the Reverend Charles F. Aked,
D. D., entitled “Christianity and Temperance.” In the
ordinary course of things it would not be expected that
such a subject, especially when treated by a minister
of the gospel of Christ, could lend itself to any dis-
cussion of a controversial nature. In the article in
question, however, there are utterances of so extra-
ordinary a character, not only impugning the honesty
and manhood of thousands of men who for years have
been obliged to submit more or less in silence to similar
attacks, from similar quarters, but actually exhorting
the church of Christ to deny them the spiritual priv-
ileges which Almighty God has vouchsafed to the
humblest and lowest of those whom He created in His
image, that I have felt constrained, as one of the men
thus publicly assailed and threatened, to request per-
mission to reply to the reverend author.
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
21
I might fitly disregard the question upon which all
Mr. Aked's arguments hinge, whether the use of stimu-
lants in moderate quantities is harmful in the broader
sense or not, as being neither in my province nor that
of a theologian to determine. But since Mr. Aked's
entire article is based upon a settlement of this very
question in his own very pragmatical way, it is only
right and just for me to state, by way of preface to
my reply, that, audacious as it may seem, I disagree
with the reverend gentleman's conclusions in this all-
important regard.
Of course, I am neither a minister nor an expert
physician. But I belong to a family whose members
for many generations have indulged in stimulants,
and I do so myself for diverse reasons. Firstly, because
I have always been accustomed to them; secondly,
because I like them, and because they have wrought me
no harm; and lastly, because I was taught by a Chris-
tian sect, whose standing among religious denomina-
tions is not inferior to that of the church to which the
reverend gentleman himself belongs, that the moderate
use of stimulants is sanctioned by the revealed scrip-
tures, and can injure no normally healthy being.
I am aware that all this will not affect the Reverend
Mr. Aked's uncompromising attitude. He is of a dif-
ferent opinion, and he has given due notice to all men
that whosoever disagrees with him and the particular
coterie of experts whose dicta he approves is, ipso facto,
22
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
ruled out of court, and unworthy of further considera-
tion. So that precludes the possibility of any further
argument with the reverend gentleman on that score.
Still, since the burden of Mr. Aked's article, which
will undoubtedly have been read by many thousands,
is the intentional iniquity of the brewer, as evidenced
by the mere fact that he brews and sells beer, and the
consequent duty of the church to anathematize and
excommunicate him, without further trial or hearing,
I may be permitted to plead before the greater tribunal
of the public the following circumstance in extenuation
of my offense in belonging to the fraternity which Mr.
Aked so deeply abhors.
As it happens, I received my chief religious instruc-
tion from the Moravian Brethren. It is perhaps not
generally known that John Wesley, the founder of
the Methodist Church, was converted by one of these
Brethren, and established, under the influence of the
Moravian teachings, what is known to-day as the
Methodist faith. The connection is, therefore, from
some points of view, quite a respectable one. The
Moravian creed may be summarized in the simple doc-
trine that the Scripture is the only rule of faith and
practice. Under that doctrine, though they do not
mingle with the rest of the world, the Moravian Breth-
ren engage in many industries, among which-horribile
dictum is the manufacture and sale of beer. While at
school and under the tuition of these excellent men,
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
23
whose religious earnestness and whose Christian works
no man, not excepting even, I fancy, Mr. Aked him-
self, will question, I often visited their chief brewery,
drank beer in its cellars, and learned from them by
precept and example that God had caused the grape to
grow in order that man might produce from it the
wine that “gladdeneth the heart.”
So much, then, for myself, and for the Moravian
Brethren, to whose instruction I owe such little good
as is in me, just as John Wesley, the founder of the
Methodist Church, owed them, nearly two hundred
years ago, that which made him the man he afterwards
became.
Now comes the Reverend Mr. Aked at the com-
mencement of this twentieth century and says:
"And
clearly, therefore, the Church must refuse to hold com-
munion with any man or woman who manufactures or
sells intoxicating liquor. No man making his money
by the liquor traffic must be admitted to Church mem-
bership. The money made in the trade must not be
accepted, knowingly, by any Christian community.”
I pass over the fact that this sentence of excommuni-
cation includes an entire Christian Church, and prob-
ably the most intensely religious body of men living
to-day. Inasmuch as they have the misfortune (or is
it the wilful wickedness?) to differ from the Reverend
Mr. Aked, they presumably deserve in his eyes no
better fate. But passing from the particular to the
24
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
general question, is it not fair to ask upon what author-
ity, biblical or otherwise, the Reverend Mr. Aked takes
the ground he does? The Scripture is open to the
layman as well as to the preacher, and unless great
changes have taken place since I was instructed in the
meaning of the revealed word, the teachings of Christ
are still the foundation upon which the fabric of the
modern Christian Church is reared. If this is really
so, and if a new messiah has not arisen in this twentieth
century to put to shame and confound the hitherto
recognized one and only Messiah, whom we all wor-
ship, let me tell the Reverend Mr. Aked, and I say
it in all solemnity, as one endowed as he is with an
immortal soul, as one who, before God, is an equal
participator with him in the divine love which cleanses
from all sin, that a church which would adopt the stand
he advocates would no longer be a House of God, but a
House of the Evil One, in which the name of Christ
is taken in vain and His divine message of peace and
good-will to all men made a hideous mockery.
Contrast with this shocking utterance of a minister
of Christ the words of Christ Himself, addressed (sig-
nificantly enough) to the Chief Priests and Elders of
the people of Israel in connection with the parable of
the two sons who were ordered by their father to go and
work in his vineyard. The gospel of Matthew quotes
them as follows: Chapter 21, Verses 31 and 32:-
“Jesus saith unto them: Verily I say unto you that
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
25
the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of
God before you, for John came unto you in the way
of righteousness, and ye believed him not, but the
publicans and the harlots believed him! And ye, when
ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might
believe him.'
Contrast furthermore with the Reverend Mr. Aked's
exhortation to the ministry at large to deny manufac-
turers of liquor the benefits of the Church which his
Master founded, the action of that Master Himself,
as recorded in the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 9,
Verses 10 to 13: “And it came to pass, as Jesus sat
at meat in the house, behold many publicans and sinners
came and sat down with Him and His disciples; and
when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto His disciples,
Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?
But when Jesus heard that, He said unto them, They
that be whole need not a physician, but they that are
sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will
have mercy and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
“I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” How will Mr.
Aked account to his Master Christ for refusing to any
mortal being the comforts of the Church, in which His
word, as handed down to us by His apostles, and not
Mr. Aked's word, is law?
Does it never occur to those who preach the gospel
of temperance that there is an intemperance of the
26
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
mind which is far more shocking, far more disgraceful,
and far more disastrous in its effects than the intemper-
ance of the body? The drunkard is dangerous because
he has temporarily lost all cognizance of law, of duty,
of decency, and of regard for his fellow-men. Opposi-
tion inflames his anger, and he is liable to murder any
one who contradicts him. Yet what is he but a spiritual
drunkard who, because he differs, however honestly,
from thousands and thousands of his fellow-men, pro-
ceeds in cold blood to murder their souls, instead of
ministering to them, as the physician ministers to those
whom he believes to be sick?
Christ was pre-eminently the Messenger of Charity.
Is there one word of true Christian charity to be found
in all the utterances of His servant, the Reverend C. F.
Aked, D. D., on the subject of temperance? He poses
as the new savior of mankind. But what a difference
between this latter-day savior and the divine Messiah
Whom he would supersede, and Whose teachings he
arrogantly sets at naught! He says that "the use of
intoxicatiing wine at the Lord's Table is entirely with-
out defense”; and no doubt he is entitled to his opinion.
Yet the majority of Christian Churches believe that the
use of such wine is an essential part of the awful cele-
bration of the Savior's sacrifice. And what is the
Reverend Mr. Aked's attitude towards these Christian
churches that differ from him?
“Their determination,” he says, “to persevere in the
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
27
practice of providing intoxicating wine for sacramental
purposes grows out of one of two things. It grows
out of a love of the liquor—which is dangerous; or it
grows out of hate of the Temperance sentiment—which
is detestable. Conscience is concerned with the protest
against it. Conscience cannot be concerned with the
demand for it.” Any argument to the contrary, the
reverend gentleman declares further on, can only be
"one of wicked selfishness or of more wicked spite-
fulness."
Did ever a more uncharitable, ever a more flagrantly
intemperate utterance issue from the mouth of one who
professes to be a servant of Christ Jesus? Would it be
entirely unjustifiable to say that such an utterance as
this, in face of the undoubted fact that millions of true
Christians honestly adhere to the belief which is here
so shamefully stigmatized, is conclusive proof of the
mental inebriety of the person that makes it? If we
glance at the records of history, we shall find that it
is from men who assumed the same uncompromising
attitude towards those that differed from them on
matters of religious detail that mankind has suffered
ravages worse than any that can be attributed to the
effects of alcohol.
Of course, no man with eyes to see and ears to
hear can be ignorant of the evils consequent upon the
excessive indulgence in drink. Even the Reverend
Mr. Aked admits that nobody on the face of the
28
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
earth (and presumably he includes in the category the
wicked manufacturer of stimulants himself) defends
drunkenness. But is it not strange that the intemper-
ance among men who drink is infinitesimal as compared
with the intemperance exhibited by those who preach
the doctrine of temperance from the pulpits and the
platforms of the country? In Mr. Aked's opinion
everyone who drinks is practically a drunkard, just as
everybody who disagrees with him is a wilful wrong-
doer. In following up this particular line of argument,
the reverend gentleman allows his zeal to outrun his
discretion; only momentarily, however. For, in the
course of his reasoning, he has arrived at the inevitable
and logical conclusion that the sin of drinking (even in
moderation) is no less heinous than the sin of manu-
facturing drink. A perfectly intelligent conclusion, of
course, but a dangerous one to the cause championed
by Mr. Aked, as the writer presently realizes. For he
promptly pulls himself up, and goes on: “Well, per-
haps so. But a plea may be submitted (in this case)
for suspense of judgment.” And why? "Because, ”
says Mr. Aked, “some of the best men and women the
Church has ever known have been non-abstainers; and
a movement intended to un-Church the Church member
who has not properly grasped God's purpose for this
generation would justly be regarded as intolerable."
Truly, intolerable! Just as intolerable as the un-
Churching of those who manufacture and supply the
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
29
drink which some of the best men and women the
Church has ever known indulge in. Only, in case the
latter were un-Churched, the congregations of the
churches might become uncomfortably thinned, and
so-acting under Mr. Aked's advice—the churches
are to agree to wink their eye at the iniquity and call
things square for the moment.
Was ever sophistry more gross? Again, what a con-
trast with his divine Master. Where Christ found sin,
He not only denounced it, but He scourged the sinner,
regardless of consequences. But when the Reverend
Mr. Aked in his indiscriminate ire finds himself en-
trained, not beyond what he considers true facts and
strict logic, but beyond what he deems prudent policy,
he promptly compromises with his conscience, makes a
temporary compact with the Evil One, and agrees to
condone the religious felony he has been fulminating
against-pending the advent of a more opportune
time to punish it.
The Church, even as conceived by Mr. Aked, should
surely be consistent. If the man or woman who manu-
factures stimulants is to be excommunicated because, in
addition to the millions of good people who drink those
stimulants in moderation, there are some who indulge in
them to excess and are driven in consequence to poverty
and crime, why not hold, for instance, the manufacturer
of gunpowder similarly responsible for the wholesale
slaughter of human beings which the use of gunpowder
30
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
involves? Or the manufacturer of playing cards an-
swerable for the distressful effects of the gambling
spirit prevalent among men? And so forth. Indeed,
there would be more reason to condemn the gunpowder-
maker than the maker of stimulants, for the former
manufactures no small part of his product with the
full knowledge and intention that it is to be used for
murderous purposes (in war, for instance), whereas
the latter's product is certainly not manufactured with
the specific intention that it shall be indulged in to
excess and thus cause misery and crime. It is its mis-
use, not its use, in spite of all that Mr. Aked says to
the contrary, that brings about this result, and for the
misuse of stimulants the manufacturer of them can no
more be held responsible than the manufacturer of gun-
powder can be held responsible for the deaths of those
who fall in war, or who use the gunpowder in order
to take their own or their neighbors' lives. War and
the manufacture of gunpowder, of course, are sanc-
tioned by the governments of the world. But so is
the practice of manufacturing and drinking stimulants.
Does Mr. Aked, as a Christian minister, approve the
former any more than he does the latter? The Church,
he implies, is to defy Caesar in the one case, and
excommunicate those whom Ceasar protects. Then
why not act likewise in the other case? Is there the
same astute reason for a suspense of judgment in this
latter case as was advanced for not excommunicating
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
31
later age.
the best men and women of the Church who are non-
abstainers?
We are told that we live to-day in the age of reform.
I believe we do. But it is a peculiarity of reform that
it is liable itself to become the subject of reform in a
Have we not, as just exemplified, the
spectacle of Mr. Aked reforming the doctrines of Him
who may, to say the least, be called the greatest re-
former this world has ever seen? If posterity ever
christens our age, I fancy it will call it the age of
reckless conclusions. Our worship of reason has
reached the point of idolatry, and the true human
god, Common Sense, has been relegated to the cellar.
For this, I veritably believe, the professional experts
and statisticians are indirectly responsible. They are
par excellence the public nuisances of our day. To
them is largely due the mass of reckless legislation
which issues annually from the mills of our State parlia-
ments, only to add to the multitude of freak laws which
already disgrace our statute books. The problems
which our forefathers tackled with cautious and diffi-
dent minds, we, in the plenitude of our latter-day
wisdom, hack at frantically with knives and hatchets.
We storm them with expert evidence and statistics.
We know the cause of everything, and are ready to
apply the sure remedy for evils which have existed,
and defied all the reason and the remedies of our
ignorant ancestors, for thousands and thousands of
32
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
years. It is no longer an age of progress that we live
in, but an age of final arrival. If the cart does not
go fast enough at this last stage, with the horse har-
nessed in front of it, presto! the conditions are reversed,
and the cart is placed before the horse, with the full
assurance that we shall reach our journey's end in a
twinkling.
The drink evil, with its so-called concomitant evils,
is one of the problems at issue. Mr. Aked has the true
solution of it at his command, as thousands of others
have, and he flourishes in his hand the usual magic
wand that enables him to produce the miracle, viz:
statistics. Statistics, among others, touching the rela-
tion of crime and poverty to drink.
That drink is the primary cause of crime and pov-
erty, and that without it 90 per cent of the crimes we
now deplore would not be committed, has so long been
the slogan of our would-be reformers that it has
become, like the axiom of mathematics, a tacitly ac-
cepted fact, which to deny would be as serious as to
deny that the earth revolves around the sun. The
reason, in view of the trend of the age, is apparent.
Statistics show that 50 per cent of our prison inmates
have indulged in drink to excess. Ergo: Drink caused
their downfall and their lapse into crime. The fact
never seems to occur to anyone that it might be just
as logical to say that these unfortunates drank to
excess because they were constitutionally criminal, as
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
33
it is to say that they became criminals because they
yielded to a constitutional craving for drink.
I anticipate the reply that these men succumbed to
drink before they became criminals and, inasmuch
as the cause always precedes the effect, the logical
conclusion is that drinking led to crime, and not vice
versa.
But does this answer really meet the point? Two
facts may be concomitant, and yet have no relation
to each other, or they may follow one another, and yet
not necessarily bear to each other the relation of cause
and effect. And at the same time these same two facts
may be traceable to one common basic origin or cause.
That criminals should be addicted to excessive indul-
gence in drink seems to me to be anything but sur-
prising. No more surprising is the fact, which is
undoubted, that a person given to excessive drinking
is frequently found to be a criminal. But to my mind,
these two facts, broadly speaking, prove neither that
drink and crime bear a relation to one another, nor
that the one is the cause or the effect of the other.
They prove, if they prove anything, that the tendency
to crime and the tendency to drink have one common
origin in the human being, viz: An inherent moral
weakness, which incapacitates him from controlling his
appetites and passions and resisting temptation. To
say that, if the temptation to drink had been removed
from him, he would never have become a criminal, is
34
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
to say that which no one can prove to be true. If it
were true, we should expect to find a minimum of
criminals among those nations, in which the drinking
habit does not prevail at all, such as among Mahometan
peoples. Yet, is crime less prevalent among the Turks,
the Persians, or the Mahometans of the East Indies
than it is in our Western civilization?
The same arguments apply to drink in its relation
to poverty. It is commonly stated that most poverty
is due to the ravages of drink. Incidentally it may
be mentioned that the exhaustive investigations of Mr.
Charles Booth into the cause of poverty in England
led him to discover the surprising fact that only a
small percentage of the paupers in the institutions he
examined owed their condition to drink. I say the
fact is surprising, for I should certainly have expected
him to find a very different result; not because I believe
that drink is the cause of poverty, but because I know
that poverty, for different reasons than in the case of
crime, is liable to engender a tendency to over-indulge
in drink. Those, in fact, who think they can remove
poverty by destroying the source of drink are putting
the cart before the horse. Poverty and the misery that
trails in its wake drive more men to drink than vice
versa, and by saving human beings from poverty we
shall prevent far more drunkenness than we shall pre-
vent poverty by saving men from the temptation of
drink. In other words, there are far more men who
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
35
drink to excess because they are poor than there are
men who are poor because they drink to excess.
No one knows this better than the manufacturer of
stimulants. It may surprise many men to hear that,
whenever an industrial depression strikes the country,
the business of the liquor manufacturer is the last to
feel its effects, and that when trade once more resumes
its normal condition, again the business of the liquor
manufacturer is the last to benefit by the change. And
what is the reason? Trade depression throws hundreds
of thousands of men out of work. Misery results, and
the natural tendency is to seek respite from misery
in drink. Consequently a large portion of what the
worker has hoarded for a rainy day is spent in drink.
When it is dissipated, of course, he has no longer the
wherewithal to procure liquor. The moment trade
brightens again and he finds employment, his need of
the comforting stimulant has disappeared, and he
refrains from indulging even in moderate drinking,
until he has filled the void in the home exchequer cre-
ated during the period of his misery. The conclusion
here is evident that poverty is the inciting cause of the
immoderate use of stimulants, and that the moment
that cause ceases to exist men relapse into their normal
state of decency and moderation.
I am aware, of course, that the origin of the criminal
propensities of one generation of men is frequently
traced to the vicious habits of their progenitors, exces-
36
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
sive drinking being as usual assigned as the salient
primary cause of degeneracy. Let us agree that it is.
But, again, what does that prove? It proves merely
that the father, or grandfather, or other ancestor, of
the criminal subject belonged to that unfortunate and
ever-present percentage of mankind whose characters
are inherently weak and unstable, and it is these char-
acters that are liable to pass from the parent to the
offspring, not the particular vices they have succumbed
to; just as it is not a particular disease that is heredi-
tary in certain families, but the propensity to acquire
that disease. In other words, it is the soil that is
handed down from father to son, not the seed or the
plant that happens to thrive in that soil.
Hence, it is this soil that should have the attention
of our philanthropic gardeners, not the seeds that may
fall upon it. To imagine that by erecting a fence
around it, the soil will lose its peculiar fitness for cer-
tain undesirable vegetation is no less absurd than to
suppose that by withdrawing from the weakling the
opportunities to indulge in a certain vice, let it be
drink or any other form of excess, his weak nature will
be cured and thenceforward rendered immune from
the temptations that beset it in other directions.
It is extraordinary to what lengths our statistical
friends are carried in drawing conclusions from the
mere concomitancy of certain facts. Because there
are saloons which are the haunts of the criminal classes,
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
37
therefore, as Mr. Aked says, these saloons must be the
breeding-ground of all crime, and if they were exter-
minated there would no longer be any criminals.
The conclusion is arrived at by the same faulty
process of logic as that which results in the assertion
that drink is the cause of crime and poverty. In both
cases the only premise upon which the conclusion is
reached consists in the circumstance that the propen-
sity to drink and the propensity to commit crime are
found to be co-existent in the same individuals. Is
there any more reason for saying, that the criminal
saloon is the breeding-ground of the criminal classes
than there is in saying that the criminal classes are
the breeders of the criminal saloon? Who was there
first? The criminal or the saloon? If it was the
saloon, then the saloon must have commenced its
existence, and continued to exist for a long time,
without any patronage, and surely it is an undeniable
fact that the existence of a particular class of patronage
is a condition precedent to the establishment of the
particular class of trade or business that caters to that
patronage. It is always the demand that creates the
supply, not vice versa, and the failure to recognize
this patent fact is at the bottom of all the troubles
which our latter-day reformers are constantly bringing
upon themselves and the unfortunate world they are
bent upon raising to a state of perfection.
I am not advancing a plea here for the existence
38
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
of the criminal dive, any more than I am pleading
the cause of the excessive drinker. Both are repre-
hensible, both are sore spots on our civilization. The
question is, how can we best remedy the evil and heal
the sores? I deny the postulate that, because crim-
inals haunt a certain class of saloons, which cater to
their needs, therefore all saloons ought to be abolished,
just as I oppose the proposition that, because some
people drink to excess, therefore moderate drinking
should not only be condemned, but made subject to the
terrible punishment the Reverend Mr. Aked holds in
reserve for it, pending the arrival of a more convenient
time than the present for inflicting it.
In the extravagance of his denunciatory passion the
reverend gentleman commits himself to the startling
assertion that moderate drinking is worse than drunk-
enness, and in his attempt to prove this assertion he
gets strangely confused in his statistics and his logic.
“Every man or woman,” he says in this particular con-
nection, "familiar with the work of the churches has
pondered, sometimes almost in agony of spirit, the
problem presented by the mass of smug, callous indif-
ference which no preaching or pleading can pierce.”
And to what cause does he ascribe this smug, callous
indifference? I give his own words: “The habitual
use of intoxicating drink in quantities which never go
beyond what is called “moderation, which has never
caused drunkenness, and which probably never will,
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
39
*
*
*
creates, more than anything else with which we have
to do, the type of character so hard to move.
It is not drunkenness which is the preacher's deadliest
enemy; it is drinking."
A strong statement, and a clinching one, assuredly,
if it be true. But is it true, according to the testimony
of the reverend gentleman himself? Listen to what
he says, when he requires the same statistics to prove
the need of suspending judgment against the members
of the Church who indulge in drink. “ 'It hath not
pleased God to give His people salvation by dialec-
tic,” he quotes, “and in many-sided moral questions
there are sentiments most real and potent which must
be considered, but which can no more be expressed in
syllogism or sorites than love can be measured with
a yardstick or faith weighed by avoirdupois. Between
the earnest Christian toiler on the one hand, loving
God and loving men, genuinely misled into taking
stimulants and sincerely ignorant of his duty—and
the saloonkeeper and brewer on the other, whose sin
is not accidental, but a trade, who earns a living by
wrecking the bodies and damning the souls of men,
and who accumulates more money as he accomplishes
more iniquity, there roll unfathomed oceans of moral
distinction. Some of the best men and women the
Church has ever known have been non-abstainers.
Here we have, then, an example of the same statistics
brought to bear in two ways upon the moderate drink-
40
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
ing habits of the Church member, and leading of
necessity to two directly opposite conclusions. And
if we take these two conclusions and use them as the
premise of a new syllogism, we arrive at the final
grand conclusion that “the smug, callously indifferent
Church members” and “the best men and women the
Church has ever known” are one and the same people.
Truly, a wonderful result of logic, or sorites, as
Mr. Aked—I wonder whether intentionally-calls his
syllogistic process. I was taught that the original
meaning of the term sorites was the leading up from
true premises to a manifestly false conclusion. Did
the Reverend Mr. Aked realize the peculiar appro-
priateness of the term when he employed it in refer-
ence to his own system of logic?
A line of argument, to be convincing, must not only
be consistent, but it must be sincere. To stretch a point
in order to reach a desired conclusion is neither profit-
able to the argument, nor is it truthful. To say, for in-
stance, as Mr. Aked does, that people who drink in
moderation are dull and heavy and stupid, and devoid
of quick responsiveness, generous ardor, and warm-
hearted zeal, is to state what millions of people who
have the same opportunities of observation as Mr.
Aked has know to be directly contrary to the truth.
The trouble with men of Mr. Aked's pronounced
opinions is that they are too apt to argue from their
preconceived conclusions to the premises necessary to
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D..
41
establish them, instead of reversing the process. All
experts agree on the subject of the dangerous effects of
the excessive use of alcohol, but all experts do not
agree on the subject of the effects of alcohol when
consumed in moderate quantities.
It may be conceded at once that some people should
not use alcohol in any quantities. But some people
are also compelled to avoid dark meats, starchy foods,
tomatoes, etc., etc., because they happen to be pre-
disposed to certain ailments which such articles of diet
are liable to aggravate. A common piece of expert
evidence we frequently hear adduced in proof of the
harmful effects of alcohol is the fact that the introduc-
tion of a certain quantity of liquor into the human sys-
tem serves markedly to decrease the working capacity
of the subject. I read, for instance, in a recent publi-
cation that a certain expert physician had found such
a decrease of working capacity to be produced among
the workers in a factory after he had caused them to
imbibe thirty-five grains (over an ounce) of alcohol.
Would this scientist have been equally astonished to
find the same decrease in the working capacity of
these men produced by their eating two meals at the
same time? In the first case, the writer, who bases
his argument on these particular statistics, reasons
from them that such a thirty-five gram dose of alcohol
on each week-day of the year would suffice to keep
a man permanently alcoholised to a scientifically meas-
42
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
ureable extent. Would it not follow, then, in the
second case, that, because a man suffers indigestion
from eating two meals at one time, his stomach must
become permanently ruined if he consumes two such
meals in the course of every twenty-four hours?
Everyone with any experience knows that the in-
dulgence in an appreciable quantity of alcohol during
working hours is not conducive to an increase of the
working capacity of the person who thus indulges,
any more than the eating of a too hearty meal at mid-
day is. All things have their time and their purpose,
and alcohol is no exception. Why, then, accuse alcohol
of that which we condone or pass over in silence in
the case of all other articles of diet?
But let me conclude. I have no quarrel with the
Reverend Mr. Aked on account of his selection and
application of available statistics, except that I believe
he, like many others, misapplies them. But, as a fol-
lower and worshipper, however humble, of the Savior
of mankind, I have a serious and righteous quarrel
with him as a mouthpiece of that Savior, when he uses
his sacred office, not to preach the word of God to
those whom he considers wrongdoers, but to deny
them the comfort and the healing power of that Word
which was given to all men alike. Never has the
extravagance of the movement which is so deplorably
misnamed the Temperance movement been more forc-
ibly and shockingly brought home to me than it has
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
43
been by the perusal of this article from the pen of a
prominent Christian minister. If it has been left to a
mere layman like myself to lift his solitary voice in
protest against this travesty of Christ's message to man,
the fact will not redound to the credit of the thousands
of Christian ministers who stand by and allow it to
pass unrebuked.
Fairness has always been one of the prime character-
istics of the Anglo-Saxon race. Yet, strangely enough,
to-day the extravagant and persistent vituperation pro-
ceeding from a host of men who, from the nature of
their calling, can command and hold the attention of
the public, and who are gifted, above the ordinary
being, with the powers of dialectic, has so cowed the
generality of men that, not only are many fair-minded
and disinterested persons who in their hearts disap-
prove this violence and extravagance reluctant to enter
the lists with them, but to a large extent the press
itself, for political and other reasolis, deems it wise
to close its columns, both to these fair-minded and dis-
interested onlookers and to those interested ones whom
Mr. Aked and his adherents would see annihilated,
body and soul, without a trial, without a hearing, with-
out even the ordinary human privileges which are ac-
corded to the humblest and meanest applicant at the
bar of public opinion.
Every question, however plausible one side of it may
appear, has another side to it, and the inability or the
44
Reverend Charles F. Aked, D.D.
want of opportunity to present that other side must
not be mistaken for proof of its weakness or its non-
existence. It is perhaps scarcely fair to expect of men
whose calling is purely commercial that they shall of a
sudden don dialectical armor and sally forth, lance in
hand, to give successful battle to an army of profes-
sional champions adept in all the arts and practices
of the polemical joust. But it may in all fairness be
expected by these men, and by the greater public, who
are the final judges of a tourney, that the one side,
when challenged to the fray, shall not be deprived of
the use of those weapons which the other side is privi-
leged to employ, and which it is able to employ with
all the superior skill of the trained expert.
The present writer is one of these men, and he is
keenly alive to the fact that he may be lamentably de-
ficient in those qualities which are necessary to enable
him to cope with the intelligence, the erudition, and the
rhetorical powers of men of Mr. Aked's natural ability
and culture. If he is, let the fact serve as proof of the
inequality of the champions, not of the merit or the
demerit of their respective causes.
Some Reflections on the Moral
Aspects of Prohibition
From The Crown, August, 1909
For the purpose of this article it shall be assumed
that the consumption of alcoholic beverages in any
quantities and under any circumstances is entirely evil.
This is the avowed creed of the prohibitionist, and for
· argument's sake let it be accepted. His ultimate and
supreme aim is to destroy the demand of the consumer,
and as a first step towards the accomplishment of that
aim he is endeavoring to compass the destruction of the
consumer's source of supply.
Strategically, this policy would be admirable, but
for one fundamental flaw in it. It is based, unfor-
tunately, on the fallacious notion that the supply
creates the demand, whereas the reverse is the case.
It is the demand that creates the supply, and it will
always create it so long as the earth and what it pro-
duces afford the means of satisfying the demand.
Until, therefore, the guns of the prohibitionists are
directed against the consumer himself the warfare of
prohibition will remain what it is to-day, merely de-
structive of the control and regulation of the liquor
traffic, not of that traffic itself. At some future date,
46
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
perhaps, if prohibition honestly means what it pro-
fesses, the consumer will become the main point of
attack, and then the tug of war will commence in real
earnest. It lies indeed logically in the nature of things
that, if the manufacture and sale of drink is a crime,
the purchase and consumption of drink should also be
held to be criminal. The only problem is whether that
which is not, and never has been, regarded as a crime
can be arbitrarily made such. The question may seem
futile, and yet it is the crucial question upon which
ultimately the success or non-success of prohibition
hinges. Supposing, for instance, that all the laws of
the universe were to combine to make, not only the
manufacture and sale, but also the act of drinking
liquor itself a crime, would not human nature revolt
against the interference with the personal rights of the
individual, and defy the laws? It is very much to be
feared that it would. The law cannot arbitrarily de-
clare an act to be criminal. Crime is something of an
already fixed and well-defined character, and the law
merely deals with it where it finds it.
To confound what is termed crime with what is
termed sin or vice is a common error, into which,
unfortunately, men of a certain trend of thought are
peculiarly liable to fall, and when they do so, and
endeavor to inflict the consequences of this error upon
their fellow-beings, the result is invariably social dis-
turbance, such as is now convulsing our nation from
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
one end to the other. Some evils are not remediable by
law, and sin and vice are of this category of evils. A
man who drinks liquor may be guilty of a sin. But it is
a sin against himself alone, and however much an indi-
vidual may sin against himself, in the light of human
justice his sin is not criminal. It can only become crim-
inal when it injures his neighbor. All laws to which the
person of the citizen is amenable are made to protect
one individual from the undue encroachment of his fel-
lows, not to protect him against himself. Hence, if a man
drinks to excess and appears publicly in the condition
known in police court parlance as "drunk and disor-
derly,” he is arrested and punished, not because he has
drunk to excess.
That is his affair. But because his
condition is a menace and an offence to the community.
An individual's morals, in short, are his own concern;
his immorality can only become criminal when it affects
others and threatens their interests or welfare.
Possibly the advocates of prohibition may recognize
this fact, and realizing that a law against drinking
in itself would be manifestly inadequate to compel that
general obedience which alone makes law effective, they
rely for the present upon the enactment of such statutes
as will hedge in the willing drinker with restrictions and
impediments calculated to render the obtaining of liquor
by him a practical impossibility. Their object, and a
very praiseworthy object, of course, is to remove temp-
tation from the weak. But here, too, unfortunately,
48
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
they are confronted with an insuperable obstacle in the
lack of that common consent of the people at large
without which all such statutes must needs fail in their
operation. For, in order to thus successfully remove
temptation from the weak, a personal sacrifice on the
part of all those who are strong, and who have no
cause to fear temptation—and they admittedly far
outnumber the weak—is the primary requisite, and
human beings are not yet divine enough to voluntarily
sacrifice their liberties for others. Compulsory phil-
anthropy, on the other hand, is a hybrid monstrosity,
and is neither human nor divine.
I once knew an Englishwoman who was a great
charity worker, and who told me that she had taken the
pledge to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages.
I suggested, rather rashly, that this act was a con-
fession of weakness on her part. She answered: “No,
it is not. As a matter of fact, I like a glass of wine,
and see no harm in it. But I often have occasion to
urge others, weaker than myself, to take the pledge,
and I feel that I have no right to ask my neighbor to
do that which I am not willing to do myself.” To that
argument I can conceive no valid answer. On the
contrary, I think its force must be admitted. This
lady was in favor of self-prohibition, and in order to
promote self-prohibition she voluntarily forewent the
gratification of her own tastes and desires, though
she saw no harm therein to herself. And is not here
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
49
the vital difference between her attitude and that of
our latter-day prohibitionists? What this lady did
voluntarily they would force everyone to do by legal
enactment; and that, as experience proves, is impossible.
This same lady, though very wealthy, made a point
of refraining from exhibiting any outward evidence of
her wealth. She wore no jewelry, in fact she possessed
none; her dress was of the simplest, and her home sur-
roundings were modest enough to satisfy the preju-
dices of the most exigent socialist. “I am a lover of
things of beauty,” she explained, “and by no means
despise luxury. But I believe that the flaunting of our
riches in the face of so much poverty that exists around
us is the source of much of the discontent and the envy
which eats at the hearts of the poor, and tempts the
needy to commit crime. The exhibition of valuable
jewelry, for instance, has to my knowledge put the
thought of theft into the minds of men who had pre-
viously never harbored the notion of relieving their
needs by stealing. It is for this reason that I neither
wear nor keep jewelry, because it might serve as a
temptation to those who are in want, or who have a
propensity to steal.”
An admirable specimen of self-sacrifice, to be sure.
Everyone will admit that. But could this self-imposed
obligation be legally or reasonably imposed upon all
men and women? There is no doubt that the display
of articles of value on the person or in the show win-
50
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
dows of stores tempts many a weak individual to
commit theft, and if the opportunity were removed our
weaker brother would not succumb to his weakness.
But are we, therefore, to have no stores that display
goods, no men or women that wear jewelry, and are we
to eschew all luxury, because among the many who do
not possess it there are a few who might be saved from
the commission of crimes if there were no luxury to
tempt them?
The question may sound absurd to the unthinking
reader. And yet, if he will reflect a moment he will
admit that from the ideal Christian standpoint the
answer to it should be “yes.” Indeed, viewed from
that standpoint, no sacrifice should be considered too
great to save our fellow-beings from committing a
wrong. We are living, however, not in an ideal, but
in a practical world. God's law tells us to be good in
ourselves. Human law can do no more than restrain
us from doing wrong to others. If it attempts to go
further than that, it touches what for the want of a
better term we call our personal liberty. No law can
suppress or govern a man's thoughts, or his beliefs,
or his desires, or his appetites. It can only so regulate
his exercise of them as to prevent him from thereby
interfering with the rights, or endangering the safety
of his neighbors.
Perhaps I should apologize for using the term per-
sonál liberty. It has been subjected of late to a good
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
51
deal of sneering criticism on the part of those who favor
sumptuary legislation. And the reason is not without
interest. "What is the definition of personal liberty?"
these men say. “Who is to be the judge of the limits
of personal liberty? Laws are made by the majority
of the people, and if the majority decides that a law
does not infringe personal liberty, who shall gainsay
it?
The answer seems to me to be very simple. Un-
doubtedly the people, as a whole, will gainsay it, and
among that whole, as prohibition itself is proving every
day, a goodly number of the very persons who, as a
majority, have ignorantly, meddled with their own
and their neighbors' private rights. There is no need
to define what those private rights are. The history
of government has long ago defined them, and their
limits have been set, and will always be set, by actual
experience. The true measure of personal liberty, in
other words, is determined simply by the inability of
law to cumail it. To put it differently, the power of.
of 1
law is limited by the possibility of its execution. Let
the majority which passes a law be ever so large, if
that law infringes the personal rights of the individual,
it will be ineffective for the purpose for which it is
enacted, even though it have all the might of a despotic
government behind it to enforce its observance. Per-
sonal liberty, in brief, is that which no law framed
by human mind can successfully abridge. A law
52
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
framed with that object in view may do untold damage,
it may work the greatest injustice, but it will never
succeed in that which it aims to accomplish, namely,
to determine and control the actions of the individual in
such matters as concern himself alone.
The best proof of all this, as has been intimated, is
afforded by prohibition itself. Prohibition has proved
a deplorable failure wherever it has been attempted.
And it has proved more than a failure. It has in-
creased and multiplied the very evils it aimed to erad-
icate, and has added to those evils others of a character
scarcely less reprehensible than those it has failed to
correct. This is no random statement. The so-called
drink evil has been emphasized and increased wherever
the legal sale of liquor has been rendered impossible.
The drunkard there is the drunkard still, but asso-
ciated with him now are thousands of hypocrites and
law-breakers who were formerly comparatively upright
and honest men. Naturally, such drinks as most easily
evade the eye of the law are those most in demand
in such districts, and ardent spirits are just such
drinks. To sell in such territory is made a crime;
consequently the demand of those living in it, whose
requirements will be satisfied in spite of all law, is.
supplied, not by reputable and conscientious manufac-
turers and dealers, but by people who care for no law
and whose conscience is non-existent. The liquors
that enter these territories and are sold to the masses
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
53
such a
are for the most part of the worst possible kind. A
man cannot question what he buys from a bootlegger or
in a speak-easy, and being deprived of the oppor-
tunity to obtain comparatively good, wholesome bever-
ages, he takes what he can get, which is, in most cases,
rank poison.
Some prohibitionists, who are wise and honest enough
to recognize and admit these patent facts, say: "Oh,
but wait until we have really perfected prohibition,
and not only barred the shipment of liquors into pro-
hibition States, but have placed a ban on their im-
portation from abroad.” Well, supposing such
thing were feasible, and presumably it is, what would
be the result? Can a law arrest the developments of
nature? Will the grape cease to ripen, and corn and
rye and barley refuse to lend themselves to the process
of fermentation at the behest of the United States
government or of any other human government? Most
assuredly not.
Hence, if laws could really bring
about a condition under which, not only the local
manufacture and sale, but also the importation of
liquor were rendered impossible, would not every
person desiring a stimulant become his own manu-
facturer? And what would his product be? Not
much superior to the decoctions which the savage pre-
pares for himself, and the imbibing of which drives him,
as a rule, temporarily mad. In former times, before
science and commerce had reached their present stages,
54
Moral Aspects of Prohibition:
home-brewed ale was the common drink in many houses.
Could any law prevent a man from brewing ale in his
own home for his own and his friends' use? Or brew-
ing stronger drinks, according to such primitive meth-
ods as the circumstances would permit of his employ-
ing? And is there anyone so hardy as to assert that
such home-made substitutes for the scientifically pre-
pared article are better, or purer, or less harmful than
those which are now manufactured, sold and consumed
under proper supervision of the law?
So much, then, for the ineffectiveness of prohibition,
which is so glaring a fact that no one who has actually
studied the conditions prevailing where prohibition
in its various forms has been attempted can deny it. A
far more serious question, rendered doubly serious in
the light of prohibition's manifest failure to prohibit,
is the disastrous moral effect of the movement which
is making itself felt throughout the length and breadth
of this fair land.
It is the old story of the consequences of extravagant
and exaggerated development, whether religious, social,
industrial or economical; namely, temporary moral ret-
rogression, from which it takes civilization years to
recover and start once more afresh upon the inevitable
slow forward movement of social
social progress.
More
harm has been done by the unwise efforts of zealous,
though well-meaning reformers to bring humanity to
a state of perfection by one stupendous forward push
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
55
than the combined misdeeds of all the unscrupulous
miscreants of history have accomplished. The fact
is sad but true, and the results of the prohibition move-
ment are one more instance in proof of it.
Perhaps the most distressing feature among the
consequences of this movement, fostered as it is by a
strongly organized sectarian church power, is the
moral cowardice which it has engendered in the public
at large. The impulse to swim with the tide, and not
against it, is innate in the human animal. The emo-
tional tide of so-called temperance sentiment which is
sweeping over the land to-day is carrying thousands,
if not millions, with it, whose true sympathies are not
with those who have caused this tide, but who swim with
it because they have not the moral courage to admit
convictions which appear contrary to the popular trend.
There are thousands and thousands of men in this
country who openly profess allegiance to this cause,
but who are privately and in secret opposed to it.
They help to advance it, and are the very ones who
make it the farce it is when once it has apparently
succeeded.
This assertion may seem at first sight difficult to
substantiate. But, unfortunately, the proof is only
too easy to adduce.
Statistics show that an over-
whelming majority of men in this country indulge in
drink. The percentage is put as high as ninety-three
and as low as seventy-five. The fact that in many
56
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
cases a majority of these same men vote for prohibition
proves either one of two things. Either there are
far more philanthropists in the world of the calibre
of the lady I referred to earlier in this article, or there
are more hypocrites among us than it is agreeable to
believe. That this majority of prohibition voters does
not consist of men who distrust their own ability to
withstand the temptation to indulge to excess, and
who therefore welcome laws to restrain themselves, is
proved by the fact, again attested by the incon-
trovertible evidence of government statistics, that only
a comparatively small percentage of those who drink
do so immoderately. Which, then, of the two above-
mentioned alternatives is true? I leave it to those
better qualified to judge the true inwardness of man-
kind to decide whether the philanthropists or the
hypocrites are likely to be the more numerous among
us.
Now what is the moral effect of all this? An English
Archbishop once said: “Better England free than
England sober.” Would it not be more to the point
to
say
here: "Better Americans honest than America
sober?” Indeed, if the quasi-sobriety here implied is
to be part of American religion, can we not go further
“Better Americans honest than America
thus religious?"
The prohibition movement is admittedly a church
movement, and in criticising its results it is impossible
and say:
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
57
to avoid criticising that which inspires and promotes
it. And do we not find in this particular branch of
church work the same abiding fault that characterizes
the work of certain churches as a whole, namely, the
attempt to force reason to subordinate itself to dogma,
instead of the reverse?
The honesty and the courage of a man's convictions,
however mistaken they may be, are morally more up-
lifting to him than all the forms of religion which he
may make a show of following because someone else
tells him he must accept them, and he believes that
popular opinion will condemn him unless he does so.
The clergy of our day are constantly deploring the
emptiness of their churches. Have they ever considered
that the man who stays away from church because
he cannot subscribe to much that he considers illogical
and contradictory in the teachings and the doctrines of
its ministers is far more honest and true to that intelli-
gence with which God has endowed him, than is he
who either represses that intelligence, subordinating
it to the will and dictates of others, or who merely pre-
tends that his reason is in accord with all he is called
upon to think and believe? And how many of those
who parade as church-goers are at heart in accord
with all that they hear and are called upon to profess
in the churches they worship in? It may appear to be
a strong statement, but I am firmly convinced that
there are as many true worshippers of God among
58
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
those whose absence from divine service our clergy
so deeply deplore, as there are among those whom the
clergy count as the props of religion.
Extravagance and exaggeration may work upon
the emotions of men, but it is this same extravagance
and this same exaggeration that drive the sober-minded
from the fold, and the stubborn adherence to manifestly
obsolete and exploded tenets, which is the bane of
some of our present day clergy, too often completes
the work of alienating from the church the very ele-
ments that, if retained, would constitute its real
strength. Progress is the keynote of everything human.
Yet, is it not religion, the one and most important
of mankind's possessions, which in many instances has
refused to progress and thereby allowed itself to be
left behind in the general forward and upward trend
of humanity?
To be sure, the grip which these churches still hold
upon the emotions of the people is a stupendous source
of power. But is this a power that will endure? That
which we obtain solely through the emotions of men
is evanescent as are the emotions themselves. Reason
alone is lasting. Where the two conflict, victory for
a brief space may be with the former, but ultimately
the latter must always prevail. In the interval, while
reason is compelled by emotion to conform itself to
dogma, it becomes hypocritical, and truth and religion
are no longer inside the Church. hut outside of it.
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
59
Analyze the prohibition movement, and does not the
same assertion hold good? It is primarily the work of
emotional sentiment. Calm reason either stands aloof,
or, fearing disapproval, joins the throng of emotional-
ists in some hypocritical disguise. Consequently, there
are more true believers in temperance, more honest
workers for its cause, among the few who frankly and
openly oppose prohibition as exaggerated and foolish
than there are among the many who profess to see
in prohibition the promise of the future millennium.
The thousands and thousands of so-called temperance
nien who surreptitiously obtain liquor in the territory
they have been instrumental in declaring dry, and who
secretly indulge in what they openly profess to con-
demn, are glaring proofs of the correctness of this
statement.
Again, look at actual statistics for corroborative
proof. In an article in the last November issue of the
Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, Mr. J. C. Jackson, editor of the Ameri-
can Issue, the official organ of the Anti-Saloon League,
writing about the work of that League, winds up with
the following startling statement: “As a result of
these united efforts, in which the League has been the
principal bond of late
some 38,000,000
population (in the United States) is under one form
or another of prohibition—nearly one-half the popu-
lation of the United States."
years
*
米 ​*
60
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
And mark you, good reader, the major portion of
this result has been obtained during the last thirteen
years. Now compare with this statement the govern-
ment's statistics regarding the sale of intoxicating
beverages in this same United States during the period
mentioned. In spite of the fact that practically half
America is alleged to have had its source of drink
supply cut off in these thirteen years, the sales of
malt beverages have increased from fifteen gallons
per capita to twenty-two gallons per capita, or roughly
forty-six per cent, and the sales of distilled whiskey
from 1.05 gallons per capita to 1.58 gallons per capita,
or over 50 per cent.
Is there any rational being who will claim that this
enormous increase in the consumption of liquor in face
of the alleged extraordinary success of the prohibition
movement is due to the increased propensity to drink
on the part of the inhabitants of the wet territory only?
If such were the case, a simple arithmetical calculation
will show that the population in the wet territory must
have trebled its per capita consumption of liquor in
thirteen years, a manifest absurdity.
By their fruits ye shall know them. The prohibi-
tionist, unfortunately, has proved to be the best sales-
man the dealer in strong drink has. As an evidence
of this fact I can cite the following instructive inci-
dent, for the truth of which I can personally vouch.
In the course of a recent political campaign in which
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
61
the liberal elements of a certain State organized for
the purpose of defeating the efforts of the prohi-
bition party to elect a legislature favorable to its
cause, appeals were issued to the public at large
for funds in support of the liberal movement, and
among others a certain well-known and powerful
national combination of liquor dealers, whose business
methods, by the way, are not approved by the reputable
manufacturers in the country, was approached with
the request for a contribution. The answer received
was a categorical refusal, coupled with the statement
that the appeal to these men meant practically that
they should contribute towards the curtailment of their
own business. "If we knew of any means," the com-
munication ran, “by which we could, either directly or
indirectly, contribute towards the funds of the pro-
hibition party, we would gladly avail ourselves of the
same, since our sales increase in exact proportion to the
increase of prohibition territory.” This fact, of course,
is notorious, as probably every reputable liquor firm
will admit, which sees what it considers its legitimate
market snatched from it by the prohibitionists and
handed over to the purveyor of the bootlegger and
speak-easy proprietor, who care little what they buy,
provided the profit is commensurate with the risks
they undertake in selling.
In short, the moment a territory is declared dry
the sales of every variety of ardent spirits in that
62
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
territory increases by leaps and bounds, because the
lighter beverages are not so easy to ship nor so easy
to conceal. Beer, for instance, is almost entirely ex-
cluded from such territories. Yet the sale of beer has
increased during these thirteen years of the victorious
reign of prohibition by nearly fifty per cent, with
practically only half the territory it formerly had to
supply.
Does the public realize what this indicates? It indi-
cates as surely the progress of real temperance in
those territories that have been spared the tender
mercies of prohibition as it does the increase of the
real drink evil in those territories which have been
placed under the prohibition ban. For, mark this.
The enormous growth in the consumption of beer
does not imply a proportionate growth in the con-
sumption of alcohol, but rather the substitution of
the lighter, though more bulky, beverage for the
stronger drink, the surest sign of advancing temper-
In other words, the increase in the consumption
of strong drinks takes place in dry territories under
the auspices of prohibition, while the lighter beverage
is steadily driving out the ardent spirits in territories
left wet.
What an object lesson for the misguided friends of
temperance! And for this men are perforce made
hypocrites and dissemblers and cowards by the thou-
sands and the millions. Can this be the aim of the
ance.
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
63
church? If so, I repeat that truth and religion are
no longer inside the church, but outside of it.
In view of the foregoing, it may well be asked if it
can be possible that the men who have inaugurated this
movement, and who continue to further it, are blind,
not only to its failure to accomplish what it purports
to accomplish, but also to the moral disease which is
being spread among the people at large in consequence
of that failure. It is scarcely compatible with the
undoubted intelligence that is directing the movement
to assume such blindness on its part to be possible.
And yet, for what reason should men, many of whom
claim to be God's workers on earth, deliberately persist
in an undertaking, the only result of which is the
corruption of men's characters and their perversion
from that which is upright and true?
To anyone who has gained a glimpse of the inside
of the organization which is doing the major portion
of this work it must be abundantly apparent that there
are some who are engaged in promoting its aims simply
for the sake of the material advantage, there is in it
to themselves? But this is no satisfactory or sufficient
answer to our question. It is unfortunately true that
many of those who pose before the public in the ultra-
popular guise of the prohibition worker are actuated
primarily by mercenary motives. If it were not in-
vidious to do so, I could refer by name to a number
of well-known characters of this description, who
64
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
publicly exhibit their frenzy for pay—and not for
moderate pay, either, but for pay which, like that of
the actor or the professional platform entertainer, is
proportioned to their skill in communicating their
frenzy to the ignorant and unsophisticated crowds that
listen to them. This is business, of course, and not bad
business, at that. But when philanthropy enters the
field of ordinary commerce, it becomes, to say the least,
a trifle suspicious.. Have we not recently witnessed
even the spectacle of a Governor of a State, who plies
a lucrative trade as a prohibition agitator, and whose
philanthropy would not permit him to commence a
promised address on temperance before a meeting of
young Sunday-school children in a poor rural com-
munity until he had been handed a check for $25.00,
the agreed stipend which he required to set his phil-
anthropical machinery in motion?
These are unpleasant facts, and their unpleasantness
is not lessened by the circumstance that all these peo-
ple are employed by an organization which collects
its funds mainly in the churches and disburses them
with lavish hand among all and any who can prove
their aptitude to arouse the hysterical passions of the
multitude. But, notwithstanding this be true, and
notwithstanding the instruments through which the
results under review are being produced, may be in
many instances unworthy and even despicable, it is
equally true that there are men of unquestionable in-
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
65
tegrity and honesty of purpose who continue to lend
their powerful aid and influence to the perpetuation of
a cause whose ultimate victory is impossible and whose
present success is notoriously disastrous.
Why is this? Is there some ulterior purpose at the
bottom of this entire movement? Some purpose of
so exalted a nature, in the minds of those who are
furthering it, that they willingly and knowingly use
a temporary craze that has seized, or been produced
in, the people's mind as a convenient instrument by
which to accomplish that purpose, even though it
cause temporary evil?
And of what nature can such purpose be? Let us
be frank, and face this question fairly and squarely.
There is an old German saw which says: "Tell me
what company you keep and I will tell
you
what
you
If there is any wisdom in this saw, its appli-
cation to the present case may afford us some enlight-
enment on the subject that is puzzling us.
We are
accustomed, of course, to see philanthropy and religion
go hand in hand, nor can the work of the churches in
the cause of temperance and decency be otherwise than
heartily welcomed and commended. But, of all strange
bedfellows philanthropy and politics are certainly the
strangest, and the political bedfellowship of our
religious philanthropic friend prohibition is unfor-
tunately its salient, though not its most attractive
feature. If we go further, and inquire what is the
are."
66
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
center from which this entire agitation is being polit-
ically manipulated and controlled, we find conditions
which to the observant reader of history suggest possi-
bilities of a rather startling character. I allude here,
to put it more plainly, to the fact, which cannot be
denied, of the overwhelming predominance in the
ranks of the active political prohibition army of the
clergy and lay brotherhood of one particular religious
denomination among the many of which our Anglo-
Saxon race boasts. Far be it from me, of course, to
question the propriety of any particular church or sect
carrying on a philanthropic propaganda of its own.
No .one, indeed, will deny the right, nay the duty, of
any religious association to exert all its influence in
advocating and promoting that which it believes to be
essential to the moral welfare of humanity. There
will be few, however, who will not agree with me when
I
say that a political propaganda carried on by or
under the auspices of a religious body is extremely
dangerous, let the ostensible purpose for which such
propaganda is made be ever so noble and meritorious.
And when such purpose signally fails, as is the case
in this instance, without any abatement of the growth
and the use of the political power gained by those who
are pursuing it, is it not natural to suspect that this
purpose is being used as a cloak to conceal objects of a
more far-reaching nature, for the attainment of which
the control of the government machine is desired ?
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
67
Whether this suspicion be justified or not, it is always
deplorable when a church departs from its God-given
function to educate and inspire its children and elevate
men's minds and hearts above the sordid level of mun-
dane affairs, for it cannot mix in these affairs itself
without becoming contaminated by their worldliness
and all it implies, and thus eventually losing that hold
on the faith and reverence of mankind which alone
enables it to successfully do God's work on earth.
Churches, before now, have entered politics, o
cessfully in the worldly sense, but never with bene-
ficial results in the higher spiritual sense, either to
themselves or to the flocks in whose interest their
political excursions have ostensibly been taken.
Strictly speaking, perhaps, this phase of the ques-
tion does not come within the scope of this article. It
is the moral, not the political aspect of prohibition with
which we are here concerned, and morally it matters
perhaps little whether the Methodist, or Baptist, or
any other sectarian forces are trying by devious means
to obtain control of the governmental machine or not.
That, however, in prosecuting their aims, whatever
they are, these potent forces are insidiously destroying
the independent manhood of the citizen is a question
which is indeed very pertinent to the subject we are
discussing and of greater moment than any other.
The end, in the opinion of some, always justifies the
means, and it may be that the ascendancy of what
68
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
these forces please to designate as “the” church in
political and governmental affairs is of such paramount
importance to its future existence that, even if it can
only be accomplished at the cost of the temporary moral
retrogression of the citizen, it is well worth the sacrifice.
In this connection the closing words of an article
entitled, “The Anti-Saloon League As a Political
Force," by W. M. Burke, Ph. D., Superintendent of
the Anti-Saloon League of California, in the Novem-
ber issue of the Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, are supremely interesting.
