THE LAST DELIVERANCE
Every great social advance made by men in the past has been made under
the pressure of public opinion. That public opinion was created by a
free and an unfettered Press. The grim fact that we are now faced with
is that the day of the free Press is over. Syndicates of capitalists
control the Press of the country, and newspapers whose circulation
approaches a couple of millions create the opinion their owners desire.
The duty of the newspaper is to record facts, and communicate to the
people the correct data on which public opinion can be based. If the
Press purposely suppresses what is true, lends itself to the colouring
of the records so that the false seems to be the true and the true
false, then it becomes the greatest public peril. A generation that is
doped with doctored news can scarcely arrive at the truth. The
newspapers are supplied free by the bureaux of the interested with news
that serve their purpose. Thus it comes that the machinery for
creating public opinion is largely in the hands of those whose purpose
is that public opinion shall not destroy or lessen their profits.
There are noble exceptions; but, taking it as a whole, the syndicated
Press of this country is no longer a mirror of the truth.
I
In the United States of America and in Canada there are one hundred and
twenty millions who speak our language, whose religion is also ours,
who are the most intelligent and hard-headed people on the face of the
earth, yet if one were to believe what the Press of this country says,
one would be driven to the conclusion that they are poor foolish
idealists who have said farewell to their senses. And that because the
Press serves the public with doctored news. One day we are told how a
hundred thousand New Yorkers are to march in procession through the
streets demanding the return of their alcoholic drinks. The columns
are full of the preparations for the greatest uprising of the oppressed
and parched citizens. The great day comes and the procession is a
fiasco. But the syndicated Press omit to record that only a miserable
handful paraded the streets, the offscourings of the city's purlieus,
amid the derision of the onlookers. We are later informed under great
headlines that the American Medical Association or some such society
has called for the annulling of the Prohibition Law. We feel that the
climate is bound to become wet again, for the doctors demand it. But
we soon learn that this particular association of doctors is a mere
fragment of a noble profession--a fragment separate from the American
Association which corresponds to the British Medical Association. But
the syndicated Press does not record that fact. The Press that
distorts events after that manner can only flourish among a generation
that desires not the truth.
II
There is nothing more to be desired than that the people of Great
Britain should acquaint themselves with the facts regarding the
greatest social advance ever made by humanity in a generation. Can it
be the case that the millions of America committed an act of social
folly when they outlawed the liquor traffic and closed the saloons, and
that, awakening from their dream, they are to restore the traffic in
alcohol and the saloon once more? That is the impression that a
spoon-fed Press seeks to create. Can it be true?
To answer that question we must ascertain first whether the prohibition
of the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the States was an act of
panic legislation, the result of a snap vote, the effect of a passing
enthusiasm or a fanaticism that was triumphant for a moment? If it be
of that order, then it may be expected to be cast aside by a wearied
and disillusioned people. But the movement that prohibited alcohol
across the Atlantic has the toil and sacrifice and devotion of three
generations behind it. It is not a thing of yesterday. As far back as
1834 the selling of liquor to Indians was forbidden by law.
Seventy-six years ago (in 1846) the first Prohibition Law was enacted
in the State of Maine. Fifty-seven years ago the Presbyterian General
Assembly excluded liquor distillers and liquor sellers from the
membership of the Church. In 1873 the Women's Temperance Crusade
movement was inaugurated--a movement whose ideal was to make the United
States safe for women and children by the suppression of the saloon.
In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League was formed--an organisation that brought
the various societies into unity and fused them into the strength of
steel. There were long years of work in school and of teaching in the
churches ere on the 18th December 1917 the Amendment in favour of
Prohibition passed the Legislative Assemblies at Washington. Having
passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, it had to be
ratified by a majority of the various States. The States had seven
years in which to ratify; but within one year and two months forty-five
States, with a population of over one hundred millions, ratified the
Amendment. Only three out of the forty-eight States failed to ratify.
On the 29th January, it being certified that three-fourths of the
States had ratified as the Constitution requires, the 18th Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting alcohol, became law.
