AT THE PISTOL’S MOUTH OR THE BLACKJACK’S END.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 790, 5 December 1922, Page 5

AT THE PISTOL’S MOUTH OR THE BLACKJACK’S END.

HOW AMERICA RESISTS AN UNPOPULAR LAW. Some of the “benefits” of Prohibition are strikingly set out in jin article by Frederick William Wile, in the Philadelphia “Public Ledger,” on September Ist, 1922. ‘Prohibition enforcement murders,” says the writer, “have occurred in New Jersey, Virginia, California, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, and Arknsas. The eighteenth Amendment has been resisted at the pistolfs mouth or the black-jack’s end in every geographical section of the Republic. The Atlantic the Pacific Coast, the Middle West, Dixie and the South Western borderland have joined hands in defying the constitution, that men and women may drink. Tex/as leads with four casualties, while Georgia, Alabama, /Tennessee nd, Oklahama contribute two victims piece. The murderous character of the bootlegging trade is staggering, for Federal and State agents are constantly being shot, clubbed or beaten while raiding bootleg establishments. Many nave died (from wounds, others have been permanently incapacitated, The Prohibition service to-day is a more dangerous calling than either the Army or Navy. Every nym who entei’s it takes his life in his hands. He goes forth to the performance of his duty with that realisation in mind and a revolver on his hip. . , The boo\legger has become, with motors and\movies, one of the “key” industries of the country. The United States of to-day v reeks with amazing reports of the crooked and corrupt relations between highly placed officials of the Union and the captains of the bootlegging industry. The most callous violater, as he is the most influential in propagating both callousness and violation, is the better class citizen who buys bootleg liquor, The president of a national bank who would not falsify his books, the Federal judge or United States attorney would not commit perjury; the collector of Customs who would not smuggle ; merchant who would not givq counterfeit change to his customers—a host of upstanding citizens of ! high and low degree who would not I think of violating any single Federal Statute are to-day complacent accessories to the bootlegging crime by patronising bootleggers. There is the public men, the aspirant for high olfice, usually a seat in Congress, who is “politically dry” but “personally wet”—men who thump their chests at campaign meetings on behalf of “strict” enforcement of thef Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act„” and then return to Mlashington homes cellared with shocks of every drinkable in Their hypocrisy is an open secret. It is responsible for wholesale contempt of the law among the people at large.” This, then, is the state ojf- affairs we are invited to bring .about in New Zealand. Law-breakers encouraged by those in high places ; murder and violence following upon brqaches of a tyrannical and unpopular law; whojesale corruption festering in the very hqart of public life, " After two and a half years attempted .Prohibition, this is the state of America : is it worth copying ? Vote Continuance and keep New Zealand land law-abiding. 103