“Let any question have the support of the entire
evangelical church," this gentleman writes, “then or-
ganize this force for action, put into the field four
hundred and fifty keen, bright, able men; let them
draw their support from the millions who are in favor
of the objects proposed, AND YOU CAN CREATE
AND ORGANIZE SENTIMENT ENOUGH TO
ACCOMPLISH ALMOST ANY PURPOSE DE-
SIRED. That is what is happening in the political
arena to-day as against the OPEN SALOON. It
is merely the united church forces in action."
I have given two phrases of the above paragraph in
capitals, because they suggest startling conclusions.
Was it merely a slip of the writer's pen that caused
him to qualify the substantive “saloon” with the ad-
jective “open,” or are we to consider the phrase “open
saloon” an admission on his part of the significant fact
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
69
that only the “open” saloon and the “open” drinker
are the objects of attack by the united forces referred
to? The sentence, "you can create and organize senti-
ment enough to accomplish almost any purpose de-
sired,” surely gives food for serious reflection. “Created
and organized sentiment” has an unwholesome sound,
for would it not seem that spontaneity is the essential
guarantee of the sincerity of sentiment? But be that
as it may, I am afraid that as a general proposition
the words cited above are true. Taken in conjunction
with the sentence that follows them, “This is what is
happening in the political arena to-day as against the
open saloon,” they suggest the query: “What, under
these circumstances, is likely to happen in the political
arena to-morrow as against something else ?"
The drink question is assuredly not the only ques-
tion in which these churches are interested. Have they
entered politics only to content themselves with using
their political power for one of the "purposes desired,
to which reference is made? If sentiment generally
is to be "created and organized” under the gentle pres-
sure of the political power thus obtained by this or
the other church, at what point are the beneficent united
forces of the church in action going to stop?
The problem is interesting. The future, of course,
will bring the solution, but then, the future has an
awkward habit of copying the past, and past solutions
70
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
of similar problems are not the most agreeable, nor
the most moral things to contemplate.
And, meanwhile, what about the undoubted existence
of the drink evil and its concomitant, the disreputable
and law-defying saloon? Is anything practical being
accomplished towards the curing of these social sores?
In a certain Southern State in which, about a year
ago, a prohibition law was enacted, there are now over
three thousand men paying the United States govern-
ment license to retail liquor. Before the prohibition
law went into effect the retail liquor license holders
in that State numbered only fifteen hundred. In place,
therefore, of fifteen hundred men, of whom at least
some may be presumed to have been law-abiding citi-
zens, we have now three thousand criminals in conse-
quence of the "success" of the prohibition movement,
not counting the tens of thousands of other citizens who
daily violate the law by frequenting the places con-
ducted by these three thousand law-breakers. And all
this is the result of attempting to change faulty human
nature by a mere stroke of the legislative pen. Have
we not had enough of this pitiable and expensive farce?
Every true-minded friend of temperance is desirous
of seeing the drink evil abated and the lawless saloon
abolished. The senseless and indiscriminate crusade of
the prohibitionist is not providing a remedy for the
former and is multiplying the latter, while the more
sober-minded reformer, who recognizes the evil and
Moral Aspects of Prohibition.
71
suggests the middle path of correction, namely, sane
regulation and intelligent education, is howled down by
the hysterical clamor of an irresponsible multitude of
well-meaning but totally ignorant amateur humani-
tarians, who blindly follow a given lead, without
questioning whither it is conducting them.
Truly, there was never a time when the intervention
of men possessed, not only of the ability to lead public
opinion, but also of the courage to oppose those who
are misleading it, was more urgently needed than just
now. Such men, it is true, are at all times rare. But
it is consoling to reflect that they have usually appeared
in history just when the need of them was the greatest.
Let us hope, at least, that history will not in this one
case depart from its proverbial custom of repeating
itself, and that a Moses will arise in the nation capable
of leading it out of this wilderness of social strife,
where bigotry on the one hand and lawlessness on the
other are contending for a victory, from the results of
which humanity at large is bound to suffer, whichever
faction may achieve it
The Brewer and the Retail Liquor Traffic
Address Delivered at the Convention of the United
States Brewers' Association in Atlantic City,
June, 1909.
We are here, if I rightly understand the object of
this gathering, in order—to use a vernacular phrase
to swap stories with one another, and thus learn some-
thing of each other's troubles and needs. In the
stories you have heard, or are about to hear, you will
doubtless have found, or will find, a fundamental simi-
larity–in this respect, that our troubles all originate
from the same source. The probability is therefore
great that our needs are likewise all of the same nature.
In other words, we are all agreed that there is some-
thing in our system that wants curing, and the doctors
are divided into two factions on the question, the one
faction claiming that the patient is incurable and should
therefore be put out of his agony for good and all, the
other faction claiming that the patient can be cured
by the proper treatment and should therefore be called
upon to take that treatment. Being ourselves some-
what closely related to the patient, we naturally side
with that faction which proposes rather to treat than
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
73
to kill him, and this brings us to the question: Is he
going to take the treatment, or is he not?
And what is the treatment prescribed? Broadly
speaking, it
may
be
expressed in the term "sane regu-
lation.” A very simple prescription in itself, which we
have indeed held in our hands for years and years.
Only there has always appeared to be the awkward
condition attaching to it, that we must act as the
druggist and nurse, and both prepare the prescription
and apply the treatment ourselves.
And here is the crux of the whole matter, to drop
figurative language. Regulation, or the law that
provides it, is one thing, and the application, or the
enforcement of that regulatory law, is quite another
thing. Of course, every citizen, whatever his business
may be, or to whatever walk of life he may belong,
is expected, as a citizen, to aid in the enforcement of
law and order, and to contribute, so far as in him lies,
by his influence and his example, his share towards
correcting such evil habits as human society in its
various forms and phases is, and always will be, liable
to fall into. Only the brewer, it seems, is a solitary
exception, to this extent, that by a kind of common
understanding among the community at large, he is
supposed to owe more onerous obligations to society
in this respect than any other class of citizens; and
more than this, he is expected to be better equipped
than the members of any other trade or calling to
74
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
regulate his own and his neighbors' conduct, and to do
this, not only without the aid of governmental power,
but actually in most cases with such governmental or
administrative power, wherever it exists, solidly arrayed
against him.
It is useless to inquire whether this expectation is
just or unjust. Inasmuch as it presupposes an excep-
tionally high grade of citizenship in the class of men
to whom it applies, it might perhaps be accepted with
a certain measure of pride on our part. But, whether
it be accepted with pride or without pride, whether it
be accepted willingly or unwillingly, it has to be
accepted, and the sooner the industry at large realizes
this fact the better it will be for it. In short, the
brewer, for various reasons—some good, some bad and
some indifferent-is held responsible for the conditions
of the retail liquor traffic, and he must show himself
equal to that responsibility or bear the blame for the
consequences.
What, then, is actually wrong about the conditions
of the retail liquor traffic? I mean, of course, the
liquor traffic outside of prohibition territory, for we
all know its shocking rottenness and its multiplied and
aggravated evils there. If you want an answer to the
question, merely walk into the lobby of an hotel, or
into the smoking compartment of a Pullman car, or
into any other public place where men congregate and
discuss the topics of the day, and after the conversation
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
75
in general has found its way to the prohibition question,
as inevitably as it always starts with that of the coun-
try's weather conditions, you will hear someone deliver
himself of his sentiments regarding the lawless saloon.
And there you have your answer. The lawless saloon!
It is the cry from California to Maine-largely a man-
ufactured cry, we know. But then, nothing can be
manufactured without some material to manufacture it
from, and he among us who asserts that there is no
material basis for the cry regarding the lawless saloon
is either lamentably blind, or criminally ignorant, or
wilfully untruthful. The so-called dive, with all its
disreputable criminal and immoral appendages, is
undoubtedly among us—not to the extent the fanatics
would have the world believe, but still it is among us,
and more than sufficiently so to be a grievous blot on
a trade which in itself partakes of nothing that is not
honest and decent and respectable, and in which many
good and desirable citizens are engaged. The dive
among the saloons is, unfortunately, like the blatant
shouter among men, who, because he shouts so loud,
is easily mistaken for a multitude.
Now ask your friends in the Pullman smoker or the
hotel lobby what, in their opinion, is the cause of the
existence of the low dive, and from what source its
removal must come, and in nine cases out of ten the
laconic answer to both questions will come back: “The
brewer.” If the tenth man should happen to be a
76
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
whiskey man, the only difference in the result will be
that all ten will give this answer. It is a peculiar fact,
but it is a fact, that the whiskey man, by some myste-
rious universal understanding, seems to be exonerated
from all responsibility in the matter. If, for instance,
a man is permitted to drink too much whiskey in a
saloon, and under the influence of that whiskey goes out
and commits a crime, the blame is not placed on the
whiskey dealer who sold the saloonkeeper the whiskey,
but upon the brewer who supplies the saloonkeeper
with beer.
This, on the mere face of it, appears unreasonable,
and to a large extent it is. It originates from the fact
that the brewer occasionally aids the saloonkeeper
financially, or rents property to him, and is for that
reason looked upon as bearing a kind of paternal rela-
tion to him, which the community at large regards as
a relation of actual authority, mistakenly supposing
that that relationship exists between the brewer and
every saloonkeeper whom he supplies with his product.
Thus the butcher, the baker, the grocer, or any other
purveyor of necessaries, may send his wagon to a
saloon and deliver his goods there without becoming
accountable for the manner in which the saloon is
conducted. But the brewer cannot deliver his product
there without by that fact taking upon himself the
responsibility for the moral conduct of his customer,
and bearing in the public eye the blame for any delin-
quencies of which that customer may be guilty.
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
77
This onus of responsibility is a fact, and I am merely
dealing with the fact itself, not with the question
whether the onus is justly thrust upon the brewer or
not. An unsophisticated mind, indeed, or say a visitor
from some other planet, who happened to drop upon
the earth and proceed to investigate our peculiar
terrestrial affairs, might naively inquire why it is that
the law does not take care of these matters, instead of
leaving them to the haphazard charge of a multitude
of purely commercial individuals. The result of such
inquiry, I am afraid, would be very startling to the
inquisitive investigator. In the State of Ohio, for
instance, for which I am speaking, there is at this very
day legislation on the subject of regulating the liquor
traffic sufficient, if actually made operative, to place
the saloon in that State upon a plane of purity the
contemplation of which would almost put our Sunday-
schools to the blush. And I believe the same conditions
prevail in other States.
And there you have the real knot of the problem.
Statutes, everywhere, without number, but no enforce-
ment. A surfeit of legislation, but no operative law.
For a law that is not operative or enforced—and how
many of the so-called liquor laws are enforced by our
administrations, excepting sporadically for political
purposes ?-is not only equivalent to no law, but is
worse than no law, because it breeds in the best of men
a contempt for all law, and because it places a premium
78
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
upon fraud, and blackmail, and corruption, and all the
other iniquities to which the retail liquor traffic of this
country is notoriously subjected.
Let us be fair with ourselves as well as severe. What
other body of men, outside of those engaged in the
liquor traffic, are left without really operative laws to
govern them; left, indeed, practically to be a law unto
themselves ? Take the pure food laws, or any other
laws, for example. If they were treated, by those
appointed to execute them, as dead letters, like most
retail liquor laws are, would the man whom these laws
are intended to govern be expected to enforce them
against himself, as the brewer is apparently expected
to see to the enforcement of all statutes dealing with the
regulation and restriction of the liquor traffic? Why,
let me ask, do the retail liquor laws, as a general rule,
become dead letters? Inquire for a moment into the
history of our so-called liquor legislation, and in the
pages of that history you will find the answer to the
question. Because many of these unnecessarily harsh,
restrictive laws are introduced in our legislatures
merely for the enrichment of the notorious milking
syndicates with which we permit our law-giving bodies
to be infested, or, if the milking process should fail,
for the purpose, when enacted, of providing tribute
to the dishonest officials who become charged with their
enforcement. And are we, and is the saloonkeeper, to
be held responsible for the consequences of this in-
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
79
famy? If there are corrupt law-makers—and heaven
knows there are; if there are lax and depraved execu-
tives of the law—and again, heaven knows there are;
how shall we expect perfection and purity from those
for whom laws are made to restrain, not to tempt; to
uplift, not to degrade; to encourage men in honest and
upright citizenship, not to incite them to immorality
and crime?
I have mentioned the saloonkeeper; and we know
that he is at the bottom of this entire question. But
let us ask ourselves: Are we justified in sitting in
judgment upon him, or is it rather he who is justified
in sitting in judgment upon us? Regard him for a
moment. Recognized as the contributor-in-chief to-
wards the public needs of his fellow-citizens, taxed
almost beyond endurance, persecuted by the self-
righteous moralist, who himself rarely pays taxes,
blackmailed by the legislator, hounded by the corrupt
politician, harassed and driven by his competitor, and
all too often hard-pressed by the brewer himself, who
foolishly creates that very competitor without consider-
ing that he is thereby adding to these multitudinous
drawbacks under which the retail liquor dealer is
already laboring—this is the saloonkeeper. Is it to
be wondered at if the average man of his class suc-
cumbs to the temptation to eke out an existence, which
all these factors make almost impossible to him, by
violating laws, from which in ninety-nine cases out of
80
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
a hundred he knows he can either buy, or otherwise
procure, immunity?
I have painted a lurid picture. But we are here to
tell the truth to each other, not to throw the dust of
humbug and pretense in one another's eyes, and I
know that the picture I have painted is not exagger-
ated in a single particular. That, in spite of these
adverse conditions, there is still so overwhelming a
preponderance of respectable and honorable men en-
gaged in the saloon business is simply a marvel, and
reflects, to my mind, an extraordinary credit upon a
body of citizens who in the aggregate, let our sancti-
monious moralists say what they please, are far more
sinned against than sinning. For, just as the brewer
is in a large measure unjustly held accountable for the
non-enforcement of law and order in the retail liquor
traffic, so is the respectable and honorable saloonkeeper
compelled to bear an unjust share of the abuse and the
ignominy which are brought down upon the trade in
general by the comparatively few reprobates and crim-
inals who use the saloon as a convenient blind behind
which to carry on practices of a nefarious character
utterly distinct from and foreign to the saloon busi-
ness proper.
Like the cancerous growth on the otherwise healthy
animal body, this element has fastened itself, without
any militant opposition from our side, upon the
trade, and threatens to spread its putrid poison through
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
81
the entire system, unless the cancer be promptly cut
out. We have seen it growing for years, and have come
together in conventions and passed high-sounding reso-
lutions of disapproval and condemnation, and then
gone home again to pursue the even tenor of our com-
mercial way and let matters take their own course.
Not that we have remained blind to the jeopardy in
which this condition of affairs has gradually been
placing us, nor spared pains and money in an endeavor
to escape that jeopardy. But in all our past actions it
seems to me we have been like men in a community
overwhelmed by an epidemic of virulent disease, who
call in and pay for expensive physicians to save the
victims of the epidemic, instead of going to the root
of the evil itself and cleaning out their own sewers.
There is only one way for a man to put his house
in order. It is to do it himself. The common house
in which we all live is in need of such putting in order,
and no one individual among us occupants of the
house can accomplish the task single-handed. It must
be done collectively, and done, too, not by resolutions
and flights of oratory, but by hard, downright, active,
methodical work. This is what we are attempting in
Ohio, namely, to disassociate the retail liquor traffic
from the disreputable elements that have crept into
it, or, to be more specific, to divorce the social evil and
the gambling evil from the saloon, where they do not
belong, either by nature, or by right, or by any other
82
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
warrant. We are doing this with our own resources,
appealing for and seeking the aid of the administration
wherever we can, but never relying upon it, and only
too often meeting with its secret or open antagonism.
We have established for this purpose a Vigilance
Bureau, with a superintendent and a staff, for the
present, of twenty detectives. If these do not suffice,
we shall employ forty; if these are not enough, then
sixty. But we are going to succeed at whatever cost.
The Vigilance Bureau is placed under the control of
one brewer, in whom his associates have the confidence
that he will direct its operations without fear or favor
of anyone, whether in the business or out of it. It has
been at work for the past eighteen months in every
section of the State, and has been instrumental, in
sime fifty or sixty of our towns and cities, in either
closing up undesirable resorts, prosecuting their pro-
prietors, or otherwise forcing them to comply with the
law. It has accomplished this, occasionally with the
assistance of the authorities, but far more frequently
without it. The odds which it has had to contend
against have been, of course, great and manifold. But
these odds have been lessening from day to day, as the
sincerity and the seriousness of our purpose have be-
come more generally recognized, and we believe that
we have now reduced them to an absolute minimum;
for we have recently succeeded, against the frantic
opposition of the Anti-Saloon League, in passing a
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
83
law known as the Dean Character Law, which, if
properly utilized, will enable our Vigilance Bureau,
without the aid of police or other municipal authorities,
to mete out swift justice to any unscrupulous dive-
keeper who by his objectionable practices brings dis-
credit upon the trade in general. This law provides
that a man shall forfeit his right to continue in the
saloon business if, before paying his annual tax, he
cannot swear, or if he swears falsely:
(1) That he is an American citizen.
(2) That he has not been convicted of a felony.
(3) That he has not knowingly sold to drunkards
or minors.
(4)
That he has not knowingly allowed gambling
in, upon, or in connection with his premises; and
(5) That he has not permitted improper women to
frequent his place of business, or the premises connected
therewith.
Our Vigilance Bureau is quietly gathering evidence
in every city, large and small, against habitual vio-
lators of these provisions, who have been warned of the
consequences of continuing such practices, and by
producing that evidence at the proper time we shall
be in a position to convict the offenders of perjury
and put them permanently out of business. In the
meantime, flagrant cases are being prosecuted by the
Bureau under another clause of the Dean Law, which
imposes upon the Prosecuting Attorney of any county
84
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
the duty, upon demand of five taxpayers, to bring
proceedings in the Common Pleas Court to have the
places of such law-violators abated as nuisances.
The task may seem at first sight a stupendous one.
But when you consider that a comparatively small
percentage of saloonkeepers are really flagrant law-
breakers, and that even of this percentage some are
only unwillingly so, because driven to these practices
by their less scrupulous competitors, you will agree
that the task is after all not so formidable as it ap-
pears. I say without hesitation that ninety-five per
cent of the saloonkeepers in our State, and I believe
I may say in the country, are desirous of seeing the
trade relieved from this incubus of the disreputable
element, and will assist in weeding it out. It is to
their interest, as much as it is to ours, that this be
done, but as individuals they are as helpless as we are
to contend against an evil which is the result of collec-
tive negligence or delinquency, and can therefore only
be eradicated by strong and determined collective
action.
Gentlemen, we believe, in Ohio, that the first step
towards a rational solution of the so-called liquor
problem must be taken by the brewer himself, and
that, when it has been successfully taken, as it can
be successfully taken, the rest will follow of itself.
Do not let us delude ourselves into the belief that fana-
ticism is our real enemy. If it were it would be an
Brewer and Liquor Traffic.
85
are
insignificant enemy indeed. The condition we
facing to-day has a deeper source, and its remedy lies,
not in combating what is known as the prohibition
movement, but rather in removing the cause which is
giving that movement such widespread public support.
In other words, the troubles our industry is suffering
from are both internal and external, and the applica-
tion of the internal remedy by ourselves is a condition
precedent to the cure we are seeking externally from
others. If the law will not help us, let us help the law.
If our administrative authorities will not enforce the
statutes, let us force our administrative authorities.
We can do this if we will, and the sooner we set about
accomplishing it the sooner our troubles will end.
Above all, gentlemen, if you will permit me to close
with a terse colloquial phrase: Let us in the future
talk a little less and do a little more.
Address in Support of a Proposed
Amendment to the Rose
County Option Law
Delivered in the Senate Chamber of the Ohio General
Assembly, February 22, 1910
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee on
Municipal Affairs:
Speaking on behalf of the brewing industry, and the
trades allied to it—and I include in these trades that
of the much-reviled and indiscriminately abused saloon-
keeper-I shall confine myself exclusively to one funda-
mental argument in urging upon you a favorable con-
sideration of the bill to amend the Rose County Option
law, which is in your hands for investigation and report.
As citizens pure and simple, we might fitly perhaps
impress upon you, as others have done, or will do,
the serious problem of taxation which the Rose County
Option law in its present form has given rise to in
the cities and larger municipalities affected by it. But
I am frank to say, individually, that the taxation argu-
ment per se, unsupported by other arguments, is not
to my mind sufficient to condemn any law, whether
it be a liquor option law, or any other kind of legislative
Rose County Option Law.
87
measure. A statute that is good, that is efficient, that
has the support and the respect and the co-operation
of the people whom it affects, should not be repealed
or amended, or modified, merely because the good it
does costs the taxpayers more money. If such a statute
contributes to the happiness, if it furthers the pros-
perity, and if it tends towards the moral uplift of these
people, they should be proud and glad to dig down a
little deeper into their pockets and contribute their
extra mite to so worthy an object. The force of the
taxation argument, therefore, like that of a good many
other arguments advanced by the opponents of the
Rose law, depends primarily upon the question: Is
the law an efficient one and a just one, and does it
command the respect and the co-operation of the
people whom it affects? As citizens, the brewer, the
saloonkeeper, and those belonging to the allied trades
and industries are as much interested in this question
as anyone else. I hope to prove to you, indeed, that,
as men of business, they are far more vitally concerned
in this question than any other class of citizens can be.
The problem, whether the country should be per-
mitted to dictate to the city, or whether this political
unit or that political unit is the fair and expedient one
in determining such matters as are involved in the
Rose County Option law, is perhaps even less in my
province to discuss than the problem of taxation. But
I am obliged to preface my argument with at least one
88
Rose County Option Law.
incontrovertible assertion, which to some extent bears
upon that problem. This assertion is that, under the
Rose County Option law, the urban communities have
been forced against their will to accept the conditions
imposed upon them by those who live outside of these
communities, by men who have no concern in their
affairs, no share in their responsibilities, and who bear
no part whatsoever in their administrative burdens and
duties.
That this is true, practically every election held under
the Rose law has proved ad nauseam. The cities, by
overwhelming votes, have emphatically recorded their
disapproval of the law, and, by the conditions which
they have permitted to prevail in their midst since these
elections, they have just as emphatically recorded their
contempt and evinced their disregard of the law. The
saloon, however faulty we may concede it to be, has
been followed everywhere by the dive and the secret
joint, uncontrolled and uncontrollable by the powers
of law and order. The bootlegger has succeeded the
respectable merchant; the ubiquitous club has inherited
the premises of the tax-yielding retailer, and chaos
reigns supreme. In short, the same men who drank
before the Rose County Option law became effective,
drink now, only what they drink is of a little more
ardent and of a rankly inferior character, and the
conditions under which they drink it are vastly more
dangerous and vastly more detrimental than they were
Rose County Option Law.
89
before. The only apparent result of the operation of
the Rose County Option law in the cities—and appar-
ent merely because it is visible to the naked eye—is
the removal of the sign “saloon,” so obnoxious to some
well-meaning people, from over the doors of the drink-
ing places formerly frequented by that majority of the
citizens of the community who have so unmistakably
made known their wish-and let me add, frankly,
their intention—to continue to exercise their privilege
to congregate in public or semi-public places and seek
that particular form of social recreation which has been
theirs from time immemorial, and which a certain lordly
and aggressive section of their fellow-citizens, first by
persuasion, then by strategem, and lastly by bold and
open coercion, has aimed to deny them.
Here, then, you have the true cause of the deplorable
failure of the Rose County Option law, and of all other
similar laws, presented to you in a nutshell. For, gen-
tlemen, no statute framed by human hand has ever
succeeded, or will ever succeed, in changing the trend
of human desires, of human appetites, or of human
convictions. The belief that law, rather than example
and education, can accomplish this is the one great and
extraordinary fallacy that underlies this whole so-
called reform movement, which is carried on under
the interchangeable titles of Anti-Saloon agitation and
Prohibition. It is only too notorious that all these
efforts of Prohibition in its various guises and dis-
90
Rose County Option Law.
guises have succeeded merely in destroying the control
and the regulation of the liquor traffic, not in destroy-
ing that traffic itself. The evils which have been per-
mitted to creep into the traffic, and which we all want
to see removed, have not only remained untouched, but
that which was not evil before has been made evil by
these ill-advised and futile attempts to fetter the free
will of the individual, or, rather let me say, to put
chains on the many who are strong in order to protect
the few who are weak. Instead of curing the diseased
limb on the healthy body, they have resulted in the
entire body becoming inoculated with the disease of
the limb. Instead of forcing the disreputable dive-
keeper out of politics—a consummation devoutly to
be wished--they are driving the respectable saloon-
keeper with whips and scourges into politics. The
remedy, in other words, has proved worse than the
disease. Whilst the rational course of legislation would
be to protect the law-abiding saloonkeeper and en-
courage him in his obedience to the law, every single
measure which has been forced on the public by the
machinations of the Anti-Saloon League has without
exception had the effect of delivering the business of
the legitimate saloonkeeper, built up by honest and
steady effort, into the hands of the tough and the
criminal class. Because a comparatively small number
of wrong-doers has been allowed to invade the saloon
trade and use it as a blind for disreputable practices
Rose County Option Law.
91
that are utterly foreign to it, therefore all saloon-
keepers are being forced, indiscriminately, either to
face starvation, or become criminals and malefactors
themselves.
It is this unhappy consequence of the Rose law that
affects those engaged in the liquor traffic in one form
or another far more deeply than it affects even the
ordinary citizen, for no man can be more keenly alive
to the dangers attendant upon the selling of liquor by
lawless and unscrupulous men than the manufacturer
and the legitimate retailer of liquor himself. And
what are they but human, like all other men of business?
And if they are confronted with the alternative of
either losing all they have, or selling to the millions
who demand their goods through illicit channels, on
which of these two horns of the dilemma do you sup-
pose they will choose to be impaled?
I ain not here to make pretense of the existence of
virtues in those whom I represent, which do not exist,
and are not expected to exist, in any other class of
men, whether they ve merchants, officials, professional
men, or-let me add with all due deference-even
ministers of the gospel. No man can so shape his
conduct towards his fellow-man as our social order of
things demands that he should without a law to govern
that conduct, for without law all men, even the most
virtuous of our reformers, would, from their very
nature, be savages. Now, I say to you in all solemnity,
92
Rose County Option Law.
and I speak with considerable practical experience of
the subject—that the root of all the evil in the retail
liquor traffic lies in the fact that that traffic has for
years been under the necessity of being conducted with-
out that government of operative law which is essential
to the good and proper conduct of all men, and of all
affairs. True, we have liquor legislation galore. There
were laws on the statute books of our State prior to
the passage of the Rose County Option bill sufficient
to make every foot of ground in Ohio dry, if it had
been the will of the people that it become dry. Why,
then, were these laws not operative? Why were they
not obeyed? Was it simply because the liquor man
chose to disobey and defy the law? If so, let me ask
you, why are not our jails full of these bold disre-
garders of the law?
Gentlemen—again I speak, not in a derogatory
spirit, but merely to point and emphasize my argu-
ment, there are at this moment more ministers of the
gospel than there are saloonkeepers confined in the
state penitentiary of Ohio. Do these proportions im-
ply—as they would seem to imply—that there are
more lawless men among the ministers of the State
than there are lawless saloonkeepers? Of course it
does not. It implies simply, what I am endeavoring
to impress upon you, that the law regulating the
conduct of saloonkeepers is treated by the executives
of the law largely as a dead letter, whilst other laws
are not.
Rose County Option Law.
93
It is this which the respectable members of a trade,
that is recognized as a legitimate trade by every civil-
ized nation in the world, resent, and which they have
a good right to resent. It is this which caused the
combined liquor interests of the State to come before
you at the last session of the legislature and ask you
to pass a measure, of their own devising, which would
give into the hands of the authorities throughout the
State a means of effectually driving out the disrep-
utable elements, which, mainly through the laxity of
those authorities, had in the past been permitted to
fasten themselves upon a trade which in itself partakes
of nothing that is not honest, and clean, and commend-
able. Every obstacle which cunning could devise was
placed in the way of the passage of that measure,
known to-day as the Dean Regulation law, by those
who are opposed to the liquor traffic, not because un-
desirable elements have entered it, but because it caters
to human desires and to human pleasures of which they
see fit to disapprove, but of which the majority of men
do not disapprove.
Gentlemen, those who were responsible for the intro-
duction and the passage of the Dean Regulation law
knew only too well that, if left to itself, it would
become a dead letter—as dead and inoperative as
most other liquor laws passed by the legislatures of
the nation. They knew that the Anti-Saloon League
itself, whose leaders used every means in their power
94
Rose County Option Law.
to prevent this meaure from being enacted, would
endeavor to nullify its effect, if and when it became
a law. And the result has fully borne out their expec-
tations. No effort whatsoever, not even the shadow
of a pretense, has been made independently by any
administration charged with the proper execution of
the laws to put the provisions of this measure into
effect, and the legal counsel of the Anti-Saloon League,
and the accredited mouthpiece of that League, has
gone out of his way in a public interview to point out, ,
to the world in general and to the dive-keeper in
particular, that the Dean law-bear in mind, gentle-
men, a law devised for the specific purpose of divorcing
the saloon from its objectionable elements-is, in his
opinion, unconstitutional, and therefore unworthy of
observance.
What an object lesson to the impartial onlooker of
this tragic farce, which is being performed, at the
expense of the unsophisticated citizen, under the
auspices of the pseudo-religious, pseudo-reformatory,
but in truth purely political and eminently commercial
organization known to the country at large as the Anti-
Saloon League.
This is one picture, gentlemen. Now permit me to
present to you another.
Two years ago, after years of discussion and delib-
eration regarding the best means of meeting a condi-
tion of affairs without parallel in the history of any
Rose County Option Law.
95
industry on earth, the brewers of Ohio established a
Vigilance Bureau, with the view of doing that which I
claim no other body of commercial men has ever been
called upon to do, viz: to police its own industry. The
first efforts of this bureau were ridiculed and derided,
not only, of course, by the Anti-Saloon League, but
even by those who for years had been laying the blame
for the non-enforcement of law and order in the retail
liquor traffic upon the brewer and calling upon him,
with his limited means and his untrained powers, to
accomplish that which the trained forces and all the
powers of the government had failed to accomplish.
We found our way blocked and our purposes thwarted
at every step by the very executives of the law, the
burden of whose neglected duties we were assuming,
and whose task we were assisting them to perform, and
only in one quarter did we find an enthusiastic welcome
extended to us. That quarter, gentlemen, was the
saloon trade itself, and I am frank to admit that,
without the encouragement vouchsafed to us and
without the strong and effective co-operation afforded
to us in that quarter, we should not be in the position
to-day of proving to you that the work we have under-
taken has been increasingly effective from the very
day it was started.
It would be manifestly impossible for me, in the lim-
ited time placed at my disposal, to lay before you
even an appreciable fraction of the total details of
96
Rose County Option Law.
this work, which has been carried on quietly and with-
out effort to obtain publicity or public commendation.
But I would ask your indulgence while I submit to
you certain general results of that work, which must
convince any rational man that in the simple enforce-
ment of the existing laws regulating the conduct of
the retail liquor traffic lies the true solution of the
much-vexed liquor question, and not in the placing
of that traffic, the existence of which the public de-
mands and will continue to demand, outside the pale
of the law, as our friends on the other side of the
house propose doing.
Our Vigilance Bureau, with its superintendent and
staff of twenty-five trained detectives, has operated
during the year in nearly fifty cities of the State.
In every instance these men were first placed at the
disposal of the local authorities, and when, as was
only too often the case, those authorities, for reasons
best known to themselves, refused to accept their co-
operation, the work of investigating saloon conditions,
gathering evidence of violations of the law, and prose-
cuting the violators, was carried on by us independently
and in the teeth of the opposition either secretly or
openly manifested by the local administration. Where
such opposition was not manifested, or where it was
ultimately overcome by argument or persuasion on our
part, our task proved comparatively easy. In Cleve-
land, in Dayton, in Chillicothe, in Canton, in Youngs-
Rose County Option Law.
97
town, in Sidney, in Hamilton, in Bucyrus, and now in
Columbus, as well as in several other centers, we met
finally with the loyal and effective support and encour-
agement of the administrative officials, and in every one
of these cases our success has been of a most gratifying
nature, proving that the law can be enforced, providing
there is an inclination, not to speak of a will, to enforce
it on the part of those charged with its execution.
I do not ask you to accept my mere statement of
this fact, though I have detailed and exhaustive proof
of it in the voluminous records of the operations of
our Bureau. The testimony of the authorities them-
selves will be more satisfactory to you, and I venture
to believe that you will accept that testimony as final
and conclusive.
Here Mr. Andreae read a number of letters from
Mayors, Sheriffs, Prosecuting Attorneys and other
officials in "wet" and "dry” counties, commending the
work of the Ohio Brewers' Vigilance Bureau.
These are a few of the more salient instances, gen-
tlemen, of what has been accomplished under the Dean
Regulation Law, and it has been accomplished in most
cases under the severest of handicaps. For, bear in
mind that the brewers are not invested with police
powers, either towards transgressors in their own ranks,
or towards the public at large; nor are they trained
and experienced in performing executive work of this
nature, which is properly incumbent upon officials who
98
Rose County Option Law.
are versed in administrative affairs and practiced in the
application and proper enforcement of the laws of the
State. We might in all fairness expect to be relieved
in the future of this self-imposed task. But, rather
than risk the consequences of possible future official
neglect in carrying out the provisions of the Dean
law, we are willing to continue bearing this heavy
and difficult and expensive burden, conscious as we
are that the example we are giving will ultimately
lead to an awakening of the administrative powers
throughout the State to the necessity of exercising
that vigilance in the performance of their executive
duties, to the absence of which alone the much com-
plained of conditions existing in the retail liquor traffic
are to be traced.
Gentlemen, I need not tell men of your intelligence
and experience that you cannot extend immunity from
the law to a few favored individual members of a
trade or industry without forcing every member of
that trade or industry to demand the same immunity,
to take it unasked. Men are human, and self-preser-
vation is the first law of nature. There is scarcely a
city in this State, where the powers that be do not, for
this or the other reason, confer privileges, specifically
forbidden by the law, on a few retail liquor dealers, with
the inevitable consequence that their many competitors,
who are only too desirous of obeying the law and con-
ducting a decent, honorable business, are compelled,
Rose County Option Law.
99
either to arrogate to themselves the same privileges, or
see their business swallowed up by their favored
neighbor. Unfortunately, it is always the few who
set the pace for the many, and in acting with undue,
and, let me add, criminal indulgence towards the
few these authorities have so tied their hands toward the
many that complete disregard of law and order has
become the inevitable result.
Now let me ask you this simple question: Are these
same administrations, which have notoriously for-
feited the power to execute the law and compel obedi-
ence to it in wet territories, where the means of regula-
tion and control are provided—are these administra-
tions, I say, better equipped and better constituted to
execute and compel obedience to the law in so-called
dry districts, where, firstly, the majority of the citizens,
who elect these administrations, resent that law, and
where, secondly, the means of regulation and control
are admittedly lacking? Even if the overwhelming
evidence to the contrary had not been forthcoming from
every city which has been forced into the dry column
against the will of large majorities of its citizens, the
answer to the question is so patently negative that it
can admit of no counter-argument at all.
Our friends on the other side of the house argue that
the taxes derived from the liquor traffic are used for
defraying the expense of controlling and regulating
that traffic, and that, if the traffic were abolished, the
100
Rose County Option Law.
No one
need of these taxes must cease. Even if the first part
of this argument were more than partially true, which
it is not, the inherent and dangerous fallacy of the
latter part of the argument remains unaltered, viz:
that the liquor traffic is, or ever will be, abolished in
districts where the majority, or even an appreciably
large minority, of the citizens demand it.
realizes this fallacy more fully than the manufacturer
of liquor himself, and while he is not interested in
the question of higher or lower taxation, or in the
efficiency or non-efficiency of the administration of the
various cities of the State, he is interested in seeing
a stigma, for which he is not responsible, removed from
the traffic he is engaged in; he is interested in prevent-
ing his business, which he has established and carried
on under the protection and under the encouragement
of the law, from being arbitrarily made criminal, or
handed over to criminals to pollute and disgrace; he is
interested in seeing that the same active control of the
law shall be extended to each and every one who en-
gages in his trade, as it is extended to the members of
every other trade, business or calling.
It is upon these grounds, and upon these alone, that
I stand before you and appeal to you for a favorable
consideration of a measure which is designed to restore
to the cities of this State the most natural of rights,
which the county option law has taken from them,
namely, the right to have the determining voice in
Rose County Option Law.
101
affairs which are exclusively their own, and for the
proper management of which they alone must bear the
responsibility. The proposed Amendment to the Rose
County Option law contains nothing that is not abso-
lutely fair and equitable. It leaves the people of the
country all the rights they claim, even the questionable
right of compelling the cities to hold an election on the
"wet” and “dry” question without any desire for such
election being manifested on their part; and it gives
to the cities what they are justly demanding, namely,
the privilege to arrange their own affairs according to
the wishes and the judgment of the majority of their
citizens. Can you conceive of any measure better
calculated to satisfy all parties to a controversy, in
which the contending interests are as evenly divided
as they are in this one?
I will go even further and say that this amendment
will be as welcome to, and receive as much applause
from, the people in the country districts as it undoubt-
edly will from the people of the cities. For, do not
imagine, gentlemen, because majorities in largely rural
counties have exercised the tyrannical power conferred
upon them by the Rose County Option law to compel
cities to accept conditions of which they disapprove,
and which they cannot control, that it was for the
purpose of exercising that unenviable privilege that
they cast their votes as they did.
It may be admitted that the country folk have rea-
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Rose County Option Law.
sons for eliminating the saloon from their midst which
the cities do not have. But it is that elimination, and
that alone, in which they are interested. That their
own right of franchise was being used by the more
shrewd than honest framers of the Rose County Option
law to destroy the sacred right of the franchise in
communities in which they have no concern or interest,
was probably not realized by many of those who by
their votes in the recent county elections contributed
to that destruction. If they had realized it, I believe
that the Rose law would have received the same con-
demnation in the country districts as it has received in
the cities. It is, in fact, no more in the nature of our
race, whether we live in cities or in country places, to
countenance force and coercion on the part of one
section of the people towards the other than it is in its
nature to applaud the exercise of a despot's power over
the subjects whom he rules. The sense of justice is,
I believe, inherent in the human being the world over,
and no one who has intelligently followed the course
of events in the past year can be blind to the fact that
that sense of justice has been gradually awakening
throughout the State and bringing about a realization
in the minds of the people at large of the true rights
in this case.
Political majorities, gentlemen, are at best transient
quantities, and the majority of to-day may prove to
be the minority of to-morrow. Like the tyrants of
Rose County Option Law.
103
old, they are liable to be swept into oblivion by the
uprising common sense of the whole people, who may
sometimes temporarily applaud what they don't under-
stand to be wrong, but only to rise up presently and
visit their just wrath upon those who were the cause
of their misunderstanding. Only one thing endures,
and always will endure, throughout all time, and that
is right. That the Rose law, as it now stands, is inher-
ently wrong; that it negatives the inalienable privi-
leges granted to men throughout the civilized world;
that it deals unjustly with vested property and inter-
ests; that it arrays the people of the cities against the
people of the country; that it makes enmity between
friends, and divides the very family itself; and that
it is destructive of morals and deplorably subversive
of order and respect of the law generally; these are
facts, of which down in their hearts nine men out of
every ten who have given more than passing thought
and study to the question are deeply conscious.
It is largely in your hands to remedy this wrong.
thank you for the privilege you have granted me of
That it will and must be remedied some day, of this
we have no doubt, for nothing that is wrong can prevail
permanently. We ask you to remedy it now, lest the
consequences of the wrong grow to still greater pro-
portions and assume dimensions with which the ordi-
nary legislative powers may find it difficult to cope.
Let me, however, say this in conclusion, while I
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Rose County Option Law.
addressing you. Whether you give ear to our appeal
or not, of one thing rest assured. We stand ready,
and shall continue, to prosecute the work we have
begun with such auspicious results, and to give further
proof, if it should be needed, that it is in reasonable
laws, strictly enforced, and not in coercive and irra-
tional legislation, hated of the people and violated in
its very inception, that the long desired solution of the
liquor question must and will be found.
Truth from a Brewer's Standpoint
From Leslie's Weekly, June 2, 1910
I suppose the literature on the liquor question, if
collected and stored, would tax the capacity of a fair-
sized museum. Whether all that has been written on
the subject has brought the world one step nearer to a
solution of the problem involved, it would be hard to
say. The two contending factions, popularly known
as the "wets” and the "drys,” are still fighting, each
with varying success, over the shoulders of the people
at large.
In Ohio we have a county local-option law, which
has been operative for nearly two years in upward of
sixty counties of the State. In these counties, in which
the sale of liquor has been prohibited by law, the fol-
lowing facts, taken in each case from the official records
extending over the past three years, have been ascer-
tained:
1. The rate of taxation has largely increased since the prohi-
bition law became effective. (This, of course, was expected by the
wet faction.) The arrests for drunkenness have materially
diminished in number. (This was predicted by the dry faction.)
The number of indictments for felony and misdemeanor shows
a notable increase. (This will probably come as a surprise to both
the wet and dry factions.)
2.
3.
106
A Brewer's Standpoint.
Of course the advocates of prohibition will take
jubilant comfort in the decline of the number of
arrests for drunkenness. Whether this decline, how-
ever, means that less people drink to excess than before
is an open and perhaps a debatable question. But,
assuming the fact to be established, wouldn't the
accompanying fact that the number of felonies and
misdemeanors has increased seem to prove that sober
people are more liable to commit crimes than drunken
people? Such a conclusion would be manifestly ab-
surd, yet the statistics disclosed certainly make sad
havoc of the prohibitionist's stock argument that drink
is the cause of ninety per cent of all the crimes com-
mitted. Add to the above-cited three facts the indis-
putable fourth fact that enormous quantities of worse
liquors are sold in these "dry” counties than were sold
in them before they became “dry," and you have a
puzzle compared with which the most intricate problem
presented in higher algebra is mere child's play.
Nor do the perplexities end here. To make con-
fusion worse confounded, most of those who are mili-
tantly concerned in this much vexed question seem to
be rooted in a soil of the rankest unreason. The ex-
treme "wets" are as unreasonable as the extreme
"drys," and the laws, in consequence, are as unreason-
able as both, adding to the public bewilderment by
their contradictoriness and general incoherency. They
recognize and forbid the liquor traffic almost in one
A Brewer's Standpoint.
107
and the same breath, they tax it and persecute it simul-
taneously, and those who are charged with executing
the laws complete the universal confusion by enforcing
them one day and utterly ignoring them the next.
We are so intent upon either attacking or defending
the abstract question of the right of the liquor traffic
to exist that the question of purging that traffic, while
it does exist, of its undesirable features seems to have
passed out of our minds altogether. In consequence,
the more furious the battle rages around these disrep-
utable elements, the more they prosper, the more they
multiply, and the more bold they grow. If, for in-
stance, a district that was "wet” is voted “dry," they
flock to it like vultures, knowing that they can defy the
law more easily under "dry” conditions than they can
under "wet” conditions, and at a far less cost. For
a law that is resented, as the prohibition law is, by
a large proportion of the citizens, stands less chance
of being enforced than a regulatory law, which usually
has the approval of a large majority of the com-
munity; and since such prohibitory law precludes the
imposition of a tax on the traffic, the profitableness
of the traffic naturally increases in proportion.
I remember the time when the mere suggestion that
the brewing industry should, by any action of its own,
appear to hold itself responsible for the evils that have
crept into the retail liquor traffic would have been
received by those engaged in that industry with scorn
108
A Brewer's Standpoint.
and derision. This is no longer so, and in saying this
I am claiming no more credit for the brewer than that
of having sufficient intelligence to recognize that those
who are so anxious to bury him have been shrewdly
encouraging him in the interesting operation of assist-
ing to dig his own grave. “The conduct of the liquor
traffic is our chief asset,” said the general superinten-
dent of the Anti-Saloon League, when addressing
the recent convention of that league in Chicago. In
other words, he meant: “We rejoice in the increase
of evil that good may come of it.” The sentiment is
one of rather doubtful morality. But since the brewer
has learned that the great difficulty of making "dry”
territory "wet” again lies in the fact that the dive-
keeper and his friends in such territory join hands
with the Anti-Saloon League forces in again voting
it “dry,” mere sentiments of doubtful morality from
that quarter no longer surprise him.
The brewer has come to a gradual understanding of
the method underlying the apparent madness of his
enemy, and his changing attitude regarding the need
of taking a hand in remedying the growing evils of
the traffic upon which he largely depends for a market
is the result of that understanding. The mere public
outcry against those evils failed to accomplish this,
and perhaps not unnaturally so. If laws were not
enforced, why should the brewer feel called upon to
enforce them against his own customers? Why should
A Brewer's Stand point.
109
he be expected to be more circumspect in his business
methods or in the choice of those to whom he sells his
goods than any other merchant or manufacturer? Does
the business of any other commercial man involve the
duty on his part of inquiring into or regulating the
moral conduct of those who buy from him? Such used
to be some of the arguments offered in reply to any
suggestion that the industry should assume the burden
of the duties neglected by those to whom the execution
of the law is intrusted.
I am not defending or apologizing for the brewer;
I am merely dwelling on the psychology, if you please,
of such contributory negligence as he may have been
guilty of in the premises. Incidentally, too, I am try-
ing to pave the way for an explanation of the awkward
and difficult position in which, whether by his own fault
or not, the brewer finds himself placed to-day, and by
what means he is endeavoring to extricate himself from
it. Let it be borne in mind, in this connection, that
the brewing industry, no more than any other trade,
profession or calling, can prevent persons of lax
principles or indifferent morals from engaging in the
business. In spite of statements to the contrary, how-
ever, inspired by that tendency to exaggeration which
characterizes most utterances against the so-called
liquor man, I maintain that the brewing fraternity,
as a whole, will compare favorably in this regard with
any other industrial or professional body of men. The
110
A Brewer's Stand point.
more intelligent members of the trade have, indeed,
been for years nervously alive to the growing evils
that have become incident to the traffic which is so
closely allied to theirs, and to the need of correcting
them. But it is a long step from the realization of
that which is necessary to be done to the accomplish-
ment of that which it is necessary to do. Unanimity
of action is the condition precedent to all success that
depends upon the co-operation of many diverse ele-
ments, and this must be preceded by unanimity of
understanding
It was the alarming increase in the evil features
attached to the retail liquor traffic, brought about by
the prohibition movement, which first awakened all
ranks in the brewing industry to a full conception of
the need of energetic action to preserve what, for the
want of a better term, I will call the legitimacy of that
traffic. This awakening has been followed in different
States by different policies, all having in view a co-
operation on the part of the industry with the authori-
ties charged with the execution of the laws regulating
the retail selling of liquor. It was recognized on all
hands that not want of law, but want of law enforce-
ment, was the cause of the trouble; and since the
brewer had been pretty generally charged with being
the aider and abettor of the law-defying retailer, it
was not unnaturally supposed by the brewing industry
that, by formally serving notice on the authorities that
A Brewer's Standpoint.
111
it would support and aid any endeavors of the adminis-
trations tending to the discouragement of lawlessness
in the trade, the reluctance of those administrations to
enforce the law on that score would promptly vanish.
In this supposition, however, the brewer has found
himself utterly deceived. In the State of Ohio, for
instance, for which I am able to speak from detailed
experience, this attitude of the industry as a body was
received, first, with incredulity, then with derision, and
finally with open or concealed antagonism. The in-
credulity applied to the sincerity of the movement,
while the derision was called forth by the efforts made
by the trade to put the new policy into effect. The
antagonism followed when it became evident that those
efforts were really of a determined nature and that
they threatened to prove successful. Three instances,
out of many, will best illustrate my meaning, and at
the same time explain in some detail the character of
the task undertaken by the brewers in that State and
the difficulties attending its accomplishment.
Over two years ago, when the brewers of Ohio estab-
lished what is known to-day as the Ohio Brewers' Vigi-
lance Bureau, a certain notorious concert hall selling
liquors in the largest city of the State was one of the
first urgent cases called to the attention of the bureau.
The place, which was situated on one of the busiest
thoroughfares of the city, had become a by-word. It
was run and controlled by a city politician, for eighteen
112
A Brewer's Standpoint.
years a member of the city council, and supposedly so
powerful as to be invulnerable to attack from any
quarter. The Vigilance Bureau, to obviate any sus-
picion of partisanship, invited the co-operation of half
a dozen prominent citizens, who were known for their
philanthropic work and who personally gathered the
evidence required to prove the utterly disreputable char-
acter of the place. This evidence was placed before
the mayor, the chief of police and the county prose-
cutor, with the demand that the concert license of the
hall be revoked. The mayor declined to act; the chief
of police rudely told the brewers to mind their own
business, and publicly assailed them in the newspapers,
accusing them of insincerity; while the county prose-
cutor declared that, with all the evidence placed at his
command, it would be impossible to get a jury to con-
vict the proprietor of the hall. All this in face of the
fact that the entire community knew of the disreputable
character of the place, and every respectable citizen
desired that it should be closed.
Within a year of this first effort an election took
place, one of the results of which was the entry into
office of a county prosecutor nominated by the minority
political party. This man had announced his inten-
tion to assist in the so-called clean-up movement, and
immediately upon his induction into office the entire
detective force of the Vigilance Bureau was placed at
his disposal, with the result that indictment after in-
A Brewer's Standpoint.
113
dictment was secured against the proprietor of the hall
and vigorous prosecutions were instituted; but in every
case the jury disagreed. Meanwhile, nevertheless, the
notoriety of the place resulting from these efforts had
become so great that the proprietor was forced to retire
from the city council. After the last disagreement of
the jury the county prosecutor lost heart and was about
to abandon what appeared to be a hopeless fight. We
urged him, however, to fight on, offering to continue
to bear the expense of gathering new evidence, and he
was finally convinced by our argument that, if we but
persisted in prosecuting, neither the man himself could
stand the pace, nor could the administration afford to
remain inactive in face of the continued publicity given
to the facts. Curiously enough, within three days after
our obtaining the prosecutor's assurance that he would
not give up the struggle, the newly elected mayor of the
city, a man, by the way, of the highest type of citizen-
ship, who had meanwhile quietly investigated the place
for himself, called in the proprietor and ordered him
to close up. This event occurred within a couple of
weeks of the present writing. The fight has lasted
nearly three years, but not the least important of its
fruits is that we are now reasonably certain that the
closing up of similar joints in the same city will prove
a comparatively easy task.
In another city, located in the center of the State,
where the conditions of the retail liquor traffic had been
114
A Brewer's Standpoint.
described to us as particularly disgraceful, our bureau
offered its assistance to the mayor and the chief of
police, with the result that we were practically ordered
to leave the town. Two breweries were located there,
and, privately assisted by the proprietor of one of them,
our operatives started to gather evidence, with the
view of instituting proceedings against the most fla-
grant of the lawbreakers. In the course of their
investigations it became abundantly clear that both the
mayor and the chief of police collected large sums of
money from the dive-keepers, in return for which these
men were held immune from arrest for breaking the
law. The local saloonkeepers' organization, consisting
of the respectable element of the trade, was approached
by the bureau, which found its efforts enthusiastically
welcomed in that quarter. But no urging could induce
the organization to openly identify itself with the work
of the bureau. No saloonkeeper, we were told, could
exist in business for a week if he openly indorsed our
operations, as he would be hounded by the police and
closed up on some pretext or other. The case looked
desperate, when it occurred to me to invite a committee
of citizens to assist us. A prominent clergyman of the
town had for a time interested himself in our work, and
I instructed our superintendent to approach him and,
if possible, arrange for me to have an interview with
him. This was accomplished, but, in informing me of
the clergyman's willingness to meet me, our superin-
A Brewer's Standpoint.
115
tendent wrote me at some length, warning me to avoid
saying anything that would cause the reverend gentle-
man to suspect that, in joining such a committee, he
might become entangled in the local political campaign,
which just at that moment had reached a rather acute
stage. The mayor, our superintendent said, was a
candidate for re-election, and his opponent, who prom-
ised a clean administration, was making political capi-
tal of the disclosures brought about by our bureau.
On meeting the clergyman, I opened the negotiations
by simply handing him the superintendent's letter to
read and asking him whether it was true that such a
consideration as was mentioned in the letter would
prevent him from lending us his assistance. He ad-
mitted frankly that it would, whereupon I inquired,
firstly, whether he believed that, if the present admin-
istration of his city were continued in office, there would
be any hope of betterment in the existing deplorable
conditions; and, secondly, whether he considered that
the man who was running for the office of mayor in
opposition to the present incumbent was sincere in
his declaration that he would clean out the dives. He
answered the first question in the negative and the
second in the affirmative. I then risked the following
rather blunt proposition: “Am I to understand, then,
that you, a minister of the Gospel, will knowingly let
your city go to perdition rather than risk exciting the
suspicion that you are concerned in the local political
campaign?”
116
A Brewer's Standpoint.
He thought that I was putting the case rather
strongly, whereupon I defined my own position in the
matter as a brewer, stating frankly that I had no phil-
anthropic motives whatever in worrying about the
existence of dives in a city which I had never seen and
was never likely to see, but that I was actuated solely
by selfish considerations in the matter—the first con-
sideration being that the disreputable, liquor-selling
dive is a detriment to my business; and the second that
it is personally distasteful to me to be concerned in
any business which, either directly or indirectly, can be
connected with that which is disreputable and offensive.
The upshot of the interview was that the clergyman
consented to act on the citizens' committee. Wholesale
prosecutions followed, exposing, if not the utter cor-
ruptness, at any rate the complete indifference of the
existing administration to the open disregard of the
law on the part of the dive-keepers, and resulting at
the polls—in what? The re-election of the mayor, in
spite of the fact that both the local brewers and the
saloonkeepers' association had been encouraged by our
determined action to come out openly against him.
Discouraging, was it not? But listen to the sequel.
The mayor had had the fight of his life, and by keeping
our operatives on the ground after the election, we
succeeded in making him realize that the fight was even
then not over. He has since actually appealed for our
aid, and has decided that the day of dives and official
A Brewer's Standpoint.
117
As an
.
graft in his bailiwick has come to an end.
amusing comment on the entire situation, I subjoin
the following two letters, which are among many that
our bureau has received from mayors, sheriffs, prose-
cuting attorneys, citizens' committees, and even judges,
in every part of the State, testifying to the efficient
work of our Vigilance Bureau:
Mayor's OFFICE.
Ohio, January 14, 1910.
Mr. Gale M. Hartley, Superintendent Ohio Brewers' Vigilance
Bureau, Dayton, Ohio.
Dear Sir: The work in the city of.... ...of the Ohio Brew-
ers' Association through their Vigilance Bureau has been productive
of great results, inasmuch as the conditions of the retail liquor traffic
in this city have been greatly improved. The bureau has always
shown a willingness to co-operate with the city's administration in
any work attempted for the betterment of the local saloon condition.
Very truly yours. .
.Mayor.
The.... Board of Trade... Ohio, January 15, 1910.
Mr. Gale M. Hartley, State Superintendent Ohio Brewers' Vigilance
Bureau, Dayton, Ohio.
My Dear Mr. Hartley: On behalf of the....
