Art. 11.-PROHIBITION.

The Prohibition Situation. The Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. New York, 1925.

MUCH has been written about the prohibition of fermented and distilled beverages in the United States; but nothing so noteworthy, and nothing which has proved so sensational in the country of its origin, has been produced as is the Bulletin on the Prohibition Situation issued by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. This body represents just those elements in the religious life of the United States which helped the Anti-Saloon League in its campaign for Prohibition; and it was therefore a matter of assumption that any publication on the question issued under its auspices would be a whole-hearted defence of the prohibitionist experiment. The assumption has proved wrong. Notwithstanding that those responsible for the Bulletin make a gallant effort to range themselves on the prohibitionist side, notwithstanding that every page is written from the standpoint of men who regard Prohibition as a proper and even laudable form of legislation, their work turns out in fact to be a deadly criticism.

Before coming to the Council's survey of the present position it may be useful to recall the genesis of American prohibition. The decree of 'nation-wide Prohibition' at the end of 1919 was the fruit of many years of agitation. The title of Father of Prohibition has been conferred upon the famous Neal Dow, who founded the Maine Temperance Union in 1837. In 1843 the era of Prohibition began with a prohibitory law in Oregon, which, however, only remained on the statute book for five years. In 1846 a similar law was enacted in Maine, was repealed in 1856, and re-enacted in 1858. About this time Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont also experimented with Prohibition, though in some of these States it was either abandoned after a year or two or immediately vetoed. We must guard, therefore, against assuming that prohibition in America is an absolutely new thing. It was soon found, however, that the easiest

road to State prohibition was the parochial form of it known as local option, or local veto. Kansas, for example, began with the milder form in 1866; in 1880 it adopted full prohibition by way of a constitutional amendment. Other States-North Dakota and Iowaduring the second half of the 19th century made essays in Prohibition, and yet others-Georgia and Oklahoma— in the early years of the present century. By 1914 nine States had adopted Prohibition. By 1918 the number had grown to twenty-three out of forty-eight States. Then war-time prohibition over the whole Republic came into operation on June 30, 1919. But, apart from the operation of this last-named temporary measure, it was possible in the Prohibition States to get the prohibited beverages by buying them from outside the State; and therefore, so long as any State remained free, prohibition was shorn of its completeness.

So we find a movement for forcing the whole Republic into prohibition, as far back as 1869, by the founding in Chicago in that year of a National Prohibition Party. But the body which rightly claims the chief credit for the enactment of 'nation-wide' prohibition is the AntiSaloon League, which came into being in 1893, its somewhat obscure place of origin being the town of Oberlin in Ohio. This body began an agitation for an amendment of the Federal Constitution which would make the consumption of alcoholic beverages an offence against the Constitution. Written Constitutions are condemned as inelastic; but that of the United States, at any rate, is not as the laws of the Medes and Persians. From the beginning it provided, in its fifth Article, for possible amendments. If two-thirds of both Houses of Congress deem it necessary, or the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States make application for an amendment of the Constitution, Congress must call a convention, and if the proposed amendment is ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States, or by conventions in three-fourths of them, the amendment is incorporated in the Constitution. Seventeen such amendments had been made when the Anti-Saloon League demanded an eighteenth.

The amendment proposed was daring in a constitutional view, for a Constitution is properly concerned

with methods and principles of government, rather than with laws in the ordinary sense. Still less is a Constitution concerned with sumptuary laws, and none of the previous amendments was of this character. Yet the League embarked on its agitation for such an amendment with a vigour and thoroughness which at least are entitled to admiration, whatever may be thought of the methods of propaganda adopted. Concerning these methods stories are rife, of which the statement of Governor Clement, of Vermont, is among the least sensational, He declared that what the League did 'was to go to a man and tell him that if he voted for the Eighteenth Amendment they would not attack him in his home district; but that if he did not, they would attack him. In this manner they obtained the support of a lot of weak men, enough of them to pass the prohibition law.' (See 'Journal,' Providence, R.I., Feb. 17, 1920.) However that may be, the amendment was carried on Dec. 18, 1917; and the following now forms part of the United States Constitution :

'Sec. 1.-After one year from the ratification of this article, the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

'Sec. 2.-The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'

A third section provided for ratification by the States. Forty-five ratified at once. New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island at first refused; but their challenge of the validity of the amendment was turned down by the United States Supreme Court.

