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Show PROHIBITION'S FAILURE. The steady advance of the prohibition movement move-ment during the last decade is at once one of the most remarkable manifestations of popular antagonism antag-onism to the low-down saloon and the activity of the saloon in politics and also one of the most remarkable re-markable manifestations of inconsistency the country coun-try has ever seen. Ten years ago there were only three states with state-wide prohibition statutes Maine, Kansas and Xorth Dakota. At that time there were very few states with local option statutes. stat-utes. Since 1890 six states have been added to the prohibition roll Xorth Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Ala-bama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Oklahoma making mak-ing nine states in all. With these many other states have placed local option acts in operation, until now it ic -tlin tirniir) lmnst. rf tin nrnliihitiriTi- ists that more than 40,000,000 people in America are living in '"dry" territory.' This is indeed a good showing for the advocates advo-cates of prohibition; their zeal in the cause is to be commended ; their success worthy of emulation. Thsy have accomplished their purpose. Figures issued by the bureau of statistics at Washington for the same period from 1900 to 3910 however, indicate wherein the vast spread of "dry" territory has not done more than cut off the revenue of those states, counties and municipalities munici-palities which excluded the saloons from their boundaries. Beer consumption in the ten-year period has increased more than twenty million barrels, or 51.2 per cent. Consumption of distilled spirits has increased 44.9 per cent. Assuming that the population will approximate 93,000,000. a figure higher than any estimates until the last few weeks, that figure will represent an increase of less than 25 per cent. A normal i n-crease n-crease in consumption of beer and spirituous liquors would be in proportion to the increase in population, if there was no addition to the territory terri-tory from which the sale was excluded. The. fact that beer consumptoin has increased more than 50 per cent and spirituous liquors more than 44 per ceut, while during the same period the number of people living in "wet" territory has decreased nearly near-ly 40,000,000, furnishes a striking answer to the query, Does prohibition prohibit? It does not. j The enormous increase in the consumption of malt and spirituous liquors coming in the decade in which "dry" territory spread over half of the country furnishes in itself the best example of the failure of the movement. For it is evident that in much of the "dry" territory the law is evaded and its provisions nullified. In the newer states to adopt the exclusion of liquors the law is as openly violated as ever it was in Maine or Kansas. The abuses in the liquor business have not been removed, re-moved, but rather aggravated, by the enactment of prohibition laws, for a law not enforced is much worse than no law at all. |