Board of
Trade and our good citizens generally, I desire to thank you for
the great good you have accomplished in our city. We appreciate
your efforts and success the more because of our knowledge of
existing conditions, the authorities being in league and in sympathy
with the violators of the law placed every obstacle possible in your
way.
It is the hope of the better element of our city that your
organization continue its labors here, until law-abiding citizens are
placed in charge of affairs. Cordially yours.
President
.. Board of Trade.
For obvious reasons I omit to give the real signatures
to these letters. Suffice it to say that the first was writ-
ten by the re-elected mayor of the city in question, and
the second by the president of the Board of Trade of
118
A Brewer's Standpoint.
that city, who is the man who ran for the office of
mayor in opposition to the present re-elected incumbent
of that office. Further comment is surely needless.
The third instance will prove the variety of the experi-
ences that await the worker in this peculiar field.
In one of the most important centers of the State, in
which the liquor interests are strongly represented, the
following conditions confronted those interested in
the last fall campaign: The one political party (I
need not mention which) nominated a so-called “dry”
man for mayor, while the other chose an "ultra-wet.”
The former announced his intention to close the saloons
on Sunday and wipe out every disreputable drinking
place in the city. The latter promised a wide-open
town. The "interests” were in a quandary as to which
candidate to support. They were anxious to promote
the so-called “clean-up” movement, but they feared the
well-known prohibition proclivities of the "dry” candi-
date. The advice of the Vigilance Bureau to them was
that they should come out for the man who stood for
law and order. Unfortunately, this advice was not
heeded, and the “dry” candidate was elected without
having had the indorsement of the liberals. Imme-
diately after the election, the superintendent of the
Brewers' Vigilance Bureau presented himself to the
mayor-elect and offered him the services of the bureau.
The mayor-elect, before accepting, stipulated that some
one speaking authoritatively for the brewers should
A Brewer's Standpoint.
119
confirm this offer; and as chairman of the Vigilance
Bureau I immediately sought an interview with him,
in which I explained in detail the work we were doing
and what good it could accomplish if we received the
co-operation of the local administration. It transpired,
during the conversation, that Sunday closing was the
chief hobby of the mayor-elect, and, though reluctantly,
I agreed to lend our assistance in enforcing any Sun-
day-closing orders issued by him, provided the admin-
istration would apply itself with equal energy to the
wiping out of the disreputable joints.
In pursuance of this agreement, our superintendent
and staff of operatives presented themselves at the
mayor's office on January 1st, the day of that official's
induction, and within ten days the administration was
in possession of overwhelming evidence regarding the
character of every lawless drinking resort in the city.
All that was now needed was to raid these places and
prosecute the owners. But weeks passed, and nothing
was done.
The mayor had meanwhile appointed a
well-known adherent of the Anti-Saloon League as
his director of public safety, and had issued a statement
to the newspapers to the effect that he had been
assured of the assistance both of the Anti-Saloon
League and the brewers in cleaning up the town. As
a matter of fact, however, the closing of the saloons
on Sunday was the only task to which he really applied
himself, and with the result that the people who were
120
A Brewer's Standpoint.
accustomed to frequent the saloons on Sunday flocked
in crowds on that day to the outlying country dis-
tricts, in order to seek there the wonted recreation
which was now denied them within the city limits. In
an incredibly short time many drinking places were
started in these rural localities, most of them catering
to the riff-raff of the city population, and the cry went
up from the brewing interests and others that, unless
the Sunday-closing order were extended to these dis-
tricts and strictly enforced, the Sunday evil which had
been eliminated from the city, where it could at least
be kept under control, would merely be driven into the
surrounding townships, where the means of regulation
and control were totally lacking.
At this juncture our superintendent appealed to me
to come to the city and remonstrate with the mayor,
firstly, regarding his inactivity toward the lawless
resorts in the city; and, secondly, on account of his
refusal to avail himself of the power vested in him to
extend the city jurisdiction to the outlying townships
and insist upon the Sunday-closing order being obeyed
in those townships as it was obeyed in the city proper.
I promptly complied, but all my remonstrances proved
unavailing. To my statement that, in driving the
objectionable Sunday resort out of the city and allow-
ing it to flourish undisturbed in the surrounding locali-
ties, the mayor was acting like the housemaid who stirs
up the dust in one corner of the room and merely
allows it to settle down again in another corner, instead
A Brewer's Standpoint.
121
of continuing to sweep until the dust has been swept
out of the window, his Honor replied that he was
merely concerned in the immediate city's welfare and
did not feel inclined to interfere in the outlying dis-
tricts, where the township authorities had power to act
as well as he. All I could obtain from him was a prom-
ise that he would personally accompany our superin-
tendent the following Sunday on a tour of inspection
through these districts, and then finally decide whether
he would take a hand in closing the objectionable
Sunday resorts or leave us to do so unaided.
This tour of inspection was carried out, but without
altering the mayor's attitude in the matter. On the
subject of the prosecution or closing up of the notorious
city joints, of whose lawless practices we had supplied
him with all the necessary evidence, it was just as
difficult to move him. “Give me time,” he said. “I
don't want to act harshly with these people. I have
warned them, and if they do not heed my warning, I
will deal with them without mercy.” I pointed out
that, upon his own admission, many of these resorts
had ceased their lawless practices the moment our
Vigilance Bureau was known to be on the ground
and active (an experience, by the way, which we find
to be pretty general), but that, since the administration
had refrained for weeks and weeks from taking action
against the dives generally, they had returned to their
old methods of doing business. Thus urged, his Honor
122
A Brewer's Stand point.
grew peevish and exclaimed, “Don't press me so hard!
I have many interests to consider, and, besides, I have
to be careful that I do no political damage.” The last
words, I think, slipped out by accident. But they told
the whole story, and soon afterward I withdrew as
gracefully as I could. When we had regained the
street, I turned to our superintendent, who had been
present during the interview, and asked him what he
thought of this specimen of a "dry” mayor. His reply
was characteristic of him, for he is a man of few words.
"He's in a hole,” he said. "He thought you were bluff-
ing him when you offered to help him clean up his city,
and now he finds that you have called his bluff, not he
yours, and that worries him.” I could multiply exam-
ples of this kind almost ad infinitum. But do not
let it be supposed that they imply a hopeless or desper-
ate condition of affairs.
In the two and a half years that our Vigilance Bu-
reau has been operating, a marked change has taken
place in the attitude of the authorities generally toward
it, and even the “dry” mayor I have just described
has earnestly requested us not to withdraw our support
from him—a request we have cheerfully complied with.
The fact is that, whatever view these authorities may
take of our sincerity in the campaign we are conducting,
they have gradually learned that one element of society,
at least, takes us very seriously, and that element is the
divekeeper himself, for he runs to cover like a fright-
A Brewer's Standpoint.
123
as
ened hare the moment the forces of the Vigilance Bureau
enter the town where he operates. This is generally
acknowledged. If we could only make the dive-keeper
believe that the duly constituted authorities, with whom
we co-operate or endeavor to co-operate, were
sincere and as serious as we are, the battle against the
disorderly element in the business would be won within
twenty-four hours in every city in the State. To those
who can read between the lines, it must be evident what
is the cause of this want of co-operation with us on
the part of the usual run of city officials. They aim,
in fact, to secure the support of two opposite camps.
Thus they cater to the respectable voter by promising
thorough reforms, and curry favor with the disorderly
element of the citizenship by not carrying them out.
In other words, politics are at the bottom of the evil
we are discussing. The three primary essentials to
the success of such efforts as we have put forth in this
respect in Ohio are courage, determination and pa-
tience. Let me say a word here for the indiscriminately
abused retailer.
I assert—and I do so with a full and complete knowl-
edge of the subject—that the genuine and legitimate
American saloonkeeper is as commendable a type of
the average American citizen as any that could be
cited, not excluding that aggressively moral and self-
assertive type which is made up of many of those who
seek and work for his extinction and extermination.
124
A Brewer's Standpoint.
The proportion among those of this latter type who
disgrace the body to which they belong is no smaller
than the proportion of men who have invaded the trade
of the saloonkeeper for no other purpose than that of
using it as a cloak beneath which to conceal objects of
a vicious and nefarious character which are totally
foreign to that trade. The only difference between the
two cases consists in the fact that the main body of
saloon men, who are only too anxious to conduct a
decent and respectable business, are forced by the
exigencies of competition to disregard the law, owing
to the circumstance that some disreputable neighbor
is permitted to break it with impunity. In other
words, it is patent that you cannot extend immunity
from the law to a few favored individual members of
a trade or industry without eventually compelling every
member of that trade or industry to demand the same
immunity or to take it unasked. Take, for instance,
the midnight-closing ordinance as a mild example. I
can cite dozens of cities where ninety per cent of the
saloonkeepers are in favor of the enforcement of this
ordinance, and yet every one of them breaks it. Why?
Because a favored few have the privilege of disregard-
ing it with impunity, with the consequence that their
many competitors are compelled either to arrogate to
themselves the same privilege or see their business
swallowed up by their favored neighbor. The same
argument applies to every lawless feature of this trade,
A Brewer's Standpoint.
125
and I say without hesitation that any city administra-
tion which will show the courage or the honesty to en-
force the existing laws fairly and impartially will have
the great majority of the retail liquor dealers with it.
No better proof of the character and standing of the
saloon man could be adduced than has been afforded
by the attitude of the saloonkeepers of Ohio toward
the Brewers' Vigilance Bureau. Though the bureau
has operated in over fifty cities of the State and con-
ducted hundreds of prosecutions, resulting in every
case either in the closing up of undesirable resorts or
in the elimination of their objectionable features, only
one single complaint or remonstrance has reached me
in all this time from the trade regarding the actions
of the bureau, while, on the contrary, resolution upon
resolution has been passed by the saloonkeepers' asso-
ciations in every part of the State, commending those
actions and urging the members of the associations to
co-operate with the bureau. We are still far from
having accomplished more than a comparatively small
percentage of the task that confronts us, but we have
at least given overwhelming proof that the remaining
percentage, however large it may seem, can be accom-
plished within a limit of time, the length of which is
dependent exclusively upon the measure of honest co-
operation afforded us by the authorities whose duties
we are assisting them to perform.
Herein lies, in my humble opinion, the true and only
126
A Brewer's Standpoint.
solution of the so-called liquor question. To the
theorists and moralists, who imagine that this world
of ours can be brought to a state of perfection by a
mere stroke of the legislative pen, let me say this:
It
may, in the course of time, be possible, for the good
of the few, to wean the many from the use of alcoholic
beverages; but, if this is their theory, it is against the
demand that they should direct their attack, not
against the source of supply. To merely degrade the
channels through which that supply flows, which is
what they are doing to-day, must obviously aggravate
rather than lessen the evil they are bent on destroying.
Men do not give up their habits in obedience to a mere
fiat of the law, and the belief of the anti-liquor man
that he is confronted with a mere struggle of the saloon
for its existence is utterly fallacious. He is confronted
with a struggle for that existence on the part of the
people who want the saloon and the refreshment it
affords them.
Is there any thinking man who believes that, if this
“wet” and “dry” question were merely one between an
industry or trade, however large, and the people of
the country as a whole, it would be convulsing the
nation from one end to the other as it is convulsing it
to-day, arraying city against country, splitting up great
political parties, and shaking at the very foundations
of our social and economic being? What, indeed, would
the saloonkeeper amount to in this fight if he stood
A Brewer's Standpoint.
127
alone and had not the people behind him who have the
want and the desire for that which he supplies? Why,
he would be brushed aside like a feather! Without
the demand for liquid refreshment in a community, no
saloon could exist there. And, mark further: it is not
the saloon that makes the people of a community what
they are; it is the people of a community that make
the saloon in that community what it is. The dives and
joints which abound in every “dry” town or district
are only too conclusive proof of this. Our would-be
reformers say that the "criminal” saloon is the breeding
ground of the criminal classes. The truth, of course,
is just the reverse. It is the criminal classes who are
the breeders of the "criminal” saloon, and our teachers
and preachers, upon whose efforts the advancement and
the betterment of mankind depend, should devote
their energies to the conversion and redemption of the
delinquent citizen, who creates the bad saloon, rather
than waste those energies in futile attempts to cure
his delinquency by merely destroying that which he
creates.
Some Fallacies and a Moral
Address delivered before the Convention of the National
Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Association, at Cincin-
nati, Ohio, May 25, 1910
I don't know how a half-hour can be more profitably
employed by men in our business, surrounded as we
are by a mingled army of critics and detractors, foes
moralistic and theoristic, reformers and inquisitors,
historians of doubtful knowledge, and statisticians of
still more doubtful veracity—I say, I don't know how
we could better employ a half-hour than by taking
stock of ourselves and of this army of heterogeneous
elements that invests us. The wise and the ignorant,
the sincere and the insincere, are so strangely mingled
in this curious army that it is difficult to distinguish
the ignorant from the wise, and the sincere from the
insincere, for the wise among them often display the
most shocking ignorance, and the sincere frequently
verge so dangerously near the brink of insincerity, that
one is at times doubtful how to classify them at all.
Now, I trust I shall not shock you too greatly when
I say that, in my opinion, the same description is not
entirely inapplicable to the ranks in our own army.
Fallacies and a Moral.
129
We, too, have our wise and our ignorant, our sincere
and our insincere, and the difficulty in distinguishing
the one from the other is scarcely less great. And
what applies to the individuals on either side applies
with equal force to what they say and do. The falla-
cies are not all on one side, nor are the morals. Wis-
dom is not monopolized by the one faction, nor is folly
the exclusive property of the other. And when we
come to logic—well, there are not a few in both parties
who seem to regard it with much the same kind of
sympathy that nature is supposed to entertain for a
vacuum. I must confess at least, personally, that I
have rarely read an article dealing with the liquor
question, either from the wet or the dry point of view,
nor listened to a debate between extreme advocates of
either faction, in which the arguments of both have
not struck me as being a mass of bewildering contra-
dictions. The same applies to the facts collected and
reported by more or less impartial observers regarding
the conditions prevailing in this or the other district
of the country where one side has temporarily succeeded
in ousting the other. In a recent article, for instance,
published in Pearson's Magazine, we read that a cer-
tain State has shown material progress since the enact-
ment of a prohibitory law, from which fact, the
writer says, it is fair to assume that such law has not
retarded that progress, and may have been a factor in
stimulating it. Yet, immediately following this state-
130
Fallacies and a Moral.
ment, and the conclusion deduced from it, we learn, as
a certain fact and not as an assumption, that, in spite
of the prohibitory law, enormous quantities of worse
liquors are sold and consumed in that State than were
sold there before. Apply to these two statements the
simplest rule of logic, and we are left to draw from
them the inevitable and absurd conclusion that the
worse the conditions of the liquor traffic become, owing
to the peculiar operation (or, must we say, non-
operation?) of the prohibition law, the greater the
business prosperity of the State in which that law
operates, or fails to operate, is likely to be.
In line with these strangely contradictory phenomena
is the result of certain statistical data we have just
finished collecting and tabulating in Ohio. Here we
have a county local option law, which has been opera-
tive for nearly two years in upwards of sixty counties
of the State. In these counties, in which the sale of
liquor has been prohibited by law, the following facts,
taken in each case from the official records extending
over the past three years, have been ascertained:
1. The rate of taxation has largely increased since
the prohibitory law became effective. (This, of course,
was expected by the wet faction.)
2. The arrests for drunkenness have materially di-
minished in number. (This was predicted by the dry
faction.)
3. The number of indictments for felony and mis-
Fallacies and a Moral.
131
demeanor shows a notable increase. (This will prob-
ably come as a surprise to both the wet and the dry
factions.)
Now reconcile these facts, if you can.
Of course,
the advocates of prohibition will take jubilant comfort
in the decline of the number of arrests for drunken-
ness. Whether this decline, however, means that less
people drink to excess than before is an open and per-
haps debatable question. Were it not that it would
take too long, I could give you some data bearing on
this question that would throw an interesting light on
the methods by which the commercial gentlemen who
make their living by agitating the liquor question con-
trive to cover up the disastrous truth, which, if known,
would destroy their means of livelihood. But assuming
the fact to be established that drunkenness does de-
crease in dry territory, wouldn't the accompanying fact
that the number of felonies and misdemeanors increases
seem to prove that sober people are more liable to com-
mit crimes than drunken peeople? Such a conclusion
would be manifestly absurd, yet the statistics disclosed
certainly make sad havoc of the prohibitionist's stock
argument, that drink is the cause of ninety per cent of
all the crimes committed. Add to the above cited three
facts the indisputable fourth fact, that enormous quan-
tities of worse liquors are sold in these “dry” counties
than were sold in them before they became “dry,” and
you have apparently a puzzle compared with which
132
Fallacies and a Moral.
the most intricate problem presented in higher algebra
is mere child's play.
*
*
Now, gentlemen, it would be absurd to suppose that
the cause of all this chaos of contradictory conditions
is due to one element in this conflict alone. The falla-
cies of the prohibitionist are well known to us. But
we can also boast of some fallacies ourselves, and I
think they throw a few rays of light into the bewilder-
ing darkness that envelops the entire situation. I, for
one, at least, do not believe, as so many of us are so
constantly emphasizing, that the prohihition of the
liquor traffic has a retarding influence on the commer-
cial and social progress of a State because it destroys
an established trade, throws men out of work, causes
depression in real estate and other values, increases
taxation, and does all the many other things which
writers and speakers on our side are so fond of dwelling
upon. The fact is, and we should face it, that, if pro-
hibition were really wanted by the people, they would
not care a pin's head what it cost them or us to get it.
Prohibition is the curse it is simply because it is admit-
tedly a hideous farce, because it does not destroy the
demand for liquor, but merely degrades the channels
through which the supply flows which satisfies that
demand. It is the lowering of the moral tone of the
community, consequent upon the shocking hypocrisy
bred by the prohibitory law which is at the root of
Fallacies and a Moral.
133
all the business stagnation that invariably follows the
imposition of that law. Men of enterprise, men of
spirit and character, men of progressive ability, natur-
ally shun a State where they can only exist as hypo-
crites and quasi-criminals. Hence, the striking differ-
ence between the commercial progress made in such
a State and that recorded in States where this absurd
law does not exist. For it is men, not conditions, that
make communities, as they make nations, and what
man who boasts of any dignity and self-respect will
remain or settle in a community where he is reduced
by the law to the level of the domestic beast, which
must have a master to control its appetites because it
cannot control them itself?
Another fallacy into which some of our friends are
prone to fall is the supposition that the so-called anti-
liquor forces are composed of nothing but fanatics.
They are not. For one fanatic in their ranks I say that
there are hundreds who merely recognize the existence
of the same evil that we recognize, and, seeing no way
of curing it, conclude that it is incurable, and that there-
fore no other remedy is left but the complete destruc-
tion of the source from which they believe the evil
emanates.
Now, I dare say, some of you gentlemen have noticed
the rather muddy conditions of our Ohio river water.
When I came to Cincinnati, about fourteen years ago,
this identical water was the water I had to take my
134
Fallacies and a Moral.
bath in every morning, and I am frank to say that I
used to curse, first the water works of our city, and
then the Ohio river itself, for this state of affairs. To-
day, thanks to the intelligent administration of our
city, I enjoy a clean, pellucid bath in the morning, but,
mark you, not because of the fact that a commission of
lunatics has since endeavored to stop up the source of
the Ohio river, but because an enlightened water works
commission has hit upon the very simple device of filter-
ing the water and eliminating from it the extraneous
mud it has accumulated on its passage from the river's
fountain spring
If the story of the liquor question can be expressed
in a parable, there you have the parable. By attempting
to clog up the spring from which the river flows, all
that can be accomplished is to increase the muddiness
of its water, and a very small percentage of mud, as
you know, makes a very muddy looking river, just as a
very few rowdy and disreputable saloons make a very
disreputable looking saloon trade. Remove the mud
from your river water, and you will have no kickers
about impure water left, except those who are so con-
stituted that they kick on general principles against
all and everything that exists. By the like token,
divorce from the saloon trade the mud of prostitution
and gambling and other foreign parasitical elements
which have sucked themselves fast to that trade, and
you will find nothing left of the so-called anti-liquor
Fallacies and a Moral.
135
forces but the fanatics, and perhaps a few commercial
schemers who will be busy hunting new fields of easy
profit.
So much, then, for some of the fallacies and contra-
dictions that cloud the issue on both sides. Now, as
to the moral to be deduced from them, if I may be
permitted to talk morals outside of a prohibition meet-
ing, it seems to me to be this: That we should not
forget, in our indignation over the many blunders the
other fellow is committing, that we have ourselves some
blunders to correct, and that there is no better or
more forcible way of showing up the other fellow's
blunders than by correcting our own.
I speak as a brewer, not as a wholesale liquor man.
But I am of those who believe that we occupy a joint
farm, and should act jointly, as joint proprietors of
the farm, in the joint interest of the farm and the
countryside which it supplies. The farm has a dump.
All farms have, even the ministerial farm. But this
particular dump has been permitted to be used as a
kind of general depository for the offal of the neigh-
borhood. It has, in consequence, grown out of propor-
tion large for the size of the farm, and the countryside
is holding its nose. Now, it is no use for us to stand
squabbling with one another about the question as to
which of us deserves the greater share of the blame for
letting this dump grow to its unreasonable size. The
fact is that it is there, on our joint farm, and, by way
136
Fallacies and a Moral.
of expressing their disapproval of dumps in general,
some philanthropical neighbors have started in with
pitchforks to dig into the dump and stir it up, and
spread its putrid stuff broadcast, making the neighbor-
hood think that they are living, not near one dump,
but in the midst of a thousand dumps, and that a pesti-
lence is imminent. Perhaps, indeed, a pestilence may be
imminent, but not owing to the existence of the un-
avoidable dump, but owing to the foolish action of the
philanthropical neighbors in shooting the stuff of which
it is composed all over the neighborhood and contami-
nating the whole atmosphere with that which, if
properly confined, can harm no one but those who wil-
fully stick their nose into it. This action, of course,
is exceedingly foolish. But, on the other hand, the
circumstance that the other fellows are blunderingly
increasing the nuisance doesn't relieve us from the
odium attaching to that nuisance, nor does it absolve us
from the duty of mitigating the nuisance, so far as
human endeavor can mitigate it. This, in my humble
opinion, gentlemen, is our situation, and while I
haven't described it in the most savory of language, the
picture I have given is true, if not alluringly beautiful.
Now, what should we do? Isn't it clear that we
ought, in the first place, to close our farm-gates and
put up a sign on our premises saying “No indiscrimi-
nate dumping allowed here”? To endeavor to keep
out the prohibition fellows with the pitchforks, who
Fallacies and a Moral.
137
are stirring up the foul odor, without at the same time
barring the entrance to the riff-raff from the outside,
that keeps shooting the rubbish on our lot which
creates the foul odor, is to my mind an utterly sense-
less proceeding
What, indeed, have our governing authorities been
doing all these years but putting up double-barred
gates around our farm for this very purpose? Only,
unfortunately, they have contented themselves merely
with the erection of the gates. The same old riff-raff,
nothing daunted, now climbs over the gates and con-
tinues depositing its evil-smelling stuff on our ground,
while the authorities not only stand idly by and let
things take their course, but in only too many cases
actually give these fellows a leg-up and help them over
the gates. Our remonstrances, meanwhile, are met
with the answer: “Mind your own business. The
gates are our property, and we won't let you meddle
with them.'
Now, gentlemen, we have got to meddle with these
gates, for, if we don't, the danger is that the accursed
dump will grow until nothing is left of our farm but
one gigantic dump. To depart from metaphor, I be-
lieve that our two industries, organized as they are
to-day for defensive purposes, should devote their
means and their brains to the correction or the removal
of that which has forced them into this defensive
attidute. I believe that the solution of what is rather
>>
138
Fallacies and a Moral.
ambiguously styled the liquor question, must come, in
the first instance at least, from the liquor industries
themselves, and from no other source. But as long
as we merely confine ourselves to resisting the applica-
tion of the false remedies suggested, without offering
at least some remedial suggestion of our own, we can
make no headway. Let our attitude, then, be assistant
as well as resistant. Let us interest ourselves in law
enforcement, and above all let us serve notice on the
governing powers in unmistakable terms that we
insist that they shall do likewise.
To put the case a little more concretely. The retail-
ing of liquor in connection with gambling and disor-
derly houses, and the dispensing of it to drunkards and
minors, is pretty universally admitted to be undesirable.
Indeed, I have yet to meet a manufacturer of beer
or whiskey who does not emphatically agree that it
should be suppressed, and that, if it were suppressed,
there would be no more so-called liquor question, as
we understand it to-day. Well, the law does forbid it.
Then, why does it still universally exist? Because
those charged with executing the law don't execute it.
And what is the inevitable result? Simply that those
who are willing and anxious to be controlled by the
law are left at the absolute mercy of those who refuse
to be so controlled. The saloonkeeper is no better than
most men, and unless his actions and those of his like
are governed by law, they will be governed each by the
Fallacies and a Moral.
139
actions of his neighbors, which means by simple com-
mercial or competitive expediency. It might be better
if it were not so. But it is so.
That is the position in a nutshell, and it is intensely
human. I believe it was the late lamented prince of
American humorists who said, “Be good, and you will
be lonesome.” And the prince of American humorists
knew his country only too well when he coined this
immortal phrase. Gentlemen, if you can once guar-
antee the thousands of salooonkeepers of the country,
who violate the law to-day merely because their neigh-
bors are permitted to do so with impunity, that if they
will be good they will not be lonesome, I venture to
say that every man of them will heave a sigh of relief
and cheerfully comply with all reasonable provisions
of the law. It is, in fact, this haunting dread of being
left lonesome in our commercial virtue that interferes
more than anything else with the carrying out of our
good intentions. And naturally so. For isn't it the
very aim and purpose of the law to protect those who
obey it from having undue advantage taken of them
by those who disobey it? When the law fails in that
most important respect, it fails altogether, because it
thereby not only perpetuates the criminality of those
who are criminally inclined, but perforce makes crimi-
nals of those who, if given a fair chance and opportun-
ity, would rank among the best and most respectable of
our citizens.
140
Fallacies and a Moral.
With all due respect, then, to those among us who
believe that some new and better law will give us the
panacea for all of our ills, I say that if you enacted
the best law which human brain could conceive, it
would but add one more law to the many that are now
being broken, unless provision were at the same time
made to mend the executive machinery through which
the power of that law is transmitted. On the other
hand, if you once succeeded in mending that defective
executive machinery, no new laws would be needed,
because the existing laws are admittedly more than
sufficient to provide that machinery with all the power
it requires to perform its functions.
Gentlemen, if I have endeavored, in a humble way,
to deal with what I consider are some of the fallacies
that obstruct the settlement of the much-discussed
liquor question, and to deduce a moral from them, I
am keenly alive to the fact that I have left the real
and crucial point at interest untouched. What the
public wants is a remedy; what the government wants
is a remedy; and what we want is a remedy. We all
three know what that remedy is, but each of us is look-
ing to the other to apply it. I say that neither of the
three can apply it without the assistance and co-opera-
tion of at least one of the two others. Isn't it time,
then, for our united industries to offer that assistance
and co-operation in some definite and tangible manner?
If, for instance, the governing authorities of the
Fallacies and a Moral.
141
country had, in addition to the power vested in them,
our knowledge and experience of the matters they
are attempting to regulate, their chances of success
would be increased ten-fold. Likewise, if we, in addi-
tion to our knowledge and experience, possessed some
of the power vested in those authorities, we, too, could
accomplish the desired result with comparative ease.
Then why not endeavor to bring about an amalga-
mation of these two forces? Why not work toward
uniting our expert knowledge with the power of the
governing authorities? I believe it is this amalgama-
tion and this union that we should strive for, and if
you gentlemen, with your powerful organization behind
you, will put your heads together to devise ways and
means to this end, and if the Brewers' organization
will do likewise, we shall achieve what we are all aiming
to achieve, namely, regulation that will really regulate,
legislation that will really operate, and, above all,
the establishment of our great industries in the rank
to which they rightly belong, that is to say, in the fore-
front row of those giant commercial pillars upon which
the greatness of our country is reared.
Address before the Committee on
Temperance of the Ohio House of
Representatives in Support of the
Dean Amendment to the Rose
County Option Law.
Delivered in the Ohio House of Representatives,
February 9, 1911
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee:
I could scarcely approach the question which is
under your consideration to-night without referring in
a few words to the scandalous statement published
a few weeks ago by the representatives of those who
oppose the measure before you, implying that, if a ma-
jority of votes should be cast in favor of that measure,
this majority would be accused of having sold itself
for money.
Being in sole and undivided charge of the interests
against which this slander is primarily directed, it
behooves me, I think, to express to you my earnest
hope that every member of the Legislature, knowing,
as he must know, the real purpose underlying this
insidious threat, will treat it with all the contempt it
deserves. I can conceive of no more disgraceful
Rose County Option Law.
143
method of intimidating the people's chosen representa-
tives than that of threatening to charge them with
corruptibility unless their vote should be recorded in
a certain prescribed manner.
Speaking for those whom I represent, I may add
that the worst and most disturbing feature of this slan-
der to us is that it classes us with the very men who
gave sanction to its utterance. For, since there is
admittedly little difference, in degree of criminality,
between the act of bribery and the act of extortion,
there can be just as little difference between the moral
turpidity of men who procure votes by money and those
who endeavor to procure them by libelous threats.
Now, Mr. Chairman, coming to the question at issue
to-night, there is one proposition bearing upon that
question, which, I think, must be accepted as undeni-
ably true by every unbiased man. This proposition
is that the Rose County Option law, which the bill
now under your consideration seeks to amend, was
not framed to give the people in the country districts
what they wanted or needed; there were already laws
enough on the statute books, prior to the passage of
the Rose law, providing for all the wants and needs
of the country folk in regard to the retention or non-
retention of the saloon in their midst. The Rose law
was notoriously framed for the purpose of forcing upon
the people in the cities what they did not want, and
what they had already repudiated. In other words,
144
Rose County Option Law.
the people in the cities had declined the means of sal-
vation offered them in the Township, the Municipal
and the Residence District acts, and they were there-
fore to have salvation forced upon them at the sword's
point in the shape of the Rose County Option law.
Unfortunately, salvation by brute force has never
proved successful, and it never will. The history of
the operation of the Rose law is merely another in-
stance in proof of this fact. In the eyes of the Anti-
Saloon League, of course, the effect of this law has
been one of phenomenal success. All the laws which
this organization has been instrumental in placing on
the statute books have in its eyes been eminently suc-
cessful. Why, gentlemen, it is the boast of this league
that in the past thirteen years it has succeeded in plac-
ing more than one-half of the entire territory of the
United States under the prohibition ban. Forty-five
million of the free citizens of this country have had
the eleventh commandment, formulated by the prohi-
bitionist, imposed upon them: “Thou shalt not drink.”
Phenomenal success, in very truth-so far as it goes.
The only trouble with the prohibitionist is that he is
utterly incapable of realizing the difference between
driving a horse to the water-trough and making it
drink. Forty-five million of the population of this
country live in territory which the prohibitionist, at
terrific expense to the community at large, has suc-
ceeded in making "dry.” Would you not imagine that,
Rose County Option Law.
145
if this "success" meant what it purports to mean, its
effect upon the consumption of alcoholic beverages in
the United States must have been almost annihilating?
Our friends of the Anti-Saloon League carefully re-
frain from telling you what that effect has really been.
But the United States revenue authorities do tell it,
and what they say is that in these same thirteen years
of the glorious reign of prohibition the per capita
consumption of whiskey in the entire country has in-
creased over fifty per cent and the per capita consump-
tion of beer has increased forty-six per cent.
Inci-
dentally, then, thanks to the "success" of prohibition,
forty-five million of the population of the country are
to-day drinking illegally half as much again of that
which they formerly drank legally. Or, rather--to be
quite accurate—since the greater half of these forty-
five million people must have voted for prohibition,
we have to assume, either that the smaller half of them
are drinking several times as much as they drank
before, or that the greater half, who voted to abolish
drink, are hypocritically helping them to consume that
fearful excess.
It has become customary to laugh at these facts, as
if they were a joke. But in reality they are terrible
facts, terrible in what they imply in the immediate
present, and terrible in what they import for the more
distant future. They embody the sum and substance
of all the immorality, all the dishonesty, and all the
146
Rose County Option Law.
hypocrisy which the prohibition law is breeding
throughout our fair and free land. They prove that
it is not making bad men better, but is making good
men worse. They prove that, like misapplied charity,
prohibition is not relieving those who require relief,
but is adding to the number of those who need that
relief.
These facts are of a general nature, Mr. Chairman,
but I have dwelt upon them for a purpose. The Anti-
Saloon League relies, in making good its case, mainly
upon statistics. But, if the directing heads of this
organization went on a quest from the North Pole to
the South Pole, they could not find allies more un-
friendly to their cause than these self-same statistics.
What is worse for them, perhaps, than the statistics
themselves is the incautious way in which they use
them. Were we not gravely presented by one of their
speakers at the public hearing on this very measure a
year ago in the Senate Chamber with a document pur-
porting to emanate from the business men of a certain
city of this State, in which among others even physi-
cians and undertakers testified to their greatly in-
creased prosperity since that city had gone “dry”?
Think of it! Physicians and undertakers waxing fat
under Anti-Saloon League rule, and this testimony is
gravely produced by the Anti-Saloon League itself.
Of course, the fact sounds ridiculous on the face of
it. And yet this was perhaps the truest statement ever
Rose County Option Law.
147
made by the Anti-Saloon League. I have here the
copy of a letter addressed to ex-Senator Duval by
Judge Edward E. Corn, of Lawrence County, himself
an uncompromising prohibitionist, which explains far
better and far more graphically than I could why it is
that physicians and undertakers appear to thrive so
greatly under so-called “dry” conditions. This is
what Judge Corn writes to Senator Duval, and what
neither the honorable Senator nor his supporters of
the Anti-Saloon League have been in a hurry to
publish:
“I have been holding courts regularly in two coun-
ties, Adams and Lawrence. As I came home last
Saturday from Adams County I saw sights that were
revolting, sickening and disgusting. Manchester, Ohio,
is in dry territory; Maysville, Kentucky, twelve miles
away, is wet territory. When I was taking the train
at Manchester for home I saw at least fifty persons
alight from that train drunk, loaded down with whis-
key in their pockets and in baskets, many of whom were
mere boys, reeling, staggering, and yelling in their
childish piping voices. Ironton, Ohio, in dry territory,
is but ten miles by street car from Catlettsburg, Ken-
tucky, which is wet, and but four miles from Ashland,
Kentucky, which is supposed to be dry, but where
whiskey and beer are both sold the same as when the
saloons were allowed, and the same conditions exist
here that I have described as existing at Manchester
in Adams County.
148
Rose County Option Law.
“Besides,
men who heretofore were in
the habit of taking one drink now buy whiskey in large
quantities and keep it in their homes and drink much
more than heretofore.”
Pray, what will you make of this testimony of Judge
Edward E. Corn, the prohibitionist, which is surely not
biased in favor of the wet side? Is it a corroboration,
or is it a refutation, of the testimony I previously al-
luded to, alleging the conditions in dry counties to be
so greatly improved that even physicians and under-
takers are thriving under them?
In whichever way
you may elect to accept it, the result reflects anything
but a flattering light upon the reasoning faculties of
our friends of the Anti-Saloon League.
Nor is this example of their logic by any means a
solitary one of its kind. In a recent article published
in Pearson's Magazine, we are assured that a certain
State has shown material progress since the enactment
of a prohibitory law, from which fact, the writer says,
it is fair to assume that such law has not retarded that
progress, and may have been a factor in stimulating it.
Yet, immediately following that statement, and the
conclusion deduced from it, we learn from the same
writer, as a certain fact, and not as an assumption,
that, in spite of the prohibitory law, enormous quanti-
ties of worse liquors are sold and consumed in that
State than were sold and consumed there before. Ap-
ply to these two statements the simplest rule of logic,
Rose County Option Law.
149
and we are left to draw from them the inevitable and
absurd conclusion that the worse the conditions of the
liquor traffic become, owing to the peculiar operation
(or, must we say, non-operation?) of the prohibition
law, the greater the business prosperity of the State
in which that law operates, or fails to operate, is
likely to be.
Mr. Chairman, I could fill hours in citing similar
instances of the unfortunate contradictions in which
the so-called statistics of the Anti-Saloon League
abound. And is it from obvious absurdities like these
that the efficacy of laws affecting the welfare of mil-
lions of people is to be reasoned? Compare for a
moment Judge Corn's solemn recital of the frightful
conditions existing in the dry counties of Adams and
Lawrence with the assertions of his fellow Anti-Saloon
Leaguers regarding the criminal statistics in the dry
counties of Ohio. On the one hand we have a leading
prohibitionist testifying, of his own experience, to the
shocking increase of drunkenness in those counties,
and on the other hand we were presented a year ago
with Anti-Saloon League statistics alleging that the
convictions for crime are decreasing there.
Here again, you see, we are confronted with the
necessity of accepting the two statements either as
corroborative or as contradictory of one another. If
be false. If they are corroborative—in other words, if
crime really does decrease where drunkenness in-
150
Rose County Option Law.
creases—we are forced to the conclusion that sober
people are more liable to commit crimes than drunken
people. And if so, what becomes of the stock argu-
ment of the prohibitionists that drink is the cause of
ninety per cent of all the crimes committed?
The absurdity of the contradiction is too palpable
to need comment. The fact is, as anyone can verify
who cares to investigate the official records of the dry
counties in Ohio, as we have been at the pains of
doing, that, while there is, unfortunately, a decrease
in the convictions for crime in dry counties, the indict-
ments for crime there, as evidenced by the grand jury
records, shows a notable increase. The Anti-Saloon
League statistician conveniently omits to mention this
significant fact. Yet what conclusion does this ominous
discrepancy between indictments for crime and convic-
tions for crime in dry counties lead to? Why, gentle-
men, isn't it superabundantly clear that it is more
difficult to convict criminals in dry counties than it is
to convict them in wet counties? Query: Why? Of
course, the conditions in Newark and a hundred other
so-called dry cities in the country supply the all-
sufficient answer. But I will present the puzzle, in all
its virginity, to the Anti-Saloon League, as an addi-
tion to the many other statistical puzzles of a similar
nature, of which its archives are full.
In short, the truth is, to be perfectly plain, that
rarely in the history of mankind has such deliberate
Rose County Option Law.
151
exaggeration, or such deliberate deception, not to use
stronger terms, been resorted to by the advocates of
any theory than has been and is still being resorted to
by those who are seeking to destroy the liquor traffic.
To inveigh against that traffic, and indiscriminately re-
vile and libel those who are engaged in it is nowadays
the cheapest and most claptrap, though, I am informed,
not the least remunerative method of obtaining plat-
form fame. And meanwhile many of the most rabid
of these so-called crusaders are the same men who help
to make the deplorable farce which we know is made of
the
very
laws they are instrumental, by their votes and
otherwise, in passing.
I am not overstating the case when I make this
assertion. It is a matter of the commonest knowledge
that thousands of the very men who, three years ago,
for political, commercial, or other selfish reasons,
made an outward show of assisting to enact the Rose
County Option law have since been found among those
who are treating that law with scorn and contempt.
And what is such a law but a demoralizing farce, when
those who publicly pretend to clamor for it scoff at it
and deride it in private? Why, all the police and all
the detectives in the universe are not sufficient in num-
ber to enforce such a law.
This fact, indeed, was unwittingly conceded in the
Senate Chamber a year ago by the chief spokesman
of the Anti-Saloon League, Judge Blair. Speaking
152
Rose County Option Law.
I say
on that occasion against the proposed amendment of
the Rose law, he said, in answer to my assertion that
the law cannot be enforced: “Give the rural folks a
chance at it, and they will enforce it.” (In the cities
of course!) There you have it. In those very words
he admits that one-half of the people is required to
enforce the law against the other half. I say to you,
gentlemen, and I challenge any one versed in the
history of law to controvert the statement, that a law
which requires one-half of the population to police
the other half is a bad law and an absurd law. I
that a law—and I now speak generally--which im-
poses the commandment, “Thou shalt not drink," upon
forty-five million people, with the result that those
forty-five million people drink half as much again, or
several times as much, as they drank before, stands
self-condemned as a bad law and an absurd law. I say
that a law which is notoriously violated and secretly
held in contempt by many of the very people who
hypocritically voted for it is a bad law and an absurd
law.
I yield to no one in my sense of respect for law.
But I submit, with all due deference to the exalted
station of those who make our laws, that what is
known as the majesty of the law is not conferred upon
the laws by the legislatures which enact them, but by
the mass of the people who approve and ratify and
obey them.
Rose County Option Law.
153
Now, it is true, Mr. Chairman, that the function of
the legislator ceases with the passage of such statutes
as, in his wisdom, he deems it proper to enact. But I
respectfully submit that his responsibility does not
end there. Laws are made, not for the benefit of some
of the people, but for the benefit of all of the people,
and if they prove defective in this vital particular, it
devolves upon the legislator to remedy that defect.
I have nothing to say against local option. What I
assert is that county option is not local option. What
I assert is that county option is a failure, and must of
necessity be a failure, if only for the reason that the
machinery to execute the law it imposes upon unwilling
communities is in the hands of those very communities
that resent it. Unless, therefore, you deprive your
municipalities of the right to elect their own executive
authorities and transfer that right to the county as a
whole, the county as a whole, by howsoever large a
majority it may impose prohibitory laws upon the
municipalities, can never make such laws effective
where the majority of the citizens in those municipali-
ties object to them.
Stop to consider what the inevitable consequence
must be of disregarding this self-evident truth. Hasn't
that consequence been exemplified ad nauseam by the
operation of the Rose law?
Gentlemen, we have heard much of the frightful
occurrence in Newark. The picture invariably drawn
154
Rose County Option Law.
of the conditions leading to that occurrence has been
that of a community terrorized by a comparatively
small tough element, of a city administration con-
trolled by that tough element, and of municipal officials
so unmindful of their sacred oath of office that they
aided and abetted these law violators. The picture, of
course, is partly true, but few, even of those who fully
realize that it presents only one-half of the truth,
have had the courage to come forward and point out
the other and more important half of the truth.
And why? Because they, too, are terrorized by a
certain element of our citizenship, who are known to
visit their vindictive wrath upon all and any who
venture to question the wisdom and expediency of their
coercive methods of government. If it be true that
the tough element of the community controlled the
administrative officials of Newark, has it occurred to
you to ask who elected those officials? Was it the
tough element of the community alone? If so, then
more than half of Newark's citizenship must belong
to the tough element, for it was a majority of that
citizenship which elected those worthless officials.
Now, God forbid that we should cast such a slur
upon the fair name of Newark. The truth is that in
Newark, as in most other cities that have gone "dry"
against the expressed will of large majorities of their
citizens, a candidate for municipal office, who would
manifest his intention to enforce the much-hated Rose
Rose County Option Law.
155
law, would not have the slightest chance of being
elected. In other words, it is tacitly understood by
the people that, if elected, he will disregard his oath
in this one particular.
Shocking, of course. Unutterably shocking, if you
like. But true. And not merely theoretically, tech-
nically true, but practically, logically, humanly true.
Can you then reasonably expect an efficient, not to
speak of a decent, administration in any such city under
these circumstances?
There, Mr. Chairman, lies the true origin of the
awful calamity in Newark. The Rose law—and the
Rose law alone—was the irritant cause of the frightful
conditions which prevailed there prior to that calam-
ity, as they notoriously prevail to-day in more or less
every so-called dry city in the country. The Rose law
has driven out the respectable administration and sub-
stituted for it the pliable, conscienceless executives
such as have made Newark a by-word among the cities
of Ohio. It has destroyed the police-controlled saloon,
which the people demand, and, instead of the legiti-
mate, taxpaying saloonkeeper, who can be made an-
swerable to a self-respecting city government, it has
invited all the criminal scum from within and without
to join hands with a complaisant administration in
defrauding the helpless community of the last vestige
of respectability which the Rose law has left it. It has
impoverished the community, it has corrupted the
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Rose County Option Law.
grown citizens, and is fast debauching those who are
young
This is not an ex parte statement. No sane man, of
course, can doubt the honesty and sincerity of the
many estimable people who, in these enlightened days
of our twentieth century, have adopted the strange
belief that legislation can take the place and do the
work of education. They are, unhappily, blind to the
great harm they are doing. But their so-called leaders,
who have deluded them into this belief-the men who
are living and growing fat on the credulity of these
good people, and who, turning philanthropy into a
lucrative profession, have made themselves responsible
for the laws that have resulted in the deplorable condi-
tion of affairs I have described—they fully recognize
the colossal era of crime they have been instrumental
in bringing about. Indeed, they not only admit it,
but, if the English language means what it says, they
would actually seem to glory in it. A leading Anti-
Saloon League advocate and a high dignitary of one
of the greatest sectarian churches in America, numer-
ically speaking, in referring recently to what he some-
what flippantly described as “that little custom they
have of bootlegging” in his dry State, exclaimed from
the public platform, “Rather a million bootleggers
than one open saloon.”
Think of the meaning of this inexpressibly foolish
utterance. We will, it says, rather be instrumental in
Rose County Option Law.
157
causing the existence of criminals by the million than
permit one man to do lawfully what, in our individual
wisdom, we see fit to frown upon. Is that morality?
Is that Christianity? Is it common sense? Are such
people as these to continue dictating the laws that are
to govern mankind? They admit almost brazenly that
their purpose is not to benefit individual humanity,
but merely to enforce a particular dogma of their own,
even if it be at the sacrifice of they don't care how
many million human souls. In other words, they say:
“What does it concern us how much moral damage a
law does, provided that law conforms with what, in
our peculiar view and in our peculiar faith, we consider
the law should be."
Newark and hundreds of other cities of our country
afford heartrending examples of the consequences of
this fanatical philosophy, or doctrine, or creed, or
whatever other name may more fitly describe it. It is
the lamentable condition which it has brought about in
our own State that we are asking you to remedy, and
you can remedy it in no other way than by restoring
to the municipalities of Ohio that democratic right of
self-government in purely local affairs which the Rose
law has wrongfully deprived them of.
Some of our friends on the other side of the house,
seeing the trend which public opinion is taking on this
question, are now endeavoring to hide behind the con-
stitutional convention, though they know full well that
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Rose County Option Law.
the deliberations of that convention can have no bear-
ing whatsoever on the Rose law, or any other similar
law, but will be concerned with purely constitutional
questions. Others again are anxiously suggesting
that you should wait until the counties that went “dry”
after the passage of the Rose law shall have had an
opportunity to vote on the same question again.
This suggestion is on a par with most suggestions
that come from that side. It is proof of one of two
things: Either of a most deplorable ignorance of the
true question at issue, or of a wilful attempt to deceive
you and the public of the real nature of that issue.
Why, gentlemen, no one denies the power of the
county to vote the cities "dry” against their will. That
power is the whole gist of the present controversy.
That power, in fact, which no one questions, was the
sole reason for the passage of the Rose law, which is
admittedly not a law providing government by the
people for the people, but a law providing government
by one class of the people for another class of the
people. The question, therefore, is not whether the
county shall be able once more to exercise the power
vested in it to interfere in the local administration of
the cities, but rather whether the county shall be shorn
of that power before it has an opportunity to exercise
it again, with a repetition of all the shocking conse-
quences from which so many of our cities are now
suffering.
Rose County Option Law.
159
I beg to emphasize that I speak here as a represen-
tative of the brewing industry. But in doing so, I ask
you to bear in mind that this is not a conflict between
the so-called liquor interests and the people as a whole,
as the Anti-Saloon League is so fond of pretending.
If any belief in this disingenuous contention existed
a few months ago, surely the astounding result of the
recent elections throughout the country has conclu-
sively proved its fallacy, to use the mildest term I can
think of to characterize it.
Believe me, you are not confronted with a mere
struggle of the saloon for its existence. You are con-
fronted with a struggle for that existence on the part
of the people who want the saloon and the pleasures
and the legitimate recreation it affords them.
What, indeed, would the saloonkeeper amount to in
this struggle, if he stood alone and had not the people
behind him, who have the want and the desire for that
which he supplies? Why, he would be brushed aside
like a feather. Without the demand for the saloon
in a community no saloon could exist there for one
solitary hour. And mark you further, it is not the
saloon that makes the people of a community what
they are; it is the people of a community that make the
saloon in that community what it is. In other words,
it is not the saloon that makes the character of the man
who frequents it; it is the man who makes the character
of the saloon he frequents. As long as there are bad
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Rose County Option Law.
people there are likely to be bad saloons. The dives
and joints which abound in every “dry” town or dis-
trict are only too conclusive proof of this. Our teachers
and preachers, therefore, upon whose efforts the ad-
vancement and the betterment of mankind depends,
should devote their energies to the conversion and
redemption of the delinquent citizen, who creates the
bad saloon, rather than waste those energies in futile
attempts to cure his delinquency by merely destroying
that which he creates.
Permit me to say this in conclusion, Mr. Chairman:
If the brewing industry of this State, which I have
the honor to represent to-night, and which I am proud
to represent, joins in the appeal of the cities to you for
this relief, to which they are clearly entitled, it is not
because the members of that industry set mere business
considerations above considerations of morality or
public expediency, but, on the contrary, because those
very business considerations and the considerations of
morality and public expediency are identical. The
brewer knows, what the United States revenue figures
so abundantly prove, that his product will continue to
be consumed by the millions and millions of men who
demand it in spite of all the efforts of those misguided
amateur humanitarians who are vainly endeavoring
to destroy that demand by degrading the channels
through which it is supplied. But the brewer is as
much concerned in seeing that his product shall reach
Rose County Option Law.
161
the consumer through respectable and well-regulated
channels as the consumer himself is concerned in obtain-
ing that product through such channels. This is the
fundamental interest we have in the question before
you, and we trust that, however insignificant this inter-
est in itself may appear to you, you will, in your wis-
dom, give due weight to those broader considerations
which touch, not only the brewing industry, but the com-
munity at large, and which I have endeavored to-night
to the best of my ability to lay before you.
Opening Address Delivered before the
Second International Brewers' Con-
gress, Chicago, October 18, 1911
If there is one fact that impresses me more deeply
than any other in connection with the honor that has
fallen to me of presiding over this Second Interna-
tional Brewers' Congress, it is that the magnificent
assembly which I am thus privileged to address from
this chair is representative of one of the most ancient
industries, if not perhaps the most ancient industry,
in the world. The manufacture of fermented bever-
ages can be traced back to the very dawn of history,
its origin, in fact, being lost in those remote ages of
which no records have been handed down to us. It is
likely, moreover, to continue to live and flourish as long
as the human race lasts, unless, indeed, the tastes and
desires of man should undergo a very radical change,
or unless perchance Nature herself should one day be
compelled to confine her processes to only such as meet
the approval of certain modern individuals, whose
stupendous faculty of discerning the good in them-
selves and the evil in others renders it almost regret-
table that the Creator should have failed to foresee
and take cognizance of their superior wisdom and
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163
1
understanding of things when he made our world, a
failure on His part which I verily believe they in their
secret hearts hold against Him. If pedigree, therefore,
still counts for anything in these days of ultra-radical-
ism, we may reckon ourselves as belonging in the very
forefront rank of the manufacturing industries of
the world.
But, while we may, justly perhaps, pride ourselves on
this fact, let us not forget, on the other hand, that pre-
eminence of any kind, whether of position, or rank, or
wealth, or mere human influence, brings with it corre-
spondingly great responsibilities, and it is these respon-
sibilities, and the best and most effective method of
properly meeting them, which should form, in my
humble opinion, the most important subject for dis-
cussion and deliberation at such a Congress as this.
You will pardon me, therefore, if I pass by the more
technical questions pertaining to our industry in its
inner workings, which will receive your due attention
in the various sections devoted to them, and confine
myself, in the few remarks I am privileged to address
to you, preparatory to declaring this Congress open
for business, to the purely sociological aspects of
our trade.
To do this without touching upon what is known in
most occidental countries to-day as the Temperance
movement would be very much like attempting to dis-
cuss the play of Hamlet without reference to the titular
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hero of that drama himself. Now, strangely enough,
there prevails at this day in the minds of many good
and worthy people the notion that temperance is the
natural enemy of the manufacturer of alcoholic bever-
ages, and the manufacturer of alcoholic beverages is,
by consequence, the natural enemy of temperance.
Whence this notion arises I do not know, unless it be
from a widespread misconception of the true meaning
of the term temperance; for, truly, if there is anything
that can remotely compare with the indiscriminate
abuse heaped upon the manufacturer of alcoholic bev-
erages in these regenerate days, it is the shocking abuse
to which the word temperance is subjected by many
of its soi-disant votaries. It is strange that this should
be so, but it is so, and perhaps no country affords a
more striking illustration of the fact than our United
States.
Here, unfortunately, the so-called temperance move-
ment has fallen into the hands of the most intemperate
people in the nation, men suffering from what I can
only describe as chronic moral inebriation, men utterly
devoid of reasoning powers, largely lacking in even
the most elementary knowledge and education, and,
worse than all, in only too many cases prompted solely
by the commercial benefits they derive from the cause
they make a profession of championing.
I am not speaking at random when I make this state-
ment. I have stood on platforms at public hearings
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165
before legislative bodies in debate with some of their
choicest orators, listening to their illogical rantings,
hearing their fierce and indiscriminate denunciation
and defamation of everybody whose opinion differs
from theirs, noting the invariable absence of truth and
honesty and Christian charity in their utterances, and
the almost incredible spirit of self-righteousness and
the overbearing arrogance of superiority with which
they cover their lack of reason and argument, and I
have marveled again and again that the leader-
ship of a movement so noble in its initial purpose,
so eloquent in its appeal to the better qualities of
man, should have been permitted to devolve upon in-
dividuals of this calibre, competent in nothing but the
faculty of arousing the unreasoning passions of an
emotional multitude and molding them to their own,
partly fanatical, partly political purposes.
These
people have succeeded in driving hundreds, if not
thousands, of respectable and decent men out of the
retail trade in this country. But they have never
closed a dive or disreputable resort in their lives. On
the contrary, they have created and are creating them
by the hundreds and the thousands.
And there is something, if possible, even worse than
this. For, if the end they attain is pernicious, the
means they adopt to reach it are far more so. I need
only point, among other notorious frauds and decep-
tions practiced by these people, to the glaring false-
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hoods disseminated by them in school textbooks on the
subject of alcohol, with the deliberate purpose of
deceiving young children as to the scientific facts bear-
ing thereon. You probably all know how, figurately
speaking, a small grain of truth is. cunningly mixed
there with a whole bushel of bare-faced untruths, and
handed to the children for consumption; as if, forsooth,
it made the truth any stronger to tell lies about it,
or as if the child never grew up and found out that
those who thus taught him were really unconscionable
frauds and morally far worse than the class of people
against whom they were trying to stir up his childish
prejudices.
