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What Prohibition Has Done to America-Fabian Franklin · Invisible Helpers

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: dot org. What Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, Perverting the Constitution. The object of a constitution
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  Speaker 1: like that of the United States is to establish certain
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  Speaker 1: fundamentals of government in such a way that they cannot
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  Speaker 1: be altered or destroyed by the mere will of a
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  Speaker 1: majority of the people or by the ordinary processes of legislation.
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  Speaker 1: The framers of the Constitution saw the necessity of making
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  Speaker 1: a distinction between these fundamentals and the ordinary subjects of
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  Speaker 1: law making, and accordingly, they and the people who gave
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  Speaker 1: their approval to the Constitution deliberately arrogated to themselves the
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  Speaker 1: power to shackle future majorities in regard to the essentials
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  Speaker 1: of the system of government which they brought into being.
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  Speaker 1: They did this with a clear consciousness of the object
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  Speaker 1: which they had in view, the stability of the new
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  Speaker 1: government and the protection of certain fundamental rights and liberties.
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  Speaker 1: But they did not for a moment entertain the idea
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  Speaker 1: of imposing upon future generations through the extraordinary sanctions of
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution their views upon any special subject of ordinary legislation.
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  Speaker 1: Such a proceeding would have seemed to them far more
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  Speaker 1: monstrous and far less excusable than the tyranny of George
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  Speaker 1: the Third and his Parliament, which had given rise to
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  Speaker 1: the American Revolution. Until the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment,
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution of the United States retained the character which
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  Speaker 1: properly belongs to the organic law of a great federal republic.
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  Speaker 1: The matters with which it dealt were of three kinds,
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  Speaker 1: and three only. The division of powers as between the
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  Speaker 1: federal and the state governments, the structure of the federal
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  Speaker 1: government itself, and the safeguarding of the fundamental rights of an
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  Speaker 1: American citizens. These were things that it felt essential to
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  Speaker 1: remove from the vicissitudes attendant upon the temper of the
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  Speaker 1: majority at any given time. There was not to be
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  Speaker 1: any doubt from year to year as to the limits
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  Speaker 1: of federal power on the one hand and state power
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  Speaker 1: on the other, nor as to the structure of the
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  Speaker 1: federal government and the respective functions of the legislative, executive,
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  Speaker 1: and judicial departments of that government, nor as to the
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  Speaker 1: preservation of certain fundamental rights pertaining to life, liberty, and property,
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  Speaker 1: that these things, once laid down in the organic law
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  Speaker 1: of the country, should not be subject to disturbance except
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  Speaker 1: by the extraordinary and difficult process of amendment. Prescribed by
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution was the dictate of the highest political wisdom.
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  Speaker 1: And it was only because of the manifest wisdom upon
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  Speaker 1: which it was based, that the Constitution, in spite of
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  Speaker 1: many trials and drawbacks, commanded during nearly a century and
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  Speaker 1: a half of momentous history, the respect and devotion of
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  Speaker 1: generation after generation of American citizens. Although the Constitution of
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  Speaker 1: the United States has been pronounced by an illustrious British statesman,
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  Speaker 1: the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given
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  Speaker 1: time by the brain and purpose of man, it would
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  Speaker 1: be not only folly but superstition to regard it as perfect.
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  Speaker 1: It has been amended in the past, and will need
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  Speaker 1: to be amended in the future. The Income Tax Amendment
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  Speaker 1: enlarged the power of the federal government in the field
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  Speaker 1: of taxation, and to that extent, encroached upon a domain
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  Speaker 1: theretofore reserved to the states. The amendment, which referred the
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  Speaker 1: election of senators to popular vote instead of having them
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  Speaker 1: chosen by the state legislatures altered a feature of the
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  Speaker 1: mechanism originally laid down for the setting up of the
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  Speaker 1: federal government. The amendments that were adopted as a consequence
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  Speaker 1: of the Civil War were designed to put an end
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  Speaker 1: to slavery and to guarantee to the negroes the fundamental
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  Speaker 1: rights of free men. With the exception of the amendments
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  Speaker 1: adopted almost immediately after the framing of the constance Titution itself,
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  Speaker 1: and therefore usually regarded as almost forming part of the
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  Speaker 1: original instrument, the amendments just referred to are the only
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  Speaker 1: ones that have been adopted prior to the eighteenth, and
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  Speaker 1: it happens that these amendments, the sixteenth, the seventeenth, and
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  Speaker 1: the group comprising the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, deal respectively
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  Speaker 1: with the three kinds of things with which the Constitution
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  Speaker 1: was originally and is legitimately concerned. The division of powers
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  Speaker 1: between the federal and the state governments, the structure of
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  Speaker 1: the federal government itself. The safeguarding of the fundamental rights
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  Speaker 1: of American citizens. One of the gravest indictments against the
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  Speaker 1: eighteenth Amendment is that it has struck a deadly blow
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  Speaker 1: at the heart of our federal system, the principle of
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  Speaker 1: local self government. How sound that indictment is, how profound
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  Speaker 1: the injury which national prohibition inflicted upon the states as
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  Speaker 1: self governing entities, will be considered in a subsequent chapter.
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  Speaker 1: At this point we are concerned with an objection even
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  Speaker 1: more viace and more conclusive. Upon the question of centralization
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  Speaker 1: or decentralization of federal powers or state autonomy, there is
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  Speaker 1: room for rational difference of opinion. But upon the question
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  Speaker 1: whether a regulation prescribing the personal habits of individuals forms
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  Speaker 1: a proper part of the constitution of a great nation,
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  Speaker 1: there is no room whatever for rational difference of opinion.
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  Speaker 1: Whether prohibition is right or wrong, wise or unwise. All
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  Speaker 1: sides are agreed that it is a denial of personal liberty.
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  Speaker 1: Prohibitionists maintain that the denial is justified like other restraints
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  Speaker 1: upon personal liberty to which we all assent. Anti prohibitionists
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  Speaker 1: maintain that this denial of personal liberty is of a
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  Speaker 1: vitally different nature from those to which we all assent.
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  Speaker 1: That it is a denial of personal liberty is undisputed,
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  Speaker 1: and the point with which we are at this moment
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  Speaker 1: concerned is that to entrench a denial of liberty behind
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  Speaker 1: the mighty ramparts of our Constitution is to do precisely
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  Speaker 1: the opposite of what our Constitution, or any constitution like ours,
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  Speaker 1: is designed to do. The Constitution withdraws certain things from
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  Speaker 1: the control of the majority for the time being, withdraws
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  Speaker 1: them from the province of ordinary legislation, for the purpose
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  Speaker 1: of safeguarding liberty. The Eighteenth Amendment seizes upon the mechanism
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  Speaker 1: designed for this purpose and perverts it to the diametrically
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  Speaker 1: opposite end, that of safeguarding the denial of liberty. All
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  Speaker 1: history teaches that liberty is in danger from the tyranny
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  Speaker 1: of majorities, as well as that of oligarchies and monarchies. Accordingly,
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution says, no mere majority, no ordinary legislative procedure,
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  Speaker 1: shall be competent to deprive the people of the liberty
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  Speaker 1: that is hereby guaranteed to them. But the Eighteenth Amendment says,
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  Speaker 1: no mere majority, no mere legislative procedure shall be competent
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  Speaker 1: to restore to the people the liberty that is hereby
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  Speaker 1: taken away from them. Thus, quite apart from all questions
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  Speaker 1: as to the merits of prohibition in itself. The Eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: Amendment is a constitutional monstrosity. That this has not been
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  Speaker 1: more generally and more keenly recognized is little to the
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  Speaker 1: credit of the American people, and still less to the
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  Speaker 1: credit of the American press and of those who should
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  Speaker 1: be the leaders of public opinion. One circumstance, may, however,
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  Speaker 1: be cited, which tends to extenuate in some degree this
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  Speaker 1: glaring failure of political sense and judgment. There have long
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  Speaker 1: been prohibition enactments in many of our state constitutions, and
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  Speaker 1: this has made familiar and commonplace the idea of prohibition
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  Speaker 1: as part of a constitution. But our state constitutions are
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  Speaker 1: not constitutions in anything like the same sense as that
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  Speaker 1: which attaches to the Constitution of the United States. Most
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  Speaker 1: of our state constitutions can be altered with little more
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  Speaker 1: difficulty than ordinary laws. The process merely takes a little
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  Speaker 1: more time and offers no serious obstacle to any object
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  Speaker 1: earnestly desired by a substantial majority of the people of
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  Speaker 1: the state. Accordingly, our state constitutions are full of a
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  Speaker 1: multitude of details which really belong in the ordinary domain
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  Speaker 1: of statute law, and nobody looks upon them as embodying
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  Speaker 1: that fundamental and organic law upon whose integrity and authority
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  Speaker 1: depends the life and safety of our institutions. The Constitution
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  Speaker 1: of the United States, on the other hand, is a
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  Speaker 1: true constitution, concerned only with fundamentals and guarded against change
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  Speaker 1: in a manner suited to the preservation of fundamentals. To
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  Speaker 1: put into it a regulation of personal habits. To buttress
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  Speaker 1: such a regulation by its safeguards is an atrocity for
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  Speaker 1: which no characterization can be too severe, And it is
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  Speaker 1: something more than an atrocity. The eighteenth Amendment is not
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  Speaker 1: only a perversion, but also a degradation of the Constitution.
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  Speaker 1: In what precedes the emphasis has been placed on the
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  Speaker 1: perversion of what was designed as a safeguard of liberty
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  Speaker 1: into a safeguard of the denial of liberty. But even
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  Speaker 1: if no issue of liberty entered into the case, an
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  Speaker 1: amendment that embodied a mere police regulation would be a
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  Speaker 1: degradation of the Constitution. In the earlier days of our history, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: up to a comparatively recent time, if any one had
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  Speaker 1: suggested such a thing as a prohibition amendment to the
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  Speaker 1: Federal Constitution, he would have been met not with indignation
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  Speaker 1: but with ridicule. It would not have been the monstrosity,
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  Speaker 1: but the absurdity of such a proposal that would have
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  Speaker 1: been first in the thought of almost any intelligent American
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  Speaker 1: to whom it might have been presented. He would have
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  Speaker 1: felt that such a feature was as utterly out of
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  Speaker 1: place in the Constitution of the United States as would
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  Speaker 1: be a statute regulating the height of houses or the
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  Speaker 1: length of women's skirts. It might be as meritorious as
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  Speaker 1: you please in itself, but it didn't belong in the Constitution.
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  Speaker 1: If the Constitution is to command the kind of respect
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  Speaker 1: which shall make it the steadfast bulwark of our institutions,
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  Speaker 1: the guarantee of our union and our welfare, it must
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  Speaker 1: preserve the character that befits such an instrument the Eighteenth Amendment,
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  Speaker 1: if it were not odious as a perversion to the
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  Speaker 1: power of the Constitution, would be contemptible as an offense
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  Speaker 1: against its dignity. End of Chapter one.
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  Speaker 2: Chapter two of What Prohibition has Done to America. This
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  Speaker 2: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 2: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 2: LibriVox dot Org recording by Leon Meyer What Prohibition has
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  Speaker 2: Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter two, creating a
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  Speaker 2: Nation of Lawbreakers. In his baccalaureate address as President of
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  Speaker 2: Yale University in June nineteen twenty two, doctor Angel felt
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  Speaker 2: called upon to say that in this country quote, the
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  Speaker 2: violation of law has never been so general nor so
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  Speaker 2: widely condoned as at present, And to add these impressive
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  Speaker 2: words of appeal to the young graduates. This is a
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  Speaker 2: fact which strikes at the very heart of our system
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  Speaker 2: of government. And the young man entering upon his active
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  Speaker 2: career must decide whether he too will condone, and even
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  Speaker 2: a bet, such disregard of law, or whether he will
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  Speaker 2: set his face firmly against such a course. It is
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  Speaker 2: safe to say that there has never been a time
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  Speaker 2: in the history of our country when the president of
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  Speaker 2: a great university could have found it necessary to address
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  Speaker 2: the young Americans before him in any such language. There
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  Speaker 2: has never been a time when deliberate disregard of law
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  Speaker 2: was habitual among the classes which represent culture, achievement, and wealth,
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  Speaker 2: the classes among whom respect for law is usually regarded
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  Speaker 2: as constant and instinctive. That such disregard now prevails. Is
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  Speaker 2: an assertion for which President Angel did not find it
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  Speaker 2: necessary to point to any evidence. It is universally admitted
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  Speaker 2: friends of prohibition and enemies of prohibition at odds on
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  Speaker 2: everything else, are in entire agreement upon this. It is
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  Speaker 2: high time that thinking people went beyond a mere recognition
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  Speaker 2: of this fact and entered into a serious examination of
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  Speaker 2: the cause to which it is to be ascribed. Perhaps
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  Speaker 2: I should say the causes, for of course more causes
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  Speaker 2: than one enter into the matter. But I say the
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  Speaker 2: cause for the reason that there is one cause which
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  Speaker 2: transcends all others, both in underlying importance and in the
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  Speaker 2: permanence of its nature. That cause does not reside in
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  Speaker 2: any special extravagances that there may be in the Volstead Act.
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  Speaker 2: The cardinal grievance against which the unprecedented contempt for law
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  Speaker 2: among high minded in law by people as directed, is
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  Speaker 2: not the Volstad Act, but the Eighteenth Amendment. The enactment
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  Speaker 2: of that amendment was a monstrosity so gross that no
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  Speaker 2: thinking American thirty years ago would have regarded it as
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  Speaker 2: a possibility. It is not only a crime against the
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  Speaker 2: Constitution of the United States, and not only a crime
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  Speaker 2: against the whole spirit of our federal system, but a
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  Speaker 2: crime against the first principles of rational government. The object
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  Speaker 2: of the Constitution of the United States is to embed
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  Speaker 2: in the organic law of the country certain principles and
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  Speaker 2: certain arrangements for the distribution of power, which shall be
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  Speaker 2: binding in a peculiar way upon generation after generation of
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  Speaker 2: the American people. Once so embedded, it may prove to
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  Speaker 2: be impossible, by anything short of a revolution, to get
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  Speaker 2: them out, even though a very great majority of the
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  Speaker 2: people should desire to do so. If laws regulating the
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  Speaker 2: ordinary personal conduct of indivation views are to be entrenched
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  Speaker 2: in this way, one of the first conditions of respect
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  Speaker 2: for law necessarily falls to the ground that practical maxim,
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  Speaker 2: which is always appealed to, and rightly appealed to, in
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  Speaker 2: behalf of an unpopular law, the maxim that if the
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  Speaker 2: law is bad, the way to get it repealed is
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  Speaker 2: to obey it and enforce it. Loses its validity if
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  Speaker 2: a majority cannot repeal the law. If it is perfectly
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  Speaker 2: conceivable and even probable, that generation after generation may pass
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  Speaker 2: without the will of the majority having a chance to
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  Speaker 2: be put into a fact, then it is idle to
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  Speaker 2: expect intelligent freemen to bow down in meek submission to
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  Speaker 2: its prescriptions. Apart from the question of distribution of governmental powers,
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  Speaker 2: it was until recently a matter of course to say
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  Speaker 2: that the purpose of the Constitution was to protect the
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  Speaker 2: rights of minorities, that it might ever be perverted to
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  Speaker 2: say exactly the opposite purpose, to the purpose of fastening
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  Speaker 2: not only upon minorities, but even upon majorities for an
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  Speaker 2: unlimited future. The will of the majority for the time
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  Speaker 2: being certainly never crossed the mind of any of the
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  Speaker 2: great men who frame the Constitution of the United States.
