right is easily attained, the effort toward it must be made. With reference to other things this seems to be accepted as true. As to thieves, the question is not, Can the government put an end to all stealing? As to murderers, it is not, Can the government stop all murder? As to counterfeiters, it is not, Can the government prevent counterfeiting so completely as to make our circulating medium absolutely safe? As to all these it is recognized that first we must determine the question of right attitude. Shall the government forbid those things and to the fullest extent of its power punish the violators of its law, or shall it make some bargain or compromise with them? The answer is that the government, to be true to itself, must wage relentless warfare upon the enemies of society who violate its laws, and under no circumstance must it lower its standard to one of compromise or partnership. Consequently our law against stealing stands without any attempt to regulate the thief or to license him. Yet stealing goes on, and, if authorities are to be accepted, increases amazingly. So we contend that our Government must first determine whether the liquor traffic is something to be protected and fostered, or to be outlawed and fought, and that the question of our attitude toward it is to be determined by the principles of everlasting right. How soon we can succeed, or whether we can ever triumph completely, is a matter of secondary consideration. It will be accepted without argument that, if we cannot overthrow the liquor traffic by a righteous fight for a righteous principle, we never will kill it by any kind of compromise.

Following this line of reasoning, the party prohibitionist concludes that the license of the liquor traffic is wrong. Under such plan the government shares in the profits of a bad business, the effect of which is to destroy its citizenship. To assume that the purpose that the government has in accepting a money consideration is to punish the saloon-keeper does not change the fact that a portion of his profit in the business has gone to the government which was under obligation to protect its people rather than to strike hands with their enemy. Under any kind of license system the government gives its consent to the business and takes upon itself an obligation to protect it against

any who would assail it, and the monetary consideration is no small part of the arrangement.

License, State control, dispensary, and other plans of the kind have failed. It never was claimed for such plans that they would put an end to drunkenness, and the most enthusiastic never for a moment claimed in support of them that the government would not be a partner in the business and a sharer in the profits. Sometimes it has been asserted that drunkenness has decreased where such plans have been established. This is quite generally given up, however, as to license, which but a few years ago was heralded as the real and final solution of the drink problem. And if it were true, as has not been conclusively proved, that State control or the dispensary reduces drunkenness to a small extent, the fact remains that the government is a partner in and responsible for the business, or so much of it as remains.

The party prohibitionist believes and asserts that no government can hope to find a remedy for the evil of intemperance so long as it is willing by legislation to take upon itself obligations to give any kind of protection to those who are engaged in the manufacture or sale of drink. Prohibition of the manufacture, sale, importation, transportation, and exportation is the only righteous policy for the Government to pursue with reference to the traffic. If necessary to have an amendment to the Federal Constitution to make this plan effective, let us have it. The Constitution has been amended; why may it not be amended again? The way to kill the saloon is not to close it at midnight, when men are turning their steps homeward and patronage would be light if not profitless, but to close the distillery and brewery which supply the drink the saloon sells. In such event saloons would go out of business, not so much because the law required it, as on account of lack of supply of the commodity they propose to sell. It is the height of governmental inconsistency to forbid drunkenness and legalize a saloon, or to forbid a saloon and protect the distillery and brewery by the power of legal enactment. If the business should be fought at all, why not fight it in the distillery as well as the saloon?

Iortunately, sufficient effort has been

made at this plan to prove its effectiveness. North Dakota, Kansas, and Vermont are among the States which have adopted prohibition of the manufacture of intoxicating beverages. Sometimes it is claimed that the law is a failure in those States, and attention is directed to the fact that liquor is sold secretly if not openly, and that drunkards are to be found in some places. The fact is overlooked, it would perhaps be improper to say willfully suppressed, that those States have not the slightest difficulty in enforcing the law prohibiting the manufacture. No one claims that the business of manufacturing continued in North Dakota after prohibition went into effect. The same is true of Kansas and of other States where any honest effort has been made to prohibit the manufacture and sale. It is admitted that any liquor sold in these States is brought in from the outside. If the Federal Government put the same policy into effect, by amendment, if need be, it would be as easy to prohibit the sale in other States as it has been in those where the manufacture is suppressed.

Our point of attack is the distillery and brewery. There are only a few thousand of them in the United States, and the greater part of them are small affairs.

As

a matter of fact, most of the intoxicating liquor in the United States is made by a few large establishments, or at least by establishments under the control of a few men. It is ridiculous to direct our entire agitation toward two hundred and fifty thousand retailers, when a few thousand distillers and brewers hold the key to the situation.

So far, other reformers-and our party prohibitionists have sometimes joined in the effort-have attempted to combat the liquor traffic with Sunday-closing laws, laws prohibiting the sale to habitual drunkards and to minors, and with laws requiring the closing of saloons at certain hours, and have ignored, to a large extent, the fact that the great source of it all was untouched. Some of the efforts directed against the saloon would be humorous if they were not so pitiful. Some good reformers have directed their efforts toward removing all chairs and benches from saloons, as though a chair was a large cause of drunkenness. Others have proposed to take the free lunches out of saloons, Why not leave the lunches and

take the whisky out? Do men get drunk on lunches? Others have proposed to remove screens, as though a screen were a cause of intoxication. It has been proposed to take almost everything out of saloons ever known to be in them, except the whisky which produces drunkenness. We are not unmindful of the fact that lunches, benches, chairs, and screens may have some part in the harm which saloons work; but they are incidents, and to direct one's attack against them comes dangerously near tilting at windmills.

