The English Method. In England during the World War the consumption of liquor was reduced by greatly increasing the taxes on it and by giving the government full power to control the saloons in places where war material was being produced and transport work done. The Japanese Liquor Law. In Japan the law of the land forbids the sale of alcoholic drinks to those who are under twenty years of age. The Movement in America. In the United States the war gave new impetus to the prohibition movement. On the sixteenth of March, 1918, the government ordered a five-mile-wide dry zone around every army and navy training camp, and at four o'clock that afternoon every saloon in Annapolis and forty-nine saloons in Newport, Rhode Island, had to close their doors. This is a sample of what happened all over the country. In some places the government itself drove the saloons out of business for the sake of the soldiers and sailors; in other places cities and states did the same thing for the sake of those who were not soldiers or sailors but who needed the same protection. The greatest victory came on the seventeenth of December, 1917, when the House of Representatives in Washington met to discuss the question of national prohibition in the United States. The discussion began at eleven o'clock in the morning and continued until five o'clock in the afternoon. Then came the roll call and the announcement by the Speaker of the House that 282 votes stood recorded for prohibition and 128 against it. On the following day the Senate decided the same way by a vote of 47 to 8. Here are the exact words of the referendum bill of national constitutional prohibition, which had aroused the deepest interest all over the country: SECTION 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. SECTION 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. SECTION 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. It is easy to see that this federal amendment put a new responsibility upon every state in the Union. Even though a state had been dry for many a year, the legislature of that state had to vote for this particular amendment within the next seven years if it wished to help get national prohibition. It is important to know that two thirds of the states must ratify which means vote for any federal amendment before it can become part of the constitution of the United States. Notice also that Section I says that national prohibition was not to be enforced until one year after the states had ratified the amendment. As you read the following list, notice that Nebraska was the thirty-sixth state to ratify. This meant that just one year later—that is, on the sixteenth of January, 1920 there would be national prohibition for the United States of America, Now read the list and see how fast one state after another stepped into line and voted for the federal amendment. Do not try to memorize the different dates. Mississippi, January 8, 1918; Virginia, January 10, 1918; Kentucky, January 14, 1918; South Carolina, January 23, 1918; North Dakota, January 25, 1918; Maryland, February 13, 1918; Montana, February 19, 1918; Texas, March 4, 1918; Delaware, March 18, 1918; South Dakota, March 20, 1918; Massachusetts, April 2, 1918; Arizona, May 24, 1918; Georgia, June 26, 1918; Louisiana, August 8, 1918; Florida, November 27, 1918; Michigan, January 2, 1919; Ohio, January 7, 1919; Oklahoma, January 7, 1919; Maine, January 8, 1919; Idaho, January 8, 1919; West Virginia, January 9, 1919; Washington, January 13, 1919; Tennessee, January 13, 1919; California, January 13, 1919; Indiana, January 14, 1919; Arkansas, January 14, 1919; Illinois, January 14, 1919; North Carolina, January 14, 1919; Kansas, January 14, 1919; Alabama, January 14, 1919; Iowa, January 15, 1919; Colorado, January 15, 1919; Oregon, January 15, 1919; New Hampshire, January 15, 1919; Utah, January 15, 1919; Nebraska, January 16, 1919; Missouri, January 16, 1919; Wyoming, January 16, 1919; Wisconsin, January 17, 1919; Minnesota, January 17, 1919; New Mexico, January 20, 1919; Nevada, January 21, 1919; Vermont, January 29, 1919; New York, January 29, 1919; Pennsylvania, February 25, 1919. Surely that list would be one of the most surprising things in the world if it were not for the following second list. This one might be called the Honor Roll of States and Territories that had already voted for State Prohibition even before they voted for the Federal Amendment and National Prohibition. Maine, 1851; Kansas, 1880; North Dakota, 1889; Oklahoma, 1907; Georgia, 1908; North Carolina, 1909; Mississippi, 1909; Tennessee, 1909; West Virginia, 1914; Alabama, 1915; Arizona, 1915; Virginia, 1916; Colorado, 1916; Oregon, 1916; Washington, 1916; Arkansas, 1916; Iowa, 1916; Idaho, 1916; South Carolina, 1916; Nebraska, 1917; South Dakota, 1917; District of Columbia, 1917; Alaska, 1918; Indiana, 1918; Michigan, 1918; New Hampshire, 1918; Montana, 1918; New Mexico, 1918; Texas, 1918; Florida, 1919; Utah, 1919; Ohio, 1919; Nevada, 1919; Wyoming, 1920. Porto Rico, 1918; Island of Guam, 1918; Territory of Hawaii, 1918; Virgin Islands, 1919. In each case the date given shows just when the prohibition law had begun or was to begin to operate in that particular state. Do not try to remember the dates, but take note of the fact that the great battle against alcohol in the United States won its first big victory in Maine in 1851, and that the fight kept on until the federal-amendment victory in 1919. The following are prohibition triumphs that came shortly before the federal amendment was ratified: a law that forbids sending liquor advertisements into states in which liquor advertising is unlawful; a law that forbids the shipment of alcoholic liquors to individuals in prohibition states; a law that forbids the manufacture of distilled spirits that is, whisky, brandy, and gin -for drink; a law that forbids the sale of intoxicating liquor to any soldier in uniform. Each of these was a victory in itself, and each helped on the great final victory. Canada. Here too prohibition has forged ahead. Province after province crowded alcohol out of its markets and off its tables until, by the last of 1918, the whole of Canada became practically a liquorless land. In early days there were two great arguments against alcohol: (1) the harm it does to the body; (2) the mischief it does to society. To-day, however, a giant new argument has been added - the hunger of the people who need food. Barley, rice, corn, grape sugar and sirup, all splendid food materials, -with millions of pounds of other edible things, are turned into beer every year. The realization of this is, indeed, part of the power that drove the prohibition movement to victory. |