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  Speaker 2: Yet this is precisely what the prohibition mania has done.
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  Speaker 2: The safeguards designed to protect freedom against thoughtless or wanton
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  Speaker 2: invasion have been seized upon as a means of protecting
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  Speaker 2: a denial of freedom against any practical possibility of repeal
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  Speaker 2: upon a matter concerning the ordinary practices of daily life.
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  Speaker 2: We and our children, and our children's children are deprived
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  Speaker 2: of the possibility of taking such action as we think
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  Speaker 2: fit unless we can obtain the assent of two thirds
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  Speaker 2: of both branches of Congress and the legislatures of three
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  Speaker 2: fourths of the states. To live under such a dispensation
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  Speaker 2: in such a matter is to live without the first
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  Speaker 2: essentials of a government of freemen. I admit that all
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  Speaker 2: this is not clearly in the minds of most of
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  Speaker 2: the people who break the law, or who condone or
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  Speaker 2: abet the breaking of the law. Nevertheless, it is virtually
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  Speaker 2: in their minds. For whenever an attempt is made to
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  Speaker 2: bring about a substantial change in the prohibition law, the
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  Speaker 2: objection is immediately made that such a change would necessarily
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  Speaker 2: amount to a nullification of the Eighteenth Amendment. And so
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  Speaker 2: it would. People therefore feel in their hearts that they
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  Speaker 2: are confronted practically with no other choice but that of
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  Speaker 2: either supinely submitting to the full rigor of prohibition, of
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  Speaker 2: trying to procure a law which nullifies the Constitution, or
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  Speaker 2: of expressing their resentment against an outrage on the first
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  Speaker 2: principles of the Constitution by contemptuous disregard of the law.
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  Speaker 2: It is a choice of evils, and it is not
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  Speaker 2: surprising that many good citizens regard the last of the
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  Speaker 2: three choices as the best. How far this contempt in
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  Speaker 2: this disregard has gone is but very imperfectly in indicated
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  Speaker 2: by the things which were doubtless in President Angel's mind,
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  Speaker 2: and which are in the minds of most persons who
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  Speaker 2: publicly express their regret over the prevalence of law breaking.
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  Speaker 2: What they are thinking about, what the Anti Saloon League
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  Speaker 2: talks about, what the Prohibition enforcement officers expend their energy upon,
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  Speaker 2: is the sale of alcoholic drinks in public places and
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  Speaker 2: by boot lakers. But where the boot laker and the
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  Speaker 2: restaurant keeper counts as thousands, home brew counts its tens
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  Speaker 2: of thousands. To this subject, there is a remarkable absence
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  Speaker 2: of attention on the part of the Anti Saloon League
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  Speaker 2: and of the Prohibition Enforcement Service. They know that there
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  Speaker 2: are not hundreds of thousands, but millions of people breaking
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  Speaker 2: the law by making their own liquors, but they dare
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  Speaker 2: not speak of it. They dare not go even so
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  Speaker 2: far as to make it universally known that the making
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  Speaker 2: of homebrew is a violation of the law. To this day,
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  Speaker 2: a very considerable number of peopleeople who indulge in the
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  Speaker 2: practice are unaware that it is a violation of the law.
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  Speaker 2: And the reason for this careful and persistent silence is
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  Speaker 2: only too plain to make conspicuous before the whole American people.
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  Speaker 2: The fact that the law is being steadily and complacently
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  Speaker 2: violated in millions of decent American homes, would bring about
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  Speaker 2: a realization of the demoralizing effect of prohibition, which its sponsors,
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  Speaker 2: fanatical as they are very wisely shrink from facing. How
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  Speaker 2: long this demoralization may last, I shall not venture to predict.
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  Speaker 2: But it will not be overcome in a day, and
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  Speaker 2: it will not be overcome at all by means of exhortations.
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  Speaker 2: It is possible that enforcement will gradually become more and
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  Speaker 2: more efficient, and that the spirit of resistance may thus
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  Speaker 2: gradually be worn out. On the other hand, it is
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  Speaker 2: also possible that means of evading the law may become
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  Speaker 2: more and more perfected by invention and otherwise, and that
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  Speaker 2: the melancholy and humiliating spectacle which we are now witnessing
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  Speaker 2: may be of very long duration. But in any case,
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  Speaker 2: it has already lasted long enough to do incalculable and
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  Speaker 2: almost ineradicable harm. And for all this, it is utterly
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  Speaker 2: idle to place the blame on those qualities of human
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  Speaker 2: nature which have led to the violation of the law.
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  Speaker 2: Of those qualities, some are reprehensible, and some are not
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  Speaker 2: only blameless, but commendable. The great guilt is not that
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  Speaker 2: of the law breakers, but of the law makers. It
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  Speaker 2: is childish to imagine that every law, no matter what
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  Speaker 2: its nature, can command respect. Nothing would be easier than
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  Speaker 2: to imagine laws which a very considerable number of perfectly
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  Speaker 2: well meaning people would be glad to have enacted, but which,
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  Speaker 2: if enacted, it would be not only the right but
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  Speaker 2: the duty of sound citizens to ignore. I do not
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  Speaker 2: say that the Eighteenth Amendment falls into the category, but
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  Speaker 2: it comes perilously near to doing so, and thousands of
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  Speaker 2: the best American citizens think that it actually does do so.
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  Speaker 2: It has degraded the constitution of the United States. It
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  Speaker 2: has created a division among the people of the United
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  Speaker 2: States comparable only to that which was made by the
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  Speaker 2: awful issue of slavery and secession. That issue was a
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  Speaker 2: result of deep seated historical causes, in the face of
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  Speaker 2: which the wisdom and patriotism of three generations of Americans
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  Speaker 2: found itself powerless. This new cleavage has been caused by
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  Speaker 2: an act of legislative folly unmatched in the history of
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: free institutions. My hope, a distant and yet a sincere hope,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: is that the American people may in spite of all difficulties,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: be awakened to a realization of that folly, and restore
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: the Constitution to its traditional dignity by a repeal sooner
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: or later of the monsters amendments by which it has
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: been defaced. End of Chapter two.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Chapter three of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: LibriVox dot org. What Prohibition Has Done to America by
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Fabian Franklin, Chapter three, Destroying our federal System. Thus far,
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: I have been dealing with the wrong which the Prohibition
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Amendment commits against the vital principle of any national constitution,
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: the principle which alone justifies the idea of a constitution
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: a body of organic law removed from the operation of
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: the ordinary process of popular rule and representative government. But
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: reference was made at the outset to a wrong of
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: a more special, yet equally profound character. The distinctive feature
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: of our system of government is that it combines a
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: high degree of power and independence in the several states
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: with a high degree of power and authority in the
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: national government. Time was when the dispute naturally arising in
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: such a federal union concerning the line of division between
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: these two kinds of power turned on an abstract or
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: legalistic question of state sovereignty. That abstract question was decided
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: once and for all by arbitrament of arms in our
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: great Civil War. But the decision, while its strengthened the
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: foundations of the federal union, left unimpaired the individuality, the vitality,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: the self dependence of the states in all the ordinary
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: affairs of life. It continued to be true after the
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: war as before that Each state had its own local pride,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: developed its own special inns, institutions, regulated the conduct of
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: life within its boundaries according to its own views of
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: what was conducive to the order, the well being, the contentment,
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: the progress of its own people. It has been the
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: belief of practically all intelligent observers of our national life
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: that this individuality and self dependence of the states has
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: been a cardinal element in the promotion of our national
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: welfare and in the preservation of our national character. In
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: a country of such vast extent and natural variety, a
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: country developing with unparalleled rapidity and confronted with constantly changing conditions.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Who can say how great would have been the loss
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: to local initiative and civic spirit, how grave the impairment
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: of national conquered and good will, if all the serious
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: concerns of the American people had been settled for them
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: by a central government at Washington. In that admirable little
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: book Politics for Young Americans, Charles Nordoff fifty years ago
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: expounded in simple language the principles underlying or system of government.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Coming to the subject of decentralization, he said, experience has
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: shown that this device decentralization is of extreme importance for
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: two reasons. First, it is a powerful and the best
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: means of training a people to efficient political action and
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: the art of self government. And second, it presents constant
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: and important barriers to the encroachment of rulers upon the
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: rights and liberties of the nation, every subdivision forming a
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: stronghold of resistance by the people against unjust or wicked rulers.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Take notice that any system of government is excellent in
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: the precise degree in which it naturally trains the people
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: in political independence. It habituates them to take an active
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: part in governing themselves. Whatever plan of government does this
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: is good, no matter what it may be called, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: that which avoids this is necessarily bad. What mister Nordoff
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: thus set forth has been universe acknowledged as the cardinal
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: merit of local self government. And in addition to this
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: cardinal merit, it has been recognized by all competent students
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: of our history that our system of self governing states
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: has proved itself of an estimable benefit. In another way,
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: it has been rendered possible the trying of important experiments
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: in social and governmental policy, experiments which it would have
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: been sometimes dangerous and still more frequently politically impossible to
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: inaugurate on a national scale. When these experiments have proved successful,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: state after state has followed the example set by one
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: or a few among their number when they have been
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: disappointing in their results, the rest of the union has
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: profited by the warning. But highly important as is this
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: aspect of state independence, the most essential benefits of it
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: are the training in self government, which is emphasized in
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: the above quotation from mister Nordhoff, and the adaptation of
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: laws to the particular needs and the particular character of
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: the people of the various states that modern conditions have
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: inevitably led to a vast enlargement of the powers of
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: the central government. No thinking person can deny it would
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: be folly to attempt to stick to the exact vision
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: of state functions as against national which was natural when
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: the Union was first formed. The railroad, the telegraph, and
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: the telephone, the immense development of industrial, commercial and financial organization,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: the growth of interwoven interests of a thousand kinds, have
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: brought the people of California and New York, of Michigan
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: and Texas into closer relations than were common between those
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: of Massachusetts and Virginia in the days of Washington and
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: John Adams. In so far as the process of centralization
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: has been dictated by the clear necessities of the times,
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: it would be idle to obstruct it or to cry
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: out against it. But so far from this being an
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: argument against the preservation of the essentials of local self government,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: it is the strongest, most possible argument in favor of
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: that preservation. With the progress of science, invention, and the
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: business organization, the power and prestige of the central government
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: are bound to grow. The power and prestige of the
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: state governments are bound to decline under the pressures of
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: economic necessity and social convenience. All the more, then it
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: does behoove us to sustain those essentials of state authority
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: which are not comprised within the domain of those overmastering
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: economic forces. If we do not hold the line where
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: the line can be held, we give up the cause altogether,
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: and it will only be a question of time when
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: we shall have drifted into complete subjugation to a centralized government,
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: and state boundaries will have no more serious significance than
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: county boundaries have now. But if there is one thing
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: in the wide world the control of which naturally and
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: pre eminently belongs to the individual state, and not to
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: the central government at Washington, that thing is the personal
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: conduct and habits of the people of the state. If
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: it is right and proper that the people of New York,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: or Illinois or Maryland shall be subjugated to the national
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: laws which declares what they may or may not eat
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: or drink, a law which they themselves cannot alter, no
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: matter how strongly they may desire it, then there is
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: no act of centralization whatsoever which can be justly objected
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: to as an act of centralization. The prohibition Amendment is
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: not merely an impairment of the principle of self government
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: of the states, it constitutes an absolute abandonment of that principle.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: This does not mean, of course, an immediate abandonment of
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: the practice of state self government. Established institutions have a
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: tenacious life, and moreover, there are a thousand practical advantages
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: in the state self government which nobody will think of
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: giving up. But the principle, I repeat, is abandoned altogether.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: If we accept the Eighteenth Amendment as right and proper,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: and if anybody imagines that the abandonment of the principle
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: is of no practical cos consequence, he is woefully deluded.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: So long as the principle is held in esteem, it
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: is always possible to make a stout fight against any
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: particular encroachment upon state authority. Any proposed encroachment must prove
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: its claim to acceptance not only as a practical desideratum,
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: but as not too flagrant an invasion of state prerogatives.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: But with the Eighteenth Amendment accepted as a proper part
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: of our system, it will be impossible to object to
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: any invasion as more flagrant than that to which the
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: nation has already given its approval. A striking illustration of
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: this has curiously enough been furnished in the brief time
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: that has passed since the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Southern senators and representatives and legislaturemen, who, forgetting all about
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: their cherished doctrine of states rights, had fallen over themselves
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: in their eagerness to fasten the Eighteenth Amendment upon the country,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: suddenly discovered that they were deeply devoted to that doctrine
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: when the nineteenth Amendment came up for g consideration. But
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: nobody would listen to them, they professed, and doubtless some
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: of them sincerely professed to find an essential difference between
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: putting woman's suffrage into the Constitution and putting prohibition into
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: the Constitution. The determination of the right of suffrage was,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: they said, the most fundamental attribute of a sovereign state.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: National prohibition did not strike at the heart of state sovereignty,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: as did national regulation of the suffrage. But the abstract
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: question of sovereignty has had little interest for the nation
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: since the Civil War. And if we waive that abstract question,
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: the prohibition Amendment was an infinitely more vital thrust at
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: the principle of state self government. The woman's suffrage Amendment
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: was the assertion of a fundamental principle of government, and
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: if it was an abridgment of sovereignty, it was an
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: abridgment of the same character as those embodied in the
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Constitution from the beginning. The Prohibition Amendment brought the federal
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: government into the control of precisely those intimate concerns of
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: daily life, which, above all else, had theretofore been left
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: untouched by the central power and subject to the independent
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: jurisdiction of each individual state. The South had eagerly swallowed
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: a camel, and when it asked the country to strain
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: at a gnat, it found nobody to listen. Our public
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: men and our leaders of opinion frequently and earnestly expressed
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: their concerns over the decline of importance in our state governments,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: the lessened vigor of the state spirit. The sentiment is
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: not particular to any party or to any section. It
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: is expressed with equal emphasis and with equal frequency by
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: leading Republicans and leading Democrats, By Northerners and Southerners, all
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: feel alike that with the decay of state spirit, a
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: virtue will go out of our national spirit, that a
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: centralized America will be a devitalized America. But when they
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: discussed the subject, they are in the habit of referring
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: chiefly to defects in administration, to neglect of duty by
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: the average citizen, or perhaps by those in high places
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: in business or the professions, to want of intelligence in
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: the legislature, et cetera. And for all this there is
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: much reason. Yet all this we have had always with us,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: and it is not always that we have had with
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: us this sense of decline of state spirit. For that decline,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: the chief cause is the gradual, yet steady and rapid
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: extension of national powers and lowering of the comparative importance
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: of the function of the state. However, the functions that
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: still remain to this state and its subdivisions, the municipalities
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: and counties, are still of enormous importance. And with the