The party prohibitionist has helped many good efforts directed against the saloons; but he never loses sight of the fact that the objective point is the manufacture, and after that the importation, exportation, and transportation, of intoxicating beverages. His plan will prove easy because it is sweeping and complete.

Of course it has never been tried with a real prohibition party back of it. At the best it has been tried in a few States with parties unfriendly, and with politicians to enforce it who were mortgaged in advance to the liquor men. Despite all these handicaps, there was so much merit about the plan that it was and is steadily opposed by the liquor men. If there were any doubt as to whether prohibition is the right policy, that doubt would be removed if one would notice that the men engaged in the saloon business fight with determination and with every means in their power any effort to put that policy into effect. They know their worst enemy, and use their utmost endeavors against it.

The plan of the party prohibitionist is scarcely ever objected to. That is to say, the statement of it invariably brings an admission that, once put into effect, it would be final and complete. A government adopting that plan is able to come into court with clean hands. It has no part or lot in the profits of the business. It places the men who are engaged in an effort the result of which must be the ruin and destruction of citizenship, on a plane with thieves and murderers, counterfeiters, and others who are recognized as foes to peace and happiness. A government so armed is ready for a battle with its foes.

It is the rule with those who criticise the Prohibition party never to state its real plan and purpose, which, I presume, is because our friends who write and speak

about us have not taken time to ascertain what we are trying to do. Ordinarily it is claimed that we propose to make men sober by law; that we expect to cure drunkenness by legal enactment, and so on. The truth is, our contention always has been that prohibition takes the government out of partnership with the business, and is the recognized rule of government with reference to evil things that destroy or interfere with the happiness of the citizen. We have advanced only the well-worn and long-recognized doctrine that it is better to do right than to resort to any kind of compromise or makeshift.

We believe that every citizen owes it to himself to vote for this policy; hence the Prohibition party, organized and in the field with a ticket at every Presidential election, and in most of the States at every State election and even at the local election. This gives the prohibitionist an opportunity to put himself on record by means of his ballot in favor of the policy in which he believes. The plan could not 'fail; for a prohibition party in power, pledged to the principle of prohibition, led by men who believe in that principle, with officials in office elected as the result of its advocacy, would close every distillery and brewery in the United States. That act would give the beverage liquor traffic a death-blow. Possibly drunkenness would continue in a way. Perhaps it would continue for all time to come; but the government at least would have assumed a right attitude toward it, and with the liquor traffic outlawed we would have a clear field for handling the problem. The key_to_the solution is prohibition with a prohibition party back of it.

We hold it to be little less than sinful to vote the ticket of a political party which stands for the saloon policy. The Republican and Democratic parties do stand for such policy. Proof is found in the fact that where they are in power, with only occasional exceptions, the saloon is legalized, and enjoys the same protection of law which is granted to the church, the home, and the school. If the policies put into effect by these parties do not determine their attitude, then, of course, there is no way to ascertain what their attitude is. If it be fair ever to hold a party committed to the policy which it has put into effect, then it must be true that the Republican

and Democratic parties are in favor of the license and legalization of the saloon.

Since it is true that he who votes a party ticket votes for the things for which the party stands, the one who votes a Republican or Democratic ticket votes for the present saloon policy in effect at the hands of those parties. To vote for such policy the prohibitionist insists is wrong.

The Prohibition party came into existence because there was no hope that either of the old parties would become such. The battle which would be necessary in order to carry the Republican or Democratic party over from the liquor column into the prohibition ranks would rend the party to pieces, and make it impossible for it to become an effective political instrument for a victorious campaign. Great as, the problem is of building a new party, it is easy by comparison with the greater effort necessary to renovate and clean up political parties which have enjoyed the spoils of office for years as a result of partnership with the worst and meanest of, our citizenship.

No man has any right to assert that a new political party cannot be triumphant in the politics of this country. It has happened in the past. The history of political parties proves that they may be expected to rise and fall, to decay and die, and give way to new organizations. The two dominant parties have lost much of the respect in which they were once held. There is political unrest which may easily result in sending men by millions into a new organization.

The saloon problem will not be settled until it becomes an issue in our politics. Our plan, if it were supported at the ballotbox by the good people who are working for the reform along other lines, would make the question the dominant issue in some campaign of the very near future. Many firmly believe, and with good reason too, that half a million to a million votes cast for the prohibition principle in a Presidential election would compel the attention of politicians and statesmen in a most emphatic and decisive way. Ours is an effort to get the issue before the people, and then to get the people to settle it right by outlawing the distillery, brewery, and the saloon. All that is attempted in present-day measures designed to restrict or regulate the traffic would be accom