This species of fraud and deception is carried now-
adays even into the sacred precincts of some of our
churches. Under the auspices of the so-called Scientific
Temperance Federation, lectures are to-day being
held in a number of churches, where, among other
“scientific” demonstrations, the following is of fre-
quent occurrence: The lecturer, speaking from the
pulpit, produces a phial containing what purports to
be the alcohol extracted from one pint of beer, and
telling his audience that he is going to demonstrate
what an all-devouring fiend lurks in this substance, he
orders the lights in the church to be turned out, and
then proceeds to apply a match to the alcohol, where-
upon, according to the veracious chronicler of this
dramatic event, the flame from the alcohol extracted
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167
from one pint of beer lights up the entire church for
a period of ten minutes.
Think of it! Less than one-half of one ounce of
alcohol, a substance the flame of which, as the merest
tyro in chemistry knows, is practically non-luminant,
burns, under the miraculous influence of the Scientific
Temperance Federation, for ten minutes with the illu-
minating effect of several hundred candlepower.
When, in the name of science and morality, and under
the cloak of religion itself, such infamous frauds as
these are perpetrated by the supposedly good and
God-fearing people of this world, is it to be wondered
at if the very dregs of humanity rise up from their
depths in derision, saying: “Truth, and decency, and
goodness are mere myths. Why try to reform us?
Your pretended reformers are worse than we.”
These are shocking facts, and still they are not the
worst. If you, gentlemen, who come from other
countries, were to see, as we see here every day, thou-
sands of women, young girls and boys, actually en-
couraged by their spiritual advisers to attend so-called
temperance meetings addressed by a certain notorious
and unsavory evangelist, whose profanity and obscenity
of speech and gesture, if perpetrated in the lowest
vaudeville show in the New York bowery, would prob-
ably cause the closing of the place by the authorities,
and if you were to witness the raving enthusiasm
aroused in them by this past-master in the practice
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of scurrility and indecency, you would not wonder at
my saying that all the physical drunkenness caused in
our world by excessive indulgence in liquor is but a
trifle as compared with the moral drunkenness which
is being produced throughout the nation by this money-
making mountebank and his likes, who, under the
pretense of pursuing a philanthropic end, cunningly
appeal to what is worst and weakest in human nature,
and who distort and twist the most beautiful religion
the world has known into a grotesque caricature of
the divine conception of its founder. Yet this is
typical of what goes by the name of the temperance
movement in this country.
But, and I cannot emphasize this fact too strongly,
it is not the real American temperance movement,
though it overshadows, and hampers, and stifles it;
nor are its leaders the true pioneers of American tem-
perance, though they unhappily outshout and outrant
those true ones and more than nullify their work.
Now, this true temperance work, and I say this ad-
visedly, is of paramount interest to none more than
to the manufacturer of alcoholic beverages, and those
among us, if there are any, who are not alive to this
fact are lacking in knowledge of the very rudiments
of their trade. The men, therefore, who are perform-
ing this work, and if it were not individious, I could
mention names well known to our fellow-brewers of
Chicago and New York, should have not only our
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169
respect, but our assistance, and to the fullest extent to
which that assistance can be given, for drunkenness,
or even mere drinking combined with any kind or form
of dissipation or vice, is the greatest enemy the brewing
industry has to contend with.
Unfortunately, as we know, and as the true advocate
of temperance knows, there are, and probably always
will be, men among us who suffer from that most un-
fortunate of all combinations, an abnormally strong
appetite coupled with an abnormally weak digestion.
Some people, I believe, look upon these men as a kind
of living proof of the wickedness of the maker of
pastries and other rich and delectable foods. But only
the fool imagines that he can cure these unfortunate
subjects of their want of gastric equilibrium by simply
inhibiting the making and selling of all toothsome pies
and pastries. It is true that pastries and pies are not
absolute necessaries of life, any more perhaps than
beer is, but they contribute, when indulged in, as they
are in the majority of cases, in moderation, not incon-
siderably to the pleasure of living, and I hold that to
be a virtue far surpassing that of the man who not
only obeys the ten commandments, but passes his life
in regretting that there are not a few more command-
ments to be obeyed. The wise philanthropist, then, ,
to carry my metaphor to its logical finish, will devote
his energies to putting educational and other whole-
some curbs on the man with the abnormally strong
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appetite and the abnormally weak digestion, rather
than waste those energies in the futile endeavor to
destroy the source of the pies and pastries in which he
so foolishly over-indulges.
And if we recognize this obvious fact, are we not
thereby recognizing in substance the very motive that
actuates that class of true advocates of temperance to
which I referred a moment ago? The purpose of the
man of this class is to mend, not to destroy, to cure,
not to, kill, and, though he is perhaps prone to see evil
where we do not see it, he and we are in the main of
one mind as to the more urgent necessities to be met,
even if we differ as to the best method of meeting them.
In short, I think I am correct in saying that the so-
called much debated liquor problem, as it presents
itself to the man of this class, does not hinge upon the
manufacture and the consumption of alcoholic drink as
such, but turns around the manner in which it is sold
or dispensed, and more especially therefore around
the public drinking places, their character, their num-
ber, and their environment.
Let us, then, for a moment compare the attitude of
the brewer towards the public drinking place with the
attitude of the temperance advocate towards that much
discussed institution. The temperance man, and I shall
henceforth use the term in its true sense, admits, though
regretfully perhaps from his standpoint, that the
saloon, as we call it in this country, or the public
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171
house, cabaret, or wirthschaft, as it is known respec-
tively in England, France and Germany, supplies a
practical need on the part of millions and millions of
decent, well-behaved, and honorable people, which no
theorizing can eradicate, namely, the need of a means
of social intercourse and physical and mental recrea-
tion. It is, of course, obvious to him, as it must be to
every one else, that, like all human institutions, without
exception, the saloon, as a means of satisfying that
need, has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, is
subject to evil uses as well as good uses, and in con-
sequence is fraught with certain temptations, to which
the weak and the foolish are liable to succumb. But
if he is really conversant with saloon life in all its
aspects and phases, he also recognizes the equally ob-
vious fact that those who do succumb to the tempta-
tions of the saloon are very few as compared with the
many who derive only comfort and benefit and profit
from it. Hence he has set himself, as a rational and
practical being, the task of remedying what he believes
to be the defects of the institution as it exists, rather
than attempting to destroy it, root and branch, without
offering the millions to whose needs it ministers any
substitute for it, or perhaps insisting upon replacing it
with some substitute of his own devising, which those
millions will not accept.
This, I believe, describes fairly accurately the atti-
tude of the present-day true advocate of temperance
towards the public drinking place.
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Brewers' Congress.
Now wherein does that attitude differ from that of
the brewer? The peculiar character of the brewer's
product, more especially perhaps of lager beer, and
the conditions under which it must be stored and
served to the consumer, render the public drinking
place the natural and almost indispensable market for
it. It may be conceded, then, without further argu-
ment, that the destruction of that market would reduce
the consumption of beer throughout the world to a
mere fraction of what it is to-day. This is the brewer's
commercial reason for defending the public drinking
place. But has he no other reason? Would, for in-
stance, its destruction, even if it were possible, reduce
the consumption of alcoholic drink in the aggregate,
or lessen by one whit the tendency to abuse or excess,
to which some individuals are unhappily prone? If
any answer were needed to that question, our American
so-called prohibition States would supply one which is
far more conclusive than any which I could suggest,
for it is notorious that the increase in the consumption
of ardent spirits in those States is out of all proportion
greater than the decline in the consumption of beer
there. Moreover, it is a well-established fact that
drunkenness, immorality, and all other evils which are
supposed to arise from, merely because they happen
to be often co-existent with, excessive indulgence in
alcoholic liquor, have increased there in the same ratio.
Nor is this all. The public drinking place, far from
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173
having been destroyed in those States, has merely been
driven into secret places, multiplied in number, de-
prived of all its good features, and reduced to the
lowest level which the human imagination can con-
ceive. Can there, then, be any stronger proof than
that which prohibition itself has afforded, that the true
solution of the liquor problem, so far as it is humanly
possible to solve it, lies not in the elimination, or the
attempted elimination, of the public drinking place, but
in raising its standard, and encouraging its good uses
and discouraging its evil uses?
And, let me ask, is there a brewer worthy of the
name on this or any other continent who is not inter-
ested, both as a business man and a citizen, in seeing
that standard raised?
There is no need, in this connection, to analyze the
accusation so indiscriminately launched against the
brewer that he is in part, if not wholly, responsible for
the condition of his market, the public drinking place.
Whatever the evil effects of his alleged past negligence
or wilful indifference in this regard may be, they are
nothing as compared with the vitiating influence which
has been wrought upon that market by the criminal
stupidity of that ubiquitous modern pest, the pseudo
temperance reformer. I say most emphatically that he
is the common enemy both of the brewer and the real
temperance man, and is largely the cause why the two
have not long ago come together and joined hands in
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accomplishing that which, in spite of their minor dif-
ferences of thought and purpose, it is their common
interest and wish to see accomplished. For there is
and can be no real difference in their view of what is
right and desirable. The only question with both is:
How can it be accomplished?
And how, indeed, can it be accomplished?
The brewer has the expert trade knowledge, the
practical experience, the insight into the causes of
conditions and circumstances which tend to lower or
vitiate the character of the public drinking place. But
in his efforts to correct those conditions and remove
their causes, and I speak with the knowledge of actual
experience when I say that earnest efforts of this kind
have been made by him, he has met with practically
insurmountable obstacles. Foolish laws, lax law en-
forcement, oppressive taxation, public indifference or
skepticism, and last, not least, the machinations of
grafting office-holders and corrupt politicians, have all
combined to oppose an effective barrier to the success
of those efforts. On the other hand, the philanthropic
worker, recruited mostly from the higher planes of
society, intellectually speaking, wields a public influ-
ence and commands a public following which, if prop-
erly directed, could override the stoutest of such bar-
riers; only, unfortunately, while he is fully conversant
with all phases of the evil he would remove, he is
lacking in that knowledge, experience ard insight
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175
which make the man in the trade itself a competent
judge both of the possibilities of correcting it and the
dangers of aggravating it.
Now, here are two forces which, if intelligently
molded into one, as I believe they can be, would each
supply that in which the other is lacking and make
of them one homogeneous whole, whose power for
good would be formidable, if not irresistible.
And why have these forces never. been joined? I
think there are two main reasons. Firstly, because,
until comparitively recently, neither of them has trusted
the other's sincerity and good intentions, and, secondly,
and perhaps chiefly, because the rabid fanatic, with
his fierce and blatant battle-cry of “death to all toler-
ance,” has always been as viciously denunciatory of the
temperance man as he is of the brewer, and is in con-
sequence as much dreaded by the former as he is de-
spised by the latter. He does not want the decent
saloon because he knows it to be his most powerful
adversary, just as the dive and the low resort are his
most precious allies. His ungodly doctrine that to
increase an evil is the best means of eventually destroy-
ing it is made manifest in his every thought and his
every act, and his venom is ready for all and any who
question its soundness.
Don't imagine that I exaggerate. I have spoken
here perhaps in unusually strong and forcible lan-
guage. But has not the time come for some one to
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proclaim the truth in plain and unmistakable terms,
to the shame of the many cowards who are dodging
it and the confusion of the many hypocrites who are
dissembling it? Look at Maine, that pretended show-
piece of the prohibitionist's achievement. By what
means did he recently prevent that State from ridding
itself of the curse of prohibition, to which he has sub-
jected it for nearly fifty years? Not by the votes of
those who believe in temperance and decency, nor even
by the votes of his own misguided dupes, for he had
no longer enough of these left to support him. No,
prohibition was retained in Maine, as everyone knows,
by the thousands and thousands of votes cast for prohi-
bition by those grinning henchmen of the prohibition-
ist, the bootlegger, the dive-owner, the tough and crim-
inal element, and the grafting city officials who fatten
on the mass of corruption which the prohibitionist pro-
vides for them. And what is the result of this unholy
alliance between him and the evil elements of society,
which he makes no endeavor to conceal? Prohibition
Maine, a whited sepulchre, reeking within of foulness
and putrescence, but which the prohibitionist brazenly
presents to the credulous world as a golden palace redo-
lent of sweet perfume and ideal delights.
The true worker in the cause of temperance sees the
lie and the infamy of it all, and is beginning to raise
his voice in timid protest against the perpetrators of
this gigantic modern fraud. This is a healthy sign,
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177
but there is a better and more promising sign still.
There are indications of late that the attitude of dis-
trust which the advocate of temperance has hitherto
maintained towards the brewing industry is undergoing
a change, and I see in this change the best augury of
future successful progress in the direction towards
which both are striving. At the 38th National Confer-
ence of Charities and Correction, held in Boston, com-
ment was made upon the recent statement of the dis-
tinguished Chairman of the Committee of Fourteen of
New York to the effect that the efforts of the com-
mittee to eliminate the evil elements in the saloon busi-
ness of that city had proved practically fruitless, until
the committee invited the co-operation of the brewing
industry in its work. The statement then goes on to
emphasize, not only the readiness with which that co-
operation had been extended to it, but the eminently
satisfactory results that had immediately followed it.
Professor John Graham Brooks then took up the
parable and expressed the opinion that, after years and
years of utterly ineffective effort on the part of the
temperance man to lessen or correct certain existing
evils, the time had come for him to seek the co-opera-
tion of the best men in the liquor business, and enlist
their knowledge and experience in accomplishing this
work.
Now, I believe there is no intelligent man in our
ranks who can doubt the wisdom of that conclusion, and
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ance
if nothing more were done by this Congress than to
approve and ratify that conclusion and suggest the
means of making it practical in effect, its work would.
not prove in vain. This should not be done, however,
by merely passing resolutions embodying intangible
generalities, but by offering those who ask our assist-
a specific, well-defined policy, which can be
adopted as common starting ground of mutual
endeavor.
Speaking for myself, my experience has led me to
certain fundamental conclusions in regard to the
public drinking place, on the correctness of which I
think few among us are likely to differ in opinion.
I believe, of course, first and foremost, that the char-
acters of persons licensed to conduct a retail liquor
business should be subject to careful scrutiny, and
only those whose record is clean and above reproach
should be permitted to engage in such business.
This may sound almost like a truism; yet bear in
mind that most of our laws, and certainly all of the
so-called successes of the unthinking reformers, have
tended, and are tending, to drive the decent, respect-
able man out of the business and the unscrupulous and
irresponsible man into it.
I believe that public drinking places in the haunts
of vice are dangerous, and that they should be elim-
inated.
I believe that public drinking places in communities
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179
where the legal machinery does not exist to properly
control and regulate them are undesirable and should
be discountenanced.
I believe that any urban community, whether large
or small, should have the right, properly controlled by
the State, to limit the number, or, by the vote of a
really substantial majority of its citizens, to entirely
prohibit the establishment of public drinking places in
its midst; provided, however, that where public drink-
ing places have already been established, with the con-
sent, tacit or otherwise, of such communities, their
owners shall be properly compensated for the loss
entailed
upon them by such limitation or prohibition.
The public, I hold, is entitled at all times, whether
wisely or unwisely, to change its opinion on matters of
public policy or general expediency, but only at its
own cost, not at the cost of the individual whose vested
interests are affected by that change or opinion.
Strangely enough, this is accepted as an almost sacred
axiom by practically every civilized nation except our
own.
Now, I respectfully submit that there is nothing
transcendentally ideal or utopian in this outline of
what, in my humble opinion, it should be the joint aim
of the brewer and the true temperance man to bring
about, nor is there anything in it to which either the
true temperance man or the honest manufacturer of
alcoholic beverages can reasonably demur or object.
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Brewers' Congress.
Why, then, should it not prove capable of accomplish-
ment? No scheme devised by the human mind has
ever proved perfect in its effect, nor ever will. It is,
in fact, those that believe, or pretend to believe, that
perfection is attainable in this world who are the
greatest obstacles in the way of human progress.
Even man's religious faith merely sets him a standard
towards which to strive, without hope or prospect of
ever attaining it in this life. We shall, therefore, I
apprehend, never cure ourselves of all our faults and
shortcomings, nor succeed in relieving mankind in
general of all its foibles and frailties, but we can by
our action at least inculcate one truth in the obtuse
minds of certain fanatical friends of ours, which they
are badly in need of learning, namely, that to correct
ourselves is the surest way to correct others.
Ladies and gentlemen, if I have presumed to occupy
your attention at such length with opinions and reflec-
tions of this specific nature, it is because I believe the
subject they bear upon to be of greater moment than
any other to the industry of which we are all so justly
proud. There is no blessing that providence has vouch-
safed to mankind which individual man, in his blind-
ness, his folly, or his weakness, has not proved capable
of turning into a curse to himself, and to pretend that
alcoholic stimulant is alone exempt from that universal
rule would be as foolish as it is to assert that the rule
applies to alcoholic stimulant only. To lessen the pos-
Brewers' Congress.
181
sibilities of the evil use of that stimulant, therefore,
and increase its profitable and beneficial possibilities,
should be the prime aim and object of intelligent men
like ourselves, and we can assuredly apply ourselves
to this task with all the more cheerfulness, because not
the least happy consequence of our efforts in this
direction may be to rid the world of that greatest of all
evils for which I am afraid alcoholic liquor must be
held answerable, that is, the existence of that latter-day
monument of human folly, human ignorance and hu-
man hypocrisy, the prohibitionist.
I now beg to declare the Second International
Brewers' Congress open for business.
Argument on Constitutional License
Made before the Liquor Traffic Committee of the Ohio
Constitutional Convention, 1912
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee:
Before presenting to you the arguments of those
who favor the proposed constitutional amendment pro-
viding for the licensing of the liquor traffic, which is
now under your consideration, it is perhaps appropriate
for me to state that I am not an attorney, but merely
a business man representing the industries and trades
which are most vitally interested in seeing that con-
stitutional amendment adopted.
I think I am correct in saying that Ohio is the only
State in the Union where, by constitutional provision,
the retail liquor traffic has been permitted to be carried
on without restriction as to the character and number
of persons engaged in it. To those who are not con-
versant with the history of the liquor question in Ohio
this fact may seem so anomalous as to be almost
incapable of explanation. Yet the explanation, though
perhaps a trifle startling, is very simple.
There are, as you know, States where the traffic
in liquor has been prohibited, unfortunately with the
invariable consequence that that traffic, encouraged and
Constitutional License.
183
fostered by the very people who voted to prohibit it,
has been patronized by them clandestinely to a greater
and more dangerous extent than ever before. In Ohio
the attempt to force prohibition on the people failed.
Consequently, those who believe that the use of stimu-
lants in any form is undesirable, particularly for their
neighbors, proceeded to agitate and work for a condi-
tion of things which, while permitting the traffic in
such stimulants to be carried on, would withdraw from
it its main safeguard against abuse, and throw it open
to the most undesirable and irresponsible elements of
the citizenship, thus causing it to become so dangerous,
so pernicious and so offensive to the community that
even those who approved of it would be forced, against
their will and better judgment, to consent to its
abolition.
This is not a mere fancy of my own, nor is it a mere
conclusion deduced by me from more or less uncertain
premises. It is, as I propose to show you, an actual
summary of that which the debates on the question of
licensing the saloon business in the Constitutional
Conventions of 1851 and 1873 disclose as being the
avowed motive of those who in these conventions in-
sisted on having incorporated in the Constitution of
the State a clause prohibiting the licensing of the
liquor traffic in Ohio.
Mr. Stanton, the delegate from Logan County and
the leader of the temperance forces in the Convention
184
Constitutional License.
*
of 1850-51, spoke as follows on January 30, 1851,
and his definition of the policy of those he represented
was accepted and endorsed by every no-license advocate
in that Convention:
“The friends of temperance on every side cried out
for an open field. They could not contend against
that sanction of the traffic which was conferred by a
license issued to a man of good moral character. Take
away that shield and the parties are placed upon equal
ground. If the people are willing to turn loose the
horrors of intemperance upon themselves, and then to
bear them, without an effort to rid themselves of the
evil, let them do it.
The truth is, the great
obstacle to the temperance reform is the respectability
of those who engage in the traffic.
"If every man who pleased were allowed to buy and
sell spirituous liquors, it would bring in all sorts of
men, and the calling would fall into disrepute, and
become degraded.
“So long as places are respectable, men will resort
to them." (Page 438, Ohio Convention Debates, ,
1850-51.)
T'hink of it! So long as places are respectable, men
will resort to them. Therefore, make them disrepu-
table. So long as men of good moral character serve
the people with the beverages they want, the people
will continue to indulge in them. Therefore, substitute
immoral and dissolute men for these men of good moral
*
Constitutional License.
185
character, and the people will cease to indulge in drink.
Gentlemen, it is sixty years since, deluded by such
monstrous arguments as these, the voters of those
days blindly gave into the hands of the so-called tem-
perance advocates this means of testing the efficacy of
their strange doctrine that to foster what is evil in that
which they aim to destroy is the best means of securing
its destruction. After forcing a trade, which they
admitted to be conducted by men of decent and respect-
able habits and principles, to throw down every barrier
and open itself up to the irresponsible and unscrupulous
elements of the community, they have now for sixty
years been indignantly and disingenuously pointing
to the lawlessness of those very elements of their own
creation as an argument and a reason for abolishing
a trade which they themselves had designedly thrown
open to them.
Let it not be imagined, however, that it has taken
the people all these years to discover the evil effect of
the immoral conditions that were thus foisted upon
them—by way, I apprehend, of ultimately lifting them
on to that higher plane of morality, from which their
self-appointed guardians shine down upon us lesser
mortals. Already in 1873 the cry for a judicious li-
cense law had become so insistent throughout the State
that a resubmission of the question could not be suc-
cessfully contested by its opponents in the constitu-
tional convention held in that year. The resourceful-
186
Constitutional License.
ness of these opponents, therefore, was taxed rather
severely to meet this situation, but, always equal to
the occasion, they contrived to so meet it that, when
submitted to the people, the question of licensing the
liquor traffic was sure to be negatived by the very men
upon whom the champions of license had counted to
answer that question in the affirmative. In other
words, every conceivable attempt was made to super-
impose upon the simple proposition of empowering the
legislature to enact a license law conditions of so
burdensome or uncertain a nature that the saloon-
keeper himself and his friends would fear to vote for it.
I mention this advisedly, because it has been plainly
intimated to the friends of license that these same tac-
tics are going to be repeated on this occasion. Their
object, of course, is the same as that which was pur-
sued by the no-license advocates of forty and sixty
years ago, namely, to insure at any cost the continua-
tion of a condition that must tend to force evil elements
into the liquor traffic, and thus so injure and corrupt
the people who avail themselves of their right to enjoy
what it offers them that they will sicken of that enjoy-
ment and ultimately consent to forego it altogether.
It is not my province, nor is this perhaps the place,
to discuss the morality of this proceeding. But the
question of its expediency is one which so vitally affects
the welfare, moral and physical, of the community that
I believe no other question now pending before this
Constitutional License.
187
convention is more urgently in need of its attention.
Gentlemen, what would be thought of men, who,
believing the consumption of well-water to be fraught
with danger to the public health, and failing to deprive
the people of the right to sink and use wells, would
deliberately pass a law forbidding them to encase their
wells and thus protect them against contamination from
the surrounding earth, with the purpose of allowing
sewage and other deadly matter to seep into them
unhindered and thereby render them so dangerous and
injurious to the community at large that, for the.
sake of pure self-preservation, it would consent to
abolish them altogether? Substitute the word "saloon"
for the word "well,” and this is exactly what was done,
and done deliberately, by those who, sixty years ago,
deprived the saloon of its one and only safeguard
against the intrusion of evil and vicious elements,
namely, a license imposing restrictions as to the char-
acter and number of persons permitted to engage in
the saloon business. In taking the license from the
liquor traffic, they took from it, knowingly, that which
corresponds with the encasement of a well; in other
words, its only protection against the sewage and foul
matter that is liable to seep into it from the outside;
and having done this, they heaped insult on to injury
by adding a paragraph to their no-license clause sar-
castically empowering the legislature to pass laws
providing against the evils arising from the traffic
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Constitutional License.
they had thus designedly left unprotected against
them. Could a more cruel piece of irony be conceived ?
Suppose the believers of Christian Science, who con-
sider the use of medicines sinful, and who regard the
practice of a physician or surgeon as offensive to God,
would come to you and, while admitting, as the pro-
hibitionists do, that the great majority of the people
are not yet sufficiently enlightened to share their views,
would ask you to withdraw all restrictive safeguards
from the medical profession and the trade of the drug-
gist, so that this profession and this trade might fall
into the worst possible hands and grow to be so dan-
gerous to mankind that people would rather become
Christian Scientists than permit them to exist any
longer. Would you not lift up your hands in utter
horror at such a demand? Yet, mark that, upon their
own admission, this was the sole intent of those who,
sixty years ago, succeeded in having the no-license
clause incorporated in the constitution of our State.
Gentlemen, it is nothing less than a marvel that,
under such conditions as these, the saloon business of
this State generally should have maintained the stand-
ard of respectability which it has. For, in spite of all
that has been said and written about the lawless saloon,
the fact is that an overwhelming majority of the saloon-
keepers of the State are men of good character and
staunch principles. Indeed, I venture to say that,
with every means thus denied them of protecting their
Constitutional License.
189
business against the corrupting influences that have
been permitted to assail it, they have struggled against
those influences with a success which the members of
few trades and professions—and I do not except even
the most exalted—would, under like circumstances,
have achieveed.
These men, in their thousands, for whom it is my
pride to be able to speak before you to-day, have been
made to suffer the odium brought upon their trade by
the vicious elements that have been allowed to enter it
unchallenged and use it as a cloak for vile and unclean
practices, which are no more an inherent feature of that
trade than stealing is an inherent feature of the bank-
ing trade, fraud an inherent feature of the legal and
commercial professions, and a certain other class of
social crime an inherent feature of the ministerial call-
ing. These men are unanimously supporting the de-
mand of their many fellow-citizens for a means of
purging their ranks of these vicious elements, for
whose presence there, not they, but their would be
destroyers are responsible.
Is it, then, a reasonable thing that the people, who
possess the right to have saloons if they so desire,
should be compelled, when they exercise that right, to
have them only accompanied by dangerous conditions,
that render them a constant menace to their health
and morals? Is it reasonable that a certain class of
men, who happen to have made the abolition of liquor
190
Constitutional License.
an integral part of their religion, should be permitted
to say to the people at large, who do not share their
religious views: “It is true that you have the right
to indulge in stimulants, but as long as you exercise
that constitutional right of yours, we will see to it that
the conditions under which you do so shall be so
obnoxious, so dangerous, so detrimental, that you will
be coerced into yielding up your liberty of action in
this respect.
These so-called reformers subscribe to the sentiment
that it is expedient to permit evil so that good may
come of it. Nay, they have gone even farther in this
instance and said that it is right to create evil so that
good may come of it. “Rather a million bootleggers
than one open saloon,” as one of their foremost leaders,
Bishop Quayle, of the Methodist Church, has put it.
With all due respect to the sacred calling of that gen-
tleman, I submit that such a statement argues almost a
form of mental or moral aberration in the person who
was capable of uttering it. Yet, sad to say, it typifies
the attitude of all those who follow his leadership, and
who are represented here to-day as the chief opponents
of the proposed constitutional amendment you are
considering
Gentlemen, I have endeavored to set before you, as
briefly as possible, not only the policy, but also the
motive which, by their own admission, actuated those
who, sixty years ago, were responsible for the clause
Constitutional License.
191
in the present constitution prohibiting the licensing of
the liquor traffic. I ask you now to contemplate the
actual result of that policy, so far as the people of this
State are concerned.
Three years ago, after procuring during the pre-
ceding fifty-seven years the passage of numerous stat-
utes, by which they designed to accomplish the second
stage of their avowed policy of corruption, namely, the
transition from the unlicensed saloon to the still more
dangerous and vicious speak-easy, or blind tiger, the
anti-liquor forces succeeded in obtaining the enact-
ment of the Rose County Option law, by virtue of
which the inhabitants of our cities, who had steadily
refused to abolish the saloon, were to be forced to do
so by the vote of the rural population. The effect of
this law, aided as it was by the obnoxious conditions
deliberately created during the preceding fifty-seven
years by its promoters, was the abolishment of the
saloon and the inevitable inauguration of the speak-
easy and low dive in no less than sixty-three out of the
eighty-eight counties of the State. The cities fought
with all their voting power against the shocking condi-
tions thus forced upon them—for the supposed ulti-
mate moral good of the citizenship, but in vain. The
abominable effect of these conditions, however, has
in the past three years become so apparent, even to the
rural voters of those counties that, as you know, they
have risen in their might and at last emphatically re-
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Constitutional License.
pudiated the organization that was responsible for their
creation, and have placed the unmistakable stamp of
their condemnation upon the insidious policy, of which
it has made them the helpless victims for so many years.
The Anti-Saloon League, of course, pleads in
excuse of this miserable fiasco, in which its well-laid
plans have resulted, that it has been defeated by the
liquor interests, which wickedly refused to join it in
forcing those who desired to drink to abstain from
doing so. In other words, it pretends to argue that,
if the manufacturers of alcoholic beverages would, of
their own free will, have ceased to supply their goods
in dry counties, all would have been well. Paren-
thetically, let me say that the law of the State forbids
neither the purchasing of those goods in these counties,
nor their sale there by the manufacturers from the out-
side. But this fact is conveniently ignored in this dis-
ingenuous argument of the Anti-Saloon League. That
League, as we know, is a law unto itself. But, thank
heaven, neither the brewers and liquor dealers, nor the
citizens of the country at large are, as yet at least,
compelled to take their law from the Anti-Saloon
League.
Even if they were, however, the insincerity of this
argument is glaringly illustrated by the fact that the
liquor industries have repeatedly offered to join the
Anti-Saloon League leaders in securing the passage
of a law that will make both the buying and the selling
Constitutional License.
193
of liquor in prohibition territory a penal offense. Why,
then, have they persistently refused to do this? Be-
cause they know, as well as we do, that the people,
however much the prohibitionist may succeed in cajol-
ing or coercing them, do not want prohibition, and
that the moment he were to institute a form of prohibi-
tion that really did prohibit, prohibition would there
and then draw its last breath.
The Anti-Saloon League, then, says in fact: “We
dare not attempt to prohibit the use of liquor, because
we know that the great majority of the people will use
it, and hence by depriving them of their right to it we
would irretrievably damage our cause.
But we want
the conditions of its consumption to be made as vile
and disreputable as a crippled machinery of the law
can render them, because those conditions will insure
and perhaps accelerate the success of our cause.” We
say, on the other hand: “We will be glad to join the
Anti-Saloon League in forbidding the use of liquor,
wherever it succeeds in forbidding its sale, but, wher-
ever the people exercise their right to use it, we want
the conditions under which they do so to be as decent
and wholesome as an uncrippled legal machinery can
make them.'
In other words, the reason why the Anti-Saloon
League opposes a license system is the identical reason
why we advocate and demand it. We need advance
no arguments of our own. We can safely rest our
>>
194
Constitutional License.
case on the arguments of our opponents, as recorded
in Ohio's constitutional history. We want as decent
and respectable a saloon as wise and judicious laws
can give us. They want the lawless and disreputable
saloon, because, by forcing it on the people, they hope
eventually to convert them to their doctrine concerning
the use of liquor in general. They have had sixty
years to try their questionable experiment on a long-
suffering community. Are they to have a further
sixty years or more to continue that experiment in
face of the emphatic verdict rendered by the people
that its effect has been disastrous and pernicious in
the extreme?
This, gentlemen, I respectfully submit, is the ques-
tion which you, the elected delegates of the people, are
called upon to consider in this convention. It is not,
as I well know, in your power to decide that question,
but it is in your hands to give the people of the State,
who derive that deciding power from you, the oppor-
tunity of exercising it. Three years ago these people
expressed in large numbers their disapproval of the
unlicensed saloon, which had been designedly forced
upon them by the prohibitionists, by voting it out of
existence. These same people have now overwhelm-
ingly voted the unlicensed saloon back again, rather
than face, in the illicit dive and speak-easy, the still
worse conditions which they were just as designedly
made to endure, and I assert, without fear of honest
Constitutional License.
195
contradiction, that they have done so because they rely
upon you to give them the means of having what they
want under the best, and not under the worst, possible
conditions. In other words, because they rely upon
you to give them the opportunity of licensing and thus
effectively restricting and controlling a traffic which
they both need and desire.
I do not believe that they have placed this reliance
upon you in vain, and I am as confident that you will
not refuse the people this simple privilege of choice
which they are asking of you as I am confident that the
people, when they exercise that privilege, will do so
sanely and sensibly, and with that intuitive faculty of
discriminating, in the light of actual experience, be-
tween right and wrong, and between good and evil,
which, though it is unhappily often denied to the
individual, is rarely absent in the people as a whole.
It is in this belief that we ask you to let the people
itself decide this question. It is in the same belief
that the Anti-Saloon League is demanding of you not
to allow the people to decide it; and fearful though the
fanatic power of that organization has become, I trust
it is not yet greater than that of the people itself.
As for those whom I am in particular privileged to
speak for here, bear in mind that, in asking for a
license law, they are not asking for greater freedom,
but for greater restriction; they are not demanding of
you a privilege, but a beneficent protection, both to
196
Constitutional License.
themselves and to the people whom they serve. License
implies restraint, and the assertion of our opponents
that it not only means unrestricted liberty, but implies
the destruction of all safeguards hitherto thrown
around the liquor traffic is, by their own showing, as
false as it is insincere.
Above all, gentlemen, we desire a condition of things
that will absolve us from the necessity of engaging in
constant political warfare for the purpose of saving
our existence from the political attacks of those who
are seeking to destroy it. It is monstrous that the
liquor question should be made a political football by
these elements, who, after having cast the ball into the
political arena, try to make the people believe that we
are responsible for its presence there. It is monstrous
that large and honorable industries like ours, which
are recognized by all civilized governments, including
our own, towards whose maintenance we pay more
than one-fourth of the total amount contributed by the
entire citizenship of the nation, should be forced to
live in a condition of constant harassing uncertainty,
which is deliberately created and maintained by adver-
saries who have as little scruples of right and justice
towards us as they have consideration for the rights
and the moral welfare of the community, whose will
they are determined to make subservient to their own.
It is in your hands to take the first step towards alter-
ing that condition, and remedying the damaging effect
Constitutional License.
197
it has had upon the citizenship at large. I pray that
the dictates of wisdom and justice may combine in
prevailing upon you to take that step.
Argument on Proposed License Codes
Before the Joint Committee of the General Assembly
of Ohio, Delivered in the House of Representatives,
January 20, 1913
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee:
If I had to choose a text upon which to base what
I am privileged to say to you on the subject of the
two license bills which are under your consideration,
I could, I think, choose no more fitting text than the
following words, contained in that portion of the
Governor's recent message to the General Assembly
which deals with the question of licensing the liquor
traffic.
The Governor says there:
“If the license plan is correct in theory, it is entitled to a test
under the most advantageous auspices."
It would scarcely be possible to place two construc-
tions upon the meaning of these words. They imply
that, since the people, by an unmistakable utterance,
have decided for the principle of license, this legisla-
ture should so frame the license law as to let that prin-
ciple be worked out in practice under circumstances
most favorable to its complete success. Now, I think
you will agree that the three cardinal objects which
Ohio License Code.
199
are sought to be attained by a system of license are
these:
(1) The elimination of the saloon question from
politics, so far as such elimination may be possible.
(2) The limitation of the number of saloons; and
(3) The restriction of the saloon business to per-
sons of law-abiding tendencies and good moral char-
acter and habits.
However voluminous a license code may be, it can,
or perhaps I ought rather to say, it should, contain
nothing which upon careful analysis does not tend to
promote the attainment of these three objects, and
nothing more.
The question, for instance, whether the use of alco-
holic liquor is desirable or not has no place in a license
code, any more than it ought to have a place in this
discussion. It would, in fact, be no more improper to
frame a license code in such a way as to promote the
sale or use of intoxicating liquor than it would be to
frame it in such wise as to promote the prohibition of
that sale or use.
Those for whom I have the honor to speak here have
very carefully examined the bill, known as H. B. No. 4,
and it is their emphatic opinion that the requirements
which I have mentioned as being vital to the efficiency
of a license code are most satisfactorily met in that bill.
They can conceive, for instance, of no more effective
way of taking the saloon question out of politics than
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Ohio License Code.
by adopting that form of licensing authority, so strong-
ly recommended by the Governor, which places the
appointing power, both directly and indirectly, in the
hands of one man, namely, the Governor himself. If
you will contrast for one moment the simple machinery
suggested in his message by Governor Cox, and pro-
vided by the framers of House Bill No. 4, with the
complicated and involved method of multiple election
of hundreds and hundreds of license officers, which the
Acker bill provides, I can scarcely believe that you
will hesitate for one instant in your choice between
the two.
The Governor's idea requires no explaining, because
it is so simple that it explains itself. The Governor is
to appoint a bi-partisan State Board of three men,
who, in their turn, shall appoint, and in a certain meas-
ure supervise and control the acts of the local or
county licensing authorities. All these authorities are
totally independent of the factional fads or whims
of the electorate, either local or otherwise, and are
answerable for their acts to no one but the Governor
himself, who, by virtue of his power to appoint and
dismiss, assumes the responsibility for those acts to-
wards the people at large.
Could anything be more simple, or better calculated
to prevent the injection of the baneful “wet and dry”
controversy into the license question? Compare with
this simple method the extraordinary proposition con-
Ohio License Code.
201
tained in the proposed Acker code. Not only is it
here, provided that every license officer shall be voted
for at the polls, but that there shall be various kinds
of votes polled, to-wit: First and second choice votes,
and different methods of counting and combining these
different kinds of votes.
Permit me to read to you the rules by which it is
proposed that the election judges and their clerks shall
be guided in determining the result of this novel com-
plicated system of polling votes.
The Acker code provides as follows, page 2, line 28:
“(a) If any candidate for an office receives a majority of the
first choice votes he shall be declared elected for such office.
“(6) If no candidate is thus elected, drop the name of the
one having the least number of first choice votes and add the second
choice votes cast by his supporters to the first choice votes of the
remaining candidates for whom they were cast.
"(c) If no candidate then has a majority, drop from the remain-
ing candidates the one having the least number of votes then to
his credit, and add the second choice votes cast by his supporters
to the votes of the remaining candidates for whom they were cast.
"(d) Repeat this operation until some candidate has a majority
or until only two candidates remain. The one then having the
greatest number of votes to his credit shall be declared elected.
"(e) No second choice vote shall be counted when it is cast for a
candidate whose name shall have been dropped as herein provided.
"(f) Any tie shall be decided by lot by the candidates."
I am constrained to say that the first three of these
clauses read very much like those deadly arithmetical
puzzles that worried us all so much in our schoolboy
2
202
Ohio License Code.
days, such as the famous problem: If a cat and a half
can devour a rat and a half in a minute and a half,
how many cats will be able to devour four and three-
quarter rats in ten and three-sevenths minutes?
I am frank to say, Mr. Chairman, that I would
rather have to solve that riddle than be compelled to
find the answer to the abstruse puzzle presented in the
three first of the clauses I have just read. The fourth
clause, which says, “Repeat this operation,” etc., re-
minds one vividly of a medical prescription, while the
last clause, which provides that “Any tie shall be de-
cided by lot by the candidates," would pass very credit-
ably as an excerpt from the rules of the gambling
table at Monte Carlo.
Gentlemen, surely the intricacies of the differential
calculus are mere child's play compared with the occult
mysticism of this algebraic system of vote-counting.
In other respects, if I may venture to say so, the
author of this code has not been as careful in clothing
his real meaning in the language of mystery. I will
read, if I may, a few clauses in this strange license
code, in which the intention of that code to prohibit,
rather than license and regulate, the sale of liquor is
so thinly veiled that no mistake about it is possible.
Under the provisions for application for license, page
6, line 130, the code says:
"In determining which applicant shall have the precedence in
securing a license
those applicants concerning whom com-
Ohio License Code.
203
plaint has been made of their violating the law, or operating dis-
orderly places, shall have no precedence over any new applicant
for license at any time when applications are granted.”
This means, in effect, that the mere lodging of a
complaint against a saloonkeeper, whether such com-
plaint be justified or not, shall suffice to put him out
of business in case there shall be any new applicants
for license at the time he comes up for renewal of his
license. By the very simple process of lodging com-
plaints against any one who enters the business from
term to term, it is evident that very soon all applicants
for license will be placed in the same category of
ineligibles.
On page 6, line 139, the code says:
“The phrase, 'person of good moral character,' as used in the
act, shall be construed to mean a person who has not sold within
the past year intoxicating liquor to minors, drunkards, or persons
in the habit of getting intoxicated, or to those concerning whom he
has been notified that others are dependent upon them for support.”
How many customers would remain to the saloon-
keeper if all those upon whom others are dependent
for support were to be eliminated? The author of the
code realizes that there might still be a few left; and
he provides shrewdly for the elimination of even these
few by the following clause, page 7, line 147, where the
code provides:
“A notice filed with the mayor or clerk of the township trustees
on the first Monday in each month shall be sufficient to liquor
dealers ten days thereafter not to sell intoxicating liquor to the
persons whose names are set forth in that notice.”
204
Ohio License Code.
Could anything be more comprehensively sweeping?
All that is needed under this clause is for some one
to procure a list of the citizens of the State of Ohio,
and ten days after such list has been filed with the
mayor and township trustees, all the saloonkeepers of
the State will have to close their doors, because no one
will be left in the State to whom he is privileged to sell
his goods.
Again, on page 9, line 220, it is provided :
“License for the sale of intoxicating liquors shall not be granted
in territory in which the sale of intoxicating liquor is, or is hereafter,
prohibited, and shall be confined to the most efficiently policed
parts of the municipality or township."
Assuming, for argument's sake, that there are parts
of a municipality which are less efficiently policed than
others, there must needs be one part which is the least
efficiently policed. In that case, all other parts of the
municipality must be more efficiently policed, and then
the puzzling question arises: How many and which
of these more efficiently policed parts of the munici-
pality are to be considered the most efficiently policed
parts?
The clause under review goes on as follows:
"No license shall be granted in a purely residential, or in manu-
facturing portions of a city or municipality, or within 300 feet from
any church edifice, or public or parochial school house."
Would it not be more simple and concise to say:
"No license shall be granted within two feet of any-
where?” It is notorious that practical prohibition of
Ohio License Code.
205
the liquor traffic was imposed upon the State of Ten-
nessee by a provision reading very much like this one.
In order to make assurance doubly sure, however,
the clause proceeds, on page 10, line 225, as follows:
"Such license shall not be granted in those parts of a munici-
pality where it is apparent that the party applying for it is seeking
to obtain patronage from adjoining ‘no license’ territory."
In other words, the declaring of a territory “dry”
shall also have the effect of making the adjoining terri-
tory “dry," with what result throughout the State it is
scarcely necessary for me to explain. In short, com-
plete prohibition is provided for in this code in so
many ways that, if one were to prove ineffective,
innumerable others could be relied upon to accomplish
the object sought.
Mr. Chairman, the Acker code bristles with this kind
of—what shall I call it?-prohibitory license, or li-
censed prohibition. All the rest of the code is superflu-
ous in face of these clauses, for, thanks to them, there
would be no saloonkeepers to license, and consequently
no saloon to regulate. Now, I respectfully submit
that, in view of the mandate of the people demanding
the license of the liquor traffic, and imposing upon the
legislature the task of carrying out that mandate, it is
not competent to consider the adoption of a license
code, which, on the face of it, plainly seeks to nullify the
expressed desires of the people, and which would result,
not in the regulation of the saloon, which the people
206
Ohio License Code.
have voted for, but in the destruction of the saloon,
which the people have not voted for.
Now, Mr. Chairman, to revert again to House Bill
No. 4, which the interests I represent fully endorse
and approve, it may be proper to dwell for a moment
upon the amendment to the constitution, in obedience
to which that bill has been drawn. I believe that no
existing constitution contains such explicit and specific
directions as to the character of the license law, the
drafting of which it not only authorizes, but commands,
as does the present constitution of the State of Ohio.
The framers of House Bill No. 4 have adhered with
religious strictness to those directions, and have ampli-
fied and added to them wherever it seemed necessary
to do so in order to give fuller effect to the intent and
meaning of the constitutional provision. Bear in
mind that every regulatory or prohibitory law which
is now in effect, or which may in future be enacted, is
by this constitutional provision made practically part
and parcel of the license code. These laws, as you
know, are legion, but their effectiveness under the
present tax system, with its unrestricted, or unrestrict-
able, right to all and any to engage in the liquor traffic
has, as we all know, been deplorably incomplete, owing
mainly to the fact that the grossest and most persistent
law violators could not be prevented from entering the
business and engaging in it again and again, in spite
of all the statutes providing for the punishment of their
Ohio License Code.
207
delinquencies. The license law which you have before
you in House Bill No. 4 will alter all this, for by a
simple constitutional proviso, which is incorporated in
amplified form in that code, it has actually become
part of the basic law of this State that a repeated
conviction for violation of any present or future
statutes regulating the liquor traffic shall not only
revoke, ipso facto, the license of the offender, but shall
forever bar the offender from again engaging in that
traffic. Do not forget, therefore, that this license code, in
addition to the life which it proposes to give to its own
specific provisions, will infuse new life into innumerable
laws which for years have been ineffective, because the
penalty attached to their violation did not, and could
not, include the forfeiture of the right of the offender
to continue in business, which means, of course, the
forfeiture of the opportunity to offend again.
Mr. Chairman, I beg to conclude with a reference
to two terse clauses in the bill known as H. B. No. 4,
which, taken in conjunction with the existing laws
regulating the liquor traffic, contain the meat of this
whole license code, so far as the regulation of the saloon
is concerned, and which no additions, if you added
volumes of them, could render more comprehensive or
effective.
The one is the first short sentence under the head of
“Qualification for License,” page 8, line 179, which
reads as follows:
208
Ohio License Code.
“License shall not be granted to a person who is not a citizen
of the United States, or who is not of good moral character.”
The other is the second paragraph under the head
of “What shall be offenses," page 22, line 542, which
reads as follows:
"If any licensee is more than once convicted for a violation
of the laws in force to regulate the traffic in intoxicating liquors,
his license shall be deemed revoked, and no license shall thereupon
be granted to him.”
The first mentioned clause, I submit, gives the
licensing authorities the widest possible discretion in
dealing with applications for license, inasmuch as it,
in effect, places upon the applicant for a license, at the
will of the licensing authorities, the burden of proof
that he is a person of good moral character. I
say
it
does this at the will of the licensing authorities, be-
cause they need only refuse to license an applicant
upon the ground that he is not, in their opinion, a
person of good moral character, in order to immediately
place upon him the burden of proving that he is.
The second mentioned clause is the one which, as
I have said, practically and in effect incorporates every
existing law, including the drastic Dean Character law,
in the license code, and therefore renders the licensee
dependent for the procuring and the retention of his
license upon his obedience to those laws. If this code
contained nothing else but these two clauses, excepting,
of course, its administrative provisions, and excepting
the important provision limiting the number of saloons,
• .
Ohio License Code.
209
it would be as comprehensive, as effective and as
drastic a license code as the strongest and most un-
compromising advocate of strict regulation could
desire.
We are in favor of the strictest possible kind of regu-
lation compatible with justice and fairness, but we
are not in favor of provisions which, under the guise
of regulation, are intended as a means of harassing and
persecuting the saloonkeeper and eventually handing
him over, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies
of his declared enemies. It is our belief, and I think
what I have cited to you to-night must have convinced
you, that this is the aim and intention of the Acker
Code, which, if the statement in the press may be
believed, is the official code proposed by those who are
unchangeably opposed to license, who made the most
strenuous campaign against license, and who, if they
are consistent—and who can doubt that they are?—
are now solely interested in making license a failure.
The code presented in H. B. No. 4, on the contrary,
as I think you are well aware, has been drafted by
those who favor the license system and whose para-
mount interest lies in making that system a success,
and, therefore, acceptable to the people who voted
for it in such overwhelming numbers. Can
Can you hesi-
tate for a moment in deciding which of the two codes
is most honestly aiming to carry out the will of the
people, and which, from the very nature of its origin,
A 4
210
Ohio License Code.
is most likely to contain the all-important element of
success? Let me close, Mr. Chairman, by repeating
the words of the Governor, which I quoted at the outset
of my remarks:
“If the license plan is correct in theory, it is entitled to a test
under the most advantageous auspices.”
These are words of wisdom, which remove this ques-
tion from the atmosphere of factional differences and
controversial strife. May they be ever present in your
minds, gentlemen, while you are deliberating upon this
momentous matter which has been entrusted to your
care.
Address Delivered at the Annual
Banquet of the Alumni Association
of the Wahl-Henius Institute
Hotel Stratford, Chicago, March 28, 1913
Mr. Chairman:
I can scarcely imagine a pleasanter task than that
which you have assigned to me, and which, if I under-
stand it rightly, is to welcome, on behalf of those who
represent the brewing industry of the present day, the
men who are destined to represent the brewing indus-
try of future days.
In doing this, and in adding to that welcome the
heartiest I can express in language-a few words of
serious comment upon the responsibilities and duties
that await you gentlemen in the sphere of activity
which you have chosen, I want to assure you that I am
deeply conscious of my own limitations, and that, while
I
may claim to speak with the authority of some experi-
ence about certain important phases of the industry
you are about to enter, I am fully aware that there
are many phases of that industry which you, who come
fresh from its chief seat of learning, are far more
competent to discuss than I am.
212
Address to the Alumni.
But you will no doubt find, or perhaps you have
already found, that there are more branches of knowl-
edge in our great industry than any one man can hope
to be proficient in at one time. In fact, I could liken
the workers in that industry to nothing better than the
citizens of a nation, each of whom is called upon to
perform his allotted or chosen part in accomplishing
the upbuilding and the maintenance of the great
national fabric, and in doing so satisfies his own per-
sonal ambitions and erects his own particular abode,
or maybe his little hall of fame, within the greater
structure he helps to build. But while each citizen has
of necessity a different share to perform in the compli-
cated task of building that greater structure, there is
one task and one duty which he shares equally with
every other citizen, and that is the task and the duty
of defending it and upholding its honor and dignity
at any sacrifice against those who may seek to over-
throw or destroy it. Every citizen of our great
republic, whatever his calling, and however humble
or exalted his station, is potentially a defender of that
great republic, and equally responsible with his neigh-
bor for its prestige among the nations of the world;
and by prestige I mean not only that which is ex-
pressed in dollars and cents, but that which we are
accustomed to regard as generally synonymous with
the term "American citizenship,” namely, the acknowl-
edged leadership of the world in all that makes both
Address to the Alumni.
213
for material progress and for the advancement of the
higher purposes of our human civilization.
Gentlemen, there is no difference, excepting that
of degree, between the duty we owe to the nation of
which we form part and the duty we owe to the
industry to which we belong, and it is this particular
thing that I wish to lay close to your hearts to-night;
that, no matter what positions you may be destined to
occupy in that industry, whether the position of
owner, manager, foreman, or any less responsible
post, you are all equally responsible for the dignity
and standing of the industry among the community at
large, and you should uphold and guard and defend
that dignity and standing as jealously as you uphold
and defend the honor of the country which is the pride
of us all.
I know that it may seem unusual for me to sound
as serious a note as this on an occasion like the present
But we brewers are living in serious times, and,
coming as I do from the ranks of those whom chance
or perhaps predilection has thrown into the thick of
the battle of our industry with its fanatical foes, it is
only natural that I should rather fall into the tone of
those who gather around the campfire than tune my
thoughts to the lighter and brighter key that prevails
among those who are comfortably seated around the
domestic hearth.
But let me emphasize this. I am speaking to you
one.
214
Address to the Alumni.
as an optimist, not as a pessimist, and what I have
said and am going to say is not said for the purpose
of lessening the enthusiasm with which you are enter-
ing upon your chosen career, but, on the contrary,
for the purpose of increasing that enthusiasm.
I am telling you, in short, that if you take yourselves
and the business you have chosen seriously, you must
be prepared, not for a life of unbroken ease and com-
fort and mere humdrum accomplishment, but a life
of serious struggle, involving all those possibilities of
real achievement that appeal so enticingly to strong,
active manhood. It is the old, old struggle against
the forces of ignorance and folly, of hypocrisy and
humbug. In our case, however, in accordance perhaps
with the instinct of modern days, these forces have
been organized into a great commercial trust, known
as the Anti-Saloon League, which is controlled by and
run for the benefit of a choice, enterprising few, who,
it is amusing to reflect, derive their livelihood from the
same source as we do, namely, the brewing and its
allied industries. Only these men live upon those
industries as parasites, eating their way through some
local sore on the body into the healthy flesh, which
they seek to infect with the poison they have carried
from the sore, so that they may thereby produce fresh
profitable soil to feed and fatten upon.
In case you should think that I am using unduly
strong language, let me hasten to say that I am merely
Address to the Alumni.
215
echoing in this language the opinion which is held of
the leaders of the Anti-Saloon League by their brother
fanatics, the prohibitionists. And who should know
and judge the fanatic better than his fellow-fanatic?
Let us trust that the respect which the one manifests
for the other may be mutual, and that it may gradually
communicate itself to the people at large, whom they
are both duping and despoiling.
But meanwhile the struggle, so far as we are con-
cerned, goes on, waxing from year to year more stren-
uous, and it is in this struggle that you gentlemen
will have to take part, engaging in it, not as mere
mercenaries fighting in return for a day's wage, but
as men defending a great principle and championing
an honest and righteous cause.
There is no need for me to tell you that, ever since
the doctrine of temperance has been preached among
men, no greater agency for the spread of that doctrine,
and no more effective promoter of true, practical tem-
perance has arisen in the world than the brewing in-
dustry. But there is need for me to tell you that the
first and most forceful illustration of this truth must
be given by those who represent that industry, and
who should therefore be the chief exponents of its
influence in the direction I have indicated.
I am not saying this to you as a preacher of morals,
for I have neither the inclination nor the presumption
to set myself up as a teacher of my fellow-men on
216
Address to the Alumni.
these subjects. I am saying it as a simple, practical
business man, and as one who knows the character of
the enemy that is assailing us, and the utter scorn for
truth and justice which is the salient feature of that
character.
To him all men, including himself, are potentially
drunkards and libertines. He does not appear to
know, as every well-informed man knows, that the
excessive indulgence of the appetites, wherever it still
shows itself in the human race, is a relic of man's
animal origin. Yet he need only look at the habits
of the wild beasts of the field and the jungle to realize
that fact. He forgets, or pretends to forget, that
man has risen, and is still rising, above this inherent
weakness of all animal nature, not by compulsion of
law, or by the coercion of his superiors, but by reason
of the exercise of his God-given individual free will,
his power of self-control, and by those higher faculties
which religion and culture have developed in him. It
is just one of the main differences that distinguish
man from his dogs and his swine and his other domestic
cattle that, while their grosser appetites can only be
restrained by brute force, he has learned to curb his
own by dint of his individual will and intelligence. Is
it not the strangest of ironies that it should have been
left to those who pose as the uplifters of our race and
as our moral guardians to attempt to thrust man back
once more into the same class with his dogs and his
Address to the Alumni.
217
swine, and by applying to him the same methods that
are applied to them to deprive him of the power and
the right to continue exercising the individual free will
and intelligence which alone have lifted him so im-
measurably above them?