And on that night the leaders of the movement held a service of
thanksgiving in Washington, and when the hour struck ushering in the
first day of the new era, Mr. W. J. Bryan began his address by reading
the words: 'They are dead that sought the young child's life.' An
Amendment to a National Constitution which has the generations behind
it is not one to be repealed. To repeal it requires now a majority of
three-fourths of the States! The one great fact to remember, is that
by local option two thousand two hundred and thirty-five counties in
the United States had made an end of the liquor traffic in their areas
before Prohibition became the national law, and that there were only
three hundred and five counties in all the States which had not
declared themselves dry before Prohibition became the law. If anything
be certain under the sun it is that Prohibition is the settled and
unalterable policy of the United States of America. During a visit of
three months, and after inquiries in several cities, I never met a
single person who wanted the saloon again reopened in the States.
Whatever criticism might be made, there was among everybody only one
sentiment regarding the saloon--and that was thankfulness that it was
closed for ever.
III
There are, however, those who desire the Volstead law defining alcohol
amended so that the sale of beer and light wines may be permitted in
restaurants with meals. To us that seems reasonable; but there is no
chance of such a policy being adopted. The reason is that these
experiments have already been made in the States and have been found
unworkable and unsatisfactory. The settled policy of the reformers in
the States is to seal up the sources of drunkenness. Every drunkard
began as a moderate drinker; and the evil has to be stayed at its
source. Mr. Bryan described the process dramatically: 'The moderate
drinker says every man should stop when he has had enough. But the
difficulty is to know when one has had enough, for enough is a horizon
that recedes as one approaches it. A frail brother was advised by a
friend to drink a glass of sarsaparilla when he had had enough.
"That's right," was the reply, "but when I have had enough I cannot say
sarsaparilla!"' The prevailing opinion among the Church and social
leaders is that the liquor trade as it was conducted in America could
not be mended, and that it had to be ended. And it was ended. Having
been ended, there is no possibility of its being amended!
IV
It is one thing to legislate and another to make that legislation
effective. We know that by experience in this country. It took long
years to make the laws against smuggling operative in this country; and
it was only after Queen Victoria's accession that the laws abolishing
slavery in the British Empire, passed in a previous reign, were made
operative. In the States the stage of legislation regarding alcohol is
past, and the stage of making the legislation effective has come. The
difficulty of making Prohibition operative is great, but the difficulty
is being steadily overcome. No law that ever was made has been fully
successful: otherwise there would be no theft and no murder in a
perfect world. In one State--Detroit--it is said that five thousand
automobiles are stolen every year, but nobody ever suggested that the
commandment forbidding theft should be repealed in Detroit. There are
more murders in New York in any one year than in the whole of Ireland
in its most distressful year, but nobody suggests that the commandment
against murder should be repealed in New York. That a law is broken is
no argument for its repeal. And notwithstanding all the smuggling
there is no doubt but that the Prohibition Law is obeyed by 99 per
cent. of the American people. 'In Nebraska there are several times as
many men in the penitentiary for stealing automobiles as there are for
violating the liquor laws.' The persons who are convicted for breaking
the law are the aliens newly come to the country--Italians, Poles,
Irish, Spaniards. A native-born American scarcely ever is found among
the breakers of the Prohibition Law, and very seldom a Scotsman. But
the newspapers themselves are the proof of this. If the disregard of
Prohibition were the general thing, the newspapers would cease to
record it; for according to the Press news is the exceptional. To walk
to business every day is commonplace and receives no record; but to be
run down in the traffic and break a limb is news. That receives its
paragraph. It is the exceptional that receives the big headlines. And
the big headlines about smuggling across the Canadian border and from
the Bahama Islands or about wood alcohol are the proof that these
things are exceptional. Otherwise they would not be news. That
ethical passion which passed the 18th Amendment is now being diverted
to its enforcement. The traffic across the Canadian border is being
stopped, for Canada is now going dry. The traffic from the Bahamas
under the British flag is being dealt with. 'We shall move heaven and
earth to make Prohibition effective,' said the orator. 'You had
better move the Bahamas,' came the reply. It would be a disaster if
the false impression created in this country by the syndicated Press
regarding the working of Prohibition in the States were to lead those
in authority to imagine that the people of the States will regard with
no indignation the British flag being used for the flouting of the laws
and of the Constitution of the United States. It is impossible that
that can go on. Everywhere in the States the organisation for making
Prohibition effective is being tightened up. In social reform the
citizens of the States are determined to lead the world. I for one am
convinced that they will not be turned from their chosen path or
deflected from their goal by bootleggers or by Jewish syndicates.