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: growth of public welfare activities, which are ramifying in so
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: many directions, that importance may be far greater in the future.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: But what is to become of it if we are
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: ready to surrender to the central government the control of
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: our most intimate concerns. And what concern can be so
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: intimate as that of the conduct of the individual citizen
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: in the pursuit of his daily life. How can the
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: idea of the state as an object of pride or
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: as a source of authority flourish when the most elementary
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: of its functions is supinely abandoned to the custody of
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: a higher and stronger power. The Prohibition Amendment has done
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: more to sap the vitality of our state system than
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: can be done by a hundred years of misrule at
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Albany or Harrisburg or Springfield. The effects of that misrule
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: are more directly apparent, but they leave the state spirit
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: untouched in its vital parts. The Prohibition Amendment strikes at
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: the root of that spirit, and its evil precedent, if unreversed,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: will steadily cut off the source from which that spirit
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: derives its life. End of Chapter three, Chapter four of
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: What Prohibition Has Done to America. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. What
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter four.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: How the Amendment was put through. There has been a
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: vast amount of controversy over the question whether a majority
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: of the American people favored the adoption of the eighteenth Amendment.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: There is no possible way to settle that question. Even
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: future votes, if any can be had, that may be
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: looked upon as referendum votes, cannot settle it, whichever way
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: they may turn out. If evidence should come to hand
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: which indicates that a majority of the American people favor
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: the retention of the amendment, now that it is an
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: accomplished fact, this will not prove that they favored its
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: adoption in the first place. It may be that they
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: wished to give it a fuller trial, or it may
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: be that they do not wish to go through the
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: upheaval and disturbance of a fresh agitation of the question,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: or it may be some other reason quite different from
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: what was in the situation four years ago. On the
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: other hand, if the referendum should seem adverse, this might
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: be due to the disgust at the lawlessness that has
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: developed in connection with the Prohibition Amendment, or to a
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: realization of the vast amount of discontent it has aroused,
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: or to something else that was not in the minds
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: of the majority when the amendment was put through, but
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: really the question is of very little importance. From the
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: standpoint of fundamental political doctrine. It makes no difference whether
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: forty million, or fifty million, or sixty million people out
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: of one hundred million desired to put into the Constitution
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: a provision which is an offense against the underlying idea
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: of any constitution, an injury to the American federal system,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: an outrage upon the first principles both of law and
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: of liberty. And if, instead of viewing the matter from
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: the standpoint of fundy mental political doctrine, we look upon
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: it as a question of constitutional procedure, it is, again,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: though for a different reason, a matter of little consequence
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: whether account of noses would have favored the adoption of
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: the amendment or not. The Constitution provides a definite method
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: for its own amendment, and this method was strictly carried out.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: The amendment received the approval of the requisite number of representatives, senators,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: and state legislators. From the standpoint of constitutional procedure, the
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: question of popular majorities has nothing to do with the case.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: But from every standpoint, the way in which the Eighteenth
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Amendment was actually put through Congress and the legislatures has
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: a great deal to do with the case. Prohibitionists constantly
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: point to the big majority in Congress and the promptness
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: and almost unanimity of the approval by the legislatures as
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: proof of an overwhelming preponderance of a public sentiment in
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: favor of the amendment. It is proof of no such thing,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: to begin with. Nothing is more notorious than the fact
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: that a large portion of the members of Congress and
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: state legislators who voted for the Prohibition Amendment were not
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: themselves in favor of it. Many of them openly declared
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: that they were voting not according to their own judgment,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: but in deference to the desires of their constituents. But
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: there is not the slightest reason to believe that one
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: out of twenty of those gentlemen made any effort to
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: ascertain the desire of a majority of their constituents, nor
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: for that matter, that they would have followed that desire
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: if they had known what it was. What they were
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: really concerned about was to get the support or avoid
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: the enmity of those who held or were supposed to
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: hold the balance of power. For that purpose, a determined
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: and highly organized body of moderate dimensions may outweigh a
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: body ten times as numerous, and ten times as representative
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: of the community. The Anti Saloon League was the power
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: of which Congressmen and legislatures alike stood in fear. Never
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: in our political hitty has there been such an example
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: of consummately organized, astutely managed, and unremittingly maintained intimidation, And accordingly,
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: never in our history has a measure of such revolutionary
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: character and of such profound importance as the Eighteenth Amendment
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: been put through with anything like such smoothness and celerity.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: The intimidation exercised by the Anti Saloon League was potent
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: in a degree far beyond the numerical strength of the
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: League and its adherents, not only because of the effective
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: and systematic use of its blacklisting methods, but also for
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: another reason, weak need congressmen and legislature men succumbed to
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: not only to fear of the ballots which the League controlled,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: but also to a fear of another kind a weapon.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Not less powerful than political intimidation was the moral intimidation,
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: which the Prohibition propaganda had constantly at command. That such
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: intimidation should be resorted to by a body pushing what
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: it regards as a magnificent reform is not surprising. The
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: pity is that so few have the moral courage to
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: beat back an attack of this kind. Throughout the entire agitation,
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: it was the invariable habit of prohibition advocates to stigmatize
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: the anti prohibition forces as representing nothing but the liquor interests.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: The fight was presented in the light of a struggle
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: between those who wished to coin money out of the
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: degradation of their fellow creatures and those who sought to
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: save mankind from perdition. That the millions of people who
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: enjoyed drinking, to whom it was a cherished source of refreshment, recuperation,
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: and sociability, had any stake in the matter. The agitators
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: never for a moment acknowledged if a man stood out
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: against prohibition, he was not the champion of the millions
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: who enjoyed drink, but the servant of the interests who
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: sold drink. This preposterous fiction was allowed to pass current
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: with but little challenge, and many a public man who
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: might have stood out against the anti saloon League's power
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: over the ballot box cowered at the thought of the
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: moral reprobation which a courageous stance against prohibition might bring
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: down upon him. Thus, the swiftness with which the Prohibition
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: Amendment was adopted by Congress and by state legislatures, and
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: the overwhelming majorities which it commanded in those bodies, is
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: no proof either of sincere conviction on the part of
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: the lawmakers or of their belief that they were expressing
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: the genuine will of their constituents. As for individual conviction,
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: the personal conduct of a large proportion of the lawmakers
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: who voted for prohibition is in notorious conflict with their votes.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: And as for the other question, it has happened in
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: state after state that the legislature was almost unanimous for prohibition,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: when the people of that state had quite recently shown
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: by their vote that they were either distinctly against it
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: or almost evenly divided. Of this kind of proceeding, Maryland
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: presented an example so flagrant as to deserve special mention.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Although popular votes in the state had within quite a
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: short time recorded strong anti prohibition majorities, the legislature rushed
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: its ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment through in the very
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: first days of its session. And this in the face
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: of the fact that Maryland has always held strongly by
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: state rights and cherished its state individuality, and that the
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: leading newspapers of the state and many of its foremost
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: citizens came out courageously and energetically against the amendment. In
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: these circumstances, nothing but a mean subversiency to political intimidation
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: can possibly account for the indecent haste with which the
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: ratification was pushed through. It is interesting to note a
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: subsequent episode which casts a further interesting light on the matter,
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: and tends to show that there are limits beyond which
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: the whip and spur rule of the Anti Saloon League
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: cannot go. In the session of the present year, the
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: Anti Saloon League tried to get a state prohibition enforcement
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: bill passed. Although there was a great public protest, the
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: bill was put through the lower house of the legislature,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: but in the Senate it encountered resistance of an effective kind.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: The Senate did not reject the bill, but in spite
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: of bitter opposition by the Anti Saloon League, it attached
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: to the bill a referendum clause. With that clause attached,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: the Anti Saloon League ceased to desire the passage of
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: the bill and allowed it to be killed On its
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: return to the lower house of the legislature. Is this
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: not a fine exhibition of the nature of the League's
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: hold on legislation? And is there not abundant evidence that
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: the whole of this Maryland story is typical of what
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: has been going on throughout the country. Charges are made
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: that the Anti Saloon League has expended vast sums of
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: money in its campaigns, money largely supplied. It is often
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: alleged by one of the world's richest men, running into
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: the tens of millions or higher. I do not believe
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: that these charges are true. More weight is to be
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: attached to another factor in the case, the adoption of
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: the Amendment by Congress while we were in the midst
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: of the excitement and exultation of the war, and two
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: million of our young men were overseas. Unquestionably advantage was
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: taken of this situation. There can be little doubt that
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: the eighteenth Amendment would have had much harder sledding at
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: a normal time. And it is right accordingly to insist
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: that the Amendment was not subjected to the kind of discussion,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: nor put through the kind of test of national approval,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: which ought to precede any such permanent and radical change
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: in our constitutional organization. This is especially true because national
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: prohibition was not even remotely an issue in the preceding election,
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: nor in any earlier one. All these things must weigh
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: in our judgment of the moral weight to be attached
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment. But there is
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: another aspect of that adoption which is more important. The
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: gravest reproach which attaches to that unfortunate act, the one
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: which causes deepest concern among thinking citizens, does not relate
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: to any incidental feature of the prohibition maneuvers. The fundamental
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: trouble lay in a deplorable absence of any general understanding
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: of the seriousness of making a vital change in the Constitution,
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: incomparably the most vital to which it has ever been subjected,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: and of the solemn responsibility of those upon whom rested
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: the decision to make or not to make that change.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: Even in the newspapers in which one would expect, as
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: a matter of course, that this aspect of the question
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: would be earnestly impressed upon their readers, it was, as
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: a rule, passed over without so much as a mention.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: And this is not all one of the shrewdest and
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: most successful devices which the League and its supporters constantly
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: made use of, was to represent the function of Congress
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: as being merely that of submitting to the question of
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: the state legislators, as though the passage of the amendment
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: by a two thirds vote of Congress did not necessarily
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: imply approval, but only a willingness to let the sentiments
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: of the several states decide. Of course, such a view
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: is preposterous. Of course, if such were the purpose of
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: the constitutional procedure, there would be no requirement of a
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: two thirds zie vote. Begin footnote. This should be self evident.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: But if there were any room for doubt, it would
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: be removed by a reference to the language of Article
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: five of the Constitution. Quote the Congress, whenever two thirds
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall purpose amendments
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: to this Constitution end quote, which shall be valid quote
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: when ratified by the legislators of three fourths of the
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: states end quote. Thus, Congress does not submit an amendment,
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: but proposes it, and it does this only when two
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: thirds of both houses deem it necessary. The primary act
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: of judgment is performed by Congress. What remains for the
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: legislatures is to ratify or not to ratify that act
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: end footnote. But many members of Congress were glad enough
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: to take refuge behind this view of their duty, absurd
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: though it was, and no one can say how large
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: a part it played in securing the requisite two thirds
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: of House and Senate. Yet from the moment the amendment
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: was thus adopted by Congress, nothing more was heard of
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: this notion of that body having to perform the merely
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: ministerial act of passing the question on to the legislatures.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: On the contrary, the two thirds vote and more was
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: pointed to as conclusive evidence of the overwhelming support of
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: the amendment by the nation. The legislatures were expected to
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: get with alacrity into the bandwagon into which Congress had
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: so eagerly climbed. Evidently, it would have been far more
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: difficult to get the Eighteenth Amendment into the Constitution if
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: the two thirds vote of Congress had been the sole
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: requirement for its adoption. Congressmen disposed to take the responsibility
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: lightly and yet not altogether without conscience, voted with the
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: feeling that their act was not final, when they might
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: otherwise have shrunk from doing what their judgment told them
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: was wrong, and the thing once through Congress, legislators hastened
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: to ratify, in the feeling that ratification by the requisite
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: number of legislatures was manifestly a foregone conclusion. Thus, at
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: no stage of the game was there given to this
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: tremendous constitutional departure anything even distantly approaching the kind of
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: consideration that such a step demands. The country was jockeyed
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: and stampeded into the folly it has committed. And who
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: can say what may be the next folly into which
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: we shall fall if we do not awaken to a
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: truer sense of the duty that rests upon every member
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: of a lawmaking body to decide these grave questions in
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: accordance with the dictates of his own honest and intelligent judgment.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: End of Chapter four, Chapter five of What Prohibition Has
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: Done to America. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. What Prohibition Has
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter five. The law
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: makers and the law well meaning exhorters shocked at the
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: spectacle of millions of perfectly decent and law abiding Americans
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: showing an utter disregard of the prohibition law a prone
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: to insist that to violate this law, or to abet
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: its violation, is just as immoral as to violate any
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: other criminal law. The thing is on the statute books, nay,
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: in the very Constitution itself, and to offend against it,
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: they say, is as much a crime as to commit larceny, arson,
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: or murder. But they may repeat this doctrine until doomsday
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: and make little impression upon persons who exercise their common sense.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: The law that makes larceny, arson, or murder a crime
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: merely registers, and emphasizes, and makes effective through the power
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: of the government, the dictates of the moral sense of
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: practically all mankind. And if in the case of some
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: kindred crimes, it goes beyond those dictates for special reasons,
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: the extension is only such as is called for by
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: the circumstances, however desirable. It may be that the sudden
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: transformation of an innocent act into a crime by mere
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: governmental edict should carry with it the same degree of
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: respect as is paid to laws against crimes which all
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: normal men hold in abhorrence. It is idle to expect
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: any such thing, And in a case where the edict
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: violates principles which almost all of us only a short
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: time ago held to be almost sacred, the expectation is
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: worse than merely idle. A nation which could instantly get
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: itself into the frame of mind necessary for such supine
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: submission would be a nation fit for servitude, not freedom.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: But in the case of the Prohibition Amendment and of
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: the Volstad Act for its enforcement, there enters another element
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: which must inevitably and most powerfully affect the feelings of
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: men towards the law. Everybody knows that the law is
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: violated in spirit, if not in letter, by a large
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: proportion of the very men who imposed it upon the country.