There is, of course, no necessity to dilate here upon
the inevitable result of such attempts, wherever they
have succeeded. If you confine the sanest man living
in a lunatic asylum, and treat him as one demented, he
is liable to become a lunatic. If you restrain men as
you restrain dogs and swine, and treat them as such,
you are liable to reduce them to the level of those
beasts. Our prohibition states afford only too many
sad evidences of the truth of this fact.
I cherish the hope that the day is not far distant
when the people of this country will uprise in their
wrath against this intolerable interference with their
freedom of will and their right of individual conscience,
and when they will say to their tyrannical oppressor's:
“Since we have become the men we are today, rising
from the level of the lower order of creation, by the
free exercise of those higher faculties with which the
Creator has endowed us, in distinction from the rest
of His creatures, you shall not deprive us of the right
to exercise those faculties, on the foolish pretense
that, by thus forcing us back again to the level of
the lower beasts, you will eventually make angels of
ور
us.”
218
Address to the Alumni.
Gentlemen, it is part of the task that awaits you,
and indeed the most important part of that task, to
help in awakening the people to a sense of this degra-
dation to which they are being subjected, and to do
so by every means in your power; by precept and
practice, by argument and reason, and above all, by
individual example demonstrating that particular fac-
ulty of the human intelligence which manifests itself
pre-eminently in moderation and self-control.
May you succeed in accomplishing this task, not
only for the sake of the industry which is our pride,
but for the sake of the cause of justice and freedom,
which is common to all men, and for the sake of
yourselves and your children, who will all be the
better men and the better citizens for the triumph
of that cause.
And so let me bid God-speed to you, one and all,
and let me wish for you the future fulfillment of
your
present desires, and the future desiring of new and
better things built upon the fulfillment of the old.
May the life that is before you be replete with the
alternate fullness of toil and harvest, and, when in
due course the evening of that life draws near, may
it bring you the crowning reward of all well-spent
endeavor; that sense of things achieved, in which the
true man finds his only real and abiding satisfaction,
and which he leaves as the most precious heritage to
those who come after him.
Why a Brewer is Proud of his Business
Address delivered at a Farewell Banquet tendered to
the Hon. Charles J. Vopicka, Minister Plenipo-
tentiary to Bulgaria, Servia and the Balkan States,
October 11, 1913
Mr. Toastmaster and Gentlemen:
I esteem it quite an exceptional privilege to be one
of those selected to convey to our distinguished guest
this evening some expression of that feeling of regard
and friendship which we all entertain for him as a
valued colleague and comrade, and of that sense of
gratification which must inspire every one of us at
the thought of the high honor which has been con-
ferred upon him by those who rule the destinies of
our great nation. It is the bestowal of that signal
honor upon one so closely associated with us as Mr.
Vopicka has been which is the especial occasion of this
festive gathering tonight, and I am sure that our
distinguished guest himself will be the last to mis-
interpret my meaning when I say that the public
significance of his appointment to represent this nation
at the seats of great European governments is, even
to us, his personal friends and associates, of far
220
Hon. C. J. Vopicka.
greater weight and moment than the private signifi-
cance attaching to the fact that he who has been
selected for that appointment happens to be a friend
and associate of ours.
I believe it was Napoleon who called England a
nation of shopkeepers, and far from resenting the
appellation, England has always been proud of it.
America, as we all know, is pre-eminently a commer-
cial nation, and her recognition as such by the great
powers of the earth is a fact to which she too has
every reason to point with pride. Commerce today
rules the world, and dictates the policies and directs
the affairs of all nations. It was not always so.
Within even my recollection the time was when the
governing powers of continental Europe looked with
the contempt of ignorance and arrogance upon those
who were even then building up the great industries
which constitute at this day the very foundation upon
which their influence and prestige rest. The fact that
a man was engaged in commercial pursuits was in
those days an effectual bar to the favor of rulers
and governments, and all those who administered the
affairs of the peoples of the earth.
All very foolish, of course, to our modern notions.
And yet, even then, there was one notable exception,
and it is interesting to dwell upon that exception on
this particular occasion.
Though the rulers of the nations of the old world
Hon. C. J. V opicka.
221
regarded industrial pursuits as a whole as beneath
their attention, there was one industry which they
considered it not derogatory to their dignity to engage
in themselves, and that was the brewing industry. I
need only point, in proof of what I say, to the rulers
of the Kingdom of Bavaria, who for centuries have
operated one of the most famous breweries of the
world, and who to this day conduct in their own name
one of the foremost “brewery-owned” saloons on the
continent of Europe; or to the Prince of Fursten-
berg, another fellow-brewer of ours, and incidentally
the most intimate friend of the German Kaiser, who,
by the way, has been recently heralded by ignorant
people in this country as an enemy of beer, whereas
the real fact is that a specially fine brew of beer,
known as the Emperor's Table Beer, is manufactured
and supplied to his Majesty's household by this very
brewer, Prince Furstenberg; or again, to the Baron
Speck von Sternburg, the scion of a famous family
of German brewers, whom the Kaiser selected as his
own Ambassador to this country; and indeed many
others. In fact, members of the brewing fraternity
in Europe occupy honored places in the councils of
most European governments. The greatest man, by
common consent, as a citizen, administrator, and public
benefactor in Denmark is a brewer, and from no other
industry have so many men been elevated to the
highest dignity in the gift of the British Crown as
222
Hon. C. J. Vopicka.
there have been from the brewing industry of the
United Kingdom.
I merely cite these examples, gentlemen, and I
could cite many more, in order to illustrate the fact
that, in selecting a man from the ranks of our industry
to represent this country abroad, our government has
not unwisely, and certainly very gracefully and tact-
fully, chosen one who, in addition to his general fitness
to occupy an ambassadorial office, brings with him to
that office, just by reason of his association with the
brewing industry, those peculiar qualifications of per-
sonal environment which accord with the thought, the
taste and the social predilections of those very leaders
of the world's affairs whom it will be his duty to meet
as his country's representative.
It would be almost amusing in this connection, if
it were not so pathetic, to reflect upon the circum-
stance that certain elements among our citizenship,
whose colossal ignorance of everything outside the
sphere of their own limited experience is only matched
by the extraordinary effrontery with which they at-
tempt to impose their dwarfish and intemperate views
upon the nation at large, actually entered a noisy
protest against the appointment of our guest as
this country's representative abroad, on the absurd
ground that he is a brewer.
I said the reflection was pathetic, and this is the
only reason why I dwell upon it here.
I have no
Hon. C. J. Vopicka.
223
quarrel with the deplorably intemperate element of
our citizenship to which I referred. It exists, and
has existed, in all countries, and in all times, and
belongs as distinctly to the abnormal class of nature's
creation as, for instance, do those among us who
are liable to the physical weakness of intemperance
in drink, or to other similar incontinencies which science
has long ago discovered to be symptomatic of cerebral
disturbance. The men who constitute that element
are moral inebriates, and should invoke our charity,
not our condemnation, just as the physical inebriate
is deserving of our sympathy rather than our detesta-
tion.
But in our country the spread in recent years of
this peculiar condition of mental and moral inebriety
has become a danger to the general community and the
nation at large, and the cause, I fear, is a specifically
human one. I mean that it lies in that wonderful
instinct which seems to impel the average human to
exploit commercially whatever comes within the range
of his effort and influence. Not only individual men,
but whole communities and nations, as history has
abundantly shown, are liable under given conditions,
which are often deliberately fostered by self-seeking
schemers, to become a prey to certain obsessions, and
it is the creation and the fostering of such conditions
by a few of the more unscrupulous commercialists of
our country that has produced that particular obses-
224
Hon. C. J. Vopicka.
sion to which I am alluding, and which has today
seized an alarmingly large number of our fellow-
citizens.
Gentlemen, I hold that a man's opinion or belief is
his most sacred possession; but when that opinion or
belief on any given subject is so unreasoning and
fanatic that it interferes with the ordinary functions
of his brain and affects his moral conduct and the
correct performance of his public and private duties,
it is no longer an opinion or belief, but becomes an
obsession, and as such stands self-condemned. When
judges, owing to their uncompromising opinions on
the question of prohibiting the use of stimulants, be-
come incapable of faithfully interpreting the law of
their country, whenever that question happens to be
involved, and instead of administering that law as it
is, deliberately determine it as they would have it to
be; when physicians, owing to the same opinions,
shamefully distort and twist the truths of science in
order to fit them to those opinions; when teachers and
preachers brazenly violate the precepts of their re-
ligion, and practically disown the Divine Master whose
gospel they preach, because His actions ran counter
to those opinions, when He not only made alcoholic
beverages, but drank them Himself; and when, lastly,
large majorities of the people's chosen representatives
admittedly violate and defy the sacred constitution
upon which the rights and liberties of the people are
founded, merely from craven fear of the organized
Hon. C. J. V opicka.
225
assault upon their political existence threatened by
the commercialists who create and exploit this terrible
mania of their fellow-citizens; it is no longer a harm-
less obsession that we are confronted with, but a
species of madness, dangerous to the people at large,
and subversive of the very foundations upon which
our social fabric is erected.
You all know that this is no exaggeration. Indeed,
there are men in this country, of wide experience and
high intelligence, who not only feared, but actually
believed, that our great American government itself
might, in this very case of our distinguished guest to-
night, yield to the artificial pressure exerted upon it
by the creators and leaders of this infatuated element
of our citizenship, and bow in obedience to their in-
solent demand that only those who share their fanatical
opinions and beliefs should be held deserving of enter-
ing the service of this country. In other words, these
men believed it possible that the government of the
United States might expose the greatest nation on
earth to the everlasting ridicule of the whole civilized
world by intimating to the rulers of foreign countries
that men who are connected with an industry in which
many of these rulers themselves deem it proper and
creditable to engage are considered in this enlightened
land of ours to be by that very fact unworthy of re-
ceiving honorable distinction at the hands of their
fellow-citizens.
226
Hon. C. J. Vopicka.
It was for this reason that I said that the public
significance of the appointment we are celebrating
tonight far outweighs the private significance attaching
to the circumstance that that appointment happens to
be bestowed upon a friend and associate of ours. It
enables us, not only as brewers, but as true citizens,
and as patriotic lovers of our country, proud and
jealous of the position this country occupies as the
acknowledged leader of the nations of the world in all
that makes for the advancement and the enlightenment
of the human race, to congratulate ourselves upon the
fact that the illustrious men whom the nation has
placed at the helm of its affairs have risen on this
occasion, as they always have in the past, and, so
God pleases, always will in the future, superior to
the small and unworthy considerations which the
threats of a fanatic band of unscrupulous and danger-
ous agitators sought to impose upon them.
Mr. Vopicka, as your friends and well wishers, who
love and esteem you, we rejoice in your elevation to
one of the most important and honorable posts in the
gift of your country. As your fellow-citizens, and
as men who would rather see their most cherished
personal ambitions crushed than suffer the slightest
blemish to rest upon the reputation and the dignity
of our great and beloved nation, we doubly welcome
the action of its government in bestowing such
honor upon you, because we recognize in it a renewed
Hon. C. J. Vopicka.
227
guarantee of the fact that that government stands
high above the sordid pettiness of selfish and ignorant
factions, secure in the knowledge of its own wisdom,
and unswerving in its faith in the wisdom and intelli-
gence of the vast majority of those whose affairs it is
called upon to administer.
And so God speed you, dear friend, and bring you
happiness and achievement in the lands beyond the
sea to which you are going, and to the nation that
sends there that credit and honor which it expects
to see reflected upon it through you, its representative
and chosen envoy.
you there
Open Letter to Dean
Walter T. Summer
From the Chicago Inter Ocean, April 27, 1913
The Very Rev. Dean Walter T. Sumner,
117 North Peoria Street, Chicago.
Dear Sir
I have just read your article on
the social
evil in last Sunday's edition of the Inter Ocean, and
there is so much in it with which I fully and heartily
agree that I feel the more emboldened to offer a few
comments on those portions of the article in the pen-
ning of which I cannot help believing that both your
sense of justice and your sense of proportion must
have forsaken you.
When I preface these comments by saying that I
am engaged in the brewing business, and that I take
considerable pride in the fact, it will scarcely be neces-
sary for me to state that the passages in your article
regarding which I join issue with you are those that
the relationship of the so-called liquor traffic
to the evil you are discussing.
It has become so common in our day, perhaps be-
cause it is so convenient, to blame the saloonkeeper,
bear upon
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
229
or the liquor traffic, for all humanity's ills, and for
all the failures of those who seek to cure those ills,
that to question the justice of this proceeding is almost
as daring an undertaking as it is to question the
truth of a religious dogma. Unfortunately for him,
the saloonkeeper, not being a man of letters, and
so equipped with the means of refuting the indiscrimi-
nate aspersions with which his detractors assail him, is
forced to bear those aspersions in silence, while those
among his hundreds of thousands of friends and
patrons who have the ability to defend him, and to
expose the injustice, the fallacies, and in many cases
the deliberate falsification which only too often char-
acterize the attacks of his enemies, remain silent for
a different reason, namely, because they are too cow-
ardly to give voice to a truth which they believe to
be unpopular. Hence the general public, hearing
always only one side of the controversy, concludes
that there is no other side, with the consequence that
the saloonkeeper is indicted, tried and sentenced with-
out being even heard in his own defense.
I do not believe, from what I know of you, that
you would for one moment willingly participate in such
an act of injustice, and it is solely in this belief that
I am publicly addressing you on what I consider the
unwarranted conclusions set forth in your article.
Because, by actual count, as you say, 236 brothel
house keepers in Chicago have added the retailing
230
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
of alcoholic beverages to their nefarious calling, is it
just to class upwards of seven thousand saloonkeepers
in the city of Chicago as “the greatest supporters of
the social evil,” and “as the greatest reapers of the
profits of the social evil”? Because these 236 brothel
house keepers collect the charge they exact for the
human bodies they supply by adding that charge to
the price of the alcoholic (and, by the way, the other)
beverages they sell, is it justifiable to denounce the
liquor traffic as a whole as “the most damnable institu-
tion at present existing in our social life"?
There are 7,200 saloons in Chicago, and the figure
236 is just a fraction over 3 per cent of those 7,200
saloons. Yet it is by this 3 per cent that you are
judging and condemning the remaining 97 per cent.
Is not this a complete reversal of the method of
Jehovah, who was willing to stay the doom of the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if only an infinitesimal
fraction of a percentage of the people of those cities
could be proved to be righteous and God-fearing?
The Bible tells us that not ten such inhabitants
could be found. Yet these cities must have had men
of all walks of life among their inhabitants, corre-
sponding to our merchants, lawyers, physicians, teach-
ers, ministers, etc. I have often wondered whether
Jehovah attributed the sinfulness of all these people
solely or mainly to the iniquity of the saloons of those
ancient communities, and destroyed Sodom and Gomor-
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
231
'a
rah merely to root out that one alleged source of all
evil.
Since I know from the Bible that there were not ten
respectable men in those cities, I am fairly convinced
that every saloon in Sodom and Gomorrah was
damnable institution.” But I am equally convinced
that it was not the damnable saloons that made the
damnable people of those cities, but rather the dam-
nable people of those cities that created their dam-
nable saloons. If it had not been so, would Jehovah
have destroyed those people, instead of rather de-
stroying the saloons or the saloonkeepers that created
them?
Every family, every calling, every profession has
its black sheep. Take your own profession, for in-
stance (and I earnestly beg you to believe that I refer
to that profession for no reason personal to yourself
or your fellow-clergymen, but merely because I can
conceive of no better way to point my argument). If
you investigate the prison statistics of the country
you will find that a comparison between the number
of preachers of the gospel and the number of saloon-
keepers confined in our penitentiaries is by no means
one to cause the latter class to feel ashamed. More-
over, no one who reads the daily newspapers requires
to be informed that the particular offenses to which
the black sheep of the first named class are most prone
are the very offenses that constitute the main source
232
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
from which the social evil originates. Yet would it
be fair, or just or logical to conclude that for this
reason the clergy as a whole is "the most damnable
institution at present existing in our social life”? I
say no honest reasoner would draw such a conclusion.
Yet, in what respect is that conclusion any more un-
fair, unjust and illogical than the conclusion you have
presented to thousands of readers that, because 236
houses of ill-fame sell liquor, therefore the 7,200
saloonkeepers of Chicago are “the greatest reapers of
the profits of the social evil”?
I fully agree with you, and I know that
many
saloonkeepers do likewise, when you say that there
is room for great improvement in the conduct and
the character of the saloon business in this country.
Whether such improvement, even if it is effected, will
prevent the brothel house keeper from buying and
selling alcoholic beverags, is, however, very question-
able. But the main fallacy of those who are advocating
this improvement is the same fallacy which, I submit,
underlies your sweeping condemnation of a trade that
should no more be judged solely by its shady side
than should any other trade or profession.
That fallacy consists in the assumption that it is
the character of the saloon that makes the character
of the community in which it exists. The reverse is
the truth. It is the man that makes the character of
the saloon he frequents, not the saloon that makes the
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
233
character of the man who frequents it. The low
saloon does not create the social evil, but the social
evil does undoubtedly create the low saloon. If you
get rid of the social evil, you will get rid of the low
saloon. But if you succeeded in suppressing every
low saloon in Chicago, the social evil would not be
minimized thereby a particle.
I venture to say here, incidentally, and I know that
the experience of every practical man who has studied
this question will bear out my statement, that the
percentage of cases where a girl has lost her virtue
and started on the downward path in a saloon is,
comparatively speaking, extremely small.
It is after she has fallen that she gravitates toward
the class of saloon that caters to her kind, both male
and female, and she helps to create and maintain that
class of saloon, just as a tough neighborhood will
create and maintain a tough saloon, and a criminal
neighborhood a criminal saloon. Considering the two
and a quarter million population of the city of Chicago
and the well-known percentage of mankind the world
over who are of tough, vicious or criminal proclivities,
it would be surprising, in fact, if the number of
places that have been called into existence by that
percentage in Chicago should not prove in reality
to be larger than you have estimated.
Every student of economics knows that it is the
demand that creates the supply, not the supply that
234
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
creates the demand; and, more than that, it is upon
the character of the demand that the character of the
supply is conditioned, and not vice versa. Yet all the
arguments and all the actions of those who, like your-
self, are endeavoring to better the moral conditions
under which we live are persistently based upon the
very opposite assumption, with the result that, instead
of bettering those conditions, they render them worse.
That the American saloon generally is what it is
today is not due to the saloonkeeper, but to the public,
which demands the kind of saloon he conducts, and no
other. But, instead of aiming to improve the taste of
the public, those who are indiscriminately decrying
the saloon are still further debasing that taste. In
other words, instead of seeking to elevate the character
of the demand that creates the supply, they are fool-
ishly degrading the channels through which that supply
flows.
Do you think, for instance, that by publicly classing
97 per cent of the saloonkeepers of Chicago with the
percentage of brothel house keepers who have obtained
licenses to retail liquor, you are advancing the much-
desired change in the character of the Chicago saloon?
Such statements, when they are made by the profes-
sional prohibition agitator, may be ignored, but when
they emanate from men of your character and stand-
ing they are repeated by thousands of thoughtless
and ignorant people until by mere repetition they
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
235
assume the nature of an axiom, and, instead of
inducing a higher type of man to take the place of
the low type saloonkeeper, they drive the existing
high-class saloonkeeper in disgust to give place to
the man who does not care one iota how you or
others may class him.
Meanwhile the effect of this policy of indiscriminate
vilification produces, if possible, a worse effect upon
a large portion of the saloonkeepers' customers than
it does upon the saloonkeeper himself. It makes
hypocrites of those customers. And here you have
the fountain and origin of that which you rightly
criticize in the American saloon of today, namely,
the almost incredible hypocrisy that has been bred,
by just such wholesale denunciations as yours, in a
large number of American men who frequent, and
always will frequent, the saloon, but who demand the
facilities of doing so without being seen by those
whose opinions of the saloon they publicly pretend
to concur in, but in secret laugh at.
These men are recruited from the same large class
of people who, in public, follow the modern fashion
of railing against drink and the drink-seller, and who,
in private, have their beer, or whisky, or other similar
beverages smuggled into their houses concealed in flour
barrels, vegetable baskets, or other innocent-looking
receptacles.
236
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
It is largely men of your profession—as a class
without doubt the best intentioned men in the world
-who are unwittingly creating these hypocrites, and
thus, pathetically enough, are producing the very thing
they are so ardently working to destroy.
You may possibly think that I make this statement
merely by way of turning the tables, or in order to
create sensational effect. But I solemnly assure you
that I have no such effect in view. On the contrary,
I ask you to ponder the statement earnestly, for I
know the truth of what I am saying, and hundreds
of thousands of other men, though they may profess
to you to be inexpressibly shocked at this utterance of
mine, realize that same truth, but have not the courage
or the manhood to say it.
Hypocrisy, unfortunately, is the besetting sin of an
appalling number of our fellow-citizens, and it is far
worse and its insidious effect upon our social life is
infinitely more far-reaching than all the evils of the
disreputable saloon, which it is largely instrumental
in creating
The accusation, however true it may be, that among
the thousands of customers who are supplied, or com-
mercially assisted, by the brewing concerns of this
city there are some disreputable ones who should not
be in the business at all, does not alter the force, or
affect the bearing of this broader fact--namely, that
that which is unclean in the business is primarily the
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
237
product not of him who manufactures and supplies
drink but of him who purchases and consumes it.
Every brewer and every saloonkeeper realizes the
delicate and difficult position in which this fact places
him as a business man. I have no doubt, for instance,
that if I could personally investigate all the places
supplied by the concerns I am connected with I should
find some highly undesirable ones. Some brewers are
perhaps less concerned than others about the character
of the trade they supply. But the brewers as a whole
do inquire, and inquire diligently, into the moral sur-
roundings of those with whom they deal commercially,
and I believe they are the only class of commercial
men that do so. For I have yet to learn that the
banker refuses to lend money on security because
the borrower intends to use that money for nefarious
purposes, or that the dry goods merchant, the haber-
dasher, the butcher, the grocer, the real estate man, or
any others refuse to serve the panderer or the prosti-
tute, because by so doing they are contributing to their
comfort, their maintenance, or, worse still, to the
stock-in-trade of their business.
In conclusion, let me say that I wish with all my
heart I could share your sanguine expectation that
the evil of intemperance will be destroyed by our good
women, if and when they obtain the ballot in this
country. But you imply, in the same connection, that
you expect this result to come, not from the morally
238
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
uplifting influence of individual women upon our
race, to which we owe the best part of our moral
progress in the past, but from the repressive laws
which you say women will succeed in enacting, and
this leads me to conclude that you do not rate as high
as I do the real influence which woman has in the
past exercised, and I hope will in the future still
exercise, in this very direction.
Here, too, you appear to argue from the assumption
that it is the surrounding circumstances that create
the weakness of man, whereas it is so obviously the
weakness of man that creates the surrounding cir-
cumstances which cater and minister to that weakness.
Or has your experience really led you to the fallacious
conclusion of so many of your fellow-teachers of the
present day that repressive legislation can relieve them
of any of the burdens of their task as educators and
uplifters of their kind and render that task an easier
one?
The main object of repressive laws, as I understand
them, is to remove temptation from the weak. The
main object of religion, and therefore of education, is,
on the contrary, to strengthen the weak so that they
may be the better able to withstand temptation. The
first object, if it were attainable—which it notoriously
is not-would, of course, take much toil and trouble
off your shoulders and practically render your calling
a sinecure. But would it accomplish what the second
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
239
object aims to accomplish, namely, to raise mankind
itself to that higher spiritual level toward which our
religion directs us to strive? Is the thief who goes
to prison a thief no longer? Or, to put it more
broadly, can the removal of temptation, even if it were
possible, alter the weak and unstable character of
those who are liable to succumb to it any more than
the prison bars can transform the criminals we place
behind them into honest and upright members of human
society? I fervently trust that woman, when she
obtains the vote, will not realize your expectations in
the manner you suggest, but that, instead of appealing
to Caesar to carry out the task she has been specially
ordained and fitted to accomplish, she will continue
to pursue the slower but surer method of performing
that task herself.
I have never heard the truth regarding human im-
perfection and the ludicrous attempts to cure it by law
more pithily expressed than by an old German saloon-
keeper, who, in his humble way, did more than any
man I have ever known to guide the young and foolish
safely past the rocks and eddies which we all of us
have to encounter in our passage along the stream of
life. He was referring to the vice of intemperance,
but his words are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to all
human vice and weakness, and this is how they ran:
“It ain't 'cause folks drink too much that they're
no good. It's 'cause they're no good that they drink
240
Open Letter to Dean Sumner.
too much, and other folks is wasting time trying to
cure their trouble at the wrong end.”
It is not the language of Milton or Wordsworth.
But it is the language of pure, unadulterated common
sense, and there is nothing our country is so sadly
in need of at the present time as a little of that
self-same simple common sense.
Would that men of your acknowledged character,
broad view and high purpose might realize this fact
and condescend occasionally to listen to and learn from
men of the character and the practical experience of
my humble friend, the old German saloonkeeper.
Very truly yours,
PERCY ANDREAE.
Political and Personal Liberty
Address Delivered at the Annual Banquet of the
American Association of Foreign - Language
Newspapers, New York, February 7, 1914.
Mr. President, Members of the American Association
of Foreign Language Newspapers, and Ladies and
Gentlemen:
I once heard “Personal Liberty” rather flippantly
described as "the privilege which every free-born citizen
enjoys of preventing his neighbor from doing what he
likes."
Sarcastic as it may sound, I am not at all sure that
this definition of personal liberty, as practiced to-day
by quite a goodly number of our fellow-citizens, is
entirely beside the truth. The fact is that the best of us
are more prompt to recognize our own individual rights
than we are to recognize the individual rights of our
neighbor, and here perhaps lies the root of all that is
controversial about the question of personal liberty
to-day.
For, that the question of what constitutes personal
liberty is a subject of controversy, and somewhat bitter
242
Political and Personal Liberty.
controversy, in this enlightened age of ours, is a fact
admitting of no doubt. I venture to go further and
assert that this great principle, for which men have
fought and died in all ages, has perhaps never been in
greater jeopardy, has never been subject to more
insidious attack, than it is at the present day, when
the word “freedom" is on every man's lips, and the
boast that man is his own sovereign forms the burden
of every patriotic song.
Of course, the day of the despotic ruler, who sacri-
ficed the liberties of the people on the altar of his own
ambition, is gone. We choose our own rulers, and even
in many monarchical countries the voice of the people
counts in government to-day as it never counted in
history before. This means that we have gained our
political liberty, and it is, of course, a mighty achieve-
ment to have wrested this great possession from the
powerful few who, in past ages, withheld it from us
for the purpose of their own gain and aggrandizement.
But, like all human achievements, it has brought with
it its dangers as well as its blessings.
Personal liberty, as we well know, is something quite
distinct from political liberty, and the danger which
we can never be careful enough to guard against is that
the acquisition of the one may involve us in the loss
or the curtailment of the other. When every man be-
comes potentially a law-maker the temptation of the
sovereign individual, both individually and collectively.,
.
Political and Personal Liberty.
243
to regard himself as his brother's keeper, called upon
to direct and regulate his brother's conduct and habits
and morals, is liable to create a system of tyranny
which
may prove to be even worse in its effects upon
the community at large than the yoke of the ancient
form of despotic government which we have succeeded
in throwing off.
Nowhere, it seems to me, does this truth apply with
greater force than it does in this country, where the
customs, the habits, the ideals and the social needs of
those who have made it their adopted home and refuge
vary as much as the creeds and nationalities vary from
which their ranks have been recruited. If one creed
or nationality, even though it exceed all others in num-
bers, should seek, by misuse of its political liberty, to
impose its particular customs, opinions and beliefs upon
the rest of the citizenship, the conflict between political
liberty and personal liberty must at once become acute,
to the detriment, not only of the individuals whose
liberties are involved, but of the community as a whole.
For there is only one way in which the issue of such a
conflict can be determined. It must last until the
rights of the individual are vindicated, because our
individual rights are our heritage from Nature, and
no human power can permanently suppress them.
They consist, not in the political rights which the many
have obtained by conquest from the few, but in the
natural rights which each of us must seek from the
244
Political and Personal Liberty.
other, each of us must concede to the other, and each of
us must defend from the other and for the other, as
long as the world lasts; the God-given rights of individ-
ual man as distinguished from the man-given rights of
the community of which he forms a constituent part.
There is no need to define what these rights are. The
history of government has long ago defined them for
all of us, and their limits have been set, and will always
be set, by actual experience.
But here is the crux of this whole great question, as
it confronts us to-day. It is just history, and the
experience of those who lived before us, which are
strangely lost sight of in the tendencies of many of
our present-day reformers. They suffer from a perfect
rage, not only to accelerate the slow and steady proc-
esses of Nature, but to correct and even arrest them;
and, since the making of laws is now in our own hands,
they demand that we shall devote our law-making
power, not only to the correction of the defects of our
weaker fellow-men, but to the correction of that which
they believe to be the defects of Nature herself, who
created those weaker fellow-men.
Education has become to them a mere secondary
auxiliary in shaping our lightning course towards per-
fection. Mankind, if we are to believe them, can be
made honest, and righteous, and sober, and moral, and
what not, by a mere stroke of the legislative pen. The
stern truth is forgotten, which history has so often and
Political and Personal Liberty.
245
so painfully impressed upon humanity, that law can
successfully concern itself only with the actions of man
towards man, but can never determine or control the
actions of individual man in such matters as concern
himself alone.
Under the circumstances, then, it is scarcely surpris-
ing that all the activities of that particular class of
reformers which I am describing should proceed from
a basis which is the very opposite from that upon which
our civilization and general social structure have been
erected. For, whereas law, as we generally understand
it, has always sprung from and been established by
custom, they are to-day trying to reverse the process
and establish custom by law. Whereas, we have hith-
erto largely left it to Nature to deal with the small
percentage of defectives she produces, and have made
our customs and usages conform to the character of the
huge percentage of normal beings, they are to-day
adopting the opposite course and are not only attempt-
ing to take the defectives out of Nature's experienced
hands, but are actually demanding of normal man that
he shall shape his customs and his habits to suit the
needs and the weaknesses of the comparatively few
defectives among us.
In saying this, I am not casting any doubt upon the
motives of these good people. They are excellent, of
But the question is not whether their motives
are excellent, but whether, by acting upon them, they
course.
246
Political and Personal Liberty.
will attain the excellent object they are seeking to
obtain.
The fact is that we cannot, by law, subordinate the
faculties of the strong to the needs of the weak with-
out destroying the very essence of that which has made
the majority of men to-day the strong, reliant and
competent beings they are—their personal liberty. It
is true that wise laws have done much to direct the
activities of men into worthy channels, even more per-
haps than unwise laws have undone. But our would be
uplifters forget that individual man himself has risen,
and is still rising, above the inherent weakness of all
animal nature, not by compulsion of law, or by the
coercion of his superiors, but by reason of the exercise
if his God-given individual free will, his power of self-
restraint, and by those higher faculties which religion
and culture have developed in him.
If we once deprive men of the right and the oppor-
tunity to exercise these faculties, the result must be,
if Nature's work is any criterion, not that the weak
will be raised to the level of the strong, but that the
strong will be lowered to the level of the weak. If we
sacrifice the independence of the many in order to
protect the frailty of the few, we shall not only destroy
the source from which the many derive their strength,
but shall still further accentuate the dependence of
the few, to whom a share of that strength has been
denied. Charity affords the best proof of the truth of
Political and Personal Liberty.
247
this. For who does not know that Charity, which aims
to relieve poverty, is the most fruitful producer of
paupers ?
This, then, is the real and most stupendous danger
that confronts us wherever we are confronted with the
curtailment of our personal liberty, not, as those who
affect to sneer at that liberty pretend, the mere sacrifice
of our individual pleasures, our individual indulgences,
or the satisfaction of our individual social needs. These
are minor incidents of this great question, dear to our
hearts, of course, but mere trifles compared with the
greater considerations involved.
Now, there is nothing new in all this, and certainly
nothing new to you, many of whom are far abler
exponents and far doughtier champions of the prin-
ciples I have been asked to discuss here than I can
ever hope to be. No man, indeed, who has studied
the history of government, and in particular the limita-
tions of the law-making power, as evidenced by its
many disastrous failures in all ages and under every
variety of conditions, needs to be told that the safe-
guarding of that which we call the personal liberty of
man is the primary and most vital essential to all
human progress, and that no law affecting that liberty
in the slightest particular, however charitable, however
estimable the motives may appear that prompt it, can
be enacted without danger to the whole system upon
which our civilization is founded.
و
248
Political and Personal Liberty.
Unhappily, the men who have acquired this knowl-
edge, and who possess this experience, are only too
often not the men who assemble in our legislative halls,
with the mandate of the people to make their laws for
them. And here we have an anomalous condition pre-
sented to us which has often puzzled me, and which I
offer for your earnest thought and consideration.
We demand of every profession upon which, directly
or indirectly, the public welfare is dependent, that its
members, before being permitted to enter it, shall
receive previous instruction and training at the hands
of those whose knowledge and experience of all its intri-
cacies have been acquired by diligent study and wide
practice. I say we demand this of every profession,
excepting one—that of the law-maker. The physician,
the jurist, the teacher and the preacher are required to
give evidence of their fitness to follow their respective
professions before they are licensed to practice them.
Yet the most important profession of all, that of the
law-maker, is open unconditionally to every adult
citizen, and its members are selected by the people
haphazard, without inquiry into their fitness, and with-
out consideration of their knowledge and experience
of the intricate problems of law and government with
which the world has grappled since history began.
Is it entirely to be wondered at that legislation,
under these circumstances, frequently runs riot, and
that it is guided by impulse and sentiment, and by
Political and Personal Liberty.
249
the often artificially created clamor of the untutored
multitude, rather than by logic and reason and the cau-
tion that comes with accumulated knowledge and train-
ing? Our schools and universities teach the evolution of
law, the interpretation of law, and the practice of law.
But the science which concerns itself with the effect and
the bearings of law, the science which defines the true
scope of legislation, and inculcates the lessons to be
learned from its successes and failures, the science, in
short, which deals with the natural restrictions and lim-
itations of the law-making power, has, I believe, no
chair in any university in the world.
Is this condition subject to remedy? Or would any
change in it be incompatible with the preservation of
our political liberty? It would be a bold man who pre-
sumed to answer the question off-hand. But whether
it be subject to remedy or not, the condition itself, I
submit, is the primary cause of the multitude of freak
laws which clog our statute books, the dead-letter laws
which breed among us so much pestilent contempt of
duly constituted authority, those unburied corpses, in
other words, that bestrew the battlefield on which
political liberty and personal liberty are to-day so
fiercely contending for their respective rights.
The victory at this day is still with personal liberty.
But for how long? The forces of tyranny and op-
pression are ever with us, and they surround that battle-
field to-day in their full array, awaiting the oppor-
250
Political and Personal Liberty.
tunity to fall upon both champions and bind them hand
and foot with the chains forged by fanaticism and
intolerance.
And if these forces should ever accomplish their
purpose, what then? Read the printed publications
and the open declarations of these insidious foes of the
liberties which the millions of your best and sturdiest
fellow-citizens came to this great republic to preserve
and enjoy, and they will tell you "what then.” They
will tell you, as nothing else can tell you, that if there
is one prayer more than any other which every true
citizen of this great country should offer up morn and
night to the Giver of all things, it is the prayer that
our free America may be preserved from the curse of
racial and social and religious prejudices and intoler-
ances, for they are the harbingers of disaster to all
that we cherish under the name of freedom and liberty.
Comments on Mr. Andreae's
Banquet Address
(From the American Leader, June 11, 1914.)
What the Press, Educators, Senators and Congress-
men Think of the Remarkable Address Delivered
by Mr. Percy Andreae of Chicago at the Fifth
Annual Banquet of the American Association of
Foreign-Language Newspapers, Held in New
York, February 7, 1914.
The attention aroused throughout the country by
the address on “Personal Liberty” delivered by Mr.
Percy Andreae at the annual banquet of the American
Association of Foreign Language Newspapers has
been of so unusual a kind that an epitome of the com-
ments made thereon, not only by the press, but by
many leading educators, senators and congressmen
of the country will prove of interest to all who read
this address in The American Leader of February
12, 1914.
Among the press comments the following extracts
are gleaned from numerous editorials in which Mr.
Andreae's suggestions were discussed:
The Springfield Republican, in an extensive analysis
of the address, says:
252
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
"Many serious thinkers nowadays are calling atten-
tion to the danger of excessive law-making. Mr.
Andreae puts the case well when he says: “Whereas
law, as we generally understand it, has always sprung
from and been established by custom, they are to-day
trying to reverse the process and establish custom by
law.'
The Indianapolis News in a two-column article on
the address says:
"The question is one of maintaining not simply our
civil liberty, but our religious liberty as well. The
more closely one studies history, the more clearly is
one convinced of the enormous harm done both the
minds and souls of men through efforts to limit their
rightful liberty even in the interest of what was sup-
posed to be morality and religion.”
The Buffalo News, speaking editorially, refers to
the “novel view set forth by Mr. Andreae that the
political liberty we enjoy is proving a danger to our
individual liberty,” and adds, "There is a good deal
in another idea of the same speaker that it is remark-
able that the science of law-making has no chair in any
university in the yorld.”
The Troy (N. Y.) Times ends a full column edi-
torial on the address with the words:
"Mr. Andreae deals in forceful fashion with a topic
of peculiar interest, and it will not be strange if his
suggestions arouse earnest thought and evoke much
discussion
Mr. Andreae’s Banquet Address.
253
>>
The Rochester (N. Y.) Times says, referring to Mr.
Andreae's "startling suggestions,” that "the laws im-
posed by an active and zealous minority may be as
oppressive and annoying and as destructive of the
rights of individuals as laws imposed by a czar.
The Fall River (Mass.) Herald says:
“Mr. Andreae has put his finger upon a weak spot
in our national political organization, and no man in
touch with our present-day conditions can question the
truth of his observations."
Perhaps the most interesting effect produced by the
address is shown in the large number of communica-
tions on the subject received from legislators of all
parties and the heads of educational establishments
throughout the country.
For instance, President L. J. Corbly, of Marshall
College, Huntington, W. Va., refers to the address as
replete with “ideas bristling with suggestions that
reveal a man and a mind in vital touch with social and
educational tendencies.” “Every legislator in the land.”
he continues, “ought to read it, read it again, and then
read it as one who will understand.
“It reflects two things I have emphasized in private
and public addresses for two years, namely, the differ-
ence between political and personal freedom together
with the tremendous importance of guaranteeing the
latter if we ever hope to achieve, as we should, the
former, and the puerility of legislating morals into
254
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
the upper stratum of the social fabric without making
the lower and substrata fundamental to all morality
that is worth the having—an astounding example of
the 'cart before the horse.'
“Mr. Andreae's chair in educational institutions will
be realized throughout the world purely as the result
of that opportune and wise suggestion and discovery.
I shall commend the address to every young man in
our school.'
Clarence D. Ashley, dean of the New York Univer-
sity School of Law, goes a step further than President
Corbly, and says:
"My last annual report, which seems to have at-
tracted some public attention, referred to courses of
this character, and their proposed scope would include
just such instruction as Mr. Andreae advocates. This
university stands ready to give a one or two years
course along these and kindred lines, if any one or
more patriotic and well-to-do citizens will supply the
funds."
Isaac H. Lionberger, of St. Louis, former member
of the faculty of the Law School of Washington Uni-
versity, agrees with Mr. Andreae because "in the brief
day of the social reformers all sorts of injurious experi-
ments are tried."
“I know of nothing,” he says, “so efficacious in con-
vincing people of the folly of their opinions as to let
them have their way. Misfortune is irritable. It needs
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
255
one.
to do something for its own relief. It exhausts itself
in the doing of foolishness. It is utterly incredible
that one hundred thousand pages of new positive law
should each year be enacted and enforced. The read-
justments which follow are furtive and unseen, yet
nevertheless efficacious in the long run.
“While these are my convictions, I nevertheless
think the suggestion of Mr. Andreae a most admirable
It ought to be of the greatest service to the
young men of the United States to be familiar with
the distressing history of such experiments as are,
from day to day, attempted. They will learn to fear
less from such follies and to trust less in them."
Representative William Gordon, of the 20th Con-
gressional District of Ohio, touches the same note in
his comment when he says:
“Members of our legislative bodies are too prone to
yield their convictions on public questions to what they
assume to be public sentiment, which is, in fact, only
the persistent, oft-repeated clamor of a comparatively
few noisy individuals.
“Mr. Andreae is a very able man, and in my opinion
he has done much to direct the people of this country
into the right line of thinking for themselves.”
Senator John Sharpe Williams says:
“I think there is a great deal in what Mr. Andreae
says. The political power of the majority sometimes
curtails the individual's liberty; in fact, it has a ten-
256
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
dency that way. Anybody who has carefully read the
history of ancient Athens knows that.
“Mr. Andreae seems to have touched a sympathetic
chord in calling attention to the tendency of the times
to legislate for the benefit of the minority instead of the
majority.”
Representative W. C. Adamson, of the 4th Congres-
sional District of Georgia and Chairman of the Com-
mittee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, supports
him as follows:
“The more important point which Mr. Andreae and
all patriots ought to begin to dwell upon in this coun-
try, and that is more and more the disease is spreading
of living by legislation to the utter neglect of individual
effort. Everybody wants to cure some pet ill by con-
gressional legislation, and generally it is something
in which he or very few are interested, and the general
public very little affected, but the propositions are
always based upon philanthropy and pro bono publico.”
Congressman A. J. Sabath, of the 5th Illinois Dis-
trict, agrees with this, when he says:
“As to Mr. Andreae's first observation, I desire to
say that I fully agree with him that the tendency is
to ignore customs, habits, comforts, and every mode of
living, and force upon the people of this country laws
advocated by a small minority, who believe that they
can legislate against the great majority of the personal
and civil liberties, prescribe the mode of living of such
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
257
majority, and change by law their tastes, legislating
the people into an unnatural state.”
According to all these and other distinguished com-
mentators, Mr. Andreae's suggestion that our univer-
sities and schools should establish chairs for teaching
the science of law-making appears to provide the most
promising remedy for that which is undesirable in the
present trend of our State and national legislation.
“Mr. Andreae has called attention to two things
which are vitally important to every man, woman and
child in America,” says President H. L. Stetson, of
Kalamazoo College.
“For a long time I have viewed with great appre-
hension the tendency to invade the 'God-given rights'
of the individual with legal enactments. The time has
come when law-making ought to receive as much atten-
tion from our institutions of learning as commerce, or
mathematics, or chemistry. I think Mr. Andreae's
suggestions ought to have a wide circulation."
And Representative George Graham, of the 2nd
Pennsylvania Congressional District, says:
"The subject Mr. Andreae discusses is one of vital
importance to-day. Legislation is running wildly along
lines that infringe needlessly on personal liberty. The
lack of training in law-making to which he refers is a
grave reality. It would be well to create chairs for
teaching the science of law-making, and make this a
branch of liberal education.'
258
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
United States Senator G. W. Norris, of Nebraska,
goes further and sees in the delays caused by techni-
calities in the courts the result of ignorance in framing
the law.
“It would,” he says, “be very desirable if legislators
having the power to enact laws for the control of the
people had a specific training along that line. There
is no doubt that much well intended legislation results
in injury for the very reason that those who frame the
law make mistakes in the language and enable courts
that are inclined to be technical to give it a meaning
that was never intended. I have often seen this
happen.”
Representative Charles B. Smith, of the 41st Con-
gressional District of New York, is more conservative
when he says:
"I will concede that the study of law-making in the
first instance would be a great help. You cannot,
however, make a specialist by means of any system
such as would be provided in a school. I would not
like to be understood as opposing Mr. Andreae's idea
or suggestion. I believe it is a good one for the reason
that it may stir up an interest in the whole subject and
induce communities to select men who are more care-
fully trained as their representatives in Congress and
in State legislatures.”
Congressman J. R. Clancy, of the 35th New York
District, and a member of the Committee on Education,
says:
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
259
"I quite agree with Mr. Andreae's stand that law-
making should be the work of those trained for such
service, and one of the objects of the proposed National
University is to undertake just this work, as well as
the training of men for important government posi-
tions."
Congressman Frank T. O'Hair, member of the Com-
mittee on Military Affairs, agrees as follows:
“I am impressed with the idea that attention should
be paid to the science of the method by which laws are
made. I will be glad to co-operate in an attempt to
accomplish something along this line."
It is perhaps natural that the warmest support to
Mr. Andreae's suggestion for a university course of
teaching the science of law-making should come from
the colleges and universities of the country. Many
educators commented at length on this feature of Mr.
Andreae's address, and practically all of them agreed
with his suggestion.
“I do believe that a chair such as has been suggested,
thoroughly well endowed, would serve a most useful
purpose,” said President C. H. Spooner, of Norwich
University, Northfield, Vt., and President James E.
Allen, of Davis and Elkins College, Elkins, W. Va.,
said:
"Mr. Andreae's ideas are very timely and nothing
will so much help, in my humble judgment, to prevent
the confusion and unnecessary bulk of new laws com-
260
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
ing from our legislatures and congress annually as a
protracted and thorough course of study along these
lines.”
Henry Louis Smith, President of Washington and
Lee University, Lexington, Va., adds this comment:
“I think the great universities with schools of law,
commerce, etc., might well establish chairs of law-
making, although these could only deal with broad,
fundamental principles, teaching thus the science of
law-making rather than actual practice or art of
legislation.”
W. A. Harper, President of Elon College, Elon,
N. C., also believes in the idea.
“I am in sympathy with the general spirit of Mr.
Andreae's utterance," he says, “though not with some
of his detailed statements. Yet I do think that the
tendency to enact every fad at once into law is supreme
folly."
And President E. N. Bryan, of the State College of
Washington, adds:
"I have long observed the swing of the pendulum
away from personal liberty and away from customary
law toward the attempt to submerge the liberty of the
individual in the will of the masses.
President H. D. Hoover, of Carthage College,
Carthage, Ill., takes a somewhat different angle, when
he says:
“It is my opinion that our legislators are discoverers
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
261
of law and not makers of law when they fulfill their
true functions. Law cannot reform, recreate or trans-
form (speaking now of civil law). Law is a great
teacher The cost of trying to make the defectives
whole when they cannot be anything but defectives is
an unwarranted tax upon the resources of the normal.”
Charles H. Levermore, of the World Peace Founda-
tion, Boston, calls attention to one university in which
there is already a chair for teaching the science of law-
making
“I think it is true,” he says, “that there is now and
always has been, a danger that many well-meaning
people, especially those who are eager for reform, act
as though they thought that legislation could establish
custom. Our colleges and universities might help out
legislators far more than they have done in the past.
I believe that we may point to at least one university
which is making its full contribution to the legislative
needs of the State in which the university is situated.
That institution is the University of Wisconsin.”
It is a source of much gratification that the foreign-
language press of this country should have been first in
presenting the all-important question discussed in these
interesting comments to those who lead the thought of
the nation. The comments themselves, emanating as
they do from many of our most distinguished citizens,
prove conclusively that the great work now being
accomplished by the foreign-language press in awaken-
262
Mr. Andreae's Banquet Address.
ing the citizenship generally to the danger confronting
its most cherished liberties is in accord with the best
and most earnest thought of our time.
Nation - Wide Prohibition and Its
Effect upon the American Hotels
and Their Patrons
Address Delivered Before the American Hotel Pro-
tective Association of the United States and
Canada, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, on
April 14, 1914.
Mr. President and Gentlemen:
Before I approach the subject upon which you
have
honored me with an invitation to speak before you
to-day, permit me to say that I believe it to be neither
your desire to listen to my views or to any one else's
views on that subject in its moral, ethical, or sociolog-
ical bearings, nor my province to discuss such views
before a gathering of this kind. The question whether
men shall continue to exercise the right they have
enjoyed from time immemorial to drink wines, beers,
and other alcoholic stimulants has, unfortunately, within
recent years, passed beyond the realm of opinion and
become, at least on the part of those who take the
negative side of this question, a matter of dogma pure
and simple, and you cannot argue with a man on a
matter of creed, nor reason with him on a question of
faith.
264
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
There is, however, one incontrovertible fact bearing
on this question which no one interested in its solution
can afford to ignore, and that is that a very large pro-
portion of mankind does exercise this right, in its
opinion without detriment either to itself or to others,
and that it is not likely, without a struggle, to surren-
der that right, merely because a certain percentage of
men does not exercise it as judiciously as it might, or
because a certain other percentage of men has firmly
determined in its own mind that mankind as a whole
shall go without it.
Now, mankind as a whole is a pretty big fellow, and
has certainly some claim to be consulted in a matter so
personal to itself as the one we are l'eviewing, and it is
from this standpoint, the correctness of which few will
doubt, that I propose to lay before you (whom I may,
I think, fitly describe as the housekeepers of the nation
at large) the question of prohibition as it confronts the
country to-day.
There are at present, as you all probably know, three
resolutions pending before the Congress of the United
States, two providing for an amendment to the Federal
Constitution by virtue of which the manufacture, sale
and importation of alcoholic beverages are to be forever
prohibited in this country, and the third providing for
an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the man-
ufacture and sale of distilled liquor. The passage of a
resolution to amend the Constitution of the United
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
265
States requires a two-thirds affirmative vote in both
houses of Congress, and the further ratification of that
vote by three-fourths of the legislatures of the forty-
eight States comprising the Union, before such amend-
ment can become part of the basic law of the country.
On the face of it, then, it would seem as if nothing
short of the overwhelming consent of the people at
large were required to give effect to the desire of those
who aim to impose this drastic law upon the whole
nation. But the real fact is just the reverse.
The action now asked of Congress is the mere sub-
mission to the legislatures of the individual States of
the question, “Shall the people of this country, by an
alteration of the Federal Constitution, be deprived of
the personal privilege of obtaining alcoholic beverages?"
The individual congressman, therefore, is not required
to cast his vote either for or against depriving the
people of that privilege, but ostensibly merely in favor
of allowing the people to decide for themselves whether
they shall be so deprived. I say ostensibly, because, as
I shall show you later on, it is not the people who will
eventually decide this question, but a comparatively
insignificant minority of the people. Now, though
considerably more than one-third of the members of
Congress may be, and, according to the belief of many,
actually are personally opposed to the principle of
prohibition, yet such is the vindictive passion with
which this principle is insisted on by those who wish to
266
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
see it established, and so relentless and unscrupulous
their persecution and vilification of those who oppose
them, either politically or otherwise, that the average
congressman is only too glad to avail himself of the
opportunity to compromise, on the one hand with them,
and on the other hand with his own conscience, by con-
senting to leave the final determination of the question
to the country at large.
It is this fact which renders the passage of one or
the other of the resolutions in question, should either
ever reach the floor of Congress, an almost universally
admitted certainty, though only a minority of the
representatives of the people may favor the amendment
themselves.
The same condition, only in a greatly aggravated
degree, attends the ratification of the resolution by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the States of the Union.
Here, too, the general impression is that, if ratified, an
overwhelming majority of the people will have ap-
proved the resolution, whereas the fact is that a com-
paratively small minority of the people will have the
power to give final effect to the resolution against the
desire and the will of the rest of the community. And
for this reason: Each of the forty-eight States is
entitled to cast, through its legislature, one vote on the
question, so that, for instance, the State of Nevada,
with a little over 80,000 population, has exactly the
same voice in deciding it as the State of New York
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
267
has with her population of over 9,000,000 souls. Nay,
a mere majority of Nevada's voters, since a majority
determines the attitude of the legislature on such a
question, can offset the entire voting strength of the
State of New York, even if every voter in that State
were opposed to that which a bare majority of Nevada's
voters favored. Indeed, if you review the forty-eight
States in the order of their population, you will find
that thirty-six States with a total population of just
over forty million will outvote, by a mere majority of
those forty million, the remaining twelve States with a
total population of nearly fifty-four million, though
every single one of those fifty-four million people were
opposed to that which the majority of the forty million
favored.
I think you will admit, quite aside from the merits
or demerits of the question itself, that this is an extra-
ordinarily dangerous situation, overshadowing all the
moral, economical and industrial aspects which that
question presents. In other words, whatever the opin-
ion of individual men may be with regard to these latter
aspects, and they are, of course, subject to opinion and
open to argument, though the prohibitionist arbitrarily
denies this fact, there can surely be only one opinion
regarding the desirability, or indeed the possibility, of
imposing the will of a comparatively small minority of
men upon a very large majority in a matter so closely
affecting the most cherished, and hitherto undisputed,
268
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
right of the individual to pursue his own personal cus-
toms, whether good, bad or indifferent, and to regulate
his own conduct within the four walls of his own home.
This is the main aspect of this many-angled question
which I desire to present to you, and if I confine myself
to it almost exclusively it is for the reason that its other
aspects have been so fully discussed that I could hardly
hope to add anything new to that which has already
been said about them. That the resolution aiming to
prohibit the individual from drinking wines, beers and
other liquors in his own home incidentally contemplates
the destruction of over a thousand million dollars '
worth of property without compensating those who,
under the sanction and the implied guarantee of the
law, have invested their means in that property, and
without reimbursing them for the loss of a business
which they have established, not to create, but to meet,
a public demand, the legitimacy of which even those
who aim to destroy the supply have never ventured to
question, is of course a matter of very grave import,
affecting the stability of all and every other kind of
business, and the sacredness of all and every other kind
of property right. But you know this as well as I do.
Indeed, in so far as your own business has of necessity
been so arranged as to comply with this demand of the
public, you are yourselves personally interested in this
aspect and therefore more competent than I am to
judge in how far your own business and property rights
will be affected.
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
269
On the other hand, that 'the attempt to compel the
people to abstain from the use of beers, wines and other
liquors will throw two million wage-earners upon the
already overstocked labor market of the country is, at
least in my estimation, a consideration of even greater
moment than the question of property loss, and weighs
far more heavily in the scales against the so-called
moral aspect of this whole question, which the advocates
of prohibition so strongly insist upon.
These advocates deny the injurious result of prohibi-
tion to the working man, claiming, in the first place,
that the money spent for beers, wines and other liquors
goes only to a very small extent towards the payment
of labor, and, in the second place, that such labor as
may be dislodged by prohibition will be quickly ab-
sorbed in other trades, whose business will be enor-
mously increased by the purchases of necessities made
with the monies the people will save when they cease
spending anything for drink.
I would like, if you will permit me to digress for a
few moments from what I have called the main aspect
of the question, to point out the obvious fallacies upon
which these two very random assertions are based, and
incidentally to bring to your attention the extraordi-
nary want of the sense of proportion which is the
characteristic feature of all the reasoning of these excel-
lent people, and which, unfortunately, infects those
whom they influence.
270
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
The annual drink bill of the United States, according
to government statistics, approximates two billion dol-
lars. A certain clergyman, not a prohibitionist, but a
temperance advocate, as I hope we all are, happened
recently to cull this interesting fact from a prohibition
paper, together with the statement accompanying it to
the effect that only a very small percentage of this
huge amount went in payment for labor, and he was so
exercised by what he called this staggering revelation of
the excessive indulgence in drink on the part of the
people, and the waste of money it involved, that he
issued a statement insisting that something should be
done to eradicate an evil which was evidently sapping
the very vitals of humanity, and would shortly result
in leaving only a handful of temperate individuals, like
himself, to people the earth.
