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Show INCREA3E CONSUMPTION OF i LIQUORS. J For the liwcal year ending on Juns j 30. 1010. the beer salea in the Van- i l ed States amounted to 59,485,117 fcsr- ! I tels of 31 gallons each, as comparel j with 39,330,8 IS barrels in 1900. Toe.e i I llguros are furnished by the bureai j ! of statistics at Washington. Tlicie j haa been an increase of 51.2 per I cent in the ten ycura. AsHtiuiiiig that the population of the country will be found to bo about 93,0(i(),(i0it, which n a larger estimate esti-mate than anybody was making un- I ill a few weeks ago, tho ojmlatlua ' has Increased 22.H per cent in the decade. dec-ade. In the sarue ten years dlitilleJ spirits have Increased In consumption consump-tion to the eTtent of 44.9 per cent. And yet In thlw decade there has been a large gain in tho number of prohibition alates. Thero were ouly three, Maine, Kansas aud North Dakota, Da-kota, in 1000. Half a dozen, XortA Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Ml.vis- I nippl, Tc'iiiieKRpo and Oklahoma, bv been added to tho lint in the past three or four years. ' Moreover, In 'tho decade many other ' Ptaten, by local exclusion acts, have phut out intoxicants, or pretended to do bo. from counties and towna. While J only 2,500,000 people resided in "dry' territory in 1900, 41,000,000 are thera in 1910. How Is it that while this area of the prohibition region Id steadily anl rapidly expanding the amount of miut and clirftliied liquors consumed ly j the people Is increasing at a rauca ; greater rate than Is population? It must also bo borne in uifnJ that the ligured here given for consumption i touch only the liquors on which taxes tax-es are puld to the government For obvious reasons tho "moon- j shine" Hills and breweries arc not i included Nobody except those will run them know anything about them o.nclally, aud they will not tell. That l he number is large, however, Is certain. cer-tain. More of all sorts of liquors b drunk now than ton yeara ago. This Is manifest from the government's books. Of course, this means that the laws in the "dry" Btates nnd in some of the ' dry" countleH arc evaded. evad-ed. They are evaded In Georgia and Oklahoma and the other etatea whica addpted the exclusion rad In the last few years, just as they arc in Malno, Kansas and North Dakota, where, technically, intoxicants have been out- Ilawed for several years. The qu?r7i Does prohibition prohibit? must be answered by au emphatic negative i St. Louis Olobe-Democrat. |