Show gwu uw PROHIBITiON AGAIN DEFEATED The people of Massachusetts have again voted on the proposition to put prohibition in the constitution and like commonsense I folks who ire governed bj intelligence rather than by a sentiment they have do felted the amendment bj a satisfactory majontj a majority s > large in fact that it should put a quietus for long years on the subject of constitutional prohibition When any American state or even a local community of any considerable proportions shall demonstrate that legal prohibition will prohibit the other states and communities commu-nities will fall into line so quickly that it will astonish the visionaries who vainly imagine that the consumption of intoxicants intoxi-cants can be suppressed declaring their manufacture and sale unlawful Pho majority joutj of the American people would cheerfully cheer-fully put a stop to the liquor tiafllt if they could do so If the majority vote could control intoxicants would neither be sold nor manufacture within the confines I of the United States But ithe experience of long years his taught the American peo I pie that not only the majority but the nun only must proclaim in favor of prohibition before the traflic in linn can be abolished It does not argue that beacuse the majority of the votes of Massachusetts declared in opposition to the prohibitory anind ment that the majority of the voters are opposed to the suppression of the liquor business It argues rather that the voters have learned bj experience and observation J observa-tion the folly of attempting an impossibil m and that they do not with their eves open and their intelligence unclouded waist to put an idle pio ision in the fundamental law of the commonwealth Perhaps the greater proportion of those who voted no if they had been convinced that the amendment would have abolished the liquor business or oven materially promote temperance would have voted yes They were not so convinced and they did not propose that the state should repeat the farce which is being played in Maine Iowa and Kansas where constitutional prohibition has but slightly diminished the consumption of intoxicants in-toxicants and has perceptibly decreased intemperance Having escaped the folly of attempting at-tempting prohibition the people of Massachusetts should now demand at the hands of the legislature a high license lawa law making the license for selling intoxicants as high as the business will stand and placing the traffic under the strictest possible official control and regulation Compel Com-pel the men who rink whisk to pay for the stuff and to also pay the expense ex-pense which whisk j drinking imposes upon a community The wellmeaning but mistaken mis-taken if not misguided men and women who arc victims of a legal prohibition mania will advance the humane cause for which they so earnestly labor if they will exert themselves to convert individuals to prohibition instead of wearing away their lives in trying to make laws achieve impossible im-possible results |