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: Members of Congress and of the state Legis. Those that
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: voted for prohibition, as well as those that voted against it,
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: have their private stocks of liquor like other people. Nor
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: is there any reason to believe that many of them
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: are more scrupulous than other people in augmenting their supply
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: from outside sources. One of the means resorted to by
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: the Anti Saloon League in pushing through the amendment was
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: the particular care they took to make its passage involve
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: little sacrifice of personal indulgence on the part of those
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: who were wealthy enough or clever enough to provide for
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: the satisfaction of their own desires in the matter of drink,
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: at least for many years to come. The League knew
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: perfectly that in some prohibition states the possession of liquor
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: was forbidden, as well as its manufacture, transportation, and sale.
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: But the Anti Saloon League would never have dared to
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: include in the Amendment a ban upon possession. Congressmen who
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: voted for it knew that not only they themselves, but
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: their wealthy and influential constituents would be in a position
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: to provide in very low large measure for their own
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: future indulgences. And it may be set down as certain
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: that had this not been the case, opposition to the
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: amendment would have been vastly more effective than it was.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: In order that a person should entertain a genuine feeling
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: that the Prohibition Amendment is entitled to the same kind
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: of respect as the general body of criminal law, it
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: is necessary, even if he waives all those questions of
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: constitutional principle which have been dwelt upon in previous chapters,
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: that he should regard drinking as a crime. And this
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: is indeed the express belief of many upholders of the amendment,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: a foolish belief, in my judgment, but certainly a sincere one.
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: I have before me a letter typical of many, published
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: in one of our leading newspapers, and written evidently by
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: a man of education as well as sincerity. He speaks
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: bitterly of the proposal to permit light wines and beer,
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: and asks whether any one would propose to permit light
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: burglary or light arson. That man evidently regards indulgence in
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: any intoxicating lily life is a crime, and he looks
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: upon the law as a prohibition of that crime. And
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: he is essentially right if the law is right. For
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: while the law does not in its express terms make
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: drinking a crime, its intention and its practical effect, so
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: far as regards the great mass of the people, is
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: precisely that the people President Angel had in mind when
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: he implored the young Yale graduates not to be like them.
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Are not the makers or sellers of liquor, but drinkers
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: of it. They are not moonshiners or smugglers or bootleggers.
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: They are the people upon whose patronage or connivance the
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: moonshiners and smugglers and bootleggers depend for their business. And
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: everybody knows that in their private capacity, senators and representatives
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: and legislator men are precisely like their fellow citizens in
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: this matter. They may possibly be somewhat more careful about
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: the letter of the law, they are certainly just as
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: regardless of its spirit. With the exception of a comparatively
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: small number of genuine prohibitionists, men who were four pro
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: ahmbition before the Anti Saloon League started its campaign, they
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: would laugh at the question whether they regard drinking as
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: a crime, and they act accordingly. What degree of moral
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: authority can the law be expected to have in these
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: circumstances upon the mind of a man intensely convinced that
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: the law is an outrage? How much impression can be
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: produced by the mere fact that it was passed by
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: Congress and the legislatures, when the real attitude of the
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: members of those bodies is such as it is seen
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: to be in their private conduct. How much of a
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: moral sanction would be given to a law against larceny
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: if a large proportion of the men who enacted the
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: law were themselves receivers of stolen goods or a law
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: against forgery, if the legislatures were in the frequent habit
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: of passing forged checks. It happens that the receiving of
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: stolen goods or the passing of forged checks is a
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: crime under the law, as well as the stealing or
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: the forgery itself, And that the Prohibition law does not
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: make the drinking or even the buying of liquor, but
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: only the making or selling of it a crime. But
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: what a miserable refuge this is for a man who
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: professes to believe that the abolition of intoxicating liquor is
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: so supreme a public necessity as to demand the remaking
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: of the Constitution of the United States for the purpose.
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: Not the least of the causes of public disrespect for
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: the Prohibition Law is the notorious insincerity of the makers
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: of the law and their flagrant disrespect for their own creation.
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: End of Chapter.
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: Five, Chapter six of What Prohibition Has Done to America.
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: visit librivarts dot org. What Prohibition has done to America
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: by Fabian Franklin, Chapter six, The Law Enforcers and the Law,
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: Day after day, month after month, a distressing, a disgusting
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: spectacle is presented to the American people in connection with
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: the enforcement of the National Prohibition Law. No day passes
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: without newspaper headlines which feature some phase of the contest
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: going on between the government on the one hand and
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: millions of citizens on the other, citizens who belong not
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: to the criminal or semi criminal classes, nor yet to
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: the ranks of those who are indifferent or disloyal to
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: the principles of our institutions, but who are typical Americans, decent, industrious, patriotic,
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: law abiding. It is true that the individuals whom the
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: government hunts down by its spies, its arrests, its prosecutions
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: are men who make a business of breaking the prohibition law,
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: and most of whom would probably just as readily break
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: other laws if money was to be made by it.
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: But nonetheless, the real struggle is not with the thousands
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: who furnish liquor, but with the hundreds of thousands or
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: millions to whom they purvey it. Every time we read
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: of a spectacular raid or a sensational capture. We are
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: really reading of a war that is being waged by
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: a vast multitude of good, normal, amna American citizens against
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: the enforcement of a law which they regard as a
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: gross invasion of their rights and a violation of the
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: first principles of American government. The state of things thus
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: arising was admirably and compactly characterized by Justice Clark of
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: the United States Supreme Court in a single sentence of
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: his recent address before the alumni of the New York
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: University Law School. As follows, the Eighteenth Amendment required millions
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: of men and women to abruptly give up habits and
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: customs of life which they thought not immoral or wrong,
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: but which, on the contrary, they believed to be necessary
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: to their reasonable comfort and happiness. And thereby, as we
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: all now see, respect not only for that law, but
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: for all law, has been put to an unprecedented and
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: demoralizing strain in our country, the end of which it
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: is difficult to see. Upon all this, however, as concerned
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: with the conduct of the people at large, perhaps enough
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: has been said in previous chapters. What I wish to
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: dwell upon at this point is the conduct of those who,
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: either in the government itself or in the power behind
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: the government the anti Saloon League, are carrying on the
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: enforcement of the prohibition law. They are not carrying it
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: on in the way in which the enforcement of other
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: laws is carried on in the case of a normal
• 57:13
  Speaker 5: criminal law. And it must always be remembered that the
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: Volstad Act is a criminal law, just like the laws
• 57:19
  Speaker 5: against burglary or forgery or arson. Those who are responsible
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: for its enforcement regard themselves as administrators of the law,
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: neither more nor less. But the enforcement of the prohibition
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: law is something quite different. It is not a work
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: of administration but of strategy, not a question of seeing
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: that the laws obeyed by everybody, but of carrying on
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: a campaign against the defiers of the law, just as
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: one would carry on a campaign against a foreign enemy.
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: The generals in charge of the campaign decide whether they
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: shall or shall not attack a particular body of the enemy,
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: and their decision is controlled by the same kind of
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: calculation as that made by the generals in a war
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: of arms, a calculation of the chance as a victory.
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: Where the enemy is too numerous, or too strongly entrenched,
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: or too widely scattered. They leave him alone where they
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: can drive him into a corner and capture him they attack.
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: To realize how thoroughly this policy is recognized as a
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: simple fact, one can hardly do better than quote these
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: perfectly naive and sincere remarks in an editorial entitled government
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: Bootlegging in the New York Tribune, a paper that has
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: never been unfriendly to the Eighteenth Amendment. That American ships
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: had wineless was no news to the astute Waine B. Wheeler,
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: Generalissimo of the Prohibition Forces. He was fully informed before
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: mister Gallivan spoke, and by silence gave consent to them.
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: He was complacent, it may be assumed, because he did
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: not wish to furnish another argument to those who would
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: repeal or modify the Volstead Act. He has made no
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: fuss over home brew, and has allowed ruralists to make
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: cider of high alcoholic voltage. He saw it would be difficult,
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: if not impossible, to stop home manufacture, and did not
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: wish to swell the number of anti volstetters looking to
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: securing results rather than to be ingloriously but futilely consistent. Similarly,
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: the practical mister Wheeler foresaw that if American ships were
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: bone dry, the bibulous would book on foreign ships, and
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: the total consumption of beverages would not be materially diminished
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: for a barren victory. He did not care to have
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: volstatism carry the blame of driving American passenger ships from
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: the sea. Prohibitionists who have not put their brains in
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: storage may judge whether or not his tactics are good
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: and contribute to the end he seeks now from the
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: standpoint of pure calculation directed to the attainment of a
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: strategic end in a warfare between the power of a
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: government and the forces of a very large proportion of
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: the population over which it holds sway. The tribune may
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: be entirely right, But what is left of the idea
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: of respect for law? With what effectiveness can either President
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: Angel or President Harding appeal to that sentiment When it
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: is openly admitted that the government not only deliberately overlooks
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: violations of the law by millions of private individuals, but
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: actually directs that the law shall be violated on its
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: own ships, for fear that the commercial loss entailed by
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: doing otherwise would further excite popular resentment against the law.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: It has only to be added that since the date
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: of that editorial June eighteenth, nineteen twenty two, the Anti
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: Saloon League has come out strongly against the selling of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: liquor on government owned ships, a change which only emphasizes
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: the point I am making. For in spite of the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: Tribune's shrewd observations, it soon became clear that the Volstad
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: Act was being so terribly discredited by the preposterous spectacle
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: of the government selling liquor on its own ships that
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: something had to be done about it. And it was
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: only under the pressure of this situation that a new
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: line of strategy was adopted by the Anti Saloon League.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: What it will do if it finds that it cannot
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 5: put through its plan of excluding liquor from all ships,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: American and foreign, remains to be seen. Now it may
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: be relied to do all this, that a certain amount
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: of laxity is to be found in the execution of
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: all laws, that the resources at the disposed of government
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: not being sufficient to secure the hunting down and punishing
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: of all offenders, our executive and prosecuting officers, and police
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: and courts apply their powers in such directions and in
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: such ways as to accomplish the nearest approach possible to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: a complete enforcement of the law. But the reply is
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: worthless because the enforcement of all laws is in some
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: degree imperfect. It does not follow that there is no
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: disgrace and no mischief in the spectacle of a law
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 5: enforced with spectacular vigor and even violence in a thousand
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: cases where such enforcement cannot be successfully resisted and deliberately
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: treated as a dead letter in a hundred thousand cases
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: where its enforcement would show how widespread and intense is
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: the people's disapproval of the law. There are many instances
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: in which a law has become a dead letter. Where
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: this is generally recognized, no appreciable harm is done, since
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: universal custom operates as a virtual repeal. But here is
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: a case of a law enforced with militant energy where
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: it suits the officers of the government to enforce it,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: systematically ignored in millions of cases by the same officers
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: because it suits them to do that, and cynically violated
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: by the direct orders of the government itself. When this
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: course seems recommended by a cold blooded calculation of policy.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: If the laws against larceny or arson, or burglary or
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: murder were executed in this fashion, what standing would the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: law have in anybody's mind. Yet, in the case of
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: these crimes, the law only makes effective the moral code,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: which substantially the whole of the community respects as a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: fundamental part of its ethical creed. And accordingly, even if
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: the law were administered in any such outrageous fashion, as
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: is the case with prohibition, it would still retain in
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: large measure its moral authority. But in the case of
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: the prohibition law, an enormous minority and very possibly a
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: majority of the people regard the thing it forbids as
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: perfectly innocent and with improper limits, eminently desirable. The only
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: moral sanction that it has in their minds is that
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: of its being on the statute books. What can that
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: moral sayction possibly amount to when the administration of the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: law itself furnishes the most notorious of all examples of
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: disrespect for its commands. There is another aspect of the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: enforcement of the law which invites a comment, but upon
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: which I shall say only a few words. I refer
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: to the many invasions of privacy, unwarranted searches, et cetera,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: that have taken place in the execution of the law.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: If this went on, upon a much larger scale than
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: has actually been the case. It would justly be the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: occasion for perhaps the most severe of all the indictments
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: against the Volstad Act, for it would mean that Americans
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: are being habituated to an indifference in regard to the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: violation of one of their most ancient and most essential rights.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: But in fact, the danger of public resentment over such
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: a course has been the chief cause of the sagacious
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 5: strategy which has characterized the policy of the Government, or
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: perhaps one should rather say the Anti Saloon League, for
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: it is the League, and not the Government, that is
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: the predominant partner in this matter. For the present, the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: League has been lying low on the matter of search
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: and seizure. But if it should ever feel strong enough
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: to undertake the suppression of home Brew, there is not
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: the faintest question but that it will press forward the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: most stringent, conceivable measures of search and seizure. Accordingly, there
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: opens up before the eyes of the American people this
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: pleasing prospect. If the present struggle of the League or
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: the Government with bootleggers and moonshiners and smugglers is brought
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: to a successful conclusion, there will naturally be a greater
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: resort than ever to home manufacture, and equally naturally, it
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: will then be necessary for the League or the Government
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: to undertake to stamp out that practice. But obviously this
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: cannot be done without inaugurating a sweeping and determined policy
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: of search and seizure in private houses. A beautiful prospect
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: for the land of the free, for the inheritors of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: the English tradition of individual liberty, and of the American
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: spirit of seventy six. A site for gods and men
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: to weep over or laugh at end of chapter six.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: Chapter seven of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: LibriVox dot org. What Prohibition Has Done to America by
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: Fabian Franklin, Chapter seven. The nature of the prohibitionist tyranny
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: that there are some things which, however good they may be,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: in themselves, the majority has no right to impose upon
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: the minority. Is a doctrine that was I think, I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: may say, universally understood among thinking Americans of all former generations.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: It was often forgotten by the unthinking, but those who
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: felt themselves called upon to be serious instructors of public
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: opinion were always to be counted upon to assert it
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: in the face of any popular clamor or aberration. The
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: most deplorable feature, to my mind, of the whole story
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: of the prohibitionist Amendment, was the failure of our journalists
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: and leaders of opinion, with a few notable exceptions, to
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: perform this duty which so peculiarly devolves upon them. Lest
