Our opponents allege, again, that “prohibition does not prohibit;” that
the saloons are simply transformed into drug stores, and keep on selling
liquor as before; and that drinking and drunkenness have really
increased since the prohibition law went into effect. If these
assertions are true, what have they to complain of? If prohibition does
not prohibit, why do the men who want to open saloons, and make a living
by making their fellow-men drunk, oppose prohibition? If a saloon can be
so easily transformed into a drug store, why don’t all the
saloon-keepers adopt that course? If drinking and drunkenness have
increased, why are those who profit by drinking and drunkenness, and all
their allies and supporters, so bitterly opposed to prohibition?
The distress of the gentlemen who so vehemently argue that “prohibition
does not prohibit,” recalls one of President Lincoln’s quaint stories.
Gen. Grant was winning victories in the West, but his success inspired
the usual jealousies and rivalries, and the President was frequently
advised that Grant was a failure, and urged to remove him. This
criticism and fault-finding continued even after the surrender of
Vicksburg. The wiseacres insisted that Grant had made a fatal mistake in
paroling Pemberton’s army, and argued that the paroled men would, in a
brief time, swell the ranks of other Confederate armies. The President
had been patient until then, but when this argument was made, he turned
on the critics, and, with a sly twinkle, asked: “Did you ever hear about
Bill Sykes’s yellow dog?” They said they hadn’t. “Well,” said Mr.
Lincoln, “Sykes had a yellow dog he set great store by, but there was a
lot of boys in town who didn’t share Sykes’s opinion. In fact, they
regarded Sykes’s yellow dog as a nuisance. So they finally fixed up a
cartridge with a long fuse, put the cartridge in a piece of meat,
dropped the meat in the road near Sykes’s house, and then, having
perched themselves on a fence near by, with the end of the fuse in their
hands, whistled for the dog. When he came out he scented the meat, and
bolted it, cartridge and all. The boys touched off the fuse, and in a
moment there was an explosion. Sykes rushed out to see what was the
matter, and found the ground covered with pieces of yellow dog. He
picked up the biggest piece he could find, and after mournfully
regarding it for a moment, sorrowfully said: ‘Well, I guess he’ll never
be much account again—as a dog.’ And,” added the President, “I guess
Pemberton’s army will never be of much account again—as an army.”
Looking at the fragments of the whisky traffic scattered over the State,
in jails, or seated on store-boxes swearing that “prohibition doesn’t
prohibit,” or across the border in Missouri—looking at these scattered
fragments, it may fairly be said that, like Sykes’s dog, the whisky
business in Kansas will never be of much account again—as a business.