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But as I remarked just now, what can you do when you are encompassed about by the bottle-toting, sop-it-up-behind-the-door custom which has sprung up since Prohibition was slipped over on us by the Anti-Saloon League? I confess that I have not the strength of character to swim, almost alone, against the social current.
The lists of pledge signers were padded with the names of persons who had never tasted strong drink. In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League began its agitation, which has proceeded among country people with increasing influence. The individual is ignored and the pledge is signed now by the community, by the county or by the state.
Agnes M. Jenks of New Hampshire; Miss Mabel Foster of Washington, D. C.; Mrs. Rastall, Mrs. Charles Van Patten, Mrs. Parmelee, Senators Darling, Jose, and the Rev. Clifford Smith, superintendent of the State Anti-Saloon League. Those speaking in opposition were: Mrs. E. D. Brooks Brown, who presented an "anti" petition; Miss Minnie Bronson, secretary of the National Anti-Suffrage Association; Mrs.
To this subject there is a remarkable absence of attention on the part of the Anti-Saloon League and of the Prohibition enforcement service. They know that there are not hundreds of thousands but millions of people breaking the law by making their own liquors, but they dare not speak of it.
They may possibly be somewhat more careful about the letter of the law; they are certainly just as regardless of its spirit. With the exception of a comparatively small number of genuine Prohibitionists men who were for Prohibition before the Anti-Saloon League started its campaign they would laugh at the question whether they regard drinking as a crime. And they act accordingly.
Ottenburg shrugged his shoulders. "A few dull young men who haven't ability enough to play the old game the old way, so they want to put on a new game which doesn't take so much brains and gives away more advertising that's what your anti-saloon league and vice commission amounts to.
The constitutional amendment was debated February 20 and defeated by 125 to 14. The Good Templars asked for License suffrage for women. At the hearing the bill was supported by representatives of the Anti-Saloon League, the W. C. T. U., the Christian Endeavorers, etc., and opposed by the Anti-Suffrage Association and the attorney of the Wine and Spirits Wholesale Dealers' Association.
Suddenly it is announced that there is a distinct possibility of a prohibition amendment being passed by Congress in the near future; and one of the foremost representatives of the Anti-saloon League states, and with good show of reason, that if the amendment be passed by Congress, its ratification by the Legislatures of three fourths of the States can be only a matter of time.
In these circumstances, nothing but a mean subserviency to political intimidation can possibly account for the indecent haste with which the ratification was pushed through. It is interesting to note a subsequent episode which casts a further interesting light on the matter, and tends to show that there are limits beyond which the whip-and-spur rule of the Anti-Saloon League cannot go.
There are things in the world far more important than hard sense. One of the officials of the Anti-Saloon League gave out a statement the other day in which he endeavored to show all the benefits provided by prohibition. But he did it with figures. There was a column showing the increase of accounts in savings banks and another devoted to the decrease of inmates in hospitals, jails and almshouses.
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