Now, I have no doubt that this statement, like many
other statements from similar sources, was religiously
accepted as a fact by hundreds of good and well-
meaning people, who, following the example of their
pastor, had seen nothing wrong in indulging temper-
ately in what I may call the liquid pleasures of the
table, but who, with this alleged proof of the intemper-
ance of the majority of their fellow-citizens confronting
them, felt that probably nothing short of absolute
general prohibition was capable of saving the human
race from rapid total extinction.
But what is the real truth? First and foremost, the
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
271
real truth is that this worthy clergyman has utterly
failed to realize what a big country he is living in.
There are upwards of 93,000,000 people in the United
States, and if you divide 93,000,000 people into $2,000,-
000,000 per annum, you will find that it produces a
little over $21 per head per annum, or less than six
cents
per
head per day spent in drink. This is less than
the average cost of a pint bottle of beer at retail. The
pastor in question, therefore, who considers he is
indulging temperately when he takes a pint of beer for
lunch, and another pint for dinner, is in reality con-
suming, by his own reckoning, just double his average
proportion of what he calls the staggering excess of
drink consumed by the nation at large, and conse-
quently, if his prediction regarding the impending
extinction of the human race owing to excessive drink-
ing is correct, he himself will not be included in the
handful of temperate men who will soon be left over
to people the earth.
He does not realize, in short, that if only half of the
population of the United States drinks in just the
same proportion as he does, the nation's drink bill will
still amount to $2,000,000,000.
But what is of greater significance is that he does
not realize that every cent of this $2,000,000,000 spent
in drink, including the $225,000,000 which goes in the
form of taxes to the government of the United States,
pays for labor, since the market value of every com-
272
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
modity which nature brings forth represents just
exactly the sum total of the wages paid for the labor
employed in producing and bringing it to the market,
plus the interest on the capital required to set such
labor in motion, which is itself nothing more than the
accumulated product of labor, and cannot be expended
except in payment for labor. Only the earth, in fact,
works without pay. Hence, if $2,000,000,000 worth
of drink is not produced and consumed, something else
must be produced and consumed, and something else
must be taxed, in its stead, in order, respectively, to
make up for the loss of nearly a quarter of a billion
dollars in the government's annual revenues, and to
give employment to at least 2,000,000 wage-earners
who depend for their existence and that of their fam-
ilies upon the nation's drink bill.
The theoretical mind of the prohibitionist brushes
these practical difficulties aside as if they were too
paltry for serious consideration. But, then, as a rule
he has no personal risk in the experiment he is suggest-
ing, and can therefore bravely afford to let both the
capitalist and the working man take their chances. He
is simply satisfied in his own mind that two million
laboring men can easily find employment in other
trades, becauses he assumes that, when all men cease
drinking, they will promptly spend $2,000,000,000 a
year more for clothes, shoes, hats, gloves, and other
commodities, which labor must produce. Nor is he at
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
273
all concerned about the revenues of the government,
because he is equally satisfied in his own mind that
when people are once deprived of the means of obtain-
ing alcohol, all poorhouses, insane asylums, jails, and
most of the law courts will go out of existence (dis-
lodging more labor, by the way) and the sum thus
saved to the government in the maintenance of these
institutions will more than balance the loss of revenue
from the sale of wines, beers and other liquors.
Alas, it is needless to discuss all these beautiful theo-
ries, because they are all based upon the one funda-
mental fallacy that, if the manufacture, sale and
importation of alcoholic beverages is prohibited, men
will cease drinking such beverages. The fact is that
the existence of breweries, distilleries and wineries is
the effect and not the cause of men's inclination to
drink, and their destruction, and the abolition of the
sale of wines, beers and other liquors in hotels, stores,
or similar establishments, can neither destroy the desire
of men to obtain these commodities, nor deprive them
of the means of doing so. Those who ignore this
obvious fact forget that men drank, some unhappily
to excess, long before breweries, distilleries and wineries
were built, because there is nothing that grows in
Nature from which alcohol cannot easily be obtained in
practically unlimited quantities by all who desire it,
and that the number of those who do desire it is over-
whelmingly large is proved beyond the peradventure of
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Nation-Wide Prohibition.
a doubt by our nation's annual drink bill of $2,000,000,-
000. In other words, breweries, distilleries and wineries
were not established for the mere purpose of providing
men with alcohol, which they had theretofore just as
easily, and perhaps more cheaply, produced for them-
selves, but for the purpose of providing them with
alcohol unmixed with the various attendant poisons
that accompany it whenever produced by the crude and
unscientific methods of private manufacture.
Go into any prohibition State and sample the fearful
alcoholic concoctions with which the people there supply
themselves, in lieu, and usually in excess, of the puri-
fied article they are prevented from obtaining, and you
will find ample proof of my statement. In short, as
Mark Twain has so quaintly put it: “Since men can
get their tipple out of a table leg or a wooden fence
rail, what is the use of talking about prohibition?”
Gentlemen, I have dwelt upon these facts, not in
order to convince you of their truth, because their truth
is as old as the hills, but in order to establish the con-
clusion that the nation's drink bill, which the prohibi-
tionist points to as proof of the necessity for prohibi-
tion, is, on the contrary, the strongest conceivable proof
of its futility. If this conclusion is wrong, the sooner
we find it out, without putting it to the dangerous test
of statutory law, the better, and there is no body of
men in this country better equipped to find it out than
I will go further and say that there are no
you are.
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
275
men upon whom the duty is more clearly laid to find
it out than you.
I took the liberty of referring to you, at the outset
of my address, as the housekeepers of the nation, and
you assuredly are. The American hotel is the home
of the American citizen when he is traveling, and the
percentage of Americans who do not travel at some
time or other in their lives is very small. The most
successful hotel man, I believe, is he who is most expert
in managing to make his guests forget that they are
not in their own home, and he does so by placing within
the reach and within the command of his guests those
comforts which they are accustomed to and desire to
have within the privacy of their own four walls. I
believe that ninety, if not ninety-five or ninety-nine,
per cent of the hotels of the country. supply wines,
beers and other liquors to their guests, and I presume
that they do not do so with the purely malicious
intention of causing them to yield to a temptation which
they are yearning and praying to escape from, but in
order to meet a genuine and spontaneous demand on
their part.
Some of you, I believe, have already gone on record
in protesting against the proposed amendment of the
Constitution providing for nation-wide prohibition of
the manufacture, sale and importation of alcoholic
beverages. I now suggest that you follow up this
action by asking your guests, in whose behalf I pre-
276
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
sume it was taken, to either sustain or repudiate it.
In other words, it is in your power, as it is in no one
else's power, to let the Congress of the United States
know just exactly what the people of the United
States think of these prohibition amendments, by ask-
ing your guests to express themselves either for or
against them.
You can do this by placing in the letter file of each
of your guests, on any given day, or within any given
period, a printed form of petition to Congress, setting
forth the fact that certain resolutions providing for
nation-wide prohibition are now pending in the Con-
gress; that the hotels of the country are interested to
learn the attitude of their patrons towards such reso-
lutions; and that each guest is therefore requested to
sign said petition either for or against their passage
and deliver it to the hotel management for transmission
to Congress.
This will be tantamount to a representative poll of
the people of the country on a question which the Con-
gress is to-day considering, without having any means
of ascertaining the true sentiment of the voters with
regard to it.
I am fully alive to the fact that this cannot be done
without careful preparation, and that it should not be
done without providing the strictest possible safe-
guards that will secure an unquestionably fair and
impartial expression of public opinion. The arrange-
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
277
ments for carrying it out should therefore be placed in
the hands of a committee, with power to appoint sub-
committees in every State, whose duty it will be to
supervise all details connected with this poll, and to
settle all questions that may arise concerning it.
I am authorized by the National Association of Com-
merce and Labor, consisting of a large number of
Merchants' and Manufacturers' Associations through-
out the country, all of whose members, representing
many thousands of firms, are actively interested in
this question, to offer the assistance and co-operation of
that association in the execution of this work, and to
place its very extensive organization at your disposal
for the purpose of perfecting and carrying it out in
all its details, and if it should be your pleasure to
adopt my suggestion, I would ask that you empower
your committee to act in conjunction with that associa-
tion and avail itself of the facilities it offers in putting
the proposed plan in operation.
I suggest, furthermore, that your committee be
empowered to place itself in communication with all
the clubs of the country and invite them to co-operate
with you in this work by taking a similar poll of their
own members.
Gentlemen, I urge this action upon you, regardless
of whether you are individually believers in prohibition
or not, and I do so, not for your sake, but for the sake
of those whom you serve, and whose voice in such a
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Nation-Wide Prohibition.
matter none but they who hold the principle of demo-
cratic government in contempt can presume to dis-
regard.
Many of us may differ individually on the question of
what measure of personal freedom is best calculated to
promote the welfare of the community at large, but
whether one of us believes that a maximum of such
freedom, and another believes that a minimum of such
freedom, is most beneficial, is a matter of no moment
at all. It is the will of the people that governs the
government of this country, and it is upon the will of
the people that the surrender, or the non-surrender, of
their individual rights and liberties depends. Indeed,
the success or the failure of all laws in a common-
wealth like ours hinges upon the correct interpretation
of the people's will on the part of those who make
those laws, for what we rather grandiloquently term
the majesty of the law is not conferred upon laws by
those who make them, nor by those who execute them,
but by the mass of the people who accept them, ap-
prove them, and ratify them.
If the mass of the people, whose collective wisdom
is superior to the wisdom of any legislative body con-
ceivable, would take as determined an attitude towards
the laws of the land before they are enacted as it does
towards the laws of the land after they are enacted,
many of the troubles from which our republic is to-day
suffering would be eliminated. It lies in this case with
Nation-Wide Prohibition.
279
you to become the instrument through which the nation
at large can unequivocally define its real attitude
towards a measure which, if enacted, will constitute the
most radical departure in the government of men since
the days of the ancient patriarchs.
If you consent to become that instrument, you will
perform, not only a service to yourselves and to your
clients, but a patriotic service to the country at large;
you will earn, not only the recognition of the people to
whose views you thus give the means of utterance, but
also the gratitude of the people's representatives, the
faithful performance of whose duty to the nation
is conditioned upon a correct knowledge of those views.
And, above all, you will discharge a duty clearly im-
posed upon yourselves, as the nation's housekeepers,
namely, to see that, if a change is to be made in the
order of the nation's household, it be made with the
full knowledge and consent of the householders them-
selves, and not at the mere dictation of a factional body
of citizens who represent themselves as the accredited
spokesmen of those householders.
Gentlemen, I ask you to give this matter the earnest
and urgent consideration it deserves. Your ability to
carry it out is beyond question. To believe that the
will to do so is lacking in you would mean to doubt the
judgment, the loyalty, and the patriotism of men who
represent one of the greatest and most magnificent
institutions of this country—the American hotel.
Personal Liberty
I.
One of the most dangerous errors to which many of
those are subject who let others do their thinking for
them is the belief that, because the liberty of the
individual to select his own beverage or form of amuse-
ment happens at present to be the most prominent
matter of controversy between the foes and the advo-
cates of personal liberty, therefore the question of
personal liberty begins and ends with the so-called
drink question.
This question is a mere incident of the greater and
more far-reaching question of individual liberty, though
the stage it has now reached in this country typifies,
perhaps more strikingly, and certainly more intelligibly
to the average mind than anything else could do, the
critical situation into which this greater controversy
has entered.
The history of civilization, when stripped of its
unessential features, is largely the record of man's
strangely contradictory struggle; on the one hand, to
assert his right to the exercise of his individual tastes,
opinions and beliefs, and, on the other hand, when
he has succeeded in securing that right for himself,
Personal Liberty.
281
to arrogate to himself the privilege of denying the
same right to those whose tastes, opinions and beliefs
differ from his own.
For how many hundreds, nay, thousands of years,
for instance, have men striven to gain their religious
freedom; i. e., the right to worship their Maker accord-
ing to their individual beliefs and the dictates of their
own consciences? And have they finally succeeded?
Nine men out of ten will undoubtedly answer the
question in the affirmative. But will they answer the
question quite truthfully?
It is true that we no longer burn those at the stake
from whose opinions we differ. But has the desire
to do so entirely died out among us? We no longer
persecute those of whose form of divine worship we
disapprove, and drive them into other lands, where,
peradventure, their form of worship will establish itself
as the dominant form, and its votaries will promptly
proceed to drive out all others. But, again, has the
desire to do so entirely died out among us?
The methods of men change with the changing
times. But human nature remains always the same,
though it may manifest itself in ever-changing forms,
and assert itself in an infinite variety of guises.
It is a curious and significant fact that since civilized
men have, outwardly, at least, outgrown their fierce
desire to dictate to others just what manner and form
the relations between them and their Creator shall
282
Personal Liberty.
assume, a strong tendency has developed in certain
denominational bodies to carry their influence beyond
the sphere of matters spiritual, and bring it to bear,
with all the force of militant dogmatism, upon the
purely mundane affairs of men.
As long as the effect of such a tendency is confined to
those belonging to the particular religious denomina-
tion which manifests it, no valid objection can be
raised against it. But the moment it begins to extend
beyond that circle we are confronted at once with a
repetition, in a new form, of the old struggle to subject
the conscience of one man, or one set of men, to the
conscience of another man, or another set of men.
The danger with which such a condition is fraught
--and that the condition exists in this country to-day
no dispassionate observer will deny—is manifest. That
danger is all the greater because the admirable achieve-
ments of government, aided by modern progressive
science, in protecting men against the inroads of dis-
ease, the dangers of accident, and the multitudinous
effects of individual and collective human greed, indif-
ference and carelessness, are hailed by some as a reason
or proof that it is also the function of government to
dictate to men generally how they shall shape their
habits, or to what extent they shall indulge their appe-
tites, and engage in their various pleasures and pas-
times.
That it is the province of religion to influence men
Personal Liberty.
283
through their individual consciences in these regards
will be freely admitted by every reasonable man. But
whenever any religious body departs from this spiritual
method of procedure, and appeals, with all the force
of political pressure, to the mundane power of govern-
ment to accomplish by dint of law what moral or
religious persuasion has failed to accomplish, there
must inevitably ensue, not only a conflict between the
government and the individual consciences of the
governed, but a conflict between the denominations
themselves, which differ on these and other cognate
subjects as radically as they differ on matters of creed
and worship
Perhaps no more striking instance in point could be
cited than that presented by the laws in this country
regulating the observance of the Sabbath. Most men
agree, either on religious or other grounds, that it is
proper and expedient to observe the Sabbath. But
even the leaders in religious thought differ on the
question of the manner and extent of such observance.
Yet our so-called Sunday laws conform almost exclu-
sively to the views of one particular group of Christian
denominations, entirely ignoring those of all others.
This fact is rendered all the more significant when it
is realized that these particular denominations happen
to be identical with those which are in our day so
aggressively, not to say viciously, insisting upon the
passage of other restrictive laws, relating, for instance,
284
Personal Liberty.
to the use of tobacco, alcoholic drink, playing cards, the
censorship of the drama and works of fiction, the utter-
ances of the press, the purification of art, the elimina-
tion of dancing, and the prohibition of sundry other
pastimes and pleasures of the people, to the pursuit of
which they happen to be religiously or otherwise
opposed.
And where is this appeal for legislative repression in
the interest of one comparatively small but politically
and aggressively active group of religious bodies going
to end? Has not the time come when the people of all
denominations should ask whether the laws of this free
country, no matter by whom inspired, or by what
majority enacted, are to decree what shall be the moral
habits, the mental and physical recreations, or the
religious practices of all its citizens?
Let it be understood that no criticism of Puritan
ideals and no reflection upon Puritan motives is here
implied. This country is large enough to give room to
all creeds and ideals, but it is too large to permit of the
political ascendancy of one creed over all others, and
it is as much in the interest of those of Puritan ideals
that this fact should be sternly insisted on as it is in
the interest of those of other views and faiths.
For who knows, if this tendency towards denomi-
national control of government prevails, how soon the
Puritan himself may have to assume the role of the
protestant?
Personal Liberty.
285
Supposing, for instance, the Christian Scientist, ,
whose religious belief causes him to condemn the use of
drugs and medicines, should one day, by organized
political effort of the very kind now put forth by
certain other religious denominations, attempt to force
his particular precepts upon the rest of the citizenship,
by procuring the passage of laws forbidding the sale
or use of drugs for medical purposes, would the
citizen of Puritan proclivities sit idly by and allow
such interference with his liberty of choice to pass
without vigorous protest?
If he did, he would assuredly not be deserving of
the liberty he now enjoys. And here is a point, which
we must emphasize again and again, because it is im-
possible to emphasize it too often, or too strongly: The
privilege of American citizenship not only bestows upon
him who possesses it the right to enjoy the liberties
guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States,
but it imposes upon him also the duty to preserve those
liberties and defend them against all comers.
It is in order to awaken every true-thinking citizen,
and in particular those who have more recently acquired
their rights of citizenship, to a realization of this fact
and its important bearing upon the present situation,
that these articles on personal liberty are written.
There is no difference between these rights of citizen-
ship, whether they have been recently acquired, or
whether they have devolved upon the holder by the
286
Personal Liberty.
incident of birth. Let the naturalized citizen bear
in mind that he is not here as a mere tolerated guest
of those whose citizenship has descended to them from
generations of forefathers. He came here under the
implied assurance that the liberties guaranteed to all
citizens by the wise framers of the great American
Constitution were inviolate, and he is not only just as
much entitled as the descendants of earlier settlers,
but is in duty bound, as a man and a citizen, to de-
mand, with all the power which his citizenship vests in
him, that these liberties be preserved to him. He is,
in other words, a living part of this great Republic,
not a stranger within the gates, dependent for the
right to the pursuit of happiness, according to his
customs and ideals, upon the grace or the tolerance of a
coterie of men who claim the possession of some
superior kind of citizenship.
If this coterie of men has organized itself into a
solid body, in order, by the exercise of shrewdly and
not always scrupulously manipulated political power, ,
to force all others, not of their way of thinking, to
submit to their views and bow to their will, those whose
rights as American citizens are thereby threatened,
whether they hail from Russia or Italy, from Greece
or Sweden, or from whatsoever other lands they may
come, must either counter this dangerous move by
organizing in defense of those rights, or blame them-
selves if they are ultimately deprived of them.
Personal Liberty.
287
II.
The most formidable foe of human liberty is human
ignorance. There is probably no thinking human
being, excepting perhaps the lowest type of savage,
in whom, consciously or unconsciously, the desire for
freedom does not exist; nor have men in reality ever
been lacking in the means of realizing that desire, if
they so chose. In all ages, it has been solely the want
of knowledge how to utilize those means that has
prevented men from obtaining freedom and, when
obtained, of keeping it.
Under the older forms of government the people,
when oppressed beyond endurance, have risen against
their oppressors and endeavored, by force of arms, to
secure the liberty that was denied them. In most cases,
as history shows, these attempts failed, and, even when
they succeeded, the success was only temporary. And
why? For one of two reasons. Either because the
masses were inferior to their oppressors in the knowl-
edge of how to use their weapons, or because the very
weapons they had employed to obtain their freedom
were adroitly turned against them by the identical men
they had selected to lead them to victory.
We live in different times, and, especially in this
country, it is no longer the spear, the sword and the
musket to which the people have to resort in order to
protect their liberties from those who would destroy
them. When the American Colonies, in their declara-
288
Personal Liberty.
tion of emancipation from the thraldom of the mother
country and its arbitrary form of government, pro-
claimed the new gospel of individual freedom to the
world, every citizen of the new republic, without dis-
tinction of person or class, was armed with the same
weapon of defense against any attempted encroachment
from within the republic upon this newly acquired
liberty.
That weapon was not the spear, the sword, or the
musket. That weapon was the vote.
The means, therefore, which the great mass of the
people possess to-day to satisfy their desire for liberty
are no longer the same, but a moment's reflection will
convince any intelligent mind that the conditions under
which these means can be made available have under-
gone no change whatever. For, just as in the olden
days it was not the lack of arms to defend their liberties,
but the want of knowledge how to use those arms,
which kept men in a state of subjection, so the preser-
vation of our rights in this free republic depends, at
the present day, not upon the mere possession of the
privilege of franchise, but upon that which is far
more important, namely, the knowledge how to exercise
it.
Self-evident as this truth is, it is, like most self-
evident truths, more liable than any other to be lost
sight of in the actual practice of daily life.
The Russian or the Finn, who came here from the
>
Personal Liberty.
289
land of his birth to escape from the intolerable despot-
ism of autocratic rule; or the German, the Bohemian,
or the Austrian, who sought freedom on these shores
from the exacting demands and the brutal arrogance
of an all-pervading militarism, did so, not because his
hatred of his oppressors caused him to love his old
home less, but because it caused him to love freedom
more. But if he fondly imagined that the golden fruit
of liberty hung here on every tree, ready for all comers
to pluck, without effort and endeavor, and without
intelligent application of the means to seize and keep it,
with which his privilege of citizenship equipped him,
he fell into the same error that brought upon him the
deplorable condition of subjugation to a tyrannical
power from which he had fled.
Man’s liberty, in other words, both in this country
and elsewhere, lies in his own making, which means
that no one can make or unmake his liberty, but, col-
lectively speaking, individual man himself. Human
ambition to exercise power over others will in all
probability never die out. Whether that ambition
assume the form of a desire in certain men to make
their fellow-men mere servile contributors to their
own individual fortunes, or whether it express itself
in the apparently less egotistic tendency to impose a
particular rule of conduct or a particular code of
morals upon the rest of mankind, the effect, wherever
it is exercised with success, is the same, namely, the
290
Personal Liberty.
supremacy of one man, or one class of men, over
another man, or another class of men; in other words,
the subjection of the independent will of the many
to the arbitrary dictation of the few.
This has been, in all times, the beginning of despotic
rule; that is, the manipulation of the governmental
machine in the interest of a single individual, a single
family, or a single class among the general community.
Moreover--and this is a fact bearing much significance
in these days of almost hysterical reform tendencies-
there is in history no instance on record of such rise to
despotic power on the part of any man, family, or
class, that has not been based on the pretense or the
promise of bettering the conditions of the masses and
affording them greater freedom and protection from
injury or injustice.
Let us not be misunderstood when we make this
assertion. We hold that there is no nobler life than
that which is devoted to the endeavor to improve the
lives of others, to bring greater happiness, greater
security and greater protection to the many who are
handicapped by conditions of ignorance from within
and conditions of callous indifference from without.
We concede, too, and gratefully, that at no time in the
history of mankind have there been such great strides
in this direction recorded, or so many sincere efforts to
this end expended, as are in evidence on all hands
to-day. But, if it be true that blessings sometimes
Personal Liberty.
291
come in disguise, the same is equally true of curses,
and to distinguish between the two, before their effect
reveals them in their true character, requires more
knowledge and experience than are given to the ordi-
nary man, whose range of mental vision does not
extend beyond the narrow sphere of his own personal
interests and associations.
If this were not true, the whole social history of man,
as we know it to-day, would have to be rewritten. If
this were not true, men would never have had cause in
the past to overthrow their tyrants and oppressors,
because they would never have given into the hands of
others the power to tyrannize and oppress them. The
despots of old did not make themselves. They were
made by the people, who were first deceived by the
promise of blessings to come, and then resigned them-
selves, as best they could, to bear the curse which came
in their stead.
There is little difference, in this regard, between our
times and those that belong to past history, excepting,
as we have pointed out, that a new weapon has been
placed in the hands of the people wherewith to protect
themselves against the schemes, the oppressions, or the
exactions of those who are ever aiming to deprive them
of their natural rights and privileges. Yet, if the peo-
ple give as little heed to the necessity of training and
disciplining themselves in the knowledge of how and in
what direction to use this new defensive weapon as
292
Personal Liberty.
they did in the case of the older weapon, it will be as
surely directed against them as formerly the spear, the
sword and the musket became in their own hands the
means of their subjugation by their craftier and more
experienced enemies.
Experience has shown that a well-instructed army
can subdue a force of ten times its number, if that
force is scattered and uninformed and undisciplined,
though man for man each individual may be equal to
the other in energy and physical strength. Likewise,
a small force of well-disciplined and determined citi-
zens can outwit and outmaneuver an infinitely larger
number of citizens at the polls, if the latter lack the
knowledge, the training and the power of united effort,
which are as necessary to the effective exercise of the
voting franchise as they were necessary to the effective
employment of the less peaceful weapons in vogue
in the days of yore.
Few men probably require to be reminded of the
classic saying that eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty. Yet how many of those who wisely quote this
saying know its real meaning, or its real application to
our present-day conditions? How many, indeed, know
in which direction to practice that vigilance? How
many, if they ever gave the subject real thought, imag-
ine that it merely applies to our attitude towards the
foes who may threaten our liberties from without, for-
getting the far more dangerous enemies who are ever
Personal Liberty.
293.
menacing those liberties from within? We maintain
our army and our naval forces, backed by the strength
of the entire nation, to safeguard us against the
former. Are we equally well equipped to safeguard
ourselves against the latter? Do we take the same
cautious measure of the strength of these foes from
within that we do of the strength of our foes from
without? Do we maintain our defenses against the
enemy of our liberties at home with the same care and
solicitude that we bestow upon our defenses against
the enemy of our liberties abroad?
In the olden days the people were duped into fight-
ing against their own liberties because they knew no
better. In our day the people are duped into voting
against their liberties because they know no better.
And they know no better, not because the necessary
knowledge is beyond their reach, but because the
enjoyment of the very liberties their forefathers pro-
cured for them has lulled them into a state of fancied
security against any possible loss or curtailment of
those liberties. Yet they are encroached upon every
day, not by the assault of armed forces, but by
the far more insidious process of restrictive or coercive
legislation, fostered by well-organized cliques of men
who are constitutionally opposed to all freedom of will
and liberty of conscience, and who, like the tyrants of
old, enlist the support of the people in favor of such
legislation by specious promises of greater blessings
and more ideal liberties to come.
294
Personal Liberty.
It is for this reason that we prefaced this article
with the statement that the greatest foe of human lib-
erty is human ignorance. Every individual American
citizen contributes to the making or unmaking of his
liberties by his vote, and if he casts that vote in ignor-
ance of the true intentions of the man in whose hands
he thereby places his destiny, or in ignorance of the
true purposes of the measures he thereby converts into
laws, he is neglecting the primary and most elementary
duty which devolves upon him with his privilege of
franchise.
There was never a time when men needed to be
taught what their liberties are. Every man knows this
by intuition. What every man does not know is how
easily those liberties can be taken away from him by
his own unconscious connivance, and he will never
obtain that knowledge until he awakes to the necessity
of combining with his fellows in defense of his liberties,
as those who begrudge him those liberties combine
together to deprive him of them.
III.
If it is true that of all the foes of human liberty the
most formidable is human ignorance, it is equally true
that the greatest of all dangers which beset that liberty
is the ignorant folly of those who abuse it.
When, in 1898, the United States incorporated in
its possessions the Philippine Islands, the full measure
Personal Liberty.
295
of political and personal freedom enjoyed by the
citizens of our great republic was not extended to the
people of those islands, and wisely so. The safe exer-
cise of liberty is conditioned upon the power of self-
restraint possessed by the individual who enjoys liberty.
Self-restraint is the product of education, and can no
more be imparted to man by law than can any other
virtue. Savage, or semi-savage peoples are notoriously
devoid of self-restraint, hence their incapacity for
self-government.
It is, in brief, upon the measure of self-control of
which any aggregation of individuals shows itself
capable that their right to freedom is founded.. So
well, indeed, is this principle established that even the
most liberal of modern governments provide for the
temporary suspension of the most cherished rights of
the people under circumstances of extraordinary neces-
sity, such as occur in times of extreme popular excite-
ment, when the public mind is distracted by some over-
whelming national disaster, or when the public temper
is carried from its normal moorings by one of those
waves of social, political or religious hysteria which
from time to time sweep over the most civilized of
nations. It is on these occasions always the incontinence
of the individual, however temporary the nature of
that incontinence may be, which gives the primary
impetus to the public abandonment of reason and self-
control, and which brings upon the people as a whole
the inevitable loss of their cherished privileges.
296
Personal Liberty.
It is, therefore, upon the actions of the individual
that, in the first instance, the rights and the liberties
of the whole community depend, and it is for this
reason of vital importance to the community as a
whole that it should exercise such influence upon its
individual members as may effectively prevent them
from endangering the liberties of all.
That the community is capable of exercising that
influence, and, indeed, that it has in the past exercised
such influence with more effect than any laws or stat-
utes are capable of producing, of this fact history
records many striking instances. Religious intolerance,
for example, which for centuries was the contributory
cause of many of the bloodiest wars that decimated the
peoples of the civilized world, has been practically
eliminated as a factor in the making and unmaking
of great and powerful nations, not by the dictation of
law or government, but by the steady advance of public
opinion towards recognition of the rights of individual
conscience. Again, the various forms of licentiousness
in men, which society in less cultured times either
tacitly endured or actually smiled upon with more or
less indulgence, have been reduced in our age, not by
the stringency of laws enacted to curb them, but by
the irresistible force of educated public sentiment, and
many other excesses, that were once universally toler-
ated, notably that of drunkenness, which, not a hum-
dred years ago, was actually considered an indispen-
sable mark of true gentility, are to-day, if indulged
Personal Liberty.
297
in at all, committed by stealth or under cover of
secrecy, because society as a whole has learned to
frown upon them and to ostracise those who succumb
to them.
We are not implying by all this that religious intol-
erance no longer dominates the minds of individual
men, or that individual men are no longer subject to
indulgence in licentious practices, drunkenness, or
other similar excesses. The point is that it is the com-
munity alone, wielding that keenest of all influences,
public opinion, which has always determined and always
must determine to what extent the individual shall
transgress the bounds of decency with impunity,
because it is in society at large that the self-restraint
of the individual is rooted, and, if the soil in which
the plant grows becomes dry and barren, the plant
itself must wither for want of sustenance. In fact,
whenever society has neglected to exercise this control
over its members, despotic law has invariably inter-
vened and essayed the task, with all the inevitable
consequences that follow the loss of a people's liberties.
As an instance in point, perhaps nothing more strik-
ing could be cited than the period of military despotism
which followed the excesses of the French Revolution.
Now, if all this applies to the liberty of the people
in general, it applies with equal force to the liberties of
the individual in particular. A community is but an
individual many times multiplied, and though public
298
Personal Liberty.
opinion is regarded as the consensus of the sentiment
of those who constitute the body public, it is through
the individual constituent of that body public alone
that the force of public opinion can make itself
effectively felt. In other words, public opinion itself
is of no force or avail, unless the individual who con-
tributes towards its formulation gives expression to it
by his own actions and by the example of his own
daily life. To join in condemning in public what we
ourselves practice in private, or what we condone
privately in others who indulge in its practice, is to
reduce public opinion to a meaningless farce. Pretense
of virtue is the most pernicious of all vices, and unfor-
tunately of all vices the most prevalent.
On the other hand, the man who abuses his own
liberty commits no greater offense against the liberty
of all men than he who, seeing him do so, fails to
frown upon the abuse and condemn the abuser. To
treat the excesses of others as if they were mere
amiable frailties, rather to be laughed at as amusing
spectacles than treated with contempt as evidences
of human abasement, means nothing less than to share,
morally at least, in the delinquency of the offenders,
and the step from the moral to the physical participa-
tion in an offense is a very short one. Men may differ
as to the exact line of demarcation between the legiti-
mate use of our liberty and its abuse, but there is a
certain point at which all men agree that dangerous
Personal Liberty.
299
excess begins, and it is at that point, in the interest
of human liberty in general, that all men should draw
the line of approval.
We would not lay such emphasis upon this obvious
fact were it not for the circumstance that some extrem-
ists in the defense of personal liberty hold that this
liberty, being inherent in the individual himself, is
entirely beyond the control of the community at large,
and that, because its abuse by the individual is fraught
with evil consequences to him alone, such abuse is his
concern and no one else's.
We hold that there are two fundamental fallacies in
this position. In the first place, it is in the power of
the community, within certain limits, to control the
exercise of the personal liberty of the individual, not
by statutory laws, of course, but, as we have endeavored
to show, by the far more powerful influence of really
active public opinion. In the second place, the abuse
of his liberty by the individual is fraught with evil
consequences, not only to the individual himself, but
to the community at large, inasmuch as that abuse, if
indulged in too generally, or condoned by too many,
becomes a danger to the liberty of all. Or, does anyone
doubt that freedom of speech may be endangered by
those who abuse that freedom, or the liberty of the
press placed in jeopardy by those who carry that lib-
erty to unreasonable extremes? Is not the free practice
of the arts frequently imperiled by unscrupulous indi-
300
Personal Liberty.
viduals, who prostitute them to impure or immoral
uses? And are not many innocent pleasures and
pursuits of the people constantly subjected to threat-
ened or actual restriction or curtailment, by the actions
of some men who indulge in them unwisely, or with
manifestly vicious purpose ?
We are confronted to-day, indeed, with a widely
supported movement to deprive, by governmental
decree, over ninety million people, the greater part of
whom are admittedly sane, and sober, and self-con-
trolled, of the privilege of obtaining certain beverages,
the use of which has not only been universal throughout
the Christian world, but was expressly sanctioned on
festival occasions, and even enjoined upon mankind
in solemn celebration of His divine sacrifice, by Him
whom it worships as its Savior. And are not the
abuses of that privilege and the conditions under
which it is exercised by certain individuals the only
plausible pretext upon which the demand for its
general abrogation is based?
To oppose this or any other similar movement upon
the bare plea that it threatens the liberty of the indi-
vidual, and is calculated to substitute a worse evil
for that which it aims to destroy, is well enough, so
far as it goes. But it is far from meeting the whole
case, nor does it meet the really vital point in the
case. The enemy that is besieging the fortress of our
liberties would be comparatively negligible but for his
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301
ally within the fortress itself, who is forever battering
down the gates from the inside, and thus opening a
breach through which the enemy can enter and capture
the citadel.
It is this ally of the enemy within the fortress against
whom we should primarily level our guns, namely, the
abuser of our liberty, and the creator of the undesir-
able conditions under which it is sometimes exercised,
and which offend the nostrils of all decent men. We
should pursue him relentlessly, as well as those who
uphold him, not only collectively but individually,
whether he be our friend and brother, or a mere
stranger or passing acquaintance. For it is largely by
reason of our indifference that he thrives and multiplies,
bringing misery upon himself, and shame and reproach
upon us, who suffer him in our midst without objection
and protest.
It was pointed out in a recent article that many
men do not know how easily their liberties may be
taken away from them by their own unconscious con-
nivance, and that every man who loves his liberty
should combine with his fellows in acquiring that
knowledge, and with it the means of defending his
liberty against the attacks of those who would deprive
him of it. We can only reiterate this advice, but, in
reiterating it, let us couple with it this earnest admon-
ition: It is not only those that attack our liberty, but
those that disgrace it, against whom it is imperative
302
Personal Liberty.
for us to combine, because to conquer the enemy outside
the camp, and neglect to subdue the enemy within it,
is but a half-won battle, unprofitable to them that
win it, and an incentive to renewed attack on the part
of those who lose it.
Every citizen of this country, whether he be indige-
nous or foreign-born, is entitled to the use of the
liberties he has inherited from his forefathers, but not
to their abuse. If he insist upon the latter, he may
lose the former, for the right to suppress the abuse of
liberty is as inalienable as the right to use it.
IV.
Men first began to acquire the blessings of liberty
when they began to think for themselves. The exercise
of individual thought, in fact, is the very basis upon
which liberty is founded. No better proof of this fact
exists than that which has been afforded by the enemies
of liberty in all ages, for their chief point of attack
has invariably been the right of men to do their own
thinking
These enemies of liberty are ignorant, or profess
ignorance, of the fact that man has risen to his present
status by the exercise of the power, largely developed
in him by the teachings of his religion, of mastering
himself, just as the child develops into the adult when
he learns to do of his own free will those things which
in his infant stage he could only be induced to do by
Personal Liberty.
303
the will of a superior mind. Some men never outgrow
their childhood, and require the guidance and restraint
of others throughout their lives. The law treats these
men as the schoolmaster treats his refractory children,
by restraining and punishing them, because they have
no mind to cultivate, and no will to develop. To such,
the principles of virtue and morality are merely the
commands of a superior power, which they obey
because they are compelled to do so, not because they
have learned to realize the true nature of those prin-
ciples, and to obey them for their own sake. Such
compulsory obedience, of course, is neither morally
uplifting, nor productive of morality.
The merest beginner in ethics knows that the virtue
which is merely the result of necessity is no virtue at all,
and that the very essence of what we call the perform-
ance of duty is the action of our free will in doing
The slave, who accomplishes his allotted labor
under threat of the lash, performs a task, but not a
duty; and such labor, as we know, is not, like other
labor, elevating, but degrading. And so it is with
him who only keeps upon the path of virtue because he
is held there by some controlling power outside of
himself. He, too, is performing a task, not a duty;
in other words, he is accomplishing labor under the
lash, and whatever the nature of such labor may be,
whether of the highest or the lowest type, he who
performs it is reduced to the condition of the slave,
SO.
304
Personal Liberty.
with all the degrading influences which that condition
implies.
The whole history of education--and the history of
education means the history of civilization is the
record of man's collective endeavor to rise above this
condition of mental dependence (in other words, man's
gradual advance to the understanding that necessity
is not a virtue, but that virtue is a necessity; that the
ultimate goal of all government is self-government,
and the ultimate aim of all teaching is the cultivation
of the faculty of self-education). What, indeed, is
the true meaning of that greatest of all sayings that
the best governed nation is that which is least gov-
erned? It means no more and no less than that the
best governed people are those whose laws have best
equipped them to govern themselves, and since educa-
tion is the basis of government, the least governed
people must of necessity be those who have best
learned how to teach themselves.
Liberty, then, does not mean, as its foes love to
pretend, mere license, in its more specific sense of
exemption from control, but, on the contrary, it means,
in the highest and most literal sense of the term, self-
government, which is the exercise of that faculty of
individual responsibility the development of which in
the human being is the primary aim and purpose of all
true education.
The savage, to whom many of those who favor the
Personal Liberty.
305
restriction of our liberties ironically point as living
in a state of complete liberty, really enjoys no liberty
at all, for he is the prey, not only of every appetite or
emotion that may seize him, but the humble slave of
everyone of his fellows whose bodily strength, or
whose craftiness, exceeds his own. He is utterly
devoid of the sense of individual responsibility, and
some of his devices to escape the consequences of the
similar lack of responsibility on the part of his fellow-
man have survived in our own race, and are recogniz-
able in some of the polite customs of the present day.
The origin of our handshake, for instance, is said to
be traceable to the age when men so distrusted each
other that, on meeting, each would hold the other's
hands in his own in order to be secure from sudden
treacherous attack.
Treachery, unhappily, is still not entirely unknown
in our age, but, with all our modern educational ten-
dencies backwards towards the dark ages from which
our race has emerged, we have as yet not decreed by
law that men shall revive this ancient custom of savage
days, merely because there are still some among us who
may treacherously assault their neighbors unless the
latter thus protect themselves. Yet, are we so very
far from such a return to barbarous precautions in
these enlightened days, when apparently the main
presumption from which our laws proceed is that
individual man is totally devoid of self-responsibility,
306
Personal Liberty.
and that the exercise of his free will in all his actions
must be restricted to an absolute minimum?
Take, for instance, the recent order issued by the
Secretary of our Navy forbidding the officers to in-
dulge in alcoholic beverages in any form at their
messes, lest, as the Secretary has explained, some
officer may imbibe too freely and endanger the compli-
cated machinery of the modern battleship in his charge.
There is theoretically, of course, no doubt about the
possibility of such an eventuality, and, theoretically, the
order may one day save an American battleship from
damage or destruction. But, then, it is not only theo-
retically but practically just as possible that some
human lives might be saved if the law provided that
henceforth all conversations between individuals must
be conducted whilst each of those conversing held the
other's hands, according to the custom of the age when
all men went in bodily fear of each other. But would
not the law, by thus placing all men on the same plane
as the few who are devoid of the sense of honor and
good faith, quickly reduce mankind generally to the
mental status of the savage, to whom treachery is a
mere incident of ordinary human life?
What moral effect the reduction of the highly
trained officers of our navy to the status of potential
drunkards will have, I would be loth to say. That it
will not promote the development of the faculty of
individual self-reliance, which has for ages been the
Personal Liberty.
307
end and aim of education, is fairly certain; for a faculty
that has nothing to practice upon must soon decay
and die. Possibly, as has been said, it may one day
save an American battleship from accidental damage
or destruction. But possibly, also, it may result in
there soon being no more battleships with complicated
machinery to destroy, since the development of these
modern wonders has been largely due to man's emanci-
pation from that very condition of mental and moral
dependence to which such administrative acts as we
have discussed are manifestly calculated to return him.
There seems, moreover, to be a strange contradiction
in the position taken by our worthy Secretary of the
Navy that the more important the duty imposed upon
an individual, the less trust should be placed in his
ability to respond to it. Carried to its logical conclu-
sion, would not this theory render it more imperative
still to devise measures to prevent the head of the
government himself, and his immediate advisors, from
having access to alcoholic stimulants, since upon their
sense of responsibility rests the destiny of the entire
people, and the possible succumbing on the part of one
or the other of them to a momentary temptation to
indulge too freely might wreck, not only a mere battle-
ship, but a whole nation? Up to the present, we have
been, perhaps blindly, content to take this fearful
chance. But with the new doctrine before us that,
because some men are admittedly irresponsible, the
308
Personal Liberty.
young ones?
only safety to mankind is to assume that all men are
lacking in responsibility, how can we continue to rest
at ease with the hitherto unsuspected knowledge of
such shocking dangers confronting us?
And how about our general plan of educating our
Will that, too, not require radical
revision to conform with the new doctrine? One of
the most successful modern methods of training chil-
dren in the exercise of self-responsibility is what is
known as placing them “on their honor.” Nay, this
system has even been extended to the treatment of
convicted criminals, and found to work with fair
But, strangest of all, our government is
to-day straining every educational effort to bring
the savage or semi-savage race of the Philippinos up
to the level of our American capacity for self-govern-
ment. And how? By training them in the exercise of
self-responsibility. Isn't this the height of inconsis-
tency? While every effort is being exerted in the
Philippines to raise the savage inhabitant of those
islands to the level of the civilized American by
developing his sense of responsibility, the same efforts
are being simultaneously put forth at home to reduce
the civilized American to the level of the Philippino
by depriving him of the opportunity of exercising his
sense of responsibility.
success.
We hear the inevitable retort of the anti-liberal that
there is no necessity to train the Philippino to resist
Personal Liberty.
309
the temptation of drink, because indulgence in drink
is dangerous and should therefore be rendered impos-
sible both to the Philippino and the American. The
answer is obviously that it is not in man's hands to
render · indulgence in drink impossible, because, as
long as Nature herself puts drink within the reach of
man, without any assistance on the part of those who
manufacture liquor, men will have to reckon with its
temptations, and should be therefore fortified in resist-
ing them.
But the real fact is that the addiction of some men
to over-indulgence in drink, because it affords the
most convenient and most appealing example of man's
liability to deviate from the path of moderation and
thus forfeit his powers of self-control, is used as
alleged evidence that all pleasures, pastimes, appetites,
and customs, the proper indulgence in which depends
upon man's power of self-control, should be forbidden
to all men, thus reducing every human being to the
level of those few who have no power of self-control to
exercise.
In some of our States, for instance, the use of play-
ing cards, dominoes, checkers, etc., is made a penal
offense, because some men have used them unlawfully
for gambling purposes. Dancing' has been forbidden in
some communities, because, though millions dance
with members of the opposite sex without any impure
thought, there are some few who do not. Instances of
310
Personal Liberty.
this kind can be multiplied ad libitum, and the most
significant feature about them all is that the tendency
to thus reduce all mankind to the status of the weakest
and most defective of humans emanates exclusively
from a certain well-defined group of religious denomi-
nations, whose estimate of man's integrity and dignity
is the very lowest imaginable, and whose stealthily-
gained political power in this free country is one of the
greatest menaces that confront the American people
to-day.
The cultivation of the drama, the practice of the fine
arts, the pursuit of scientific truth, the right of free
intellectual development, the allurements of sport, and
the enjoyment of every worldly form of mental and
bodily recreation are all anathema to these new factors
in American politics, whose abnormal views, not only of
this life, but of the life to come, are repellent to the
normally constituted millions upon whom they are
endeavoring to force them by law. To them Satan
is the God that smiles, whilst their conception of the
Almighty is that of the God who frowns. Hence,
they hate pleasure, merely because it is pleasure, not
because some men indulge in pleasure unwisely. They
belong, in short, to that species of man of whom
Macaulay so aptly said that it condemned bear-
baiting not because it gave pain to the bear, but
because it gave enjoyment to the spectator.
And they are becoming increasingly dangerous to
Personal Liberty.
311
the community, not on account of their numbers, but
on account of their capacity for organization, which is
due just to that total renunciation of individual mental
freedom in themselves which they aim to force upon
all others. By virtue of this capacity for organization,
and by the operation of a system of terrorism as cruel
and relentless as it is immoral, they have succeeded
in recent years in obtaining practical control of a
majority of our legislative bodies. They respect no
opinion, no creed, no conscience, except their own,
and they threaten with destruction, not only politically,
but socially, commercially, and professionally, all who
impede their path, or refuse to do their bidding.
Hence, men in public life have come to fear them more
than the head-hunter is feared in the Philippines, or
the witch-finder is feared among the African tribes;
indeed, such is the dread of their displeasure which has
spread among the people at large that men will rather
hypocritically pretend to applaud their aims and
their methods than risk incurring their vengeance by
denouncing them.
Thus they are slowly but surely undermining the
very foundation upon which our liberties rest, namely,
the free development of individual human will and the
free expression of individual human thought. No
matter that, in the minds of some men, the question
whether mankind shall or shall not pursue certain
habits and customs, or indulge in certain pleasures and
312
Personal Liberty.
pastimes, may transcend in importance all other human
questions, it pales into insignificance before the fact,
which is undoubted, that the vindictiveness with which
the negative side of that question is being forced upon
the community by those who champion it has resulted
in hundreds of thousands of citizens of a free nation
fearing to give unreserved expression to their thoughts
and opinions, and this involves a far more serious
danger to a people than all the temptations which
Nature has placed in their path, and from which their
would-be benefactors would save them.
It is this fact, to a realization of which the people
of this country should awaken, and awaken fast. It
is true that a nation which yields itself up to habits
of any kind of extravagant self-indulgence is liable to
deteriorate. But a nation, many of whose citizens no
longer dare to think for themselves, or to trust in their
power of self-determination, may one day find itself
without anything much left to deteriorate from.
Liberty comes before virtue, not because liberty out-
ranks virtue, but because it is its very fountain and
origin, and no virtue is conceivable without it.
V.
If these articles had no other purpose than the
purely academic discussion of the principles of liberty
they could claim but the questionable merit of ex-
pounding what has been far more ably expounded
Personal Liberty.
313
before, for the greatest thinkers the world has ever
produced have dealt with those principles and estab-
lished their truth for all time. Indeed, if the mere
recognition of those principles by a vast majority
of mankind were a guarantee of the inviolability of
our liberties, we could afford to snap our fingers at
those who are ever seeking to deprive us of them. But
majorities, strange to say, have never been the ruling
classes among men, even in this greatest of modern
democracies, and they rarely realize the necessity of
organizing in active defense of the rights they prize
until those rights have been definitely taken from them
by some organized minority.
Hence, while we hug ourselves in the belief that the
people rule, the fact is that the people only rule poten-
tially, which means, as we have endeavored to illustrate
hy concrete example in previous articles, that the
people invariably allow the power which is vested in
them to be usurped by the few who have the energy
and the ambition to seize it and promptly apply it
to the furtherance of their own narrow theories and
fancies.
There is, and always has been, only one remedy for
this condition, and it is the discussion of that remedy
which forms the ultimate object of these articles. To
make its power felt, and secure its own rights, the
majority must emulate the example of the ruling
minority, and organize in defense of those rights as
314
Personal Liberty.
the minority. organizes to destroy them. The force
inherent in numbers, let them be ever so large, is to
all intents and purposes ineffective, unless it is directed
by some knowledge common to all, and inspired with
some definite purpose, in the attainment of which all
agree to unite. The right of franchise is such a force, ,
and however much we may pride ourselves on its
possession, it is of no more practical value to us, unless
we know how to use it, than, for instance, the modern
rifle would be of value in the hands of a soldier who
had learned nothing of its construction and inner
mechanism. To suppose that our liberties are safe,
merely because we elect those who govern us, is the
most fatal of errors. It is as easy to elect tyrants as it
is to have them handed down to us by the law of
dynastic succession. In either case it is merely the
lack of that knowledge which is indispensable to the
proper application of our collective power to govern
those who govern us that renders us subject to the
tyranny of others.
Lest we lay ourselves open to the charge of exagger-
ation, let us ask the reader to examine this statement
in the light of his own personal experience as a voter.
How much does he trouble to learn, as a rule, about
the men whom his vote helps to elect to office, beyond
their mere names and the particular party emblem
under which those names appear on the ballot? Not
one in ten voters goes to the pains of ascertaining any-
Personal Liberty.
315
thing more. Yet it is into the hands of such men that
he commits the defense of his liberties, relying upon
the party to which he owes allegiance to see that those
liberties are protected.
And herein lies his grievous error. He forgets that
his very vote for a man who believes in curtailing the
personal liberty of the citizen is a notice to the party
which has nominated that man that he, the voter him-
self, approves of such curtailment. For a political
party does not assume that those who vote for its
candidates do so in complete ignorance of the prin-
ciples for which those candidates individually stand,
and since the majority of those elected in any party
shape that party's policy, the result is only too often
that this blind voting of the individual franchise-holder
drives the leaders of the party themselves into an
attitude directly contrary to that desired by the great
majority of voters from whom the party derives its
power and strength.
It is this simple and irrefutable fact which makes it
possible, in a country where the people as a whole are
supposed to rule, for a comparatively small, but well-
organized, faction of that people to impose its will
upon the great majority of the citizens. It is this
fact which has resulted, at this day, in placing the
most cherished liberties of the American citizen in
jeopardy, and unless the individual voter, who loves
and prizes those liberties, arouses himself, at this
316
Personal Liberty.
eleventh hour, from his unpardonable lethargy, and
does his individual share in protecting them, they will
be wrested from him, with all the consequences that
follow the submission of a free people to the arbitrary
dictation of a few.
We ask no pardon for this plain speaking. The cry
for liberty on the part of men struggling against all
the odds of a tyrannical power which holds them in
subjection excites our pity and innermost sympathy.
But that same cry, if it remains but a mere cry on
the lips of men who are possessed of all the power
necessary to secure the liberty they desire, is little
short of contemptible.
There is no doubt that an overwhelming majority
of the people of this country are at heart bitterly
opposed to the aims and the methods of those who pre-
tend that they can bring about the millennium by
depriving men by law of the right to determine what
products of nature they shall use or not use, what
pleasures they shall pursue, what customs they shall
indulge, or even whether they shall laugh or cry on the
Lord's Day. There is also no doubt that this majority
has the power to prevent the enactment of any such
laws. Yet our statute books are becoming crowded
with them. And why?
The answer is simple. Because most of those who
constitute this overwhelming majority are content to
leave the defense of their liberties to their neighbor,
Personal Liberty.
317
and since their neighbor takes the same course, the
result is that everybody's business becomes nobody's
business, and the most important duty devolving upon
the individual citizen is sadly neglected by all.
The Need of a National Liberty Day
Address Delivered at the Annual Outing of the Per-
sonal Liberty League of
League of Cuyahoga County,
Cleveland, Ohio, July 22, 1914.
When I consider the subject on which I am to
address you to-day, I feel very much like the man who
undertook to carry coals to Newcastle.
It savors,
indeed, almost of presumption for anyone to come be-
fore a gathering of Cleveland citizens on an occasion
like this one, and pretend to be able to tell them
anything about the need of a liberty day. It looks
like a bold attempt to plagiarize another man's play,
and then invite him to witness its performance, or to
steal another man's invention, and then ask him to
listen to a discourse on the originality of the patent.
I want, therefore, to set myself right with you at
the start, and say that I have made no effort to copy-
right the title of my address, because that title was
copyrighted by the citizens of Cleveland six years ago,
and Cleveland's claim to it is inviolable.
It is, in fact, just because you men and women of
Cleveland have so clearly demonstrated this idea of a
liberty day to the nation at large that I am here—not
to lay claim to the patent of that idea, but to discuss
Need of a National Liberty Day.
319
with the real and legitimate patentees the need, the
grave need, of its exploitation throughout the length
and breadth of our great country.
For there is indeed need, and very grave need, for
setting apart a day, like this day, which you celebrate
annually in Cleveland, when the lovers of liberty in the
nation at large may gather in their millions, as you
are gathered here in your thousands, in order to serve
notice on those who would deprive them of that liberty
that they stand united as one man, ready to defend it
against all comers, ready, for its sake, to merge all
individual differences, great or small, social, racial, or
political, in the one paramount cause common to all,
the preservation of the birthright of every American
citizen to live his individual life, free from the inter-
ference of tyrannous overseers, according to the dic-
tates of his own conscience, and according to the light
of his own reason and intelligence.
We celebrate on our great national holiday, the
Fourth of July, the declaration of our independence of
the yoke of foreign dominion. That celebration is not
a mere anniversary ceremony. It has the far deeper
purpose of keeping alive in the mind of the individual
American citizen, who enjoys the liberties secured for
him with the blood of his forefathers, the fact that those
liberties were handed down to him, not as a heritage to
waste or dissipate, but as a sacred trust, to maintain
and defend for himself and his posterity against all
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
aggressors. It has the purpose, in other words, of
causing us annually to renew the solemn covenant
entered into by our forefathers on that momentous
Fourth of July, one hundred and thirty-eight years ago,
to assert and maintain our birthright as a nation, to
live our national life, free from the interference of
tyrannous overseers beyond the seas, according to
the dictates of our own national conscience, and accord-
ing to the light of our own national reason and intelli-
gence.
And that freedom which we assert as a nation we
must assert as individual citizens of that nation, or
acknowledge that our national freedom is but an
empty name and a delusion. There is no such thing
conceivable as a free nation, whose citizens are deprived
of their individual freedom. The very basis of our
national liberty is our liberty as individuals, and who-
soever attempts to assail that individual liberty of ours,
whether it be the representative of a power from with-
out, or of some upstart power among ourselves, he
attempts to lay sacrilegious hands upon the liberty of
the nation itself. No matter whether that attempt be
made by self-seeking men, whose open intent it is to
reduce us to the status of slavish dependents upon
their ambitious will and pleasure, or whether it be made
under the more plausible and alluring pretext of bene-
fiting us morally and socially—the result is the same.