Then came the Act, known as the National Prohibition Act, or, more usually, as the Volstead Act, for enforcing the amendment by appropriate legislation.' This statute defines 'liquor' as any beverage containing one-half of 1 per cent. or more of alcohol; and it is forbidden to manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish, or possess such liquor. Exceptions are made, for denatured alcohol, medicinal and

antiseptic preparations, patent medicines, toilet articles and flavouring extracts, and syrups, vinegar and sweet cider, and sacramental wine. In regard to beer, production is permitted subject to de-alcoholisation before sale. Liquor may be prescribed by a physician, up to (as the Act has been amended) a quart of spirituous or vinous liquor for use within ten days. The Act also contains provisions relating to notification on packages of liquor shipped and against advertising liquor or utensils, etc., for making it; and it gives to any one injured by an intoxicated person a right of action for damages against the unlawful seller of the liquor to the intoxicated person. The Act leaves very few loopholes for escape, but it allows the possession of liquor in a private dwelling for the consumption of the owner and his family or guests; and 'non-intoxicating cider and fruit-juices' may be made for use in the home. (Non-intoxicating' in this connexion has been interpreted to mean non-intoxicating in fact, without reference to the percentage of alcohol— a rift in the law, out of which a big widening may some day come.) This Act, though vetoed by President Wilson, came into force on Jan. 17, 1920.

The Federal Council of the Churches reviews it in action after more than five years; and though the Bulletin is prefaced by a caution that it is too early to form final judgments,' it will be agreed that such a period is long enough for the formation of a fairly strong provisional judgment-assuming, that is, that prohibition is to be judged solely by its practicability, and not by its inherent anti-liberal principle, in regard to which no time for probation or suspension of judgment is necessary. The authors of the Bulletin begin with a warning, which, in view of the statistics as to bankdeposits and motor-cars and so forth, in which Prohibitionists are revelling, is worth notice.

'The study on which this report is based has made it clear that the case for prohibition cannot be proved by a compilation of existing statistics. In so far as reliance is placed upon such statistics by the friends of prohibition, the cause is jeopardised for two definite reasons: (1) the data themselves are in large part disquieting; (2) the most significant effects of the prohibitionist régime are not those which are reflected in statistical data' (p. 10).

Of course this works both ways; and the Bulletin is careful to argue that deaths from alcoholism, etc., upon which the anti-prohibitionists rely, do not really mean so much as is sometimes assumed; since they are directly related to but a very small portion of the population. . . whereas the wholesome effects of prohibition are registered in inconspicuous ways.' All which may be admitted, in a measure. Even fuller adhesion may be given to the warning that

'the kind of statistics chiefly depended upon to establish a result favourable to prohibition, namely, crime statistics and economic data, are in their nature so difficult of accurate treatment and valid interpretation that it is quite unsafe to base definite conclusions upon them, save after a very much more extended and scientific study than has thus far been made' (p. 12).

Other faults in the use of statistics are pointed out, such as the 'very common error' of assuming that some development has sprung wholly from a single cause, and the Bulletin is forced into such a severe sentence as

'Prohibition publicity has suffered much from careless and unwarranted inferences which lead social scientists, economists, actuaries, and business statisticians to regard with distrust, if not with contempt, reports that are given out, with a view to fostering opinion favourable to prohibition ' (p. 13).

The Treasury Department's figures are included in this condemnation; but so also is some of the propaganda on the other side.

The Research Department of the Council, thus dissatisfied with existing statistics, has made its own inquiries. Among the most interesting were the inquiries addressed to charitable societies as to the relative size of the intemperance factor as a cause of poverty in pre-prohibition and in subsequent days. Unfortunately, the figures furnished do not go back far enough. The Bulletin notes that the years immediately preceding national prohibition-1916-18-do not offer a fair basis of comparison, because that period' represents the crest of a wave of intemperance as a cause of dependency.'