OCR Text |
Show PROHIBITION NOT A FARCE A friend writes to The Oregonian in apprehension over the stability of prohibition. He has seen intoxicated women on the street and he is annoyed in public places by beery breaths. lie grieves to see the law prepared for ridicule at the next election. It may be that some of the manufacturers who have so successfully counterfeited beer have produced a pro-Iduct pro-Iduct that counterfeits the beery breath. Indeed, it is (quite likely. But for all that, everybody is aware that j there are violations of the prohibition law. One hundred and forty-nine persons have been arrested since last January Jan-uary on bootlegging charges; many others have been arrested ar-rested for drunkenness. Still we do not join the brother in his apprehension. We expected the law to be violated. Prohibition that prohibits does not come in a day. The simple writing in the book of laws an inhibition against that which countless persons have long been accustomed to do lawfully cannot be expected to work an immediate cnarm on iixeci appetite or arouse a high moral belief in everyone that that act has been made a wrong. Portland and Oregon are in that period of prohibition which every community that has ever tried prohibition has entered and has not yet passed beyond. We have established es-tablished a law which approximately one-half of the people peo-ple of the largest community of the state did not want. We can elect to office the most vigorous prosecutors and the sternest judges, yet some of the law's defiers are bound to escape through their own ingenuity or the leniency leni-ency of juries or the occasional and unavoidable indifference indiffer-ence of officers whose duty it is to detect and arrest. But the law, with all of its violations, has accomplished accomplish-ed one great thing. It has made impossible the saloon j wiui its scanning invitation to youth to enter and there acquire an evil appetite that can never be wholly lost. I We have cut off at the root the growth of the thing that now makes bootlegging profitable and possible. But as already said, the writing of a law will not at once change the habits of men. So long as there is demand de-mand for strong drink so long will the law be violated. The dispensing of drink may, like robbery and murder and forgery, never pass out of existence. And it is not such an alarming thing to contemplate that the full strength of law and order which has been unable to eradicate erad-icate worse crimes after centuries of effort cannot hope at once wholly to prevent bootlegging. As this generation passes, the incentive to the crime will diminish. We are making micrhtv few tinners in Dra gon. That is a reform worth while, and one that will withstand any foolish ridicule that arises out of defiances of prohibition that were fully to be expected by everyone who gave the matter serious thought. Portland Oregonian. |