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: any reader should imagine that this doctrine of the proper
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: limits of majority power is something peculiar to certain political theorists,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: I will quote just one authority, where I might quote
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: scores as well, to which it is impossible to apply
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: any such characterization. It ought, of course, to be unnecessary
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: to quote any authority, since the Constitution itself contains the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: clearest possible embodiment of that doctrine. In the excellent little
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: book of half a century ago referred to in a
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: previous chapter Nordhoff's Politics for Young Americans, the chapter entitled
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: of Political Constitutions opens as follows. A political constitution is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: the instrument or compact in which the rights of the
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: people who adopt it and the powers and responsibilities of
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: their rulers are described and by which they are fixed.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: The chief object of a constitution is to limit the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: power of majorities. A moment's reflection will tell you that
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: mere majority rule, unlimited, would be the most grinding of tyrannies.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: The minority at any time would be mere slaves, whose
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: rights to life, property, and comfort no one who chose
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: the majority would be bound to respect.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: All.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: This is stated in the central point put in italics
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: by mister Nordhoff, as a matter that must be impressed
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: upon young people just beginning to think about public questions,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: and not at all as a matter of controversy or doubt.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: The last sentence, to be sure requires amplification. Mister Nordhoff's
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: certainly did not intend his young readers to infer that
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: such tyranny as he describes is either sure to occur
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: in the absence of a constitution or sure to be
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: prevented by it. The primary defense against it is in
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: the people's own recognition of the proper limits of majority power.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: What mister Nordhoff wishes to impress upon his readers is
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: the part played by a constitution in fixing that recognition
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: in a strong and enduring form. The quotation I have
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: in mind, however, from one of the highest of legal authorities,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: has no reference to the United States Constitution or to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: any constitution. It deals with the essential principles of law
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: and of government. It is from a book by the
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: late James C. Carter, who was beyond challenged, the leader
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: of the Bar of New York, and was also one
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: of the foremost leaders in the movement for civic improvement.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: The book bears the title Law its Origin, growth, and function,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: and consists of a course of lectures prepared for delivery
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: to the Law School of Harvard University seventeen years ago, which,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: it is to be noted, was before the movement for
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: national prohibition had gotten under way. Mister Carter was not
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: arguing for any specific object, but was impressing upon the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: young men general truths that had the sanction of ages
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: of experience and were the embodiment of the wisest thought
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: of generations. Let us hear a few of those truths
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: as he laid them down. Nothing is more attractive to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: the benevolent vanity of men than the notion that they
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: can affect great improvement in society by the simple process
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: of forbidding all wrong conduct or conduct which they think
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: is wrong by law, and of enjoining all good conduct
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: by the same means, page two twenty one. The principal
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: danger lies in the attempt often made to convert into
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: crimes acts regarded by large numbers, perhaps a majority, as innocent,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: that is, to practice what is in fact tyranny. While
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: all are ready to agree that tyranny is a very
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: mischievous thing, there is not a right understanding, equally general,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: of what tyranny is. Some think that tyranny is a
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: fault only of despots, and cannot be committed under a
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: republican form of government. They think that the maxim that
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: the majority must govern justifies the majority in governing as
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: it pleases, and requires the minority to acquiesce with cheerfulness
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: in legislation of any character, as if what is called
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: self government were a scheme by which different parts of
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: the community may alternately enjoy the privilege of tyrannizing over
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: each other page two forty six, Speaking in particular of
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: the evil effects of that particular species of criminal legislation
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: to which sumptuary laws belong, Mister Carter, after dwelling upon
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: the subject in detail says, an especially pernicious effect is
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: that society becomes divided between the friends and the foes
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: of repressive laws, and the opposing parties become animated with hostility,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: which prevents united action for purposes considered beneficial by both.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: Perhaps the worst of all is that the general regard
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: and reverence for law are impaired, a consequence the mischief
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: of which can scarcely be estimated page two, forty seven.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: To prevent consequences like these, springing as they do from
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: the most deep seated qualities of human nature, by pious
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: exhortation is a hopeless undertaking. But if it be so
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: in general, if the consequences of majority tyranny in the
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: shape of repressive laws governing personal habits could be predicted
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: so clearly upon general principles, how vastly more certain and
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: more serious must these consequences be when such a law
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: is fastened upon the people by means that would be
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: abhorrent even in the case of any ordinary law. The
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: people who object to prohibition are exultantly told by their
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: masters that it is idle for them to think of
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: throwing off their chains, that the law is riveted upon
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: them by the Constitution, and that the possibility of repeal
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: is too remote for practical consideration. Thus, the one thought
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: that might mitigate resentment and discountenance resistance, the thought that
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: freedom might be regained by repeal, is set aside, and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: the result is what we have been witnessing on this
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: phase of the subject. However, enough has been said in
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: the previous chapter. What I wish to point out is
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: some peculiarities of national prohibition which make it a more
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: than ordinarily odious example of majority tyranny. National prohibition in
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: the United States, granting for the sake of argument that
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: it expresses the will of the majority, is not a
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: case merely of a greater number of people forcing their
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: standards of life upon a smaller number, in a manner
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: in which such coercion by a majority is in its
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: nature tyrannical. The population of the United States is, in
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: more than one respect, composed of parts extremely diverse as
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: regards to the particular subject of this legislation. The question
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: of drink has a totally different aspect in the South
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: from what it has in the North, a totally different
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: aspect in the cities from what it has in the
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: rural districts or in small towns, to say nothing of
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: other differences, which, though important, are of less moment. How
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: profoundly the course of the prohibition movement has been affected
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: by the desire of the South to keep liquor away
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: from the Negroes needs no elaboration. It would not be
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: going far beyond the truth to say that the people
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: of New York are being deprived of their right to
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: the harmless enjoyment of wine and beer in order that
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: the Negroes of Alabama in Texas may not get beastly
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: drunk on rotgut whisky. If the South had stuck to
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: its own business and to its traditional principle of state autonomy,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: a principle which the South invokes as ardently as ever
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: when it comes to any other phase of the negro question,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: there would never have been a prohibition amendment to the
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: Constitution of the United States, and at the same time,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: the South would have found it perfectly possible to deal
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: effectively with its own drink problem by energetic execution of
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: its own laws, made possible by its own public opinion.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: Nor is the case essentially different as regards the West.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: The very people who are loudest in their shouting for
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: the Eighteenth Amendment, are also the most emphatic in their
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: praises of what Kansas has accomplished by enforcing her own
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: prohibition law. Thus, the prohibitionist tyranny is in no small
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: measure a sectional tyranny, which is of course an aggravated
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: form of majority tyranny. But what needs insisting on even
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: more than this is the way in which the country
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: districts impose their notions about prohibition upon the people of
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: the cities, and especially of the great cities. When attention
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: is called to the wholesale disregard of the law, contempt
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: for the law, and hostility to the law, which is
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: so manifest in the big cities, the champions of prohibition
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: in the press, including the New York Press, never tire
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: of saying that it is only in New York and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: a few other great cities that this state of things exists.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: But everybody knows that the condition exists in not only
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: a few, but in practically all of our big cities.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: And for that matter, it exists in a large proportion
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: of all the cities of the country, big and little.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: But if we confine ourselves to only the thirty four
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: cities having a population of two hundred thousand or more.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: We have here an aggregate population of almost exactly twenty
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: five million, nearly one fourth of the entire population of
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: the country. It is a trifling matter that these communities,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: this vast population of large city dwellers, should have their
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: mode of life controlled by a majority, rolled up by
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: the vote of people whose conditions, whose advantages in disadvantages,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: whose opportunities and mode of life, and consequently, whose desires
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: and needs are of a wholly different nature. Could the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: tyranny of the majority take a more obnoxious form than
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: that of the sparse rural populations scattered over the whole
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: area of the country from Maine to Texas and from
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Georgia to Oregon, deciding for the crowded millions of New
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: York and Chicago that they shall or shall not be
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: permitted to drink a glass of beer. Nor is it
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: only the obvious tyranny of such a regime that makes
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: it so unjustifiable. There are some special features in the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: case which accentuate its unreasonableness and unfairness. In the American
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: village and small town, the use of alcoholic drinks presents
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: almost no good aspect, the countryman sees nothing but the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: vile and sordid side of it. The village grog shop,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: the bar of the small town hotel in America has
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: presented little but the gross and degrading aspect of drinking.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: Prohibition is meant to the average farmer. The abolition of
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: the village groggery and the small town bar room. That
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: it plays a very different part in the lives of
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: millions of city people, and for that matter, that it
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: does so in the lives of millions of industrial workers
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: in smaller communities, is a notion that never enters the
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: farmer's mind. And to this it must be added the
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: circumstances that the farmer can easily make his own cider
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: and other alcoholic drinks, and feels quite sure that prohibition
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: will never seriously interfere with his doing so. Altogether, we
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: have here a case of one element of the population
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: decreeing the mode of life of another element, of whose
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: circumstances and desires they have no understanding, and who are
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: affected by the decree in a wholly different way from
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: that in which they themselves are affected by it. Many
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: other points might be made further to emphasize the monstras
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: of the prohibition that has been imposed upon our country.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: Of these, perhaps the most important one is the way
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: in which the law operates so as to be effective
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: against the poor and comparatively impotent against the rich. But
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: this and other points have been so abundantly brought before
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: the public in connection with the news of the day,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: that it seems hardly necessary to dwell upon them. My
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: object has been rather to direct attention to a few
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: broad considerations less generally thought of. The objection that applies
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: to sumptuary laws in general has tenfold force in the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: case of national prohibition, riveted down by the Constitution and
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: imposed upon the whole nation, by particular sections and by
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: particular elements of the population. A question of profound interest
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: in connection with this aspect of prohibition demands a few
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: words of discussion. It has been asserted with great confidence,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: and denied with equal positiveness, that prohibition has had the
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: effect of very greatly increasing the addiction to narcotic drugs.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: I confess my inability to decide from any data that
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: has come to my attention which of these contradictory assertions
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: is true. But it is not denied by anybody. I
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: believe that, whether prohibition has anything to do with the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: case or not, the use of narcotic drugs in this
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: country is several times greater per capita than it is
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: in any of the countries of Europe, six or seven
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: times as great as in most Why this should be so,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: it is perhaps not easy to determine. The causes may
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: be many, but I submit that it is at least
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: highly probable that one very great cause of this extraordinary
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: and deplorable state of things is the atmosphere of reprobation
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: which in America has so long surrounded the practice of
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: moderate drinking, Any resort whatever to alcoholic drinks being held
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: by so large a proportion of the persons who are
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: most influential in religious and educational circles to be sinful
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: and incompatible with the best character, it is almost inevitable that,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: in thousands of cases, desires and needs which would find
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: their natural satisfaction in temperate and social drinking are turned
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: into the secret and infinitely more unwholesome channel of drug addiction.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: How much of the extraordinary extent of this evil in
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: America may be due to this cause, I shall not,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: of course venture to estimate, but that it is a
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: large part of the explanation, I feel fairly certain, and
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: my belief that it is so is greatly strengthened by
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: the familiar fact that in the countries in which wine
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: is cheap and abundant and is freely used by all
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: the people, drunkenness is very rare in comparison with other countries,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: as easy and familiar recourse to wine prevents resorts to
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: stronger drink. So it seems highly probable that the practice
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: of temperate drinking would in thousands of cases obviate the
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: craving for drugs. But when all drinking, temperate and intemperate,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: is alike put under the ban, the temptation to secret
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: indulgence in drugs gets a foothold, and that temptation, once
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: yielded to the downward path, is swiftly trodden. Finally, there
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: is a broad view of the whole subject of the
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: relation of prohibition to life, which these last reflections may
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: serve to suggest. When a given evil in human life
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: presents itself to our consideration, it is a natural and
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: praiseworthy impulse to seek to affect its removal. To that
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: impulse is owing the long train of beneficent reforms, which
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: form so gratifying a feature of the story of the
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: past century and more. But that story would have been
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: very different if the reformer had, in every instance undertaken
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: to extra whatever he found wrong or noxious to strike
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: with crusading frensy at what you have worked yourself up
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: into believing is wholly in accursed. Thing is attempting short cut,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: but is fraught with the possibility of all manner of harm.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: In the case of prohibition, I have endeavored to point
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: out several of the forms of harm which it carries
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: with it. But in addition to those that can be
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: so plainly pointed out, there is a broader, if less
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: definite one. When we have choked off a particular avenue
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: of satisfaction to a widespread human desire. When foiled, perhaps
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: in one direction, we attack with equal fury the possibility
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: of escape in another and another. Who shall assure us that,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: debarred of satisfaction in old and tried ways, the same
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: desires will not find vent in far more injurious indulgences.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: How different if instead of crude and wholesale compulsion, resort
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: were had, as it had been had before the prohibitionist
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: mania swept us off our feet to well considered measures
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: of regulation and restriction, and to the legitimate influences of
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: persuasion and example. The process is slower, to be sure,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: but it had accomplished wonderful improvements in our own time,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: and before what it had gained was solid gain. It
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: did not invite either the resentment, the lawlessness, or the
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: other evils which despotic prohibition of innocent pleasure carries in
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: its train. End of Chapter seven, Chapter eight of What
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: Prohibition Has Done to America. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. What
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin. Chapter eight
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: one half of one percent. The Eighteenth Amendment forbids the manufacture, sale,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the importation thereof in
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: two or the exportation thereof from the United States and
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: The Volstead Act declares that the phrase intoxicating liquor, as
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: used in the Act quote, shall be construed to include
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: all liquors containing one half of one percentum or more
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: of alcohol by volume, which are fit for use for
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: beverage purposes. End quote. Since everybody knows that a drink
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: containing one half of one percent of alcohol is not,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: in fact an intoxicating drink, a vast amount of indignation
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: has been aroused among opponents of national prohibition by this