An assault upon our individual liberty, under whatso-
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ever guise it be made, is an assault upon our national
liberty.
This is no mere phrase, my friends. What I have
said' is emblazoned in large letters upon that bulwark
of our rights and privileges as American citizens, the
Constitution of the United States. And that Consti-
tution was framed as it is for one obvious reason.
Because the wise and experienced men who wrote it
knew that future enemies of the liberties it guaranteed
us were as likely to spring up from within the nation
as from without. They knew, in fact, that kings and
princes are not the only tyrants from which the human
race has suffered, and perhaps not the worst; indeed,
that the over-weening ambition of a certain class of
men to dominate the minds and souls of their fellow:
men and render them mentally and morally subject to
their particular views and notions is, and always has
been, the gravest danger that threatens human liberty.
That is why our Constitution specifically guarantees us
our mental and moral independence, not only as a
nation, but as individuals, and that is why those who
take the oath of allegiance as citizens of this country
must bind themselves by that oath to defend its Con-
stitution and laws against all enemies, domestic as well
as foreign.
There is no need for me to tell you who those domes-
tic enemies of our American independence are. Your
presence here is proof abundant that you do know
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
them. But merely to know them is not enough. What
is of far greater importance is to know how to meet
and overcome them, and it is the acquisition of that
knowledge, so sorely needed to-day by the millions
of our liberty-loving fellow-citizens, that should form
the supreme object of such gatherings as this.
Enthusiasm for a cause is a great thing, but by itself
alone it never secured a victory. We may be stirred
to the very depths of our souls by the words and the
melody of our national anthem, yet the grandest
national anthem man ever conceived never won a battle.
What, indeed, would our great Fourth of July celebra-
tion avail us if, during the remaining three hundred
and sixty-four days of the year we failed to apply,
in the actual practice of our daily life, the solemn
lesson which it teaches us the need of concerted effort
to preserve the glorious heritage that has descended to
us from our fathers, the necessity of that eternal
vigilance which we know to be the price of our lib-
erty? It is what we do on these three hundred and
sixty-four days that really counts, my friends, not
what we do on this one day which we set apart for the
consideration of that which requires to be done. To
recognize our duty is one thing; to perform it is
another. And this distinction is one which the liberals
of this country should, above all others, take to heart,
for it seems to be the besetting sin of those who love
liberty that they take their liberty too much for granted,
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323
each relying upon his neighbor to do what all must do
without exception if our liberty is to be preserved.
Let us be frank with ourselves. The trouble is that
our liberties are too much in our hearts and too little
in our heads; that we talk for our liberties very con-
sistently, but vote for them very inconsistently. With
those who would take our liberties from us the case
is just the reverse.
It is their heads which govern
them, perhaps because they have no hearts to govern
themselves with, and while they talk against our
liberties very inconsistently, they vote against them
very consistently.
You know this is true. But do you realize its full
bearing upon the conditions we are to-day facing in this
country? Do you realize that it is the true and only
explanation of the humiliating fact that a compara-
tively small band of organized professional agitators
has been able to defy the overwhelmingly liberal senti-
ment of the American people, and carry its victorious
assault upon that people's liberties to the very threshold
of Congress itself?
Our press and our humanitarian societies have be-
come greatly aroused of late about what is known as
commercialized vice, and, God knows, commercialized
vice is damnable beyond the power of words to express.
But I will name something to you which is even more
damnable than commercialized vice, something which
is even more infamous and baneful than commercial-
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
ized vice, and which is at this day threatening to
convert the greatest nation upon earth into a nation
of moral cowards and craven hypocrites. That thing
is commercialized religion!
Its practitioners, who trade as shamelessly upon the
spiritual instincts of men as certain other practitioners
trade upon their animal instincts, have been slowly
supplanting our real clergy, the great majority of
whom are powerless to cope with the morbid emotion-
alism which they foster and feed on. They have
invaded our churches, they have penetrated into our
homes, they have degraded our politics, and they have
even contaminated our press itself. They have sent
more unfortunates to the insane asylums of the country
than all other factors that produce insanity put to-
gether, and last, but not least important, they have
called into existence those aforenamed professional
agitators, who are turning this same shameless traffic
in men's souls into a means of undermining the very
foundation upon which our individual rights and privi-
leges rest.
Thus we see our most sacred spiritual possession,
our religion, prostituted to the purpose of destroying
our most sacred temporal possession, our liberty, and
yet scarcely a voice is lifted in protest against this
double sacrilege. And why? Because so few have the
courage to proclaim the truth, though all know it.
Because so few have the initiative to speak the first
Need of a National Liberty Day.
325
word of stern protest, though all are eagerly listening
for that word, and will echo it from one end of the
country to the other when once a few fearless leaders
utter it.
And it is time that it should be uttered, unmistak-
ably and unequivocally, in every center of the land.
It is time for plain speaking, and not only for plain
speaking, but for stern, determined, united action.
That is why I say that there is sore need for a
national liberty day, when all lovers of liberty may
awaken from their lethargy and indifference, and may
learn to hear and speak the truth, which they all feel,
but few dare express; when they may counsel with
one another upon these grave dangers that confront
them, and devise ways and means to avert them; when
they may meet their fellows, and unburden their hearts
to each other, without fear of the vengeful wrath of
those who have banded themselves together to wreak
destruction, temporal and spiritual, upon all who differ
from their narrow belief in enforced morality and
mental coercion; when they may call upon
their preach-
ers to return to their duty, which so many of them have
forsaken, and which is to preach God's word, and not
meddle in the affairs of Caesar; and when they may
call upon the servants of Caesar, which are our chosen
law-givers, to attend to the affairs of Caesar, and not
suffer the law of man to trespass on the domain which
is subject to God's law.
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
I know that these are serious words that I am speak-
ing. But I am not uttering them lightly. Nor will
the fact that I have uttered them, and you have heard
them, signify more than the rustling of the evening
wind in the trees of this park, if they remain mere
words that have passed from me to you. It is not the
response you give to them to-night that counts, but the
response that you will give to them when you return
to your homes.
I have said that a patriotic song, inspiring though it
be, never won a battle. And I may say with equal
truth that a liberty day, however enthusiastically you
may celebrate it, will never, of itself, secure your
liberties. It is our disciplined army and navy, drilled
in the use of their weapons, and drilled to use them
with accurate knowledge and unerring aim, that keep
the enemy at a respectful distance from our nation's
shores. And without such weapons, intelligently used,
all the patriotism of a great people would prove power-
less to protect it from the encroachment of its ambi-
tious neighbors.
And so it is with us, and the defense of our liberties
against the organized assault of those who are seeking
to destroy them. If we would preserve those liberties,
we must fight for them, and if we would fight for
them successfully, we must drill ourselves, as our army
and navy are drilled, in the effective use of the weapons
we possess to defend them with. These weapons are
Need of a National Liberty Day.
327
not rifles and cannon and other deadly engines of
destruction, but they are equally well adapted to the
purpose for which they are designed, and—what is
more significant–they are equally useless and ineffec-
tive in the hands of those who have not learned to use
them with knowledge, care and intelligence.
The weapons I refer to are our votes, and the point
I am endeavoring to bring home to you is that it is
as imperative for us to learn how to vote accurately
against the enemy of our liberties at home as it is for
our army and navy to learn how to shoot accurately
at the enemies of our liberty abroad.
I say again, this is no mere figure of speech. If I
were not addressing men of Ohio, it might be necessary
for me to enter into an exhaustive explanation of my
meaning. But it is just you men of Ohio who have
taught me the truth of what I have said, because what
I have expressed in mere words you proved by actual
practical demonstration six years ago to the nation at
large, and whenever men gather in other States to-day
to consult about the ways and means of defending their
liberties, the first question that arises to every man's
lips is, “How did they do it in Ohio ?”
And how did you men of Ohio do it? By asserting
the principle, which every true republican, every true
democrat, and every true progressive should assert,
namely, that when the question of our liberty is in-
volved, the American citizen recognizes and owes
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
allegiance only to the one supreme party in this coun-
try, to which all other parties belong, and that is the
American party. And whether he be republican, demo-
crat, or progressive, no man can give stronger proof of
his loyalty to the particular political faith which he
confesses than by just asserting that principle. It is,
indeed, of the very essence of true party affiliation
that we should demand of our respective party that
the men it asks us to support for office should first
stand the test of true American citizenship, not only
in name, but in sentiment, in idea, and in principle.
And a man is not a true American if he stands, under
whatsoever guise or pretext, for principles that tend to
curtail the individual liberty of the American people;
and in saying this, I don't care whether such a man's
ancestors came over to this country in the Mayflower
or whether he was the first of his family to set foot on
these shores; I don't care whether such a man claim to
be a republican, or a democrat, or a progressive; I
don't care whether he be a millionaire or a pauper, a
stranger, a friend, or a brother. The charter of our
liberties is inviolate. It is more sacred than the tie of
blood, more sacred than the bond of friendship, and
more sacred than the obligation of party fealty.
And there is but one liberty that our great charter
can assure us; namely, our personal liberty, which
means the right to live our individual life according
to the dictates of our own conscience, and according to
Need of a National Liberty Day.
329
the light of our own reason and intelligence. There is
absolutely no restriction placed upon that liberty,
excepting one, and that is that we shall not abuse it
to the detriment of our neighbor or the society we
live in.
To guard against such abuse, the State has been
invested with an authority known as the police power,
which means the power to prevent and punish crime; to
guard against public calamities; to maintain order and
decency; and to regulate man's public intercourse with
man. Under this power a person who abuses his lib-
erty to the injury or inconvenience of others may be
deprived of it, and rightly so. But the fact that my
neighbor abuses his liberty is no warrant to the police
power, or to any other power, to take away my liberty.
We know, and always have known, that some men have
a tendency to commit crime, or to gamble, or to squan-
der their patrimony; that some men are liable to
become insane, or to spread disease, or to indulge in
foolish excesses, or otherwise offend against public
order and decency, and we have for that reason vested
in our government the authority to place such men
under restraint. But when the government exercises
that power over all men indiscriminately, and restricts
the personal liberty of the entire community because
of the delinquency of a few of its members, it usurps
an authority that was never vested in it by the people,
and violates the fundamental principle upon which our
Constitution rests.
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
Yet this is what is occurring daily, and has been
occurring daily year after year in our generation, until
the tendency to use the police power to deprive us of
the rights and privileges guaranteed us by our Consti-
tution has assumed proportions of the most alarming
character. And upon what ground is this tendency
being justified? Upon the ground, put forth by those
who are fostering it, that the weak and defective among
us must be protected, and that, since the weak and
defective are notoriously incapable of the proper exer-
cise of their free will, therefore the right to exercise
such free will must be denied to us all.
Hence, instead of following the wise custom of
centuries, namely, to improve our defective fellow-
beings by endeavoring to raise them to the level of the
healthy normal majority, the absurd policy is now being
pursued of endeavoring to improve the few defectives
among men by reducing the healthy normal majority
to the level of those defectives. Nay, is it not largely
the weakling and the defective who are prescribing our
laws at this present day? Who, for instance, is shout-
ing loudest for those laws which aim to make all men
virtuous by compulsion? The reformed libertine.
Who, above all others, is claiming the power to regu-
late our personal habits, and make all men sober and
honest by law? The reformed gambler and drunkard.
Who is clamoring most noisily for the right to direct
us, by legislative enactment, into the paths of right-
Need of a National Liberty Day.
331
eousness? The reformed crook. And so on all down
the line. Our public platforms swarm with these quon-
dam reprobates, who parade their own miserable fail-
ure to live in a state of freedom as a reason why all
men should forfeit their liberty. They pose in our
magazines, they infest our literature, and they even
trespass upon the sanctity of our tabernacles. It has
come to such a pass, indeed, that if a man has lived a
particularly vicious or criminal life and is found out,
he need only declare his undying hatred of individual
liberty in sufficiently profane and obscene language, in
order to be promptly hailed by the self-styled moral
forces of the country as a prophet and an evangelist.
The honest man, the sober man, and the righteous
man are no longer considered in the making of our
laws, and instead of a nation in which the normal
majority rules and regulates the defective minority, we
are fast becoming a nation in which the weak and de-
fective pass laws for the control and the regulation
of the strong and healthy.
And who are the prime instigators of this pernicious
movement that sets up self-confessed crooks, and
gamblers, and drunkards, and libertines to direct men
into the paths of rectitude and teach them, by the
example of their own despicable weakness, that hon-
esty, continency and sobriety are virtues only attainable
by compulsion of law? Under whatsoever colors they
may sail, whether as Purity Leagues, Moral Uplift
332
Need of a National Liberty Day.
Societies, Prohibition Party, or Anti-Saloon League,
they are, one and all, traceable to one well-defined
group of religious denominations, which, under one
guise or another, are aiming to force their religious
and moral conceptions upon the community as a whole.
We all know their name, but we rarely mention it
above a whisper. Yet the day is approaching, my
friends, when that name will have to be proclaimed
loudly and insistently in this country by all who desire
to retain the right to exercise their own religious faith,
by all who desire to worship their Maker according
to their own individual conception of Him, and to
receive His bountiful gifts, as they themselves see
them, not as those gifts may be damned or commended
by men who claim to be wiser than He.
You can hasten the coming of this day, my friends ;
not, indeed, by merely whispering the real name of
this arrogant enemy of our freedom, nor by passing
high-sounding resolutions denouncing his insidious aims
and designs, but by emulating his own shrewd methods
and organizing in a solid body to destroy his power as
he has organized to establish it. No matter whether he
call himself the Anti-Saloon League, or whether he
insolently claim to be the Church in action, these names
are mere traps to catch the unwary, for behind them lie
purposes infinitely more far-reaching than the mere
interference with our customs and pastimes and pleas-
ures. There are thousands of men, including the great
Need of a National Liberty Day.
333
body of our enlightened clergy, who know this enemy
of ours and his real purposes, but who take no part in
combating him, because they shrink from his venomous
tongue and its ruthless slanders. There are thousands
in this free country who cringe to him, not from con-
viction, but from fear of his relentless power, and
from distrust of your ability to overthrow it; men who
love the light of God's sun, which he would darken
because some are blinded by it; men who in secret
revel in the smile of radiant life-pulsing nature, which
he would convert into a frown, because some are infat-
uated by it. His power is rooted in their bondage, and
their servility is the metal from which he fashions
his weapons. It is in your hands to wrest that power
from him and smite him with his own weapons. All
these things have been before. Men may be weak,
and foolish, and small, and cowardly, but the love of
freedom is an instinct of human nature which no
human power can destroy and no human law can per-
manently suppress.
You have proved this in Ohio, yet this enemy flour-
ishes still, and will continue to flourish until you unite
in your scattered millions as he has united in his
organized thousands. You can accomplish this, but
you can only accomplish it if you will act as one
compact army, in which each soldier performs his
allotted duty, obedient to the call of his chosen officers;
in which the leaders select the point of attack, and the
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Need of a National Liberty Day.
rank and file advance solidly to the assault, fired with
but one thought—the success of the cause, and inspired
with but one faith—the faith in the knowledge and
wisdom of those who lead them. For some of us must
be generals, and some must be soldiers, but the glory
of the victorious battle is common to all. Which of us
asks, indeed, as he doffs his hat to the veterans who
pass us as we line the streets on memorial day, who
was the general and who the soldier? We greet them
one and all as the nation's defenders, and the humblest
shares our reverence equally with the most exalted.
And so let it be with you. You have your captains
and generals. Follow them. You have the component
parts of a great army ready at hand—your associations,
your clubs, your social societies, and your friendly
orders. Convert them, for liberty's sake, into regi-
ments and brigades, with leaders to direct and officers
to instruct you how to so apply your united voting
power, locally, by State, and nationally, that no enemy
of liberty, open or secret, may escape detection and
reach our legislative halls to destroy what your man-
date enjoins him to protect. And where you have no
such societies, create them, not only for the perpetua-
tion of the ideals, the principles and the customs that
have been handed down to you by your fathers, but for
their militant defense. Don't place your cross against
the name of any candidate at the polls until you have
received the assurance of those whom you can trust
Need of a National Liberty Day.
335
to know that he is sound on the principle of liberty.
It is far better not to cast your vote at all than to risk
casting it for one who will use it to betray you. And,
above all, do not judge those who wish to represent
you by their promise of what they will do in the future,
but by the record of what they have done in the past.
Remember that the leopard never changes his spots.
There are men among you who know these records,
and it is your duty to make their knowledge yours.
These are practical suggestions, simple as the A B C,
I know, but it is just the simplest things of life that
we are most apt to overlook. No man is so foolish
as to knowingly desert a friend in order to support an
enemy. Yet this very thing is done unknowingly
every day by the liberal-minded men of this country,
for how often have they been cajoled by the seductive
promises of some apparently repentant enemy into for-
getting the services of a true and loyal friend? I say
to you that I would rather be dragged down to defeat
at the heels of the humblest champion of liberty than
rise to the highest pinnacle of success hanging to the
coat-tails of liberty's most exalted adversary. The
triumph of our cause depends more upon the encour-
agement we give to its friends than it does upon the
punishment we mete out to its enemies.
And our
cause has friends to whose magnificent efforts in its
behalf many of us have not given the full measure of
recognition which they deserve.
336
Need of a National Liberty Day.
Let me refer particularly to the great liberal press of
the country, and more particularly still to that con-
tingent of the liberal press which we so woefully miscall
when we speak of it as the Foreign Language Press.
I want to say to you that, in whatsoever languages
these great newspapers appeal to their millions of
readers, there are none in this country that show a
greater mastery of the real American tongue than they
do. It is through them that the often crude, though
splendid, human material which flows to us year after
year from foreign lands, to augment our existing citi-
zenship, is endowed with the true American spirit and
the true knowledge and appreciation of American
thought, American ideals, and American patriotism.
They are, by all odds, the staunchest defenders of the
rights and privileges which we love so dearly, and
their tongue appears foreign only to those who have
themselves become foreign to the language in which
our forefathers spoke—the language of freedom and
liberty. Our debt of gratitude to this great press is
deep and lasting, and we should at least endeavor to
discharge that debt by cheering and encouraging it,
and by helping to extend its influence and multiply its
power wherever that influence and power are exercised.
There are some men among you who can do this
more effectively than others, and it is to them especially
that I address this appeal. But let none of us depend
upon the efforts of his neighbor, and think that his
Need of a National Liberty Day.
337
liberty is safe because that neighbor is alert in its
defense. That is how, in all ages, the rights of the
many
have become subservient to the ambition of the
few, for if the mere will of the greater number gov-
erned our human conditions, tyrants and despots would
have been unknown to history, and liberty would have
been as easily accessible to men as the air they breathe.
It is not the will alone, but the concerted expression of
that will, which counts. It is not numbers that give
power, but the quality of the co-operation that exists
among them.
There is not a man within reach of my voice who
cannot contribute his share towards perfecting that
very co-operation among our numbers which I speak
of, not a man who has not some laggard friend who
loves his liberty well, but thinks it is his neighbor's
business to protect and preserve it for him. It is the
inertness of such laggards among us, not the power
inherent in the enemy of our liberties, which makes that
enemy so strong. Let every man of you, therefore, go
out into the highways and byways and gather in these
sluggish friends of liberty and rally them around its
banner. Where some lead, many will follow, and
when many call, all will answer. Don't be satisfied
with this year's outpouring of Cleveland liberals, mag-
nificent though it is, but see to it, one and all, that next
year thousands are added to your numbers to-day. Let
no one plead business duties as an excuse for inactivity.
338
Need of a National Liberty Day.
No man's business is more pressing than the defense
of his liberties. Example is the parent of all human
endeavor, and there is no man too humble and insignifi-
cant to set a good example to his fellows, nor is there
any man too great and exalted to follow such example,
though it be set him by the humblest of his fellow-
mortals.
And the greatest example of all, my friends, is that
which men set each other collectively. Ohio set one
such example to the nation six years ago, when her
liberty-loving sons rose in their legions and, smiting
the enemy of liberty at the very hour of his expected
final triumph, drove him from his fastness and put
him to ignominious rout. Let the liberal sons of Ohio
now give one more such example, and send a clarion
call all over this wide land to their fellow-liberals in
every city, village and hamlet of the nation, to come
forth annually on such a day as this and gather in
their millions where all men may see them and measure,
as they themselves should learn to measure, the mighty
force which they represent.
For the time has come when city and State can no
longer fight single-handed against this growing en-
croachment upon our freedom as men and citizens,
but when the nation as a whole must be called to enter
the combat and bring it to a final and decisive issue.
And the nation will respond, if the call rings true.
There is no stronger bond between men than their
Need of a National Liberty Day.
339
love of freedom, but, to establish this bond securely and
firmly, friend must meet friend, and comrade must
know comrade, each drawing faith from the faith of
the other, each adding the fuel of his own ardor to the
flame of enthusiasm that burns within us all.
Help to bring about this nation-wide meeting of
friend and friend, comrade and comrade, and I say to
you that you will kindle a fire in this land which will
sweep with withering might over the hosts of fanaticism
and intolerance that have invaded it, and will give
birth to a new and invincible brotherhood among men-
the great Brotherhood of American Freemen.
This is the message I bring to you, men of Ohio.
And I bring it to you in preference to all others, be-
cause I know you, and have taken measure of your
strength and your manhood, because I have lived with
you, and fought with you, and shared, in my humble
way, in your triumph in the cause of liberty, because,
in short, I am one of you, a part of your flesh and
your
spirit, a son of Ohio, as proud of her name, and as
jealous of her fame among the States of the Union,
as the truest and best of you.
The Real Menace of Prohibition
An Address Delivered Before a Mass Meeting of
Citizens at Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, October
30, 1914
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen:
There is no need for me to dwell upon the fact that
this great outpouring of citizens to-night marks the
closing hours of a campaign upon the outcome of which
depends more for this great city of yours, more for
the great State which it adorns, and more for the
entire nation which is to-day holding its breath in
anticipation of that outcome, than ever depended upon
any event in this country since our forefathers cast off
the yoke of foreign dominion and established the prin-
ciple of self-government on this side of the Atlantic
Ocean.
The same question confronts this State to-day, and
through this State the American nation at large, which
confronted our great forefathers one hundred and
thirty-eight years ago; the question, namely, “Shall
we submit to a government of all of the people by
some of the people, or shall we fight for a government
of all of the people by all of the people?"
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
341
It is only those that are thoughtless, or ignorant,
or blinded by unreasoning prejudice, who believe that
the real contention raised by the prohibitionist is
merely that of drink or no drink. I say to you that
if nature were to take it into her head to-morrow no
longer to give life to the germs of fermentation, and
thus to deprive man of the possibility of either using
or abusing one of the greatest gifts she has bestowed
upon him-I refer to the cup that cheers-prohibition
and the prohibitionist wouldn't be affected thereby one
particle. True, the prohibitionist might lose a con-
venient means of making proselytes for his real pur-
pose among unthinking though well-meaning people,
but that real purpose itself would remain untouched
and unaltered; the only trouble the prohibitionist might
be put to would be to find some new convenient mask
behind which to conceal it.
That purpose is the same that has caused man to war
upon man since the history of the human race began;
that purpose is the same that has caused the teachings
of the greatest reformer our world has seen to be made
a hollow mockery of by many of those who claim to-day
to be his servants and disciples; that purpose, in short,
is to establish the ascendency in this country of one
group of religious sects over all others; in other words,
to compel men to worship their Maker according to the
dictates of that one group of sects, and to receive His
bountiful gifts, not as they themselves see them, but
342
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
as those gifts happen to be damned or commended by
men who claim to be wiser than He.
That, my friends, is the real menace of prohibition,
not the mere danger that the individual may be de-
prived of his liberty to indulge in a glass of beer or
wine if he so pleases. It were far better, indeed, that
even this liberty should be sacrificed than that the real
object of prohibition should be attained; the destruc-
tion of that most sacred treasure which men have
fought for centuries to gain, which they have bled for
and died for their liberty of conscience.
Thousands know this, and yet how few have the
courage to say it, even in a whisper. Thousands know
that, because of this unholy propaganda which has
been substituted for the gospel of Christ by certain
religious denominations to-day, the pretender and the
faker, the unfit and the ignorant, have found their
way into our seats of learning and even into our pulpits,
and have driven out of them the true and the just, the
clean and the high-minded men who are alone fitted
to occupy them. Thousands know that it is of far
greater importance to the morals of our community,
and to the future development of our young ones, that
these churches and schools should be cleansed of these
half-educated and sometimes wholly undesirable ele-
ments, which have forced their way into them under
the pretentious banner of prohibition, than that society
should be freed from evils which have existed among
men as long as men themselves have existed.
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
343
Don't imagine that I am minimizing those evils. Far
from it. I am merely contrasting them with another
evil that is infinitely more dangerous, an evil which
many men recognize, but which most men—I speak
with brutal frankness—are too cowardly to even name.
We all know that the curse of excessive indulgence
in drink is one of the most terrible curses that individ-
ual man can bring upon himself and those who belong
to him. But a far more terrible curse than excessive
drinking, or any other excess to which imperfect man
is
prone,
has fallen upon this entire land within recent
years, and that is the curse of prohibition. It is the
the curse that has resulted in dividing this great nation,
not only socially and politically, but racially and
religiously, into two violently hostile camps; it is the
curse that in these modern days has turned man against
man, brother against brother, class against class, race
against race, aye, even church against church; it is the
curse that has spread more corruption, more hypocrisy,
more infamy and more immorality throughout the
length and breadth of this fair land of ours than have
all the evils it pretends to cure; it is the curse that has
converted the beautiful doctrine of Christian love into
that of unchristian hate; it is the curse that has caused
honest men to eschew the truth and embrace the lie;
the curse that has driven the fear of God out of men's
hearts and the fear of man into them; the curse that,
under the pretense of saving men from themselves, is
344
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
handing them over, bound hand and foot, into the bond-
age of others. It is the curse of intolerance, the out-
growth of that religious hysteria which is the worst and
most deadly form of intemperance known to the
human race.
Prohibition has made slaves of free men, cowards of
the brave, and hypocrites of the true. It has emptied.
the very churches it was intended to fill, and has filled
the very asylums and pesthouses it was designed to
empty. It has made a farce of the sacred things of life,
and a tragedy of the lighter. It has made sober men
drunkards, and drunken men more drunken. It has
corrupted the pure, and given more power to the cor-
rupt. But worst of all, its crowning iniquity, is that it
has degraded man's most sacred possession, his re-
ligion, into the most sordid of traffics, setting the word
of man above the word of God, and converting our
temples into market halls for the bartering of political
merchandise.
This is the real prohibition you are fighting, my
friends, and the only true thing ever said of it by its
advocates is that it is a moral issue. God knows that
.
it is a moral issue, and may the really moral side
of that issue eventually triumph.
I have used plain words, and if they are strong
words as well as plain, it is because the time has
come to speak the truth on this subject in strong
and unequivocal language. It is the truth, as I have
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
345
said, which thousands, nay millions of our fellow-
citizens realize, yet which so few dare to face. And
why?
Go into the thousands of towns and villages and
hamlets of this free country, and ask the business
man, the professional man, aye, even the laborer and
the domestic, why they shrink in terror from speak-
ing their true thoughts on this question of prohibition,
and they will tell you why—that is, provided they
are sure that no spy or eavesdropper is near. They
will point, perchance, as they whisper the reason in
your ear, to this or the other unfortunate among
them, whose business was destroyed, or whose profes-
sional career was ruined, or whose job was ruthlessly
taken from him, because he had dared to think for
himself on the subject, and had been hardy enough to
think it aloud, and they will ask you, in your turn, if
you expect them to expose themselves and their
families to the same fate.
Ask our newspapers and our magazines, which dis-
cuss all other matters with fearless courage, and throw
open their columns to the thinkers and writers on
each side of any public question, why on this particular
question of prohibition their columns are so voluble
on the one side, while they maintain the silence of
death on the other, and they will tell you, though not
for publication, that an organized attack in the form
of a systematic boycott invariably follows even the
346
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
printing of a mere news item which by any possible
construction can be interpreted as unfavorable to the
so-called prohibition cause. I have no doubt that some
newspapers, if they deign to notice this assertion of
mine to-morrow morning, will either deny or ridicule
it. But it is true, nevertheless.
Ask the legislator, with whom you have sat over a
friendly glass of beer to-night, and whom you see to-
morrow casting his vote for prohibition in the halls of
the Assembly, to explain his strangely contradictory
conduct, and he will shrug his shoulders and tell you
with a wink of the eye that he loves the truth, as
much as you do, but that he loves still more that
which he knows to be good for his political health.
And so on, all down the line. The Vehmgericht and
the Inquisition of the middle ages were, morally speak-
ing, but mere child's play compared with the systematic
reign of terror inaugurated by the unscrupulous organ-
ization that is seeking to impose the farce of prohibition
upon the people of this country, as a curtain-raiser
to the real tragedy that is to follow it.
And we are living in the age of so-called liberty,
in what we believe to be the freest country on the
face of the globe.
Will the American public ever wake up to the truth?
Will the American public ever realize that a cause
that calls itself moral, and can only succeed by the
operation of a system as immoral and as corrupt as
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
347
the worst system of fraud and deception ever practiced
upon a credulous people, is a living lie?
I say yes, the American public, as well as the thou-
sands of blind and deluded men and women who are
to-day unconsciously contributing to the success of
this monster fraud of our modern age, would realize it
to-morrow if the real truth could be brought home
to them. And the prohibitionist by profession knows
it. That is why he has built and set in motion this
huge machinery by which he has succeeded in silencing
men's tongues and preventing the true facts from
creeping into the press, and, through the press, reach-
ing the country at large.
And what are these true facts? If you think the
statements I have made to you to-night are based
on mere conjectures of my own, let me take you back
sixty odd years in the history of the prohibition
movement and convict these false exponents of the
modern uplift idea out of their own mouths. Let me
tell you, in their own words, why they opposed the
licensing of the sale of stimulants in this State, and
why they insisted, sixty years back, on the incorpora-
tion of the famous no-license clause in the constitution
of Ohio.
That clause was added to the constitution in the
Constitutional Convention of 1851, and on page 438
of the official record of the Ohio Convention Debates
of that year you will find printed the following utter-
348
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
ance by Mr. Stanton, the delegate from Logan County
and the accredited leader of the so-called temperance
forces in the State, an utterance which was accepted
and endorsed as the definition of the policy of those
he represented by every prohibitionist in the Con-
vention.
“The friends of temperance on every side,” he said,
"cried out for an open field. They could not contend
against that sanction of the traffic which was con-
ferred by a license issued to a man of a good moral
character. Take away that shield, and the parties
are placed upon equal ground. The truth is, the
great obstacle to the temperance reform is the respecta-
bility of those who engage in the traffic.
“If every man who pleased were allowed to buy
and sell spirituous liquors, it would bring in all sorts
of men, and the calling would fall into disrepute, and
become degraded.
“So long as places are respectable, men will resort
to them."
Think of it. So long as places are respectable, men
will resort to them. Therefore, make them disrep-
utable. So long as men of good moral character serve
the people with the beverages they want, the people
will continue to indulge in them. Therefore substitute
immoral and dissolute men for these men of good
character, and the people will cease to indulge in
drink.
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
349
My friends, it is more than sixty years since, de-
luded by such monstrous arguments as these, the
voters of those days blindly gave into the hands of
the so-called temperance advocates of their time this
means of testing the efficacy of their shameful doctrine
that to foster and increase what is evil in that which
they aim to destroy is the best means of securing its
destruction; and after having forced a trade, which
they admitted to be conducted by men of decent and
respectable habits and principles, to throw down every
barrier and open itself up to the irresponsible and
unscrupulous elements of the community, they pointed,
during the following sixty years, indignantly and dis-
ingenuously to the lawlessness of those very elements
of their own creation as an argument and a reason
for abolishing a trade which they themselves had de-
signedly thrown open to them.
Such was the morality of the teachers of prohibition
sixty years ago, and their descendants of to-day are
worthy emulators of the same kind of morality. All
honor to the men and women who sincerely strive to
better their fellow-beings, even if their efforts be mis-
guided. But shame everlasting upon those who, under
the mantle of piety, resort to every abomination known
to degraded and criminal man in order, not to better
human conditions, but to aggravate them for their
own selfish ends.
Yet of such—and I say it deliberately—are those
350
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
who have banded themselves together at this day to
commercialize the most philanthropic movement of
modern times the movement for the spread of the true
gospel of temperance. Fraud, misrepresentation, and
bold, bare-faced falsification of public documents are
their weapons, and such is the impudent sense of
security with which their knowledge of men's fear
of their power has filled them, that they all but openly
glory in the use of these despicable weapons.
If you have read the daily press—I mean its adver-
tising columns—and if you have followed the litera-
ture which has been issued by the Ohio Home Rule
Association, and which has been mainly confined to
exposing the almost incredible falsehoods spread broad-
cast by those to whom the publication of the truth
means defeat, you will know that, by the deliberate
suppression of the most important word in the Home
Rule Amendment as published by them, these un-
scrupulous falsifiers attempted to so distort its lan-
guage as to make it appear to the public as if that
Amendment would destroy all existing regulatory laws
on the statute-books of the State. The Home Rule
Amendment reads in one passage, namely: “Nor shall
any law hereafter be passed prohibiting the sale, fur-
nishing, or giving away of intoxicating liquors through-
out the State.”
It requires no legal mind to understand that the
words “hereafter be passed” mean that all laws hereto-
>>
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
351
fore passed and now on the statute-books remain in-
tact and unaffected by this amendment. But the Anti-
Saloon League want to defeat the amendment by
making the people believe that these very now exist-
ing laws are intended to be annulled, and so they
deliberately and dishonestly leave out this important
word “hereafter" in the copy of the amendment which
they send to voters. And when their fraud is detected,
and they are confronted with it, they claim, firstly, that
the omission was due to a printer's error, and, sec-
ondly, that the word was unimportant anyhow.
Do you remember the story of the little boy who
was reprimanded for having dirty hands, and who
pleaded, in the first place, that he had washed his
hands, and, in the second place, that he hadn't had
any soap and water to wash them with? The Anti-
Saloon League is the exact facsimile of that little
boy, and the likeness is rendered additionally striking
by the dirty hands.
Let me say this, my friends, and I hope the Anti-
Saloon League will discover it on November 3. There
is a “Hereafter” which none can escape. Though
some men may strive to expunge that word from
the tablets of their minds, as a word of no importance,
their falsification of those tablets will not alter the
fact that this “Hereafter” will one day have to be
faced by them, and whether it be before the seat of
public judgment, or before the seat of a far higher
352
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
tribunal, I believe neither one nor the other judge
will accept as an excuse for the falsification of the
record that it was due to a printer's error.
A printer's error, forsooth. Only think of it. The
leaders of the Anti-Saloon League are known as the
most punctilious sticklers imaginable for precision in
spoken and written language; indeed, they pretend
to detect a so-called "sleeper" in the mere omission
or introduction of a comma in any proposed law having
for its object the betterment of those conditions from
which they derive their means of livelihood. Yet they
permitted not only this but eight other "printer's
errors” to creep into the alleged copy of the Home
Rule Amendment, which they sent to the citizens of
Ohio with a statement that the amendment would
repeal all regulatory laws now on the statute-books
of the State. And, by the most significant of coinci-
dences, every one of these nine very unfortunate print-
er's errors, in a document containing less than ninety
words, happened to so color the language of the
amendment as to give the semblance of truth to
their false statement.
Does this require any comment from me? Or, to
speak in the common parlance of our day: Can you
beat it?
No true man, indeed no sane man would lend his
hand to the destruction of all regulatory laws on our
statute-books, hence thousands who believe in the
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
353
ours.
principle of home rule, deceived by this dastardly
fraud, are likely to cast their vote against the very
measures they favor, for, give a lie the start, and
the truth will always have difficulty in catching up
with it.
And this is but one of many lies and frauds that
have been practiced upon the people of this State
during the past few weeks. The employing of men to
simulate drunkenness and enter our churches during
Sunday service to annoy and scandalize the congre-
gations is a well-worn trick of these moral friends of
The masquerading of little children of respec-
table parents in rags and tatters, carrying banners
with inscriptions intimating that they are the offspring
of drunken mothers and fathers, and imploring the
people to save them from these drunken parents by
voting for prohibition, is another such trick. The
stationing of poorly clad and weeping women on street
corners, who, when asked by the gathering crowd
what the cause of their distress is, sob out the state-
ment that their husbands are drunk in a nearby saloon,
(they don't give the name of the place), and that their
children are at home crying for bread, is another.
Object lessons for educational purposes I believe they
call them-well, there are a thousand and one ways
of avoiding the use of what we term the short and
ugly word. But I say to you that if you dress up
a common lie in the silkenest of silken doublet and
354
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
hose, and paint its villainous face with the choicest
of pious paints, and drench it from head to foot with
the sweetest of pious perfumes, you won't alter the
fact that it is a common lie, whose evil features no
paint can conceal, and whose evil stench no perfume
can cover. This is true of the ordinary, everyday
lie, and it is equally true of that master-lie of all
modern lies: prohibition.
It is the defeat of that lie, and the confounding of
those who have given it the start in this great cam-
paign, which is the issue that confronts you at the
polls next Tuesday. And mark this, my friends,
for it will have a great bearing upon the result of the
ballot on November third. It is not upon our mere
love of the truth, but upon the courage we show in
defending it, that the triumph of the truth depends.
Enthusiasm for a cause is a great thing, but mere en-
thusiasm never won a battle. It is votes, not senti-
ments, that will decide the battle of the ballot at
Tuesday's polls, and in this connection I am going
to confide to you a great secret, and ask you, in
your
turn, to communicate that secret confidentially to every
one of your friends, so that each one of these may act
upon it and cause each of his friends to do likewise.
Tell it in particular to those of your friends who love
their ease and comfort, and are rather inclined to
let others do for them what they should do for them-
selves. There are tens of thousands of these in our
The Real Menace of Prohibition.
355
ranks, and I have reliable information that they are
already preparing at home for an elaborate celebration
of the victory you and others are going to win for
them next Tuesday. Tell them that this proposed
celebration of theirs is by no means the sure thing
they think it is, because the fact is that the election
is not yet cinched; because the fact is—and this is the
secret I want to whisper to you—that we require just
one more vote to win.
Just one more vote, mark. It seems a little thing,
doesn't it? But I want you to bear it in mind, to
the exclusion of everything else, from now until the
polls close on November 3. We require just one more
vote to win. Trifling as it may appear, believe me
that this whole great election hangs upon this one
vote, and if each one of you will make each one of
your stay-at-home friends realize that this one vote
is his vote, and no other's, I promise you that this
one vote will be the biggest of its kind ever cast at
any election held in this State.
When the Majority is King
(From the American Leader, October 8 and 22, 1914.)
[EDITORIAL Note.—In our last issue we referred editorially to
Mr. Andreae's noteworthy address, delivered at Cleveland on the
22d of July, on the subject, “The Need of a National Liberty Day,"
and we spoke of his energy in defending the cause of "Personal
Liberty" wherever he could strike a telling blow. We recalled to
our readers' minds also the masterful address on the same subject
delivered before the American Association of Foreign-Language
Newspapers, Inc., at its last annual banquet in New York, on the
evening of February 7th. This address, which created a profound
impression among thinking men in all parts of the country, was
printed in our issue of February 12th. In our issue of June 11th
we published a number of opinions of that address from the press
and from prominent educators, legislators and publicists. The article
of which we here print the first part is a fitting and clinching
completion of that notable address.]
As long as human society has existed, the opinions
of men regarding that which is most vitally essential
to human morals and human happiness have probably
differed. Perhaps fortunately so, for divergence of
views leads to discussion and exchange of thought,
and there lies the root of all human progress. The
social fabric we live in to-day has not been built up
by the thought, the opinions, or the achievements of
one man, one set of men, or one race of men. It is
the result of the compromise between many human
minds and many human views, and the possibility
When the Majority Is King.
357
of such compromise is conditioned upon two essentials,
viz.: respect for the opinion of our neighbor, however
fundamentally that opinion may differ from our own,
and the recognition, now universally conceded, of the
equal rights of all men.
In these modern days, when the principle of the
rule of the majority is recognized throughout the
civilized world as the most equitable, if not the most
perfect form of government, it is well to bear this
fact in mind. It is scarcely necessary to say that,
unless this rule of the majority were subject to certain
well-defined limitations, it would prove as tyrannous
in principle and as destructive of human rights and
human happiness as that most despotic form of ancient
government which is based on the so-called divine
right of kings. Yet those very limitations, so wisely
imposed upon our modern form of government by our
forefathers, are to-day in danger of being all but
totally removed at the instance of men who are
putting forth the strangely delusive doctrine that the
needs of human society demand the sacrifice of indi-
vidual human liberty.
Startling as the assertion may appear, it is none
the less true that the acceptance of this doctrine would
mean the first step towards a general relapse of man-
kind into the state of barbarism from which it has
emerged. The doctrine is based, in fact, upon an
obviously false conclusion regarding the true evolu-
358
When the Majority Is King.
tion of human society; for society was manifestly not
formed to restrict or curtail individual liberty, but,
on the contrary, to establish and protect it.
The notion of some men that the life of the savage
is an example of perfect and unrestricted freedom, is
a complete fallacy, as a mere glance at man in his
primitive state will prove. The savage human has
not even the most elementary sense of individual lib-
erty. He has only one conception of human right,
namely, that of superior might. Hence, where the
savage state prevails, the strong enslaves the weak,
only to be himself enslaved by the stronger, until the
strongest establishes his paramount power and makes
his individual will the supreme law for all.
This condition is not only irreconcilable with the
exercise of individual liberty, but is correspondingly
incompatible with any sense of that which we call
criminal, on the part of those who live in it. The
human mind, indeed, has developed only one concep-
tion of crime, namely, the violation of human right,
and the supreme right of man is liberty. Conse-
quently, the savage, knowing no liberty, knows no
crime. It is true, he kills, burns, and robs, whenever
opportunity offers. But these acts are not the exercise
of individual liberty, because they are committed as a
matter of might, not of right. And, inversely, when
the consensus of human opinion constitutes such acts
crimes, it is not because they have come to be regarded
When the Majority Is King.
359
as an undue exercise of individual liberty, which re-
quires restraining, but because they are recognized as an
undue violation of individual right, and as such to be
suppressed.
There is nothing strange in all this. The history of
human progress is the evolution of the sense of indi-
vidual human right. The principle underlying our
common law, as stripped of its obsolete feudal and
other medieval excrescenses, is the protection of this
right of the individual, not its restriction for some
fancied benefit to accrue thereby to the community.
The individual at no time claimed the right, either
expressed or implied, to murder, burn, or steal. When
he committed these acts, he did so relying purely upon
his individual ability to defy the attempt at vengeance
or reprisal on the part of those whom such acts injured.
When law, therefore, constituted these acts crimes, it
was not because a majority of men agreed to forego a
right to murder, rob, or burn, and forced an unwilling
minority to follow their example, but because all men
demanded the right of protection against murder, rob-
bery and arson, and such protection was only rendered
possible by each, without exception, extending it to the
other.
There is no record in the history of mankind which
would indicate that these laws were established other-
wise than by the common consent of all men, nor does
their occasional violation at this advanced stage of
360
When the Majority Is King.
our civilization imply that there is a single individual
among us who regards them as an infringement of his
liberty of action. Even the murderer, the thief, and
the incendiary themselves acknowledge their necessity,
and for obviously selfish reasons.
Law, then, if it conforms to our established notion
of the equal rights of men, expresses, not "a rule of
action which is prescribed by some superior, and
which the inferior is bound to obey” (Blackstone),
but essentially a contract, a compact for mutual pro-
tection between individuals, and its force and effect-
iveness are conditioned upon the completeness of the
mutual character of that protection. This conception
of law indeed is unconsciously so ingrained in the
human mind that it has become part of our language
itself. We do not say: "all men are subject to the
equal restriction or constraint of the law.” We say:
"all men are entitled to the equal protection of the
law.” And the distinction is significant as showing
that men intuitively feel that the purpose of law is to
protect individual right, not to restrict or annul it.
It would be, and is, indeed, impossible for men to
agree upon constraint or annulment of right, but all
can agree upon its protection. Hence laws which force
protection upon men who do not want it become purely
restrictive, and as such usually fail, because the com-
pact underlying them is not based upon a mutual
consideration; in other words, because they exact the
When the Majority Is King.
361
performance of an obligation upon which one party
insists without giving a consideration which the other
party desires.
When some men, therefore, speak of the “Social
Contract” as an instrument by virtue of which the
individual yields up certain liberties in consideration
of certain benefits he receives from the community he
lives in, they do not state the case accurately.
Men had no liberties before the community was
formed to establish and protect them. The savage,
for instance, is not free to roam at large, as so many
suppose. He can only do so if his stronger fellow-
savage permits him. Our social conception of liberty
is that all men, weak or strong, have equal rights, which
they agree, for a common selfish reason, to guarantee to
each other. Hence, the community, which is merely an
individual many times multiplied, has no benefit what-
ever to bestow apart from the personal liberty of that
individual, and, since that liberty is inviolate, the com-
munity cannot take it from one and give it to others,
nor deny it to some for the alleged good of all, with-
out defeating the very end for which the community
was established.
The guaranty of equal rights simply involves the
obligation of equal duties to secure those rights, and the
community has been created as the instrument through
which both are carried out. It has no right, nor should
it exercise the power, to alter either the guaranty or
362'
When the Majority Is King.
the obligation, for the one is the perfect complement of
the other. In other words, the obligation to respect my
neighbor's rights implies in no sense a restriction of my
own. On the contrary, if I commit an act which infringes
the rights of my neighbor, I am not excercising my own
rights, but violating or jeopardizing them, because my
rights and my neighbor's are coextensive and inter-
dependent.
Let me illustrate.
The acquisition of wealth is an exercise of individual
right, because it neither interferes with nor abridges the
equal rights of all men to acquire wealth. The use of
wealth, however, to deprive other men of the equal
facilities to acquire it is an exercise of individual might,
which is a violation of right, and, therefore, properly
becomes a matter of community control.
Again, I claim the individual right to speed my
automobile to the bent of my foolish desire. I shall
exercise that right with perfect propriety, as long as I
do so on my own premises. But if I exceed the speed
limit on the public thoroughfare, I interfere with the
right of my neighbor to protection of life and limb, and
since I claim the same right as he, I cannot violate his
right to that protection without at the same time for-
feiting mine. I want no protection against my own
folly, nor am I willing, as a matter of equity, to con-
cede to my neighbor the right to be protected at my
expense against his folly. It is only in so far as his
When the Majority Is King.
363
folly affects me and my folly affects him that he and I
are equally interested and conclude to enter into an
agreement for mutual protection, which we call law.
This manifestly does not involve the abrogation or
sacrifice of personal right, but on the contrary, it
involves its solemn recognition, and the community is
there to see that the contract to mutually recognize it
is duly fulfilled by all parties to it.
The fault, then, which is at the root of all purely
restrictive laws lies in the fact that they are enacted
as a result, not of a common desire for protection on
the part of all men, but of a desire on the part of one
class of men to protect another class that neither desires
nor appreciates the protection. The question whether
that protection may be morally, or otherwise, good for
them or not, has no bearing upon the matter. However
laudable or desirable the object of a law may appear,
its primary requisite is effectiveness, and that effective-
ness depends upon the mutual consent of those whose
actions it is to control. Autocratic rulers have learned
this to their cost, and the lesson which kings have learnėd
in the past is in store for majorities in the future, if
they transgress the limits with which nature has cir-
cumscribed their power. For nature is superior to law,
and has never yet failed to demonstrate its superiority.
Our latter-day prohibitionists afford the strongest
proof that this fact is recognized, even by those who
are to-day promulgating the doctrine that individual
364
When the Majority Is King.
man must yield up what we call his personal liberty
for the benefit of what a certain class of men-say, a
majority—consider to be the need of the community at
large. The prohibitionist believes—no doubt sincerely
—that the use of alcoholic drink is the root of all human
evil. This being his creed, the obviously honest way to
endeavor to remedy the evil would be to forbid the use
of such beverages, and punish all who have them in
their possession. But the prohibitionist knows too well
that the millions who assert the right to indulge in
stimulants, because they see in that indulgence no inter-
ference on their part with the rights of any other man, ,
would rise as one multitude in protest against such a
law. So the prohibitionist resorts to a subterfuge,
and, while expressly admitting the right of men to
drink, deprives them of the opportunity to exercise that
right by forbidding the manufacture, sale and distri-
bution of drink.
But is there any difference between destroying the
opportunity to exercise a right and destroying that
right itself? To confine a man in a vacuum and say
that you are not taking from him the right to breathe,
is an absurdity. Yet it would be no different from con-
fining a man in a place where he can obtain no drink
and saying to him that you are not depriving him of
the right to drink.
This is the fatal insincerity of the prohibitionist, and
it is here where the majority that does his bidding over-
When the Majority Is King.
365
steps the limits with which nature has circumscribed its
power, and the result is, as in all such cases, confusion,
resentment and open defiance of the law.
It
may be freely admitted that some laws directly
restricting the right of the individual have been enacted
with some measure of permanent success, but such laws
have invariably related to rights the exercise of which
the individual considered too unimportant to insist upon,
and they were therefore generally tolerated, or accepted
without resistance. But their success does not make
them right. On the contrary, the fact that the liberty
they restrict is considered not worth while contending
for constitutes their peculiar danger, inasmuch as they
establish a precedent for the enactment of other laws
affecting liberties far more deeply and generally
cherished.
Nowhere has this fact been more clearly stated than in
the following words of our Declaration of Indepen-
dence: “All experience hath shown that mankind are
more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than
to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which
they are accustomed.” Needless to say, the evils here
referred to are the evils of tyrannical government.
I know of no statute which more strikingly illustrates
in itself, both the effectiveness of law based upon com-
mon consent and the ineffectiveness of law based upon
the mere arbitrary ruling of a majority of men, than
that which is known as the Sunday law in this country.
366
When the Majority Is King.
In so far, namely, as this statute establishes Sunday
as a day of rest, it is universally accepted, because
all men realize the need of release from labor on one
day in the week, and unless each would concede to the
other the opportunity to rest on that day, none could
safely exercise the right to do so. In other words,
the great majority of men only transact business on
Sunday because they are forced to do so by their com-
petitive fellow-business men. All, however, includ-
ing the few men whose mere greed of gain causes them
to labor on Sunday, experience the need of a respite
on one day in the week; hence the agreement, not to
take from each other the right to open their place of
business on the Lord's day, but to protect for each
other the right to rest on that day.
Now, rest implies recreation, and there is where the
Sunday statute produces the inevitable clash, for,
wherever it prevents men from indulging in the recrea-
tion they desire and consider themselves entitled to, it
acts not as a concession but as a deprival of right, and
in consequence becomes largely inoperative. Men real-
ize, in short, that such parts of the law which forbid,
for instance, the playing of games, or the opening of
houses of amusement, public museums and places of
public resort on Sunday, have not the object of pre-
serving the right of the individual to rest, but aim to
force men generally to observe the Sabbath according
to the religious views and conceptions of a certain sec-
When the Majority Is King.
367
tion of the Christian church, and the law therefore
becomes ineffective, except in those localities where the
followers of these particular religious denominations
are in a sufficiently large majority to coerce the rest
of the community into obeying it.
This is exactly the rule by might, and not by right,
which is peculiar to man in his savage state, a condi-
tion from which he has been steadily endeavoring to
rise, and into which a certain element of modern society
is to-day—unwittingly, no doubt-endeavoring to
return him. Nor does it matter whether such might
is exercised by one man, as, for instance, an autocratic
ruler, or by a body of men, as, for instance, a majority.
It is equally subversive of human rights, and therefore
productive of evil. Men suffered from it under one-man
rule, largely because they did not realize their power
to resist it. Men suffer from it under majority rule,
either because they are too indolent or indifferent to
use the power they possess to destroy it, or because
they are too ignorant to understand the principles
which it violates, and which it is every man's duty, in
his own interest and that of his fellows, to maintain
and defend.
There is, in fact, no more divine right vested in major-
ities than there is vested in kings, and those who assert
that the complex character which our modern society has
assumed demands a readjustment of our notions of indi-
vidual liberty merely prove their utter misconception
368
When the Majority Is King.
of the fundamental principle from which human society
took its inception, and which alone has made its advance
to its present stage possible. It therefore behooves men
who aspire to be our law givers, as well as those who elect
them, to constantly bear in mind that our present-day
government cannot, with due deference to this funda-
mental principle, the equal rights of all men, properly
concern itself with anything but the detailed application
of that principle to the complex conditions of modern
society. Wherever it seeks to accomplish more than
this, it either attempts to alter, or it violates, that prin-
ciple, with the consequence that the laws it enacts
become laws based upon might, not right, and as such
either tyrannous or nugatory. For might is evanescent,
while right endures forever.
If men would stop to consider why it is that human
beings only found it possible in a corporate capacity
to secure and protect individual liberty, they would
discover that the reason is as transparently evident to-
day as it was at the very beginning of human society.
The fact is, humiliating as the admission may be, that
we are individually by no means so far removed from
the savage state as some of us are led to believe. Indi-
vidual man, even at this day, let his station be ever so
humble, is by instinct a tyrant, with little true concep-
tion of right, excepting as it pertains to himself. It is
only when he has been educated to see that his own
rights are co-extensive with, and their security and
When the Majority Is King.
369
maintenance interdependent upon, the rights of his
fellow-man; in other words, that the preservation of
his own liberty is conditioned' upon his unqualified
recognition of the equal liberty of all men, that his
selfish, tyrannical instinct yields to his equally selfish
sense of expediency, and makes way for the spirit of
compromise, which results in the agreement for the
mutual protection of individual right that finds its
expression in human law.
There was never a time when the realization of this
fact by men of all ranks and grades was of such
supreme importance as it is in this present era of our
so-called enlightenment and complex social conditions.
When a Minority is the People
(From the American Leader, Nov. 12 and 28, 1914.)
Paradoxical as it may sound, while majority rule
seems to us to be the form of government most repre-
sentative of the people, the true fact is that the voice
of the people invariably speaks through the minority.
The reason is very simple. Experience has taught
us that the liberty of the individual is contingent upon
the equal liberty of all men. Government, however, on
whatever basis it may be established, implies a ruling
body and a body ruled. No matter how the ruling
body is constituted, whether it be. permanent or tempo-
rary, hereditary or elective, the function of government
is inseparable from the exercise of power, and power
is the antithesis of freedom. The instability of party
rule, which is the characteristic feature of our repub-
lican form of goverment, is traceable primarily to this
very antithesis. The minority of to-day becomes the
majority of to-morrow, only, in its turn, to hear the
voice of the people speak through another minority and
oppose
the
power through which the newly established
majority proceeds to impose its rule upon the com-
munity at large. Thus the same course is run over and
When a Minority Is the People.
371
over again, and the ruling body and the body ruled are
in constant conflict and opposition.
It would seem, then, as if there were a decree of
nature against any permanency or stability in human
affairs. Yet this is not so. It is through the very con-
flict between the body ruling and the body ruled that
we have obtained some of the best results in our human
government. In England, for instance, where the
minority is known in parliamentary language as the
opposition, it has become a common saying that the
surest guaranty of good government lies in the strength
of the opposition.