Whoever will judge of the condition of the States regarding Prohibition
from the newspapers in New York will find themselves misled. 'In New
York,' says _The World_, 'it will be necessary to install three
enforcement agents to a family, so that they can stand in three
eight-hour shifts, or hire the entire population of the city as special
enforcement agents and set every man to watch himself.' That is the
sort of piffle that is supplied gratis to the newspapers in this
country. What is forgotten is the fact that the millions of homes
where the fathers and mothers live and toil, who have carried the law,
say nothing. Their voice is not heard in their Press. And they have
not weakened in their resolution that their country shall be a country
where children shall grow up untempted and where monopolies shall no
longer be free to fill the jails and the poorhouses. No amount of
jibes can alter the fact that there has been no ethical revolution in
the history of the world comparable to that passion for righteousness
which passed the 18th Amendment and which is now determined to enforce
it. 'Our parents,' said a wet orator lately, 'taught us to lay up
something for a rainy day: how much nicer if they had only taught us to
lay up something for a dry one.' The American will make any number of
jokes about his climate, but his determination is unalterable that it
shall be dry. There has been no great moral advance made by humanity
in these last centuries which has been unable to hold its ground.
Whatever dust may be thrown in their eyes, the people of this country
may be certain that there will be no repeal. When the choice is
'Repeal' or 'Enforce,' the American chooses unhesitatingly. 'Enforce'
becomes his watchword.
V
Though in the Western States full enforcement of the Prohibition Law
has not been effected so far, yet the beneficial effects of the closing
of the saloons are so many and great, that he who runs may read. There
were four millions idle in the States at the time when I was there, but
the nation was going through the greatest industrial crisis in its
history with perfect calm, and without suffering the pangs of
destitution, because workmen no longer wasted their money in the
saloons. Here in Britain the idle have been pauperised by doles from
the public exchequer; in the United States there have been no doles.
The nation can thus come through a crisis of unemployment without half
its number becoming a charge on the remainder. That is possible
because the sources of waste are sealed up. Statistics amply prove
that drunkenness is rapidly disappearing. The Salvation Army ceased
its rescue work among the drunkards in New York because there were no
more drunkards to be rescued. In Pittsburg I found the jail well-nigh
empty and the poorhouse without sufficient inmates to keep it clean.
It is the same everywhere. One great employer of labour, whose opinion
I asked, said: 'Prohibition has given us a good Monday in our factory.'
That was the most terse and effective testimony to Prohibition that I
heard. There is no broken time owing to drunkenness. Industrial
efficiency has been increased 20 per cent. One man who had an interest
in a big hotel told me that the profits from soft drinks
(non-alcoholic) were last year double the profit they used to make by
the sale of alcohol. Hotels never had such a time of prosperity as
they have had lately. The reason is that men can bring their wives and
children to stay at the hotels with perfect safety. The proprietor of
the biggest hotel in a city where I stayed told me that he was glad to
be rid of the bar and that he would never have it back on any account.
A Canadian-Scot who has prospered greatly told me how he became a
Prohibitionist. 'I am interested in a mine in the north,' said he,
'and I went to visit it. I saw the men wasting their substance and
their lives in the saloons--lying around drugged, with their pockets
empty. It was shocking. I used to give $500 to fight Prohibition.
When the wet agent came to my office after that for my subscription, I
said: "Get out! I'll give $500 a year in the future to make an end of
all saloons!" It is thus the movement spreads. The moderate drinker
is as determined as the Rechabites that the saloon shall never open its
door again--and it never will. One of the oddest testimonies in behalf
of the success of the new law was this saying: 'In Detroit there has
been a falling off in the taxi-cab trade.' The inference is that
everybody can walk home now. 'We saw,' says Mr. Harold Spender, 'only
a single drunken man in America for three weeks, and then he was a
politician going to Washington.' In a period of three months I saw
none. Though this reform has been in operation for so short a time, it
has already effected the greatest miracle in modern history. It has
healed the sick by the hundred thousand and it has raised the dead.
