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

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2511, 28 November 1922, Page 1

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

HOW AMERICA RESISTS AM UNPOPULAR LAW. Some of the “benefits” of Prohibition are strikingly set out in an 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, Virginian, California, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas. The eighteenth Amendment has been resisted at the pistol's mouth or the black-jack's end in every geographical section of tlie Republic. The Atlantic seaboard, the Pacitic Coast, the Middle West Dixie and the South Western borderland have joined hands in defying the constitution, that men and women may drink. Texas leads with four casualties while Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahaina contribute two victims apiece.

The murderous character of the bootlegging- trade is staggei'ing, for .Federal and State agents are constantly being shot, clubbed or beaten while raiding- bootlegging establishments. Many have died i'roin wounds, others have been permanently incapacitated. The Prohibition service to-day is a more dangerous calling than either the Army or .Navy. Every man who enters 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 iup The bootlegger lias become, with motors and movies, one of the "key" industries of the country. The United States of to-day reeks with amazing reports of the crooked and corrupt relations between highly placed ollicials of the Union and the captains of the bootlegging industry. The most callous violator, as he is the most influential m propagating both callousness and violation, is the better class citizen who buys bootleg liquor. The president of a national bank would not,falsify his books, the Federal judge or United fStates attorney would not commit perjury; the collector of Customs who would not smuggle; merchant who would not give counterfeit change to his customers —a host of upstanding citizens of high and low degree who would uot think of violating any single Federal Statute are to-day complacent accessories to tlie bootleggers. There is the public men, the aspirant for high ollice, 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 the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act," and then return to Washington homes cellared with stocks of every drinkable in creation. 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 of affairs we are invited to bring about in New Zealand. Law-breakers encouraged bv those in high 'places; murder and violence following upon breaches of a tyrannical and unpopular law: whole-sale corrupt ion festering in flic very heart of public life. After two and a-balf years attempted Prohibition, this is the State of America: is it worth copying? Vote .Continuance and keep New Zealand law-abiding. 103