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: stretching of the letter of the amendment. I have to
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: confess that I cannot get excited over this particular phrase
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: of the Volsted legislation. There is, to be sure, something
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: offensive about persons who profess to be peculiarly the exponents
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: of high morality being willing to attain a practical end
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: by inserting in a law a definition which declares a
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: thing to be what in fact it is not. But
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: the offense is rather one of form than of really
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: important substance. The Supreme Court has decided that Congress did
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: not exceed its powers in making this definition of quote
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: intoxicating liquor. And while this does not absolve the makers
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: of the law of the offense against strict truthfulness, it
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: may rightly be regarded as evidence that the transgression was
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: not of the sort that constituted a substantial use diurpation
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: the assumption by Congress of a power beyond the limits
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: of the grant conferred upon it by the Eighteenth Amendment.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: If Congress chose to declare one half of one percent
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: as its notion of the kind of liquor beyond which
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: there would occur a transgression of the eighteenth Article of
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: the Amendment of the Constitution, says the Supreme Court, in effect,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: it may do so, in the exercise of the power
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: granted to it, quote, to enforce this article by appropriate
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: legislation end quote. Not that little effort has been expended
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: by lawyers and legislators state and national upon the idea
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: of bringing about a raising of the permitted percentage to
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: two point seventy five. That figure appears to represent quite
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: accurately the point at which, as a matter of fact,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: an alcoholic liquor becomes, in any real and practical sense,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: in the slightest degree intoxicating. But except for the purpose
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: of making something like a breach in the outer wall
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: of the Great Prohibition Fortress, the purpose of showing that
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: the control of the prohibitionist forces over Congress or a
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: state legislature is not absolutely unlimited. This game is not
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: worth the candle to fight hard and long merely to
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: get a concession like this, which is in substance no concession.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: To get permission to drink beer that is not beer
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: and wine that is not wine is surely not an
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: undertaking worth the expenditure of any great amount of civic energy.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: A source of comfort was, however, furnished to the advocates
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: of a liberalizing of the prohibition regime by the very
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: fact that the Supreme Court did sanction so manifest a
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: stretching of the meaning of words as is involved in
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: a law which declares any beverage containing as much as
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: one half of one percent of alcohol to be an
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: quote intoxicating liquor. If a liquor that is not intoxicating can,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: by congressional definition be made intoxicating, it was pointed out,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: then by the same token, a liquor that is intoxicating can,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: by congressional definition, be made non intoxicating. Accordingly, it has
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: been held by many, if Congress were to substitute ten percent,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: say for one half of one percent in the Volstead Act,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: by which means beer and light wines would be legitimated.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: The Supreme Court would uphold the law, and a great
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: relief from the present oppressive conditions would, by this very
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: simple means be accomplished. What the Supreme Court would actually
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: say of such a law, I am far from bold
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: enough to attempt to say that the law would not
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: be an execution of the attent of the Eighteenth Amendment
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: is plain enough, and it would be a much more
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: substantial transgression against its purpose than is the one half
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: of one percent enactment. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: the Supreme Court would decide that this deviation to the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: right of the zero mark is as much within the
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: discretion of Congress as was the Volsted definition to the left. Certainly,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: the possibility at least exists that this would be so.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: But whether this be so or not, it is quite
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: plain that Congress, if it really wishes to do so,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: can put the country into the position where prohibition will
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: either draw the line above the beer and wine point
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: or go out altogether. For if it were to pass
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: an act repealing the Volstad law, and in a separate
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: act passed practically at the same time, but after the
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: repealing act, enact a ten percent prohibition law or some
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: similar percentage what would be the result. Certainly, there is
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: nothing unconstitutional in repealing the Volstad Act. There would have
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: been nothing unconstant tutional in a failure of Congress to
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: pass any act enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: can put out of action a law that Congress has
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: passed on the ground of unconstitutionality, but it cannot put
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: into action a law that Congress has not passed, And
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: a law repealed is the same as a law that
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: has not been passed. Thus, if Congress really wished to
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: legitimate beer and wine, it could do so, leaving it
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court to declare whether a law prohibiting
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: strong alcoholic drinks was or was not more of an
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment than no law at all,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: For the only alternative the Court would have before it
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: would be that law or nothing. I do not say
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: that I favor this procedure, for it would certainly not
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: be an honest fulfillment of the requirements of the Eighteenth Amendment.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: To have a law which professes to carry out an
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: injunction of the Constitution, but which does not do so
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: is a thing to be deplored. But is it more
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: to be deplored than to have a law which in
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: its terms does carry out the injunction of the Constitution,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: but which in its actual operation does no such thing.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: A law to the violation of which, in a vast
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: class of instances, the millions of instances of home Brew,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: the government deliberately shuts its eyes, a law the violation
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: of which, in the class of instances in which the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: government does seriously undertake to enforce it, bootlegging, smuggling and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: moonshining is condoned, aided, and abetted by hundreds of thousands
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: of our best citizens. It is, as I have said
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 3: in an earlier chapter, a choice of evils, and it
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: is not easy to decide between them. On the one hand,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: we have the disrespect of the Constitution involved in the
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: enactment by Congress of a law which it knows to
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: be less than a fulfillment of the Constitution's mandate. On
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: the other other hand, we have the disrespect of the
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: law involved in its daily violation by millions of citizens
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 3: who break it without the slightest compunction or sense of guilt,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: and in the deliberate failure of the government to so
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: much as take cognizance of the most numerous class of
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: those violations in favor of the former course the passing
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: of a wine and beer law. It may at least
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: be said that the offense, whether it be great or small,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: is committed once for all by a single action of Congress, which,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: if left undisturbed, would probably before long be generally accepted
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: as taking the place of the Amendment itself. A law
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: permitting wine and beer, but forbidding stronger drinks would have
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: so much more public sentiment behind it than the present
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: law that it would probably be decently enforced and not
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: very widely resisted. And though such a law would be
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: justly objected to as not an honest fulfillment of the
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: Eighteenth Amendment, it would, i believe, in its practical effect,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: be far less demoralizing than the existing statute, the Volsteed Act. Accordingly,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: while I cannot view the enactment of such a law
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: with unalloyed satisfaction, I think that, in the situation into
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: which we have been put by the Eighteenth Amendment, the
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: proposal of a wine and beer law to displace the
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: Volsteed Law deserves the support of good citizens as a
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: practical measure which would affect a great improvement on the
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: present state of things. End of chapter eight.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 6: Chapter nine of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 6: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 6: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 6: librivoxt or recording by Jude Cater What Prohibition Has Done
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 6: to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter nine Prohibition and Liberty.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 6: Liberty is not today the watchword that it was one
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 6: hundred years ago, or fifty years ago, or thirty years ago.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 6: Though there may be much doubt as to the causes
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 6: of the change, it must be admitted as a fact
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 6: that the feeling that liberty is in itself one of
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 6: the prime objects of human desire, a precious thing to
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 6: be struggled for when denied and to be jealously defended
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 6: when possessed, is not so strong a hold on men's
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 6: minds at this time as it had informer generations. Some
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 6: of the chief reasons for this change are not, however,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 6: far to seek. In the tremendous movement political and econom
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 6: that has marked the past hundred years, three ideas have
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 6: been dominant. Democracy, efficiency, humanitarianism. None of these three ideas
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 6: is inherently bound up with the idea of liberty, and
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 6: indeed each one of the three contains the seed of
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 6: marked hostility to the idea of liberty. This is more true,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 6: and more obviously true, of efficiency and of humanitarianism than
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 6: it is of democracy. But it is true in no
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 6: small measure of democracy. Also, for people intent upon the
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 6: idea that government must be democratic, that is, must reflect
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 6: the will of the majority, naturally concentrate upon the effort
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 6: to organize the majority and increase its power, a process
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 6: which throws into the shade regard for individual rights and liberties,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 6: and even tends to put them somewhat in the light
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 6: of obstacles to the great aim. Furthermore, the democratic movement
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 6: has set for itself objects beyond the sphere of government
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 6: and in the domain of economic control. Democracy, if that
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 6: is the right word for it, must strive for collective power,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 6: as distinguished from individual liberty, even more intently than in
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 6: the field of government. However, in the case of democracy,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 6: there is at least no inherent opposition to liberty. Such
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 6: opposition as develops out of it may be regarded as
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 6: comparatively accidental. Not so with efficiency or humanitarianism. Even here, however,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 6: I feel that a word of warning is necessary. I
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 6: am not speaking of the highest and truest efficiency, or
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 6: of the most far sighted and most beneficent humanitarianism. I
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 6: am speaking of efficiency as understood in the common use
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 6: of the term as a label. I am speaking of
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 6: humanitarianism as represented by the attitude and the mental temper
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 6: of nearly all of the excellent men and women who
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 6: actually represent that cause, and who devote their lives to
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 6: the problems of social betterment. To the efficiency expert, and
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 6: to his multitude of followers, the immediate increase of productivity
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 6: is so absorbing an object that, if it has been
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 6: attained by a particular course of action, the question whether
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 6: its attainment has involved the sacrifice of liberty seems to
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 6: his mind absolutely trivial. Of course, this would not be
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 6: so if the sacrifice were of a startling nature. But
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 6: short of something palpably galling, something grossly offensive to the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 6: primary instincts of free men, he simply doesn't understand how
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 6: any person of sense can pretend to be concerned about
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 6: it in the face of demonstrated success. From the efficiency standpoint,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 6: what is true of the apostle of efficiency and his
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 6: followers is even more emphatically true of the humanitarian, and
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 6: difficult as many people find it to stand out against
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 6: the position of the efficiency advocate, it is far more
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 6: difficult to dissent from that of the devotee of humanitarianism.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 6: In the case of the first, one has to brace
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 6: up one's intellect to resist a plausible and enticing doctrine.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 6: In the case of the second, one must, in a
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 6: sense harden one's heart as well as stiffened one's mind.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 6: Or here one has to deal not with a mere
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 6: calculation of a general increase of prosperity or comfort, but
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 6: with the direct extirpation of vice and misery, which no
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 6: decent person can contemplate without keen distress. If the humanitarian
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 6: finds the principle of liberty thrust in the way of
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 6: his task of healing and rescue, he will repel with
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 6: scorn the idea that any such abstraction should be permitted
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 6: to impede his work of salvation. And especially if the
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 6: idea of liberty has, through other causes, suffered a decline
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 6: from its once high authority, he will find multitudes ready
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 6: to share his indignation, and he will find still greater
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 6: multitudes who do not share his indignation, and in their
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 6: hearts feel much misgiving over the invasion of liberty, but
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 6: who are without the firmness of conviction or without the
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 6: moral courage necessary to the assertion of principle when such
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 6: assertion brings with it the danger of social opprobrium. The
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 6: leaders in humanitarian reforms and their most active followers are
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 6: as a rule men and women of high moral nature,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 6: and whether wise or unwise, broad minded or narrow and fanatical,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 6: are justly credited with being actuated by a good motive. Unfortunately, however,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 6: these attributes rarely prevent them from making reckless statements as
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 6: to the facts of the matter with which they are dealing,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 6: nor from indulging in calumnious abuse of those who oppose them. Hence,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 6: thousands of persons really averse to their program give tacit
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 6: or lukewarm ascent to it, rather than incur the odium
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 6: which outspoken opposition would invite. And accordingly true, though it is,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 6: that the idea of liberty is not cherished so ardently
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 6: or so universally as in a former day, the decline
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 6: into which it has fallen in men's hearts and minds
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 6: is by no means so great as surface indications make
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 6: it seem. On the one hand, the efficiency people in
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 6: the professional humanitarians are like all reformers and agitators, abnormally vocal,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 6: And on the other hand, the lovers of the old
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 6: fashioned principle of liberty are abnormally silent, so far as
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 6: any public manifestation is concerned. In the foregoing I have
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 6: admitted I think as great a decline in the current
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 6: prestige of the idea of liberty as would be claimed
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 6: by the most enthusiastic efficiency man or the most ardent humanitarian.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 6: I wish now to insist upon the other side of
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 6: the matter. Persons who are always ready to be carried
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 6: away with the current, and their name is legion, constantly
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 6: make the mistake of imagining that the latest thing is
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 6: the last. They are the first to throw aside old
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 6: and venerable notions as outworn. They look with condescending pity
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 6: upon those who are so dull as not to recognize
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 6: the infinite potency of change. And yet curiously enough, they
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 6: never think of the possibility of a change which may
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 6: reverse the current of today, just as the current of
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 6: today has reversed that of yesterday. The tree of liberty
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 6: is less flourishing today than it was fifty or one
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 6: hundred years ago. Its leave are not so green, and
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 6: it is not so much the object of universal admiration
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 6: and affection. But its roots are deep down in the soil,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 6: and it supplies a need of mankind too fundamental, feeds
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 6: an aspiration too closely length with all that elevates and
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 6: enriches human nature to permit of its being permanently neglected,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 6: are allowed to fall into decay. And even at this
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 6: very time, as I have indicated above, the mass of
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 6: the people, and I mean the great as well as small,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 6: cultured and wealthy, as well as ignorant and poor, retain
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 6: their instinctive attachment to the idea of liberty. It is
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 6: chiefly in a small but extremely prominent and influential body
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 6: of over sophisticated people specialists of one kind or another,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 6: that the principle of liberty has fallen into the disrepute
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 6: to which I have referred. The prime reason why the
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 6: prohibition lawlaw is so lightheartedly violated by all sorts and
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 6: conditions of men, why it is held in contempt by
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 6: hundreds of thousands of our best and most respected citizens,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 6: is that the law is a gross outrage upon personal liberty. Many,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 6: indeed would commit the violation as a mere matter of
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 6: self indulgence. But it is absurd to suppose that this
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 6: would be done as it is done by thousands of
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 6: persons of the highest type of character and citizenship. These
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 6: people are sustained by the consciousness that, though their conduct
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 6: may be open to criticism, it at least has the
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 6: justification of being a revolt against a law, a law
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 6: unrepealable by any ordinary process that strikes at the foundations
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 6: of liberty. Defenders of prohibition seek to do away with
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 6: the objection to it as an invasion of personal liberty
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 6: by pointing out that all submission to civil government is
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 6: in the nature of a surrender of personal liberty. This
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 6: is true enough, but only a shallow mind can be
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 6: content with its cheap and easy disposition of the question.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 6: To anyone who stops to think of the subject with
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 6: some intelligence, it must be evident that the argument proves
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 6: either too much or nothing at all. If it means
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 6: that no proposed restriction can properly be objected to as
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 6: an invasion of personal liberty. Because all restrictions are on