VI
The readers of the commercialised Press when they scan the inspired
articles regarding America's social uprising have only to use their
common-sense to realise that they are being served up falsehoods. They
have only to think what a mighty change for the betterment of humanity
has been wrought in the great cities where alcohol no longer seeks and
lies in wait for the unwary at every street corner. Instead of liquor
seeking him, the drouth must now seek the liquor--and the search is a
toilsome one in a dry and parched land. What a deliverance that must
be for the weak-willed when the State no longer, by licensed premises
every few yards in the crowded streets, tempts them to take the road to
pauperism and destruction. They have only to think of the lives of
rich and poor whom they themselves knew, that have made shipwreck on
these rocks and shoals, and think what a deliverance has come to the
nation that no longer, with the marshalled host of its liquor sellers,
seeks to enslave and destroy its citizens. They have only to look at
the city of their habitation and ask themselves why it is that so many
hundred thousand of their fellow-citizens live under conditions that
mean unspeakable misery. Why are families doomed to one-roomed houses?
why are children reared under conditions that mean their being damned
before they are born? The answer is--Alcohol! In proportion to the
number of public-houses in any district is the misery of the housing
conditions. You have but to scratch the surface of human misery
anywhere in our cities and you find the turgid stream of alcohol. Let
the reader of the subsidised Press ask himself why all the money spent
on clearing and cleaning slums has wrought no result? It is that
alcohol creates new slums faster than the old are cleared away. Let
him ask why all the money spent in mission work, in philanthropic work,
in rescue work, has not diminished the mass of human misery; and the
answer is--Alcohol! Let him think of the money now wasted by the
workers in the reeking public-houses being used to clothe and feed and
house the children--and what wonderful cities we would have and what a
new race we would become. And all that has been done in the United
States and in Canada. 'Our great claim as Prohibitionists,' said
Admiral Sims, 'is that it has shut up the schools of future drunkards,
the saloons and the clubs. We have saved the rising generation.' No
amount of misrepresentations can alter facts. The Americans are not
fools. They know their own business. 'In every community,' said
President Harding recently, 'men and women have had an opportunity to
know what Prohibition means. They know that debts are more promptly
paid, that men take home the wages that once were wasted in saloons,
that families are better clothed and fed, and more money finds its way
into the savings bank. In another generation I believe that liquor
will have disappeared, not merely from our politics, but from our
memories.'
VII
Great Britain led the world in the deliverance of humanity from the
degradation of slavery; the United States and Canada are leading the
world in the still greater deliverance of humanity from the degradation
of alcohol. Out of the West cometh the world's salvation. America,
that is for ever singing of itself as the 'sweet land of liberty,' is
now the seat of the greatest experiment in personal coercion that the
world has known. And that is because the American has freed his mind
from cant. He has replaced the conception of liberty as liberty to do
as we like by the conception of liberty which is the liberation of
large masses of the community from thraldom to their base appetites and
from the oppression of grafters and profiteers. The main cause of that
deliverance was the awakened conscience of the people. When the power
to veto licences was placed in the hands of the people, the citizens
became conscious of the fact that when they voted for a licence they
were just as much partners in the saloon as if they furnished the
liquor and sold it standing behind the bar. When they considered that
the poisoning of the poor by alcohol was a road to wealth, when they
traced the misery and ruin that afflicted the community to the saloons,
they felt that they could not any longer be sharers in the traffic nor
incur responsibility for it. It was the Churches of the land that
wakened the conscience of the people. It was better that any community
perish rather than that they should offend one of the little ones for
which Christ died.... What we need is that the conscience of the
community should be wakened in the same manner. The Church of Christ
alone can sound the trumpet that wakens from the slumber of torpor.
But the Church seems more concerned about dealing out soothing syrup to
its soporific members than about wakening the dead. The spectacle of
bishops denouncing Prohibition in the name of Freedom; of
representative Church Councils refusing to recommend the cause of
No-Licence; of congregations being narcotised to the slaughter of the
innocents that goes on ceaselessly all around them--the victims of
Bacchus laid for ever on his altar--while the preacher proclaims peace,
peace, where there is no peace, and expounds an evangel of sweetness
and light while the people are perishing--all that may well make angels
weep. But the Churches are wakening. The founder of Christianity
prayed, 'Lead us not into temptation,' and Christians cannot for ever
acquiesce in the State tempting its own children to their destruction.
Just as we look back and marvel how any Christian could ever defend
slavery, so fifty years hence, when the liquor traffic will have become
a memory, men will marvel how Christians could ever have defended the
Liquor Trade and looked on, silent, while it swept the young and the
strong to doom.