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Show ! MICHAEL J. FANNING ! LECTURES ON PROHIBITION With the unqualified declaration that the only way to successfully combat the evils of the liquor traffic is to secure se-cure state-wide and ultimately nationwide nation-wide prohibition, Michael J. Fanning of Philadelphia, a veteran temperance orator, delivered an address at the First. Congregational church at Salt Lake h'.st Sunday afternoon. Mr. Fanning spoke under the auspices of the Salt Lake W. C. T. U., the vice president, Mrs. R. E. Waite, presiding. Embellishing his address with numerous numer-ous anecdotes, the lecturer made an argument ar-gument that closely held hi3 audience. He said in part: I Thinking men and women who have I carefully studied the question are practically prac-tically agreed that the liquor traffic presents the most gigantic evil with which we as a people, as a nation, as individuals, have to deal. The way, the best way, to overcome this evil should be dear to the hearts of everyone every-one who respects himself and loves his wife and children. ' Moral suasion won't do; local option won't do; a dry county next to a wet county won't do; that has been tried and proved a failure. And the best evidence of this is that you will everywhere every-where find the liquor dealers leading a local option campaign. The remedy, the one remedy, is state-wide prohibition, prohibi-tion, ultimately nation-wide prohibition. But I am told that the liquor traffic, like ot ler fridustries, is governed by the law of supply and demand. The only thing woa about that statement is that it is 1 1-t true.. When we have the evils of the saloon to confront, we are confronted with the truth from which you cannot get away, that it is the suppl, that creates the demand. People do not try to secure what they know they crnnt have. Cut off the supply of liquor and the question of the abolition of demand for it will be only a matier of a few years. The supply ; of liquor feeds and fosters the demand for it. Stop furnishing the supply and you have solved the problem. But we are told ihat we must have the liquor traffic for the revenue it yields, for the vast sum that flows annually an-nually into the coffers of the nation through infernal-internal revenue. Who pays this revenue? Not the liquor dealer. The average liquor dealer in the United States last year took in $8700 and paid out an average of $52 '. the difference being the liquor dealer's toll, which in the last analysis is paid by starving wives, besotted husbands, helpless orphans, betrayed maidenhood, Dlasted careers, wreck, ruin, despair and death. Mr. Fanning said the people of the United States spend annually on liquors enough to provide a home and ten acres of land to a million families. "The earnings of all the railroads in the United States in one year would only pay the bill of those who use liquor for 156 days," he said. He argued that the use of liquor increases in-creases the cost of administration of government, and said that in states where prohibition is enforced, the social so-cial evil almost entirely disappears. |