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 6: the same footing as part of the order of society.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 6: It means what every man of sense would at once
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 6: declare to be preposterous, and if it does not mean that,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 6: it leaves the question at issue wholly untouched. Submission to
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 6: an orderly government does of course involve the surrender of
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 6: one's personal freedom in countless directions. But speaking broadly, such
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 6: surrender is exacted under what are generally known as free
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 6: institutions only to the extent to which the right of
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 6: one man to do as he pleases has to be
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 6: restricted in order to secure the elementary rights of other
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 6: men from violation, or to preserve conditions that are essential
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 6: to the general welfare. If a steals, he steals from B.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 6: If he murders, he kills B. If he commits arson,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 6: he sets fire to B's house. If a man makes
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 6: a loud noise in the street, he disturbs the quiet
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 6: of hundreds of his fellow citizens, and may make life
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 6: quite unendurable to them. There are complexities into which I
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 6: cannot enter in such matters as Sunday closing and kindred regulations,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 6: But upon examination it is easily enough seen that they
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 6: fall in essence, under the same principle, the principle of
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 6: restraint upon one individual to prevent him from injuring not
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 6: himself but others. A law punishing drunkenness, which is a
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 6: public nuisance, comes under the I have been speaking of.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 6: A law forbidding a man to drink for fear that
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 6: he may become a drunkard does not. And in fact
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 6: the prohibitionists themselves instinctively recognize the difference, and avoid, so
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 6: far as they can, offending the sense of liberty by
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 6: so direct an attack upon it. It is safe to
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 6: say that if the Eighteenth Amendment had undertaken to make
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 6: the drinking of liquoric crime instead of the manufacturer and
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 6: sale of it, it could not have passed, or come
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 6: anywhere near being passed. There is hardly a senator or
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 6: a representative that would not have recoiled from a proposal
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 6: so palpably offensive to the instinct of liberty. Yet precisely
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 6: this is the real object of the Eighteenth Amendment. Its purpose, and,
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 6: if enforced, its practical effect, is to make it permanently
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 6: a crime against the national government for an American to
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 6: drink a glass of beer or wine. The legislators state
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 6: and national who enacted it knew this perfectly well. Yet
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 6: if the thing had been put into the amendment in
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 6: so many words, hardly a man of them would have
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 6: cast his vote for it. The phenomenon is not so
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 6: strange or so novel as it might seem. It has
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 6: a standard prototype. In the history of Rome. The Roman
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 6: people had a rooted aversion and hostility to kings, and
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 6: no Caesar would ever have thought of calling himself Rex.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 6: But imperature went down quite smoothly and did just as well.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 6: In addition to its being a regulation of individual conduct
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 6: in a matter which is, in its nature the individual's
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 6: own concern, prohibition differs in another essential respect from those
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 6: restrictions upon liberty which form a legitimate and necessary part
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 6: of the operation of civil government. To put a governmental
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 6: ban upon all alcoholic tres is to forbid the use
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 6: of a thing in order to prevent its abuse. Of course,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 6: there are fanatics who declare and believe that all indulgence
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 6: in alcoholic drink, however moderate, is abuse. But to justify
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 6: prohibition on that ground would be to accept a doctrine
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 6: even more dangerous to liberty. It is bad enough to
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 6: justify the proscription of an innocent indulgence on the ground
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 6: that there is danger of its being carried beyond the
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 6: point of innocence. But it is far worse to forbid
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 6: it on the ground that, however innocent and beneficial a
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 6: moderate indulgence may seem to millions of people, it is
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 6: not regarded as good for them by others. The only
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 6: thing that lends dignity to the prohibition cause is the
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 6: undeniable fact that drunkenness is the source of a vast
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 6: amount of evil and wretchedness. The position of those who
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 6: declare that all objections must be waived in the presence
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 6: of this paramount consideration is respectable, though in my judgment,
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 6: utterly wrong. But any man who justifies prohibition on the
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 6: ground that drinking is an evil, no matter how temperate,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 6: is either a man of narrow and stupid mind, or
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 6: is utterly blind to the value of human liberty. The
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 6: ardent old time prohibitionist, the man who thinks, however mistakenly,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 6: that the abolition of intoxicating drinks means the salvation of mankind,
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 6: counts the impairment of liberty as a small matter in
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 6: comparison with his world saving reform. This is a position
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 6: from which one cannot withhold a certain amount of sympathy
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 6: and respect. But to justify the sacrifice of liberty on
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 6: the ground that the man who is deprived of it
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 6: will be somewhat better off without it is to assume
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 6: a position that is at once contemptible and in the
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 6: highest degree dangerous. Contemptible because it argues a total failure
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 6: to understand what liberty means to mankind. Dangerous because there
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 6: is no limit to the monstrosities of legislation which may
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 6: flow from the acceptance of such a view. Esau sold
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 6: his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage, which
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 6: he wanted. These people would rob us of our birthright, and,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 6: by way of compensation, thrust upon us a mess of
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 6: pottage for which we have no desire rejecting, then the
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 6: preposterous notion of extreme fanatics, whether the fanatics of science
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 6: or the fanatics of moral reform, we have in prohibition
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 6: a restraint upon the liberty of the individual, which is
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 6: designed not to protect the rights of other individuals, or
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 6: to serve the manifest requirements of civil government, but to
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 6: prevent the individual from injuring himself by pursuing his own
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 6: happiness in his own way, the case being further aggravated
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 6: by the circumstance that, in order to make this injury impossible,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 6: he has denied even such access to the forbidden thing
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 6: as would not except in a sense that it is
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 6: absurd to consider, be injurious. Now, this may be benevolent despotism,
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 6: but despotism it is, and the people that accustoms itself
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 6: to the acceptance of such despotism, whether at the hands
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 6: of a monarch or an oligarchy or a democracy, has
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 6: abandoned the cause of liberty. For there is hardly any
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 6: conceivable encroachment upon individual freedom which would be a more
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 6: flagrant offense against that principle than is the one that
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 6: makes an iron bound rule commanding a man to conform
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 6: his personal habits to the judgment of his rulers as
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 6: to what is best for him. I do not mean
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 6: to assert that it necessarily follows that such encroachments will
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 6: actually come thick and fast on the heels of prohibition.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 6: Any specific proposal will of course be opposed by those
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 6: who do not like it, and may have a much
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 6: harder time than prohibition to acquire The following necessary to
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 6: bring about its adoption, but the resistance to it on
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 6: specific rounds will lack the strength which it would derive
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 6: from a profound respect for the general principle of liberty.
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 6: Whatever else may be set against it, it will be
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 6: impossible to make good the objection that it sets an
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 6: evil precedent of disregard for the claims of that principle.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 6: The Eighteenth Amendment is so gross an instance of such
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 6: disregard that it can hardly be surpassed by anything that
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 6: is at all likely to be proposed. And if the
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 6: establishment of that precedent should fail actually to work so
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 6: disastrous an injury to the cause of liberty, we must
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 6: thank the widespread and impressive resistance that it has aroused.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 6: Had the people meekly bowed their heads to the yoke,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 6: the Prohibition Amendment would furnish unfailing inspiration and unstinted encouragement
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 6: to every new attack upon personal liberty. As it is,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 6: we may be permitted to hope that its injury to
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 6: our future as a free people will prove to be
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 6: neither so profound nor so lasting as in its nature
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 6: it is calculated to be. Before dismissing the subject, it
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 6: will be well to consider one favorite argument of those
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 6: who contend that prohibition is no more obnoxious to the
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 6: charge of being a violation of personal liberty than are
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 6: certain other laws which are accepted as matters of course.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 6: A law prohibiting narcotic drugs, they say, imposes a restraint
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 6: upon personal liberty of the same sort as does a
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 6: law prohibiting alcoholic liquors. And it must be admitted that
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 6: there is some plausibility in the argument. The answer to
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 6: it is not so simple as that to the broader
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 6: pleas which have been discussed above. Yet the answer is
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 6: not less conclusive. There is no principle of human conduct
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 6: that can be applied with undeviating rigor to all cases,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 6: and indeed, it is part of the price of the
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 6: maintenance of the principle that it shall be waived in
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 6: extreme instances in which its rigorous enforcement would shock the
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 6: common instincts of mankind. Illustrations of this can be found
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 6: in almost every domain of human action, in the everyday
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 6: life of each one of us, in the practice of
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 6: the professions, in the procedure of courts and juries, as
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 6: well as in the field of lawmaking. It is wrong
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 6: to tell a lie, And there are a few doctrine
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 6: are extremists who maintain that lying is not excusable under
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 6: any circumstances. But the common sense of mankind declares that
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 6: it is right for a man to lie in order
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 6: to deceive a murderer who is seeking his mother's life.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 6: Physicians almost unanimously profess and honestly the principle that human
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 6: life must be preserved as long as possible, no matter
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 6: how desperate the case may seem. Yet I doubt whether
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 6: there is a single physician who does not mercifully refrain
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 6: from prolonging life by all possible means in cases of
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 6: extreme and hopeless agony. Murder is murder, and it is
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 6: a sworn duty of juries to find accordingly. Yet the
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 6: doctrine of the unwritten law, while unquestionably far too often
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 6: resorted to and thus constituting a grave defect in our
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 6: administration of criminal justice, is in some extreme cases properly
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 6: invoked to prevent an outrage on the elementary instincts of justice.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 6: In all these instances, we have a principle universally acknowledged
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 6: and profoundly respected, and the waver of it in extreme
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 6: cases so far from weakening the principle actually strengthens it,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 6: since if it absolutely never bent, it would be sure
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 6: to break. And so it is with basic principles of legislation.
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 6: To forbid the use of narcotic drugs is a restraint
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 6: of liberty of the same kind as to forbid the
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 6: use of alcoholic liquors. But in degree the two are
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 6: wide as the poles asunder the use of narcotic drugs,
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 6: except as medicine, is so unmitigatedly harmful that there is
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 6: perhaps hardly a human being who contends that it is. Otherwise,
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 6: people crave it, but they are ashamed of the craving.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 6: It plays no part in any acknowledged form of human intercourse.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 6: It is connected with no joys or benefits that normal
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 6: human beings openly prize a thing which is so wholly evil,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 6: in which moreover, so swiftly and insidiously renders powerless the
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 6: will of those who, perhaps by some accident, once begin
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 6: to indulge in. It stands outside the category, alike of
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 6: the ordinary objects of human desire and the ordinary causes
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 6: of human degradation. To make an exception to the principle
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 6: of liberty in such a case is to do just
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 6: what common sense dictates, and scores of instances where the
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 6: strict application of a general principle to extreme cases would
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 6: involve an intolerable sacrifice of good in order to remove
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 6: a mere superficial appearance of wrong. To make the prohibition
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 6: of narcotic drugs an adequate reason for not objecting to
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 6: the prohibition of alcoholic drinks would be like calling upon
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 6: physicians to throw into the scrap heap their principle of
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 6: the absolute sanctity of human life because they do not
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 6: apply that principle with literal rigor in cases where to
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 6: do so would be an act of inhuman and unmitigated cruelty.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 6: End of Chapter nine, Chapter ten of What Prohibition Has
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 6: Done to America. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 6: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 6: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Jude
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 6: Cater What Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 6: Chapter ten, Prohibition and Socialism. In the foregoing chapter, I
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 6: have said that while absorption in the idea of democracy
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 6: has had a tendency to impair devotion to the idea
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 6: of liberty, yet that in democracy itself there is no
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 6: inherent opposition to liberty. The danger to individual liberty in
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 6: a democracy is of the same nature as the danger
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 6: to individual liberty in a monarchy or an oligarchy. Whether
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 6: power be held by one man, or by a thousand,
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 6: or by a majority out of one hundred million, it
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 6: is equally possible for the governing power, on the one hand,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 6: to respect, or on the other hand, to ignore, the
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 6: right of individuals to the free play of their individual powers,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 6: the exercise of their individual predilections, the leading of their
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 6: individual lives according to their own notions of what is
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 6: right or desirable. A monarch of enlightened and liberal mind
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 6: will respect that right and limit his encroachments upon it
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 6: to the minimum required for the essential objects of reasonable government.
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 6: So too will a democracy, if it is of like
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 6: temper and intelligence. But it is not so with socialism. Numerous,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 6: as are the varieties of socialists, they all agree in
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 6: being inherently antagonistic to individualism. It may be pleaded in
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 6: criticism of this assertion that all government is opposed to individualism,
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 6: that the difference in this respect between socialism and other
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 6: forms of civil organization is only one of degree that
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 6: we make a surrender of individuality as well as of
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 6: liberty when we consent to live in any organized form
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 6: of society. It is not worthwhile to dispute the point.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 6: The difference may, if one chooses, be regarded as only
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 6: a difference of degree. But when a difference of degree
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 6: goes to such a point that what is minor, incidental,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 6: exceptional in the one case is paramount essential pervasive in
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 6: the other, the difference is, for all purposes of thinking,
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 6: equivalent to a difference of kind. Socialism is, in its
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 6: very essence opposed to individualism. It makes the collective welfare
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 6: not an incidental concern of each man's daily life, but
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 6: his primary concern. The standard it sets up, the regulations
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 6: it establishes, are not things that a man must merely
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 6: take account of as special restraints on his freedom, exceptional
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 6: limitations on the exercise of his individuality. They constitute the
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 6: basic conditions of his life. When the socialist movement was
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 6: in its infancy in this country, though it had made
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 6: great headway in several of the leading countries of Europe,
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 6: the customary way of disposing of it was with a
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 6: mere wave of the hand socialism can never work. It
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 6: is contrary to human nature. These simple assertions were regarded
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 6: by nearly all conservatives as sufficient to settle the matter
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 6: in the minds of all sensible persons. That is now
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 6: no longer so much the fashion. Yet I have no
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 6: doubt that a very large proportion of those who are
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 6: opposed to socialism are still content with this way of
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 6: disposing of it. But socialism has steadily, though of course
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 6: with fluctuations, increased in strength in America as well as
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 6: in Europe for many decades. And it would be folly
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 6: to imagine that mere declarations of its being impracticable or
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 6: contrary to human nature will suffice to check it. Millions
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 6: of men and women here in America, ranging in intellect
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 6: all the way from the most cultured to the most ignorant,
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 6: are filled with an ardent faith that in socialism, and
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 6: in nothing else, is to be found the remedy for
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 6: all the great evils under which mankind suffers. And there
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 6: is no sign of slackening in the growth of this faith.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 6: When the time comes for a real test of its strength,
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 6: when it shall have gathered such force as to be
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 6: able to throw down a real challenge to the conservative
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 6: forces in the political field. It is absurd to suppose
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 6: that those who are inclined to welcome it as the
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 6: salvation of the world will be frightened off by prophecies
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 6: of failure. They will want to make the trial, and
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 6: they will make the trial regardless of all prophecies of disaster.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 6: If the people shall have come to believe that the
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 6: object is a desirable one, that socialism is a form
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 6: of life which they would like after they got it.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 6: The one great bulwark against socialism is the sentiment of liberty.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 6: If we find nothing obnoxious in universal regimentation, if we
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 6: feel that life would have as much savor when all
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 6: of us were told off to our tasks, or at
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 6: least circumscribed and supervised in our activities by a swarm
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 6: of officials carrying out the benevolent edicts of a paternal government.
