IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 56, 29 November 1919, Page 11

IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

A GREAT BRITISH EDITOR'S ' OPINIONS. U.S.A. UNDER THE BONE-DRY MEASURE. (Published by Arrangement.) Probably 110 figure is belter known in British Journalism than '11. W. ujassinghnm, the great editor who wntej in ' the "Nation" under the title "H.W.'.M." This weekly journal has been publishing a series of articles refording the impressions of the editor gathered on his recent tour through ■i- r - s - A - Portions of the articlo are as follow:— The Triumph of Prohibition. Let no 0110 doubt the long and serious preparation which led up to tho constitutional amendment of December 18, 191", and to its ratification by forty-five States in the Union out of forty-eight. Over fifty years of agitation, lie behind a decision which lias broken up the fading lines of contention between Democrats and Republicans, and taken, from both parties a majority of more than two to one in favour of prohibition. The hostile forces in Congress were worn down by having exhibited to thom_ a moving picture of the march of prohibition and of the great material benefits that had accompanied it. Not one of tho public men I interrogated liad a, good word for the saloon. It was impressed on me that the bad odour in wlr.ch it stood forbade the sensible compromise of retaining the lighter beers.. "We cannot trust it," was the answer. "The saloon must go. It corrupts our politics, enfeebles our 6toek, and stains our womanhood."

The Anti-Saloon Movement. To a casual visitor tho American saloon, with its male attendants, wellclothed and well-trained, has an air of almost dull so'briety in comparison with the riot of our public-house. But there is abundant witness to its ravage. Tho society of the small town, notably of tho coastal population of New England, was pictured to me as seriously demoralised by drink. Tho United States Census :of 1910 put 10 per cent, of tho insanitv down to alcohol. Nearly all the. railways began to discriminate against drinkers; great employers, such as Rockefeller and Ford, weeded them out of their shops and factories, whenever they could be traced. The nation, in fact, was growing teetotal under • a hundred influences, I' prophesy that when the American soldier tells his full story of the prolonged liquor carnival of London, they will be more potent still. Many American publicists distinguished between temperance and prohibition. But produce your proof of a slide to race-degeneracy, and they will treat tho drink question as the Anti-Saloon League treats it., The Bishop of Hereford sneers at the intellectual quality of the war on alcohol. I should have said that it had enlisted most of tho best minds- in America. Success ot Prohibition. The moment a town or a county or a State went dry tho Anti-Saloon League began to feel its pulse and report its abounding social health. Bank deposits, the purchase of food, dry ( goods, children's needs, all bounded up. The hotels boomed with the rest, C-laols began to empty, and new schools to open. Take this rencrt from Idaho. In December, 1915, the saloon doors closed, and a drastic prohibition law came into effect. The use cf all intoxicants, save puro alcohol for medicinal or industrial purposes, was forbidden. Its mere possession wps made unlawful and heavily punished. Reaction from such a. law of Draco seemed inevitable. It never came. Within ten months of the edict tho constitutional amendment for prohibition was carried by a voto of three to one, and the trade, which had dictated the politics and named the officials of the State, could not claim one of tho thou-sand'office-seekers for Federal,. State, county, or local positions. Why? Chiefly because of tho wave of "good business" that followed the shift from "wet" to "dry." Tho change was most marked in Boise, the capital city, where "the trade" was strongly entrenched. For the first time in its' history manual workers and clerks began to exchange thoir pay checks for purchases in the stores. Debtors bccame creditors; cash transactions grew rapidly; the returns of business went up 10, 15, 30 per cent:; and the deposits in the six ranks increased by 42 per cent. 'Quite as remarkable was the way in which the crime-machinery eased off. Arrests for drunkenness fell, from 11)5 in the first four months of 1915 to .23 in tho first four months of 1916; arrests for vagrancy almost ceased; One gaol was emptied for tho first time in 3G years, another for the first time in its history, and tho Justices of tho Peace sat for months with hardly a criminal case to try. A friend of the "wets" summed up their losing case as follows;—" The saloon is gone for ever, there can b'o no argument for. its return; the only humiliating thing is that the fools and fanatics and cranks were right, and we were wrong." Idaho and Boise are not America, but the incessant rolling back of tho "wetf'forces, which has gono on sinco the century, opened could hardly have been aecfutlplished unless thoir case had been fairly typical. , Take Arkansas. In one generation it - hag changcd from license' to no-license, tho licensed counties dwindling with each election from 4G'to 12 and finally disappearing; Now; with trade booming, and the blazon of crime and poverty fading away, the Anti-Saloon League can report that "in no part of the State could, a respectable minority

vote 'be polled for the return of the saloon." Seattle and Detroit are examples of the greater hiving-centres where prohibition governg a mass of new wealth and energy and seems to stimulate it. The last Year Book of the AntiSaloon League could report over 30 Governors of States as "on record" for the "dry" propaganda; and over 89 per cent, of tho total area of government as under "no-licenso." After the Battle. .Thus far moral enthusiasm, .marching to one of the greatest triumphs in its history. Its advance is stained, say its enemies, anil many perfectly fair critics, witli intolerance, and is a blow at human nature. Obviously it js a check, a bit in thu mouth of tho average easy-going man. Starting with no conviction of tho essential ratonality of prohibition, I found myself attracted, to its benevolence, as well ds startled by the great surfaco of refined thinking and living which tho

movement had captured in its swift but by no means erratic course. lis weakness is discernible; though the i workman's view is by no means to be guiiged by tho protest of the Federation of Labour, one (lons not feel sure that labour as a whole, is really acquiescent. Tho workman is not a Puritan, and when ho happens to be of European' origin, he has the beer-drink-ing or. tho wine-drinking habit, usually in moderation. If henceforth he must walk through life dreamless and openedeyed, unsolaccd by his favourite spellbinder,. somo iioiv door of hope and imagination 1111150 open to him, or there will bo a. cry of injury and revolt. ■ The human nnimal, driven too fast, has shy corners to retreat to, queer solaces for the loss of forbidden appetites. A recent observer of prohibition in Canada found evidence, which lie retailed to me, of much resort to secret drinking and to vile and even murderous

substitutes for beer and whisky, He and others thought prohibition inapplicable to• tho greater American cilic.s. arid )<rnphesied evasion. When the officials frii'id the law was being dodged on a sufficiently wide scale, they would cease to try and onl'orce it. Reaction? Hut he and they frankly gave up the smaller towns and the farmers. They would stay prohibitionist; for them the reign of alcohol; was over. But that looks like a final .conquest. Prohibition has enlisted science, business... religion, and that typical American compound business-religion, the tcacner, (ho doctor, the enthusiast. To their call answers a now veteran army of social workers, which nas fought and put its enemy to flight in all but three American States. AVhatcver happens to a waverin? East, the concord of the West and tho South (tho latter based on the determination to keep whisky and the negro apart) makes a return t<\ liquor almost impossible. A three-fourths majority of States is needed for undoing the constitutional amendment. Where is it to bo found? Nor can I conceive a serious moral reaction arriving unless the spiritual stuff of America undergoes a chango which would rcsemblo a deterioration.

America in not e. leiscfed peopl# anything like tho extent that *• W Incomparably the greatest of the Tim*!*' r.ess" nations, sho maltM also ous preparation for being greater stilli Sho is "all in" in tho nico; ttb ure iwfc, . Sho may change; waver, soften; broaden] deepen. But sho will not coareon. , llw peoplo will roach after tho psrsonol r»> finemoni which is tlioir prido, and lie* new buihieis will continually hake on now gradations of shape aud colour from their Puritan model. H.W.M.