Whether this be so or not, it is certain that all
substantial progress in representative government has
been marked by the gradual development of a minor-
ity into a majority. In our imperfect and somewhat
blundering fashion, therefore, we manage, after all, to
evolve some order out of chaos, and the saying that
the people rule, while in some respects a mere figure
of speech, is not so in all respects. The people do rule
—ultimately, and the reality of this rule of the people
is best exemplified by the fact that only those laws
prove to be stable and permanent which have the ap-
proval and the consent of all men.
This is true, no matter whether the governing power
be exercised by one man or by many. The difference,
in fact, in so far as it bears upon the actual individual,
is not as great as some believe. Government, even
372
When a Minority Is the People.
though established by a majority, must necessarily pass
into the hands of a few men, with all the power which
the function of government implies. In our country,
it is this majority which elects the legislative and exec-
utive bodies, and vests in them the authority to
enact and enforce laws. It also, in many cases, elects
(unfortunately) the judges, among whose functions
is that of deciding whether such laws as the governing
body enacts conform to the fundamental principles of
individual human right which are embodied in our
Constitution, and are known as organic laws. These
organic laws represent presumptively the definitely
ascertained will of all the people, and for that reason
have been placed beyond the power of a mere majority
to abrogate or alter.
The system, then, on the face of it, seems perfect.
Yet is it so very different from what we call monarchic
institutions? The rights of the people, though possibly
not quite the same, are as real and in some cases as well
defined under the rule of a king as they are under the
rule of a majority, and they are as liable to infringe-
ment in the one case as in the other, only the people
at large do not realize it. The idea of majority rule,
indeed, seems to possess some magic charm which
disarms all suspicion of tyranny, and blinds the indi-
vidual to the eternal truth that only by the most jealous
vigilance can the liberty of man be protected against
the power of man.
When a Minority Is the People.
373
How many of us, who sing blithely of the land of
the free, do not realize that it is not because our country
is subject to the rule of a majority that its citizens
are, or ought to be, free, but because the rule of the
majority is subject to the rights of the minority. That
these rights of the minority happen to be the rights of
the whole people renders it all the more important for
us not to allow ourselves to be lulled into the belief
that no effort on our part is required to secure them
against encroachment.
If it had not been considered within the range of.
possibility, for instance, that the right of all men to
life, liberty and property might one day be contested
by a perverse majority of citizens, there would have
been no reason to safeguard that right so carefully in
the Constitution of our country. That Constitution,
in fact, while purporting to establish the inalienable
rights of the whole people, in effect merely protects
the rights of the minority of the people against the
aggression of the ruling majority, and the very fact
that it does so warrants us in saying that a minority
whom a ruling majority of citizens attempts to deprive
of such established rights (no matter whether the major-
ity deprives itself of those rights at the same time), is
as justly termed the people as if it were a whole nation
rising against an oppressive ruler calling himself king.
· For, in an absolute monarchy the whole people are the
minority, while the king is the majority. The only ap-
374
When a Minority Is the People.
parent difference, in this particular, between representa-
tive and monarchical government is that in the former
case the ruling body is subject to dismissal by the people,
and in the latter case the ruler is not. But even this
difference, on closer inspection, proves to be purely
theoretical, for the reason that, since representative
government is established by a majority, it is only
by a majority that it can be dismissed, and a majority
is manifestly no more likely of its own accord to relin-
quish its power than a king is to relinquish his.
It is in all cases, then, the minority that must of
necessity act as the protector of the fundamental rights
accorded to the whole people, and it is therefore prop-
erly representative of the whole people whenever it
stands in defense of those rights. Nor is there any
exaggeration in the assumption that, in our enlightened
age, a minority may be called upon, and ought, to take
such a stand. Man, in all ages, has been subject to
fitful impulses, which have caused him periodically to
deviate from the course marked out for him by the
accumulated experience of generations and seek a short-
cut, by way of law, to the final goal he is destined to
reach, if at all, by education. That we are to-day in the
midst of such a period is scarcely to be doubted. In fact,
the particular impulse which is characteristic of our pres-
ent age, and which, fed by certain aggressive though
well-meaning reformers, has seized large numbers of the
community with almost epidemic force, is nothing less
When a Minority Is the People.
375
than to subvert the entire foundation upon which we
have so far erected our social fabric, by assuming that
human society was not created for the benefit of indi-
vidual man, but that individual man was created for
the benefit of human society. Which means, of course,
what many of those who unreflectingly subscribe to this
doctrine do not fully realize, that individual man has no
rights inherent in him by nature, but only such rights
as society, ruled by a majority, may concede to him.
It is not necessary to enter into an academic discus-
sion of the question which of the two propositions is
theoretically correct. The theory of government, as
advanced by some men (though they be a majority)
is one thing, its practice, as determined by all men, is
another, and, whether fortunately or unfortunately, it
is this other upon which the success of government is
conditioned.
If men were created equal, as our Declaration of
Independence has it, there would be no problem of
government to confront us, for majorities and minorities
would be inconceivable. But they are not. Men are
merely assumed by us for the purposes of government to
be created with equal rights, which means, if it means
anything, that they have the inalienable right to their
own folly and their own wisdom, and the equally
inalienable right to protection against the folly and the
wisdom of their neighbor.
It is idle to pretend that this is a mere theory. It is
376
When a Minority Is the People.
the result of the stern practical experience of ages,
which has proved that all the laws of the world, backed
by all the power of governmental authority, cannot make
foolish men wise or wise men foolish. The fool of to-
day may become the sage of to-morrow,—and vice
versa, but not by social or governmental decree. Wis-
dom is not imparted by law, nor can folly be corrected
by it.
This truth is as old as the hills, and perhaps for that
reason, like most very ancient truths, more apt to be
lost sight of than are others far less obvious. But
though some of us may temporarily overlook or disre-
gard it in our eagerness to advance our own pet theories
of what is good for our fellow-men, it is just through
these fellow-men that we are again brought face to
face with the truth, and recognize its immutability.
If all men were equal, law would be superfluous,
and education, as we understand it, futile, for equal
men would require no protection against each other,
nor could some benefit by the example and the teach-
ing of others. Being unequal, they have agreed, each
in his own selfish interest, to submit to law, in order
to protect each other from the consequences of their
inequality, and to education, in order that, so far as
humanly possible, the degree of their inequality may
be lessened.
We have, therefore, two distinct functions which
society, as constituted by individual man, has always
When a Minority Is the People.
377
been called upon to perform. The governmental func-
tion, which aims to prevent superior and inferior from
trespassing upon each other's rights, and the educa-
tional function, which aims to bring superior and inferior
to the same level of mental, moral and physical efficiency.
If ever the latter function (the educational) were to be
completed, the former function (the governmental)
would cease automatically, for the need of human
government is predicated upon the inequality of those
governed. Unless this were true, there would be no
meaning in the saying that the least governed people
are the best governed.
It is, then, the confusing of these two functions by
those in whom they are vested which has usually been the
source of the differences that have arisen between the
body ruled and the body ruling, for the tendency to
endeavor to accelerate the slow but steady process of
education by force of law is by no means exclusively
peculiar to our present age. Many an autocratic ruler
who has gone down in history as a selfish tyrant really
committed no greater offense than that of which our
majorities of to-day are so often guilty, namely, the
offense of endeavoring to anticipate the slow but endur-
ing accomplishment of education by the quicker but
more transitory effect of legal compulsion. One of
the most enlightened monarchs of the eighteenth cen-
tury, for instance, nearly caused his subjects to rise
in revolt against him by decreeing that the dead should
378
When a Minority Is the People.
be buried without coffins, in order that the dissolu-
tion of the body might be hastened. If a majority
in our day were to order the dead to be cremated
instead of buried, and it undoubtedly has the power to
do so, it is more than likely that a similar revolt would
be the consequence, and for the same reason, namely,
because education has not yet convinced men that the
rights of all demand such a law.
This is no attempt to prove that what men are
taught to do by education is always right, and what
they are unwillingly compelled to do by force of law
is always wrong. Probably there has been as much
injudicious teaching in this world as injudicious govern-
ment, and mankind has suffered from the one as much
as from the other. The point is one of precedence,
purely, and a moment's reflection will convince anyone
that government, even in its most primitive stage, has
always been the offspring of education, and not vice
When, for instance, kings established their
power by divine right, they did so with the tacit con-
sent of the people, who had been taught to believe,
largely on religious grounds, that the kingly office was
conferred upon its incumbent by a higher authority
than that of man. When, in the course of history, the
tendency grew to curb the royal power, it was because
men had learned to realize that there is a human limit
even to the exercise of divine right; and again, when
monarchy was abolished and purely representative
versa.
When a Minority Is the People.
379
government was instituted in its stead, it was because
advancing education had previously convinced the
people that natural human right entitles all men to an
equal voice in human government.
It is quite conceivable that education might have
proceeded in just the reverse direction, but it is at
least questionable whether, if it had, we should have
arrived at the stage of civilization which we have
reached to-day. The fact is, however, that education
has not proceeded in the reverse direction, and it is
this fact which we have to reckon with, not the theories
of those to whom the fact may be inconvenient.
It is a strange, and, indeed, disquieting circumstance
that so many of our educators at this day are to be
found among those who advance the theory that
government can accomplish what education alone is
fitted to accomplish, or that it can accomplish it more
quickly. It argues a distrust of the efficacy of educa-
tion which throws a peculiar light upon the modern
educator who harbors it. If a teacher, failing to inspire
his class with the necessary willingness to absorb his
superior knowledge, were to call in a policeman to
enforce that willingness he would accomplish neither
anything creditable to himself nor beneficial to those
whom it is his duty to instruct. He would merely
confess his own incompetency as an educator, while
the policeman—well, would remain a policeman still,
capable, no doubt, of swinging a club with telling force
380
When a Minority Is the People.
upon the outer surface of a recalcitrant pupil's cranium,
but scarcely with any inspiring effect upon that which
is inside it. Yet it is that which is inside it that educa-
tion is intended to reach.
Apply the example to the general proposition before
us. When our educators, failing to impress the people
they are called upon to instruct with the necessity of
observing certain rules of personal conduct or follow-
ing a certain prescribed code of morals, appeal to the
governing power to step in and accomplish the desired
end by law, the result is precisely the same. True, the
club of the law is undoubtedly capable of descending
with telling force upon the outer surface of the people's
cranium, to the extent even of depriving them of
the power of physical resistance, but it is not capable
of conveying any moral conviction to the mind inside,
without which conviction the effect of the law's club
will be but of a temporary nature. In other words, a
law which does not carry with it the convincing power
that it is right, even though physically enforced by the
club of the majority, is as practically ineffective as the
policeman in a schoolroom. Everyone admits, of course,
that the best of laws without the power to enforce them
would be an absurdity. But a law which requires one-
half of the people to compel its observance by the other
half is, as experience has abundantly shown, a still
greater absurdity.
Such laws originate in our modern times almost
When a Minority Is the People.
381
invariably in the attempt of the governing power to
usurp the function of the educator, and since men's
notions of their rights, upon which human government
is founded, are, whether right or wrong, the product of
education, it is obvious that, when government thus
essays to encroach upon the function properly belong-
ing to education, it is arrogating to itself the very
power that is intended to direct and control it.
Our government, which derives its authority from
the people, has not been invested with the power to
determine what shall be the individual rights of men.
This power has been specifically reserved to themselves
by the whole people, and until the whole people have
learned to change or modify their recorded views on
the subject, the government, no matter by how large a
majority established, is bound to shape its acts in strict
accordance with those views, or it will violate the con-
tract upon which it is founded.
That contract stipulates equal liberty and equal
protection for all men, which means that no man can
demand a liberty which is not possessed equally by
every man, nor receive a protection, however much he
may seem to need it, that merely extends to his own
person, and not, through that person, to the community
at large. In other words, no man can ask anything of
law for his sake alone, nor impose anything by law
upon others for their sakes alone, without exceeding
the rights conceded to him by all the people.
382
When a Minority Is the People.
As an illustration in point, for instance, compulsory
vaccination would be a flagrant violation of this estab-
lished principle of individual right, if it merely aimed
to protect the individual himself against the ravages of
a deadly disease. But it does not. It aims to prevent
the individual from becoming a source of deadly con-
tagion to all other individuals. A man, if he choose,
may court death, but he may not endanger his life to
the peril of other men's lives. The law against suicide
is for this reason a monstrosity. It could scarcely be
more so, indeed, if it subjected the would-be suicide
to the penalty of death. A law, in short, which attempts
to forbid what it cannot prevent is not only wrong in
principle, but absurd in fact.
It is notorious that our statute books at this day
literally swarm with just such enactments, and they
are the result, either of crass ignorance of the most
ordinary principles of human government on the part
of our legislators, or, worse, still, of their truckling to
the imperious demands of theorists who are either
as ignorant as they, or who have made themselves a
power in political life for the express purpose of pitting
their own peculiar conception of human right against
the wisdom and experience of all ages. It is, in fact,
not because the governing power is arrogating to itself
the function of the educator, but because the educator
is seeking to assume the function of government, that
this modern departure from all established principles of
When a Minority Is the People.
383
government has become so great a menace to the com-
munity at large.
It would scarcely be possible to cite a more instructive
example of the effect of this merging of the educational
function in the function of government than that which
is afforded by the attempt on the part of a certain
class of modern educational reformers to enforce the
purely individual principle of abstinence from certain
indulgences common to the people at large by act of
law. That these attempts, wherever temporarily
successful, have been made so by the grossest misuse of
the power of a majority against the rights of the
minority, is best evidenced by what is known in this
country as the prohibition movement, which has resulted
in dividing the entire nation, not only socially and
politically, but racially and religiously, into two vio-
lently hostile camps.
It is the theory of those who foster this movement
that it is necessary, in the interests of human society,
to protect all men by law against the desire or the
temptation to drink, because a certain percentage of
men are liable to indulge the habit to excess and thereby
become useless or unproductive members of the com-
munity. Now, if the effects of this indulgence were not
only equally dangerous to all, but at the same time
contagious or communicable, all men might become
equally interested in seeing the habit eradicated. But
they are not An intoxicated man may be a very
384
When a Minority Is the People.
unpleasant person to meet, or he may fail to provide
for his wife, who married him in the mistaken belief
that he would become the family bread-winner, just as
she might have married a man who proved too lazy to
work, or who developed a vile temper which caused
him to ill-treat her. But intoxication is not contagious.
or communicable. On the contrary, contact with a
drunken man acts upon others more often with deter-
rent than with alluring effect. Hence men who know
that the pleasure of drinking can be indulged in by
them without any fear of incurring a dangerous infec-
tion or transmitting it to others, regard the protection
which the prohibitionist claims he is extending equally
to all men as, on the contrary, a concession of individual
protection to some men at the sacrifice of the right of
all.
This is one fatal flaw in the prohibition theory. But
there is another. If the habit of drinking stimulants
were traceable to a virus, which is liable to develop in the
human system as in the case of smallpox or tuberculosis,
the law might, by sheer exercise of the physical force
wielded by a majority, compel all men to be inoculated
against the virus, even though the disease it produced
were not contagious. But human science has so far dis-
covered no such virus, nor has any system of law or pro-
cess of legal inoculation been devised that will effectively
destroy the appetites and desires of men. Prohibition,
therefore, not only violates the solemn guaranty of
When a Minority Is the People.
385
individual right which forms the very basis of our
American Constitution, namely, the guaranty of equal
liberty and equal protection for all men, but attempts
to forbid what it cannot prevent, and is for this reason
one of the most pernicious products of the modern
reform theory.
It is almost pathetic to reflect that, in a country
like ours, where every man, through his vote, con-
tributes his share towards the government of the nation,
so few should possess even the most rudimentary knowl-
edge of the fundamental principle upon which that
gov-
ernment was established, and that, in consequence, so
many remain totally blind to the grave danger of
permitting even the slightest infraction of that prin-
ciple by those whom they elect, not to rule the com-
munity, as some erroneously suppose, but merely to
perform the governmental function on behalf of all
of its members.
If the people are sovereign—and few will have the
temerity to deny that our constitution intended that
they should be—then the majority is merely a viceroy,
and a viceroy is appointed, not to exercise the sovereign
power, but only to perform those sovereign functions
which the sovereign himself is not able to perform
in person. The moment a viceroy successfully usurps
his sovereign's power, the sovereignty of the latter is
a thing of the past, even though he may remain king
in name.
386
When a Minority Is the People.
And so it is with the sovereign people. The function
of the majority is purely viceregal, and while the
majority performs that viceregal function, the minor-
ity becomes the guardian of the people's sovereign
rights. Thus the answer to the question implied in
the words, “When a minority is the people,” is clearly
indicated. A minority is the people when the majority
is a king.
Some Reflections on the Relation
Between Liberty and Law
(From the American Leader, March 25, 1915.)
It is a strange fact that what men cherish most they
usually think least about; they just take it for granted.
If this applies to a man's religion-and it does so to a
very large extent—it applies with equal force to that
which man reverences most next to his religion-his
liberty.
Ask the first ten men you meet on any day of the
week what their conception of liberty is, and nine of
them, if they tell the truth, will probably admit that
they have never given the question a moment's thought.
The tenth may say: “Liberty is my right to do as I
please, within the law," and the remaining nine, if they
hear the definition, are likely to accept it with complete
satisfaction, never realizing that the very
relation
between law and liberty is the crux of the whole prob-
lem; in other words, that the definition states the
problem, but does not solve it.
Yet it is upon these very men, and the millions of
which they are typical, that the maintenance of the
substructure depends upon which the edifice of human
liberty is built. For liberty, far from being an un-
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Relation Between Law and Liberty.
conditional privilege of man, is, on the contrary, the
outgrowth of certain conditions which lie in man's
own making or unmaking, and first and foremost of
which is the recognition of the fact that, where all
enjoy equal liberty, no man can be free to interfere
with the freedom of his neighbor. Hence, though our
modern institutions guarantee us the continuance of
our liberties, they do so only upon the assumption that
we shall do our share towards preserving the conditions
which have made those liberties possible. Each indi-
vidual among us is responsible for that preservation,
both to himself and to his fellow-individuals, and any
lack of diligence on his part in fulfilling that responsi-
bility, or enforcing its fulfillment by others, endangers
the liberties of all.
Here, then, would seem to be the first and foremost
duty of the citizen; yet, unfortunately, it is the one
duty he gives least thought to. He is satisfied to
intrust such matters to those whom he elects to govern
him, and, having once elected them, he goes with a light
heart about his business.
He forgets that the people are as responsible for the
government they elect as the government is responsible
for the people who elect it. Any dereliction of duty
on the part of the ruling power in a representative
government is a dereliction of duty on the part of
those who have constituted that power. It is not to
be expected that millions of men will ever be of one
Relation Between Law and Liberty.
389
mind on any specific proposition of government.
Hence, the necessity, even in representative govern-
ment, of rule by majority. But that rule applies to
the specific details of government only, not to the
principle of individual human liberty which underlies
it. The safeguarding of that principle, both against
certain elements of the community at large who are
forever seeking a pretext to overthrow it, and against
those who may be tempted by the temporary tenure of
power to violate it for their own gain, lies with the
people at large.
Those of the former class maintain that liberty
means the license to do as you please, regardless of
law, and they point to the latter class as proof of their
assertion. Thus the actions of the grafting politician,
the servile legislator, and the corrupt administrator of
our time, as well as of their creator and creature, the
unscrupulous and law-defying citizen, are cited by
them as examples of the exercise of liberty. The fact,
of course, is that they are just the reverse. It is
precisely these men who are undermining the primary
condition upon which our liberties hinge, namely, the
recognition of the truth that man can only secure the
blessing of liberty in exactly the degree in which he
extends that blessing to his neighbor. But, if such
men are responsible for the nefarious misuse of the
power vested in them, they are no more so than are
the rest of us twenty odd million voters of the country,
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Relation Between Law and Liberty.
in whose hands it lies to drive these malefactors from
their positions of power and put better men in their
places.
Man, on the whole, therefore, is as free as he
deserves to be; which means that, if, in his collective
capacity, he is not able enough, or determined enough,
to repress the individual who violates the principle of
liberty, he thereby fails to make good his own claim
to be free.
Liberty, in fact, is inseparable from order, and the
strongest evidence of that waning of the sense of
liberty in our commonwealth, of which there are indub-
itable signs to-day, consists in the lamentable indiffer-
ence with which so large a proportion of our present-
day citizenship regard their individual responsibility
for the maintenance of that condition of public order
and rectitude which constitutes the main safeguard of
our liberty. Too indolent to perform their individual
duty in this regard, yet alive to the necessity of cor-
recting what they themselves fail to correct, these
people become an easy prey to the false doctrine which
teaches that it is liberty that is subversive of order, and
that consequently order can only be established at the
sacrifice of liberty.
The truth is, not that liberty is destructive of order,
but, on the contrary, that lack of order is destructive
of liberty. Order may be conceivable without liberty,
but liberty is inconceivable without order. The exer-
Relation Between Law and Liberty.
391
cise of liberty is indeed the most intelligent expression
of the human will, because true liberty cannot exist
unless it gives exactly what it takes, and it is therefore
only possible to him who recognizes that the safety
of his own rights lies in the protection he extends, and
compels his fellow-man to extend, to the same rights
in others.
How necessary it is to extend that protection to our
fellow-man, regardless of what we may individually
think of the discretion he displays in exercising his
liberty, must have been very forcibly brought home of
late to the commercial man of the country, who has
for years contemplated, sometimes with amusement,
and not infrequently even with approval, the modern
trend to curtail the purely social liberties of the
people, never realizing that his tacit acquiescence in
that curtailment meant the establishing of a precedent
which warranted the curtailment of his own. At least,
it can be said that, if the business man has not yet
awakened to this fact, it is high time that he should,
for the most superficial investigation will prove to
him that the same elements in the community which
aim to restrict the social liberty of the individual are
the elements that aim to interfere with his commercial,
industrial, or any other liberty which he happens to
prize.
These elements have only one conception of liberty,
namely, unrestricted license. They do not realize that
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Relation Between Law and Liberty.
unrestricted license is the very antithesis of liberty
in the social sense in which we understand it; nay,
they do not realize that it is just unrestricted license
which they themselves are advocating when they de-
mand that their particular view of what man is
entitled or not entitled to do shall govern all men's
actions. The essentially reciprocal feature, in short,
which makes liberty an asset in which all mankind
possesses equal partnership rights, is inconceivable
to them.
The best proof of this fact is afforded by the favorite
contention so often advanced by this school of modern
thinkers, by way of justifying the restrictions they
would place upon men's liberties, that when we murder
our fellow-being, or steal his purse, or destroy the
happiness of his home, we are exercising our liberty.
Of course, we are doing just the contrary, for we are
violating the cardinal principle on which all human
liberty is founded-namely, the equal right of all men
to life, property, and the pursuit of happiness, just
as they are violating that principle when they seek to
deprive man of his liberty of action, not because it
interferes with the liberty of his neighbor, but because
it does not conform with their notion of what that
action ought to be. If it were an exercise of liberty
for me to take my neighbor's life or his property,
where would be my liberty to retain possession of my
own life or property? Such possession would depend,
Relation Between Lare and Liberty.
393
under those circumstances, not upon any right inherent
in me, but upon my individual power to defend my
possession against the rest of my kind. That power
is the basic principle of the law of the jungle, which
the aforesaid school of thinkers have the amiable habit
of confusing with the principle of human liberty,
utterly ignorant of the fact that it is just that law
of the jungle which they are aiming to substitute for
the liberty they refer to so contemptuously. For the
law of the jungle is the law of the strongest, and it
matters but little, so far as my liberty is concerned,
whether I forfeit it to an individual who is physically
stronger than I am, or whether it is taken from me
by an aggregation of individuals calling themselves a
majority, whose power exceeds minė.
The fact is that liberty, in the human sense, is not,
as so many thoughtlessly believe, founded upon our
law, but, on the contrary, our law is founded upon
liberty, and it is to the non-realization of this important
difference that our many legislative blunders are due.
Your agitator against individual liberty will tell you
that it is the protection of the weak against the strong
that necessitates the curtailment of that liberty by law.
But the statement is utterly and palpably false. It is
just of the very essence of liberty that it affords the
weak protection against the strong. It is also of the
very essence of liberty, as expressed by law, that no
man, whether weak or strong, shall be forced to accept
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Relation Between Law and Liberty.
protection against himself, for has it not invariably
been on the pretext of protecting men against them-
selves that tyrants in all ages have succeeded in estab-
lishing their despotic power? Thus, if I own the
finest mansion in the universe, I am free to destroy it
in the full wantonness of my individual folly, without
let or hindrance on any man's part, but I may not lay
a finger upon the cottage belonging to my humblest
fellow-man. His cottage is his freedom, which I am
bound to respect. My palace is my freedom, which he
is bound to respect. We are each equally responsible
to each other, but not for each other.
The real truth is that the modern theory which calls
for the sacrifice of our liberty is based upon the assump-
tion that this sacrifice is necessary in order that the
weak among us may be protected against their own
weakness, that is their incapacity to use their liberty
with judgment and discretion, and this is a proposition
of such far-reaching effect that it is impossible to over-
estimate its seriousness.
Putting aside the abstract question of individual
human liberty and the important part it has played
in the advancement of human culture, let us ask our-
selves whether it is possible to protect a man against
his own weakness. Speaking offhand, we would say
that the possibility is at best a very doubtful one.
Weakness may be defined as the lack of power to
resist, and if we so surround our weaklings that there
Relation Between Law and Liberty.
395
shall be nothing for them to resist, they may escape the
immediate penalty of their weakness. But will they be
ultimately any better off? Or, to be more specific, will
their weakness grow greater or less? By wrapping
a man with a weak heart in cotton wool, and carefully
shutting him off from any excitement or exertion, you
may save him from a premature death, but you will
not cure his weak heart. We confine our insane in
asylums, but that, in itself, does not cure their insanity,
and, though we lock up our criminals in jails, we do
not thereby convert them into useful members of
society.
If strength, then, is the power to resist, of what good
is that power without the opportunity to exercise it?
All evidence of nature goes to prove that there is no
sense or function in man, beast, or plant that does not
disappear or become atrophied with the lack of oppor-
tunity to exercise it, nor is there any such sense or
function among Nature's creatures that has not grown
more perfect in proportion to the opportunity given to
exercise it. Would, for instance, the mole of to-day
have sightless eyes but for his habit of living in the
safety of the earth’s depths, where no opportunity
existed to exercise his sense of sight? Would the eagle
of our time be able to gaze into the sun's light if his
forefathers had shrunk from braving the power of its
burning rays? It is true that, by living in darkness,
some individual moles may have escaped the immediate
.
396
Relation Between Law and Liberty.
consequence of their weakness, who would otherwise
have succumbed to it. Likewise it is possible that some
individual eagles may have succumbed to the blinding
power of the sun's light who would have suffered no
such consequences had they refrained from exposing
themselves to it. But it is the race as a whole we are
considering here, not the individual, which is strictly in
accordance with the trend of our modern age. And
which race is better off, in the ultimate result to-day,
the race of moles with their blind eyes, or the race of
eagles with their sun-defying orbs of sight?
According to the theory of some, the mole started
his career with weak eyesight, which caused certain
hygienically inclined mole-leaders to decree that this
lack of power to resist light should be met by removing
all necessity for such resistance; in other words, by
causing all moles to live in the dark. Had the eagles,
in that spirit of indiscriminate race charity peculiar to
the modern human, been moved to likewise deprive
themselves of the liberty to brave the sunlight in order
to help the moles to carry out this decree, it would not
have caused the mole to acquire the eyesight of the
eagle, but it would have compelled the eagle to con-
tract the blindness of the mole.
According to another theory, the race of moles aimed
to escape extinction at the hands of the race of eagles
by seeking the greater safety afforded them in the
darkness below the earth's surface. If this theory is
Relation Between Law and Liberty.
397
correct, the fact marks a significant difference between
the moles and eagles and the human race. Human
intelligence was capable of conceiving and developing
the idea of liberty, which implies the protection of the
weak from the strong, whereas the moles and the eagles
were not. Hence the moles, not enjoying with the
eagles the benefit of the human compact which we
call liberty, had to save their existence from the eagles
at the cost of their sense of sight.
It would seem, therefore, if comparisons count for
anything, that liberty scores all along the line, for if,
on the one hand, the mole had not feared so much for
his weak eyesight as to deny himself the liberty of
exercising his sense of sight in the full light of day, he
wouldn't ultimately have lost his eyesight altogether.
Or if, on the other hand, the eagle hadn't insisted upon
violating the weaker mole's liberty by devouring him
at sight, the latter would not have been compelled to
sacrifice both his liberty and his sense of sight in order
to save his miserable existence in the bowels of the
earth.
The illustration proves, then, that if our friend the
mole was able, temporarily, at least, to protect himself
against the consequence of his own weakness, the cost
at which he did so was prodigious. In other words, he
saved himself from total extinction, but, incidentally,
instead of curing his weak eyesight, he converted it
into complete blindness. And all this for the want of
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Relation Between Law and Liberty.
that liberty, which, if he and his fellow-being, the eagle,
had been capable of conceiving and practicing it,
would have given each his right to an equal place in
the sun, and made of the mole, if not an eagle, at least
a more distinguished member of animal society than
he can boast of being to-day.
But we no longer take our lessons from Nature.
Nature leaves her creatures to adapt themselves to
their surroundings. We are trying to adapt the sur-
roundings to Nature's creatures. The question is,
which is likely to produce the best results, Nature's
system, or Man's? Judging from experience, the
odds appear to be largely in favor of Nature, for
while Nature's system has produced some unfortunate
moles, it has also given a race of eagles to the world.
Some of us think it might be better if all were eagles,
but, in our endeavor to convert all moles of Nature's
making into eagles of human make, there is the uncer-
tainty whether the result may not prove to be the
reverse, namely, the conversion of all eagles of Nature's
making into moles of human make. There is some
warrant, in fact, in past experience for the fear that
this may indeed prove to be the result. But, then,
experience is one of the things we no longer take
much stock in. We believe in experiment, not in
experience. We forget, perhaps, that experiment is
merely experience in the making. But that is a detail.
Some mathematical freak once reckoned out that,
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Relation Between Law and Liberty.
if all the human energy expended in fruitless endeavors
to cure the incurable were translated into motive
power, it would be more than sufficient to run all the
machinery in the world. The possibilities of economy
and greater efficiency that suggest themselves hero
almost transcend human conception. Perhaps some
day. a genius will be born capable of exploiting those
possibilities. Until then we must content ourselves
with dreaming of them—eugenically.
Liberty, Race Culture, and Our
Balance of Profit and Loss
An Address Delivered Before the New Jersey State
Chamber of Commerce, at Newark, N. J., on April
13, 1915.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: In these days of san-
itation, and eugenics and hygiene, and the race for per-
fect efficiency of muscle and brain, when, wherever we
turn, we meet an anti-this society or an anti-that league,
an association for the legal suppression of this evil, or a
club for the legal eradication of that abuse, it is not the
easiest of tasks to discuss the somewhat antiquated sub-
ject of liberty before any gathering of men without
treading upon some one's favorite corn.
Perhaps, indeed, I ought to feel a particular hesitancy
about discussing, before a body of pre-eminently com-
mercial men, a subject apparently so far removed as this
one is from their special sphere of interest. But I be-
lieve that, at this day, there is no class of citizens that has
so much reason to apply its thoughts to this very subject
of liberty as that of the business men of the country.
You know people sometimes do not realize that they
possess a stomach until they swallow something that
upsets that stomach, and then they know it for certain.
Liberty and Race Culture.
401
Now, liberty is to commerce and industry, as it is to all
other affairs of man, what the stomach is to the human
body, only the business man didn't find it out until quite
recently, when a sudden overdose of legislative restric-
tion disagreed with that stomach and set his whole com-
mercial body aching. Since then, unless he is different
from all other stomach invalids, he may be presumed to
take an intelligent interest in stomachs and stomach
ailments in general, and to appreciate the opportunity,
highly prized by all sick people, of comparing his
own symptoms with those of his fellow-sufferers. At
least, if he doesn't, it is high time that he should, and
that relieves me from further apology in the premises.
Now, the fact is that all of us love liberty—of a kind.
Some like it in homeopathic doses, especially where their
neighbor is concerned. Others demand it in full allo-
pathic strength, especially where they themselves are
concerned. All have some sort of liberty which they
desire to exercise; only most of us regard just that sort
of liberty which we ourselves affect and approve as the
only liberty that is fit for others.
The fact that liberty, in the social sense in which ex-
perience has taught us to understand it, means, broadly,
equal rights and equal protection for all men, has been
largely forgotten by many of us. Race-betterment has
become the dominant-well, I will not say fad, because
the subject is too sacred—but let me say the dominant
trend of our age, and many of us are willing and ready
402
Liberty and Race Culture.
to sacrifice even our liberty upon the altar of race-bet-
terment, entirely forgetful that the very basis and
foundation of all human betterment thus far achieved
has been precisely that liberty which we are so blindly
ready to sacrifice. It is just as if a man had built a
house five stories high, and having determined to put
several more stories upon it, concluded that the first
thing necessary in order to accomplish this was to remove
the foundation upon which the first five stories were
erected.
Some one has said: Show me the freest people on
earth, and I will show you the most progressive. Is
there an American who will have the temerity to ques-
tion that statement? Yet America is today in danger
of affording an example of the obverse of what the
statement expresses, namely: show me the least free
people on earth, and I will show you the least progres-
sive. There is nothing perfect in this world-Nature
has so decreed it, and in consequence we must pay for
our freedom, as we must pay for everything else we
possess and enjoy. It is merely a question of what
we get for that which we pay.
Let me illustrate. We are all mighty proud and
satisfied to know that average human life has within
comparatively recent times been lengthened by quite
a respectable span of years.
This has been accom-
plished, not by laws applied directly to the individual
and his personal actions and doings, but by the expendi-
Liberty and Race Culture.
403
ture of a little administrative wisdom and by the acqui-
sition and application of a little sound scientific knowl-
edge. Is there a man seated at these tables who would
not wish to see the average length of human life still
further extended? Well, we are told that it can be
done. Indeed, it is the opinion of some of our fellow-
men that by merely giving up most of that which we
have come to regard as pleasant and agreeable in our
lives we can still further lengthen our average existence.
I don't know what you think about it, but I am frank
to say for myself that, if the length of my life is to be
in inverse ratio to the enjoyment I am to get from
it, I for one would prefer to have my life made as short
as possible. Perhaps that is a cranky notion, but, in
these days of cranky notions generally, I am surely
entitled to have mine.
The fact is that there is one sense the cultivation
of which has been sadly neglected among us, and our
deficiency in which is at the bottom of all our cranky
notions and the many preposterous consequences they
produce in this very imperfect world we are so bent
upon making perfect in record time.
That sense is
the sense of proportion. If any fellow countryman
of ours makes a particularly sensational hit with us,
either by some well-turned phrase in a public speech,
or by some extraordinary feat of learning, or by some
signal act of heroism or sacrifice, we don't signify our
approval or appreciation of his accomplishment, as
404
Liberty and Race Culture.
they would in other countries, by conferring a distinc-
tion upon the man that is proportionate to the cir-
cumstances of the case.
Not a bit of it. If we are
really in earnest, we boom him for President. We
either go the whole hog, or we don't go at all. We
can't move by degrees, because a degree is a proportion,
and we are blind to all proportion.
This defect in our mental vision of things shows
itself whether we are dealing with the weightiest or
the most trivial affairs of our social life. Instances,
in fact, have become so numerous that the difficulty
is to select those that are most instructive.
I will eschew for the moment those instances more
directly affecting the commercial life of our citizen-
ship, in which you are specifically interested, and cite
a few samples of that minor freak legislation of ours
which has in recent years made America a bye-word
among the nations of the earth, and which, if we would
only realize it, has been the forerunner of that graver
legislative malady from which the nation in general,
and its commerce and industry in particular, are today
suffering
In every case you will find that the utter absence
of all sense of proportion underlies the action of the
legislator who proposes, the law-making body which
enacts, and the people at large who acquiesce in, the
statutory absurdities involved.
For example, because certain games lend them-
Liberty and Race Culture.
405
In one
selves to the practice of betting or staking money, all
games of this character, including dominoes, checkers
and the like, have been forbidden in one of our States,
even within the four walls of a citizen's private resi-
dence. In another State the law prescribes the exact
quantity of certain beverages which the private citizen
is permitted to purchase and keep in his home at one
time, and providing heavy penalties if he should ever
exceed that quantity. Again, in another State, a man
is debarred from indulging in a game of billiards in a
public place, if the community by a majority vote
decides that such pastime is undesirable.
State you violate the law if you tip any one who
renders you a service; in another you are punished if
you smoke a cigarette. In one State it is proposed
to forbid physicians and dentists to wear beards and
whiskers; in another State they are aiming to regu-
late the style and character of women's wearing ap-
parel. There is actually a law today under the con-
sideration of one of our legislatures which proposes
to punish tailors if they make trousers containing
hip-pockets, and to fine the citizen who wears such
trousers, because, forsooth, hip-pockets are occasion-
ally used as receptacles for revolvers. In Wisconsin
a bill has just been introduced providing that house-
maids shall be given at least two nights a week off
and have a special room set apart for them to receive
their callers in. In the State of Illinois a law was
406
Liberty and Race Culture.
recently enacted determining what the minimum width
and length of bed sheets used in hotels shall be, and
providing for the punishment of hotelkeepers whose
bed sheets do not conform to such minimum measure-
ments. Nothing, in short, is so trifling as to escape
the attention of our legislators, and cause the adoption
of restrictive or coercive measures which are out of all
proportion far-reaching when compared with the con-
ditions they aim to correct.
You may laugh at these laws, and see nothing but
their comic side. But I say to you that their bearing
is an infinitely wider one than many imagine, for you
cannot acquiesce in the violation of the principle of
personal right in matters that appear of no moment
to you without eventually jeopardizing the stability
of that principle as applied to matters that are
of moment to you. It is not the specific absurdity
of this legislation which I am trying to bring home
to you, but the generally dangerous trend of the public
mind which it indicates, and which is gradually leading
us, as you must have learned in recent years, to ac-
quiesce in absurdities of a far graver nature.
Take an occurrence of quite recent date in the City
of Chicago, which may have come to the notice of
some of you, and which, trivial as it may appear, is
typical of this general trend of the public mind, the
danger of which I am discussing.
Two lady bathers were recently annoyed on a well-
Liberty and Race Culture.
407
known Chicago bathing beach by a couple of male
rowdies, while swimming with thousands of others of
both sexes, whose chief enjoyment consists in partaking
of the pleasures of the water together. The indigna-
tion of the citizenship, of course, knew no bounds,
and incidentally also, as usual, it knew no proportion.
Any one with a sense of proportion would have seen
to it that the two male rowdies were given a sound
thrashing and sent home in an ambulance as a warning
to all others of like character and tendencies. But
what did occur? A rule or law was promptly passed
compelling all male and all female bathers, i. e., the
thousands of respectable husbands and wives, brothers
and sisters, or friends and acquaintances of either sex,
henceforth to bathe in separate enclosures, and thus
forego the companionship which was the main pleasure
their daily plunge afforded them. There is no doubt
that this edict, which classed all men as potentially
incapable of observing the ordinary manners and de-
cencies of life, prevented any female bather from ever
again being molested by a rowdy male bather, just as
surely as the cutting off of a man's head will prevent
him from ever suffering again from headache. The
question in either case is: Is the cure of the evil
worth the cost of the remedy?
That, indeed, is the main question to be determined
wherever our liberties are involved, and, unfortunately,
too few of those who are advocating remedies for our
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Liberty and Race Culture.
evils today are alive to the necessity of counting the
cost of those remedies.
There is a ridiculous but very apposite story of a
railroad switchman who has just side-tracked a freight
train in order to make way for an express, and, in the
act of throwing the switch back to let the express
pass along the main line, sees a little child playing on
the main track a hundred yards ahead. He realizes
that if he throws the switch the child is doomed. It
is too late to stop the express. The switchman is a
father with a little child, or a brother with a little
sister, and his whole paternal or fraternal heart goes
out to that little human atom on the main track. It
must be saved at any cost, and he proceeds to save
it. He refrains from throwing the switch back, the
express comes thundering along, swerves into the sid-
ing—and the child is saved. Incidentally, of course,
a few score of human lives are snuffed out when the
express crashes into the freight train on the side-track
and is reduced to matchwood mixed with bloody
human flesh. There is no doubt about the switch-
man's humanity. But there is just as little doubt
about his lack of the sense of proportion.
It is a deplorable fact, but unfortunately true, that
our modern schools are turning out specimens of this
class of switchmen by the scores. They intrude them-
selves upon our legislatures and haunt our public
rostrums. They move their audiences to tears with
Liberty and Race Culture.
409
their stories of the many grown-up babes which their
switching methods are saving from destruction on
Nature's railroad track. But, on the question of the
cost to the multitudes in the trains switched off from
Nature's main track to the siding specially con-
structed by man, they remain silent.
Few men, indeed, realize to what lengths this
modern trend of ours to apply legislative remedies
to existing ills without counting the cost of the rem-
edies is carrying us.
Some of those who are specially
interested in combating the prohibition movement are
apt to think that this trend begins and ends with the
question whether men shall be permitted to drink
stimulants or not. This is a grave mistake, and mis-
leads many men. As a matter of fact, the prohibition
movement, important as it may appear to a large
number of people, is but an incidental phase of a
question infinitely more far-reaching; the question,
namely, whether man generally shall live his individual
life according to the dictates of his own conscience
and according to the light of his own reason and
intelligence. We believe that we are living today in
the age of individual freedom, yet though you were
to name the worst and most terrible despots that ever
tyrannized their fellow-men in bye-gone days, you
could not mention one who would have dared to
interfere with those natural personal rights of man,
the sacrifice of which is today demanded of us by an
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aggregation of theory-mad individuals calling them-
selves philanthropists, who believe that the betterment
of mankind can only be accomplished by degrading
the individual to a mere automaton, without soul, mind
or will of his own, whose every movement must be
directed by some governing force outside of him, and
whose every act must be determined by rules arbi-
trarily established by a body of his self-styled superiors.
Don't imagine, gentlemen, that you yourselves, who
may oppose this peculiar trend of our time in one
particular form, are entirely free from its baneful
effect in other forms. We are all creatures of our
age, and unconsciously subject in one respect or
other to its subtle influences.
Take, for example, the comparatively recent de-
velopment of the science of race culture, more gen-
erally known as eugenics. No one will doubt the
value of inculcating eugenic principles by educational
means. But education in our day as a means of pro-
moting betterment is at a discount. People have
come to believe that law can compel us to run, before
education or Nature has taught us how to walk.
Hence, among other things, we have the spectacle of
eugenic marriage laws, which prohibit marriage be-
tween defectives. That Nature has equipped the de-
fectives with the same instinct of propagation with
which she has endowed her more perfect creatures,
and that the prevention of marriage by human law
Liberty and Race Culture.
411
will not prevent the production of offspring by natural
law, does not enter into the calculation of the eugenic
enthusiast, or, if it does, he proposes in cold blood
to get even with Nature by sterilizing those of her
creatures which he considers she has no business to
create.
Now it is perfectly true that the attempt to enforce
the principle of eugenic procreation by law. would
be worse than a farce without the application of
drastic safeguards of the kind indicated. But where
is the application of such safeguards going to stop?
Which of us, for instance, is to say who are defectives
and who are not? Dishonesty is, according to our
social notions, a sign of defectiveness. Are we going
to sterilize all dishonest men and women? Untruth-
fulness, cruelty, inordinate greed of gain and a score
of other human frailties are signs of defectiveness.
Are we to sterilize all untruthful, cruel, greedy or
otherwise frail beings among us? Indeed, if we did,
would any of us be left to perpetuate the human race?
Are we going to breed hụman beings as we breed our
domestic cattle? And if so, who is going to decide
what kind of human cattle we desire to breed? No
two men will agree on that point. Nature, without
man's help, breeds pretty good cattle, and she bred
them long before man rose to be very much more
than the ordinary beast of the field. When he grew,
by Nature's grace, to the status of lord of the creation,
412
Liberty and Race Culture.
he pried into some of Nature's secrets, and began to
use them in order to produce a breed of cattle fitted—
for what? For his own purposes.
He did not do
this for the benefit of the cattle, but for his own
benefit. The bull or the cow, the horse or the hog of
today may be better adapted to our human needs
than the type of ancestor from which we have grad-
ually evolved them. But are they, from any other
point of view, particularly from their own, any better,
any happier, or any more perfect than those ancestors
or their undomesticated descendants? Do we ask
whether the bull or the cow, the horse or the hog
we breed are satisfied with the existence we are instru-
mental in giving them? No. We are simply a super-
species determining, for purely selfish reasons, what
the character, the attributes and the qualities of all
other species subordinate to us shall be, and until a
similar super-species appears on the earth, to which
we humans shall become subject, a like treatment of
our own species will scarcely be practicable.
Perhaps you will say that such a super-species of
man has already appeared on earth? If you do, I
shall not quarrel with you. There are strong indica-
tions that it has, and the fact is one of the most
serious problems we modern humans have to confront.
That species of superhuman consists of those among
us who have set themselves the task to breed a human
race that conforms to their notion of what the human
Liberty and Race Culture.
413
race should be. At what cost to the comfort, the
happiness and the liberty of the individual, who shall
say? He is not even given a vote in the matter. The
question, heretofore a purely personal one: “Shall I
aim to live longer and more efficiently, regardless of
the pleasantness of my life, or shall I aim to live
more pleasantly, regardless of the length and the
efficiency of my life?” is no longer to be determin-
able by the individual concerned, because some indi-
viduals—and this must be freely conceded-do not
always determine it as wisely as they might. And
because some do not determine it wisely, all of us are
to be deprived of the liberty of determining it, and
that liberty, hitherto individual, is to be lodged in the
community as a whole.
Some say the bargain is a good one. I am not here
to contradict them. But it is reasonable to ask to
what lengths such a bargain is going to carry us.
If
our liberty is to be lodged in the community as a
whole, how long will it be before our lives and our
property are treated likewise? Precedents are danger-
ous, and if the fact that some men, in the exercise of
what they erroneously suppose to be their liberty, in-
fringe the liberty of their neighbor is a good reason
why the community should abrogate all individual
liberty and substitute for it what is fancifully termed
the liberty of human society, then there is equally
good reason for the community to assume the owner-
414
Liberty and Race Culture.
LIS.
ship rights to all individual human property because
some men violate the property rights of their neighbor.
Indeed, such violations consist in nothing more than
the infringement by one individual of the individual
liberty of the other—the very liberty some of us are
proposing that the community shall take from all of
Hitherto we have left our law courts to deal
with these violations. When the millennium dawns we
may require no more law courts, insane asylums, jails
or poorhouses, but I believe it will not be because
individual liberty has been taken from us, but because
men will have learned by education to exercise that
liberty according to the contract under which each
has guaranteed it to the other.
Now there is assuredly no man worthy of the name
who does not earnestly desire the betterment of the
human race. The question is how best to obtain it, and
it is here where the cultivation of the sense of pro-
portion becomes of paramount importance to us. The
exercise of individual freedom-and I speak of free-
dom not only in the social or moral but also in the
commercial sense—is, and must always be, dependent
upon our due observance of the conditions which alone
warrant human liberty. Since we have agreed that all
men are entitled to equal liberty, the main condition
under which we exercise our liberty is that we shall
respect the same liberty in our neighbor. Analyze
any human act that is regarded as criminal, and you
Liberty and Race Culture.
415
will find that its criminality consists in one thing, and
one thing only—the infringement of the individual
liberty of others. Murder is criminal, because it in-
fringes the right of the individual to his life; theft is
criminal, because it infringes the right of the individual
to his property; and so on all down the line. To give
an illustration of a character more germane to this
present gathering: As business men you claim and
rightly—the liberty, either personally or jointly with
others, to acquire commercial wealth and power, but
if you use that commercial wealth and power to deprive
your fellow business man of his commercial liberty, or
the right or the opportunity to exercise it, you are
committing a criminal act. It is not the acquisition
or possession of commercial power, but its misuse that is
reprehensible. Few will deny that what is known
as “big business” has been largely the making of this
country commercially. It has, incidentally, also, as we
know, called into existence certain abuses, from which
individual business men, and through them the com-
munity at large, have suffered in their commercial
liberty. When the country awoke to this fact, the
cry went up for a remedy to cure the evil, and the
usual thing happened. The obvious purpose was to
stop the abuse of commercial power by some, in order
to secure the commercial liberty of all. But what
was done? The commercial liberty of all was curtailed,
in order to stop the abuse of commercial power by
some.
416
Liberty and Race Culture.
It is just another instance of that lack of the sense
of proportion which I illustrated in the story of the
switchman and the little child playing on the railroad
track. We take too little measure of comparative
values, with the natural consequence that we are con-
stantly risking a maximum of good to destroy a mini-
mum of evil. And the great question is: Shall we,
after all, succeed by such methods in destroying that
minimum of evil? Men have always blundered, and
are likely to blunder as long as the human race lasts.
But is it not just the freedom to blunder which has
developed man's power to achieve? To take from all
of us that freedom, and everything it implies in the
way of human dignity, human initiative, aye, and
human efficiency, which is the fruit of human initiative,
for the purpose of curing the lack of efficiency on the
part of some of us, would appear to be the poorest
form of economy. And what is the price we are to
pay for the problematical results it promises to a few
of us in gain of human efficiency? Granted even that
the temporary gain were certain, what about the
ultimate balance of profit and loss?
Every man naturally regards the particular freedom
he desires to exercise with a keener sense of apprecia-
tion than he does the freedom which his neighbor
cherishes, but he forgets that, in permitting the curtail-
ment of that neighbor's freedom, he is setting a prece-
dent for the curtailment of his own. The freedom
Liberty and Race Culture.
417
of one of us is the freedom of all of us, no matter
what our view may be of the individual wisdom with
which that freedom is exercised.
The time has gone by when you, as business men,
can afford to laugh if you read in your morning news-
paper that a law is proposed forbidding women under
a certain age to use paint or cosmetics, or to wear
false hair or earrings, as if it were a good joke. Per-
haps, to many of you, who don't follow the actual trend
of our modern legislation, the very suggestion of such
a possibility sounds as if it had been dug up from the
history of by-gone Puritan days. Yet the enactment
of just such a law as this is today under the considera-
tion of the legislature of one of our neighboring States.
And it is merely one of hundreds of a similar kind
with which our lawgivers are gravely concerning them-
selves, and which we have hitherto laughed at, and
sometimes even thoughtlessly applauded, without re-
alizing that, by our indifference to such monstrous
interference with the personal doings of others, we
were justifying the same unrestrained interference
with our commercial and industrial liberties, and in-
deed with all that which touches the very vitals of our
public and private existence. We don't realize that, as
business men, if we are wise, we ought to protest as
vehemently against the enactment of such an out-
rageous law, and all others like it, as we would protest
against a law providing that no merchant shall sell
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Liberty and Race Culture.
or purchase any commercial commodity above or below
a price to be fixed by a national commission of super-
visors. We don't realize, in short, that our failure to
condemn the one law, however trivial the individual
rights which it violates may appear to us, implies our
acceptance of the principle involved in the other,
because that principle is the same in both.
And why don't we realize it? Because we have
largely ceased to recognize that the safety of our
own rights lies in our protection of the rights of
others. And what rights are safe, if we each only
contend for the preservation of those which we our-
selves desire to exercise? What pleasures will remain
for any of us, if each assumes the privilege to deny
to others the pursuit of those pleasures of which he
himself happens to disapprove?
I confess frankly that a good deal of that which
affords pleasure to my neighbor appears as the rankest
of folly to me. But if I legislate away my neighbor's
freedom to exercise the pleasure he prizes and I con-
sider foolish, what is to prevent him in his turn from
legislating away my freedom to exercise the pleasure
I prize and he considers foolish? Some believe that
this is indeed what we are coming to, and that when
everybody has succeeded in abolishing by law what he
considers the foolish exercise of the freedom of every-
body else, we shall have reached the final stage of
perfect human efficiency.
Liberty and Race Culture.
419
Perhaps we shall. And still, the question I just
propounded remains unanswered, What about the ulti-
mate balance of profit and loss?
Human efficiency is a great thing. But I know a
greater. It is human happiness, and human happiness
cannot be ground out by the legislative efficiency mill.
It is largely, if not entirely, a matter of individual
human choice, guided by education and by the lessons
we learn from our own experience and the experience
of others. Our choice may not always be of the wisest,
but, if we were all to become as wise as the thirty
thousand odd laws annually introduced in our legis-
latures promise to make us, it wouldn't be long before
the angels would descend to the earth weeping at their
own unfitness, and pleading to be initiated into the
mystery of human perfection.
Far be it from me to advise the angels. There are
some among us, I know, who feel quite capable of
doing so. I do not. But should the day ever arrive
when the angels come to us to learn how to become
perfect beings, I would at least venture to warn them
to leave their sense of proportion (if they have any)
behind them. It doesn't fit in our modern scheme of
human betterment.
At any rate, I believe that no angel with any sense
of proportion would dream of placing the whole angel
world in quarantine because some angels showed symp-
toms of disease. Yet who can deny that this is indeed
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Liberty and Race Culture.
our modern human tendency? We see excess, and
immediately proceed to prohibit all indulgence. We
note the ravages of disease, and promptly confine sick
and sound in the same general hospital. Abuses creep
into business, and we put all business under the ban
of suspicion. In short, let our newspapers uncover
any sore, social, moral or commercial, and presto! seven
hundred and fifty thousand amateur specialists spring
up in every nook and corner of the country with a
legislative serum warranted to cure it, and we all have
to be inoculated with the serum, whether we individ-
ually happen to suffer from the sore or not.
It is the super-species at work among us, claiming,
as it does, that Nature just bungles when she produces
creatures with sores, and that man, represented by the
super-species, can produce a human breed entirely
free from sores, provided only that the race will
submit to the necessary breeding process and pay all
the cost involved in it. Meanwhile Nature is invited to
look on and take a much-needed lesson in man-making.
Let it be understood that I am not endeavoring to
belittle the superior character of this super-species of
man, nor its wisdom, nor its ingenuity, nor its sincerity,
nor even its ability to "put one over” on Nature, any
more than I would think of belittling the transcendent
achievement of that famous character in fiction, Frank-
enstein, who, having learned all that Nature knows,
and added to it a goodly portion of his own wisdom,
Liberty and Race Culture.
421
succeeded in artificially creating a living human being
calculated to outrival the human being of Nature's
make. But I am forcibly reminded of the fact that
Frankenstein's monster, as you all know if you have
read Mrs. Shelley's classic book, ended by destroying
all that his own creator loved best, and that the final
laugh was on Frankenstein, not on Nature.
Gentlemen, this final laugh is a very serious con-
sideration, and before we proceed too far in our head-
long race for supremacy with Dame Nature it might
be well for us to take thought and reflect whether this
final laugh, after all, may not prove to be on us and
not upon her.
OCT 27 1915
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