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 6: If we hold as of no account the exercise of
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 6: individual choice and the development of individual potentialities, which are
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 6: the very lifeblood of the existing order of society. If
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 6: all these things hold no value for us, then we
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 6: shall gravitate to socialism as surely as a river will
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 6: find its way to the sea. Socialism granted its practicability,
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 6: and its practicability can never be disproved except by trial.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 6: By long and repeated trial holds out the promise of
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 6: great blessings to mankind, and some of these blessings it
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 6: is actually capable of furnishing, even if in the end
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 6: it should prove to be a failure. Above all, it
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 6: could completely abolish poverty, that is, anything like abject poverty.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 6: The productive power of mankind, thanks to the progress of
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 6: science and invention, is now so great that even if
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 6: socialism were to bring about a very great decline of productiveness,
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 6: not to be sure, such utter blasting of productiveness as
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 6: has been caused by the Bolshevik insanity, there would be
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 6: yet amply enough to supply by equal distribution, the simple
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 6: needs of all the people. Besides the abolition of poverty,
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 6: there would be the extinction of many sinister forms of
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 6: competitive greed and dishonesty. To the eye of the thinking conservative,
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 6: these things poverty, greed, dishonesty, while serious evils, are but
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 6: the blemishes in a great and wholesome scheme of human life,
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 6: drawbacks which go with the benefits of a system in
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 6: which each man is free, within certain necessary limits, to
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 6: do his best or his worse, a price, such as
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 6: in this imperfect world we have to pay for anything
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 6: that is worth having. But to the socialist the matter
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 6: presents itself in no such light. He sees a mass
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 6: of misery which he believes, and in large measure justly
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 6: believes socialism would put an end to. And he has
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 6: no patience with the conservative who points out, and justly
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 6: points out that the poverty is being steadily, though gradually
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 6: overcome in the advance of mankind under the existing order.
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 6: Away with it, he says, we cannot wait a hundred
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 6: years for that which we have a right to demand today,
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 6: and away with it we ought all to say if socialism,
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 6: while doing away with it, would not be doing away
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 6: with something else of infinite value and infinite benefit to mankind,
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 6: both material and spiritual, something with which is bound up
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 6: the richness and zest of life, not only for what
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 6: it is the fashion of radicals to call the privileged few,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 6: but for the great mass of mankind. That something is liberty,
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 6: and the individuality which is inseparably bound up with liberty.
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 6: The essence of socialism is the suppression of individuality, the
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 6: exaltation of the collective will, and the collective interest, the
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 6: submergence of the individual will and the individual interest. The
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 6: particular form, even the particular degree of coercion by which
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 6: this submergence is brought about varies with the different types
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 6: of socialism, but they all agree in the essential fact
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 6: of the submergence. Socialism may possibly be compatible with prosperity,
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 6: with contentment, it is not compatible with liberty, not compatible
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 6: with individuality. I am, of course not undertaking here to
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 6: discuss the merits of socialism. My purpose is only to
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 6: point out that those who are hostile to say socialism
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 6: must cherish liberty. And it is vain to cherish liberty
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 6: in the abstract if you are doing your best to
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 6: dry up the very source of the love of liberty
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 6: in the concrete workings of every man's daily experience. With
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 6: the plain man, indeed with men in general, plain or otherwise.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 6: Love of liberty, or of any elemental concept is strong
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 6: only if it is instinctive, and it cannot be instinctive
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 6: if it is jarred every day by habitual and unresented
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 6: experience of its opposite. Prohibition is a restraint of liberty
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 6: so clearly unrelated to any primary need of the state,
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 6: so palpably bearing on the most personal aspect of a
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 6: man's own conduct, that it is impossible to acquiesce in
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 6: it and retain a genuine and lively feeling of abhorrence,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 6: or any other threatened invasion of the domain of liberty
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 6: which can claim the justification of being intended for the
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 6: benefit of the poor or unfortunate. So long as prohibition
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 6: was a local measure, so long even as it was
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 6: a measure of state legislation, this effect did not follow,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 6: or if at all, only in a small degree, people
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 6: did not regard it as a dominant, and above all
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 6: as a paramount and inescapable part of the national life.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 6: But decreed for the whole nation, and embedded permanently in
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 6: the Constitution, it will have an immeasurable effect in impairing
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 6: that instinct of liberty which has been the very heart
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 6: of the American spirit, And with the loss of that
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 6: spirit will be lost the one great and enduring defense
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 6: against socialism. It is not by the argumentation of economists,
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 6: nor by the calculations of statisticians, that the socialist advance
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 6: can be halted. The real struggle will be a struggle
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 6: not of the mind, but of the spirit. It will
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 6: be socialism and regimentation against individualism and liberty. The cause
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 6: of prohibition has owed its rapid success in no small
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 6: measure to the support of great capitalists and industrialists bent
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 6: upon the absorbing object of productive efficiency. But they have
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 6: paid a price they little realize, for in the attainment
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 6: of this minor object, they have made a tremendous breach
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 6: in the greatest defense of the existing order of society
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 6: against the advancing enemy. To undermine the foundations of liberty
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 6: is to open the way to socialism. End of chapter ten.
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 6: Chapter eleven of What Prohibition Has Done to America. This
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 6: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox records hoardings are in
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 6: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 6: visit librevos dot org. Recording by Jude Cater What Prohibition
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 6: Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter eleven, Is
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 6: there any Way Out? In the second chapter of this book,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 6: I undertook to give an account of the state of
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 6: mind which the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment has created,
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 6: and which is at the bottom of that contempt for
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 6: the law, whose widespread prevalence among the best elements of
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 6: our population is acknowledged alike by prohibitionists and anti prohibitionists.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 6: People feel in their hearts I said that they are
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 6: confronted with no other choice but that of either submitting
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 6: to the full rigor of prohibition, of trying to procure
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 6: a law which nullifies the Constitution, or of expressing their
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 6: resentment against an outrage on the first principles of the
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 6: Constitution by contemptuous disregard of the law. It is a
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 6: deplorable choice of evils, a state of things which it
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 6: is hardly too much to call appalling in its potentialities
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 6: of civic demoralization. And one who realizes the gravity of
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 6: the injury that a long continuance of the situation will
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 6: inevitably inflict upon our institutions and our national character, must
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 6: ask whether there is any practical possibility of escape from it.
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 6: The right means, and the only entirely satisfactory means of
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 6: escape from it, is through the undoing of the error
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 6: which brought it about, that is, through the repeal of
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 6: the Eighteenth Amendment. Towards that end, many earnest and patriotic
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 6: citizens are working, but of course they realize the stupendous
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 6: difficulty of the task they have undertaken. As a rule,
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 6: these men, while working for the distant goal of repeal
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 6: of the Amendment, are seeking to substitute for the Volstead
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 6: Act a law which will permit the manufacture and sale
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 6: of beer and light wines. A plan which, as I
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 6: have elsewhere stated, while by no means free from grave objection,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 6: for it is clearly not in keeping with the intent
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 6: of the Eighteenth Amendment, would in my judgment, be an
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 6: improvement on the present state of things. But it is
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 6: not pleasant to contemplate a situation in which, to avoid
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 6: something still worse, the national legislature is driven to deliberate
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 6: enactment of a law that flies in the face of
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 6: a mandate of the Constitution. A possible plan exists, however,
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 6: which is not open to this objection, and yet the
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 6: execution of which would not present such terrific difficulty as
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 6: would the proposal of a simple repeal of the eighteenth Amendment.
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 6: That amendment imbeds prohibition in the organic law of the country,
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 6: and thus not only imposes it upon the individual states,
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 6: regardless of what their desires may be, but takes away
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 6: from the nation itself the right to legislate upon the
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 6: subject by the ordinary processes of lawmaking. Now an amendment
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 6: repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, but at the same time conferring
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 6: upon Congress the power to make laws concerning the manufacture, sale,
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 6: and transportation of intoxicating liquors would make it possible for
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 6: Congress to pass a Volstead Act, or a Barren Wine Act,
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 6: or no liquor Act at all, just as its own
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 6: judgment or desire might dictate. It would give the federal
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 6: government a power which I think it would be far
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 6: more wholesome to reserve to the states. But it would
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 6: get rid of the worst part of the Eighteenth Amendment,
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 6: and it would have, I think, an incomparably more favor
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 6: reception from the start than would a proposal of simple repeal.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 6: For the public could readily be brought to see the
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 6: reasonableness of giving the nation a chance, through its representatives
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 6: at Washington, to express its will on the subject from
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 6: time to time, in the unreasonableness of binding generation after
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 6: generation to helpless submission. The plea of a majority rule
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 6: is always a taking one in this country, and it
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 6: is rarely that that plea rests on stronger ground than
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 6: it would in this instance. The one strong argument which
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 6: might be urged against the proposal, namely that such a
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 6: provision would make prohibition a constant issue in national elections.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 6: While the actual incorporation of prohibition in the Constitution settles
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 6: the matter once for all, has been deprived of all
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 6: its force by our actual experience. So far from settling
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 6: the matter once for all, the Eighteenth Amendment has been
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 6: a frightful breeder of unsettlement and contention, which bids fair
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 6: to continue indefinitely. I have offered this suggestion for what
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 6: it may be worth. As a practical proposal. It seems
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 6: certainly deserving of discussion, and I could not refrain from
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 6: putting it forward as a possible means of relief from
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 6: an intolerable situation. But I do not wish to wind
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 6: up on that note. The right solution, a solution incomparably
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 6: better than this, which I have suggested on account of
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 6: its apparently better chance of acceptance, is the outright repeal
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 6: of the Eighteenth Amendment. And moreover, the primary need of
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 6: this moment is not so much any practical proposal likely
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 6: to be quickly realized, as the awakening of the public
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 6: mind to the fundamental issues of the case the essential
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 6: principles of law, of government and of individual life, which
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 6: are so flagrantly sending against by the Prohibition Amendment. To
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 6: the exposition of those fundamental issues, this little book has
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 6: been almost exclusively confined. It has left untouched a score
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 6: of aspects of the question of drink and of the
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 6: prohibition of drink, which it would have been interesting to discuss,
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 6: and the discussion of which would I feel sure, have
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 6: added to the strength of the argument I have endeavored
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 6: to present. But there is an advantage too in keeping
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 6: to the high points. It is not to a multiplicity
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 6: of details that one must trust in a case like this.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 6: What is needed, above all is a clear and wholehearted
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 6: recognition of fundamentals. And I do not believe that the
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 6: American people have got so far away from their fundamentals
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 6: that such recognition will be denied when the case is
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 6: clearly put before them. There is one and only one
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 6: thing that could justify such a violation of liberty and
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 6: of the card principles of rational government, as is embodied
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 6: in the Eighteenth Amendment. In the face of desperate necessity,
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 6: there may be justification for the most desperate remedy, but
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 6: so far from this being a case of desperate necessity.
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 6: Nothing is more unanimously acknowledged by all except those who
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 6: labor under an obsession, than that the evil of drink
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 6: has been steadily diminishing, not only during the period of
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 6: prohibition agitation, but for many decades before that, drunkenness had
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 6: been rapidly declining, in both temperate drinking and total abstinence,
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 6: correspondingly increasing. It is unnecessary to appeal to statistics. The
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 6: familiar experience of every man whose memory runs back twenty
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 6: or forty or sixty years is sufficient to put the
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 6: case beyond question, and every species of literary and historical
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 6: record confirms the conclusion. This violent assault upon liberty, this
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 6: crude defiance of the most settled principles of lawmaking and
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 6: of government, this division of the country, as it has
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 6: been well expressed into the hunters and the hunted, this
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 6: sowing of dragon's teeth in the shape of lawlessness and
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 6: contempt for law, has not been the dictate of imperious necessity,
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 6: but the indulgence of the crude desire of a highly
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 6: organized but one ideaed minority to impose its standards of
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 6: conduct upon all of the American people. To shake off
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 6: this tyranny is one of the worthiest objects to which
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 6: good Americans can devote themselves. To shake it off would
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 6: mean not only to regain what has been lost by
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 6: this particular enactment, but to forfend the infliction of similar
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 6: outrages in the future. If it is allowed to stand.
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 6: There is no telling in what quarter the next invasion
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 6: of liberty will be made by fanatics possessed with the
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 6: i which, for perfection, I am not thinking of tobacco
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 6: or anything of the kind. Twenty years from now or
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 6: fifty years from now. It may be religion or some
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 6: other domain of life which at present moments seems free
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 6: from the danger of attack. The time to call a
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 6: halt is now, and the way to call a halt
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 6: is to win back the ground that has already been lost.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 6: To do that will be a splendid victory for all
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 6: that we used to think of as American For liberty,
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 6: for individuality, for the freedom of each man to conduct
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 6: his own life in his own way, so long as
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 6: he does not violate the rights of others. For the
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 6: responsibility of each man for the evils he brings upon
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 6: himself by the abuse of that freedom. May the day
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 6: not be far distant when we shall once more be
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 6: a nation of sturdy freemen, not kept from mischief to
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 6: ourselves by a eternal law copper fastened in the Constitution,
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 6: not watched like children by a host of guardians and
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 6: spies and informers, but upstanding Americans, loyally obedient to the Constitution,
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 6: because living under a constitution which a people of manly
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 6: freemen can wholeheartedly respect and cherish.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 3: The end
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 6: End of Chapter eleven, End of What Prohibition has Done
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 6: to America by Fabian Franklin