growth of "dry" territory in recent years, there has been a large increase in the per capita consumption of alcoholics.

These facts are not so well known as they should be, so it is perhaps pardonable to dwell upon them a little. In the fiscal year of 1913 the people of this country consumed 143,300,000 gallons of distilled liquors, an increase of 7,500,000 gallons over the previous year, and breaking all former records. They poured down their throats during the same year 64,500,000 barrels of beer, exceeding any previous year by more than a million barrels. Incidentally it may be mentioned that they smoked during the same time 7,707,000,000 cigars and over 14,012,000,000 cigarettes. These, as a Kentucky "colonel" might say, are the necessaries of life. What was left out of their incomes the people spent for food, clothing, rent, and other luxuries.

So completely is the business commercialized that the independent saloon hardly exists. There is a Brewers' Trust and a Distillers' Trust, and between them they not only manufacture the great bulk of liquor made, but control the retail trade. Most saloons have an ostensible owner, but the Trust has a chattel mortgage that fully covers the value of furniture and stock, and the "owner" is in reality only the hireling of the Trust. And when legal means of sale fail them, when lawful weapons of resistance to society prove ineffective, the Trusts never hesitate to resort to illegal-assassination and arson have marked the progress of temperance in every State where it has

progressed. The "blind tiger" and the "bootlegger" would, of course, be impossible institutions if distillers and brewers would sell only to reputable persons and through legal agencies. Licit or illicit is all one to them, so the stuff is sold and the great god Profit remains on his throne. In my haste I have done them injustice, and I hasten to admit it: they would prefer, no doubt, to sell under the law, but when they cannot they are determined to sell against the law.

So long as this great business of making a profit from the sale of alcohol in its various forms continues, attempting the reform of individual victims is an absolutely futile method of dealing with it. Not only will the present volume of the traffic continue, but the ingenuity of men and the power of money will be exhausted in attempts to create more appetite and extend the business. And experience shows that the attempts will not be in vain. Prohibition does

not prohibit, in any real or effective way. The Church and the various anti-saloon agitations, in spite of their local victories, are making no impression on the traffic as a whole. In spite of all yet accomplished by the forces hitherto arrayed against the saloon, a greater volume of liquor pours forth every year. We must learn to strike at the root of the evil, and not at a small branch here and there. And the roots of the liquor traffic are Profit and Poverty. Anything that improves the economic condition of the whole people will tend powerfully to reduce the consumption of liquor. But the quickest and surest results may be at

tained by eliminating the element of profit. There is one certain means of doing this, and that is to socialize the business, take it out of the hands of individuals and subject it to State control.

It will be urged that nation-wide prohibition would be equally effective and ethically better. Let us not dispute over a name. What I am calling State control is exactly what is usually called prohibition, which is not prohibition at all. The name is not honest, and that is why I prefer not to use it. In those States where a so-called prohibition law prevails, Maine for example, there is a State dispensary in every town where liquor may be bought, the buyer signing his name in a register and stating the purpose for which it is bought. Manufacture and sale of liquor are prohibited to individuals, but the State sells liquor in the so-called prohibition States. The Maine kind of "prohibition" is what I advocate for all our States, under the more honest term of State control.

This would effectively dispose of one root of the evil, Profit. The business would not be conducted for a profit; it would be minimized as far as possible; and whatever profit there was would be for the benefit of us all, not for the enrichment of a few. In a very short time the sale would be reduced to small proportions, and in a generation might be expected virtually to cease. Especially would this be the case if the progress of society should eliminate the other root, Poverty. Sociologists are more and more coming to the conclusion that the drink habit is less a cause of

poverty than an effect. If we accept their opinion, we come by another way to the conviction that we have here a social evil for which an effective cure can be found only by the abolition of poverty.

CHAPTER VII

THE PROBLEM OF CRIME

I

CRIME is one of the costliest luxuries that society permits itself to enjoy. We worship efficiency, forgetting that the efficiency of the social order is measured by its degree of success in eliminating crime and other unnecessary costs. The more perfectly organized the society, the fewer the criminals. A high ratio of crime is an indictment of a people's civilization. The United States has a high ratio of crime. We have, it is true, elaborate and costly machinery for the detection and punishment of criminals, and thousands are detected and punished every year. There is no reason to question the excellence of the machinery; it is good of its kind. Yet that it is ineffective hardly demands argument or proof. We know perfectly well that we are engaged in the foolishly wasteful process of making criminals by thousands and reforming them by hundreds. Why not try to stop the making?

If there are some who will demand proof of the ineffectiveness of our present system, let us take the prevalence of homicide throughout the United States, and especially in our cities. The average ratio of homicides in England is .9 per 100,000, while in thirty