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09 - What Prohibition Has Done to America by Fabian Franklin · What Prohibition Has Done to America

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Speaker 1: Chapter nine 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, please visit
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Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Jude Cater What Prohibition Has
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Speaker 1: Done to America by Fabian Franklin, Chapter nine, Prohibition and liberty.
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Speaker 1: Liberty is not today the watchword that it was one
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Speaker 1: hundred years ago, or fifty years ago, or thirty years ago.
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Speaker 1: Though there may be much doubt as to the causes
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Speaker 1: of the change, it must be admitted as a fact
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Speaker 1: that the feeling that liberty is in itself one of
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Speaker 1: the prime objects of human desire, a precious thing to
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Speaker 1: be struggled for or when denied, and to be jealously
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Speaker 1: defended when possessed, is not so strong a hold on
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Speaker 1: men's minds at this time as it had informer generations.
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Speaker 1: Some of the chief reasons for this change are not, however,
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Speaker 1: far to seek. In the tremendous movement political and economic
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Speaker 1: that has marked the past hundred years, three ideas have
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Speaker 1: been dominant. Democracy, efficiency, humanitarianism. None of these three ideas
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Speaker 1: is inherently bound up with the idea of liberty, and
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Speaker 1: indeed each one of the three contains the seed of
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Speaker 1: marked hostility to the idea of liberty. This is more true,
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Speaker 1: and more obviously true, of efficiency and of humanitarianism than
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Speaker 1: it is of democracy. But it is true in no
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Speaker 1: small measure of democracy. Also, for people intent upon the
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Speaker 1: idea that government must be democratic, that is, must reflect
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Speaker 1: the will of the majority, naturally concentrate upon the effort
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Speaker 1: to organize the majority and increase its power, a process
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Speaker 1: which throws into the shade regard for individual rights and liberties,
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Speaker 1: and even tends to put them somewhat in the light
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Speaker 1: of obstacles to the great aim. Furthermore, the democratic movement
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Speaker 1: has set for itself objects beyond the sphere of government
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Speaker 1: and in the domain of economic control. Democracy, if that
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Speaker 1: is the right word for it, must strive for collective power,
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Speaker 1: as distinguished from individual liberty, even more intently than in
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Speaker 1: the field of government. However, in the case of democracy,
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Speaker 1: there is at least no inherent opposition to liberty. Such
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Speaker 1: opposition as develops out of it may be regarded as
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Speaker 1: comparatively accidental, not so with efficiency or humanitarianism. Even here, however,
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Speaker 1: I feel that a word of warning is necessary. I
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Speaker 1: am not speaking of the highest and truest efficiency, or
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Speaker 1: of the most far sighted and most beneficent humanitarianism. I
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Speaker 1: am speaking of efficiency as understood in the common use
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Speaker 1: of the term as a label. And I am speaking
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Speaker 1: of humanitarianism as represented by the attitude and the mental
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Speaker 1: temper of nearly all of the excellent men and women
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Speaker 1: who actually represent that cause, and who devote their lives
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Speaker 1: to the problems of social betterment. To the efficiency expert
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Speaker 1: and to his multitude of followers, the immediate increase of
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Speaker 1: productivity is so absorbing an object that, if it has
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Speaker 1: been attained by a particular course of action, the question
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Speaker 1: whether its attainment has involved the sacrifice of liberty seems
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Speaker 1: to his mind absolutely trivial. Of course, this would not
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Speaker 1: be so if the sacrifice were of a startling nature.
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Speaker 1: But short of something palpably galling, something grossly offensive to
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Speaker 1: the primary instincts of free men, he simply doesn't understand
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Speaker 1: how any person of sense can pretend to be concerned
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Speaker 1: about it in the face of demonstrated success. From the
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Speaker 1: efficiency standpoint, what is true of the Apostle of Efficiency
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Speaker 1: and his followers is even more emphatically true of the humanitarian,
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Speaker 1: and difficult as many people find it to stand out
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Speaker 1: against the position of the efficiency advocate, it is far
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Speaker 1: more difficult to dissent from that of the devotee of humanitarianism.
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Speaker 1: In the case of the first, one has to brace
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Speaker 1: up one's intellect to resist a plausible and enticing doctrine.
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Speaker 1: In the case of the second, one must, in a
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Speaker 1: sense harden one's heart as well as stiff in one's mind.
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Speaker 1: Or here one has to deal not with a mere
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Speaker 1: calculation of a general increase of prosperity or comfort, but
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Speaker 1: with the direct extirpation of vice and misery, which no
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Speaker 1: decent person can contemplate without keen distress. If the humanitarian
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Speaker 1: finds the principle of liberty thrust in the way of
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Speaker 1: his task of healing and rescue, he will repel with
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Speaker 1: scorn the idea that any such abstraction should be permitted
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Speaker 1: to impede his work of salvation. And especially if the
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Speaker 1: idea of liberty has, through other causes, suffer a decline
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Speaker 1: from its once high authority. He will find multitudes ready
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Speaker 1: to share his indignation, and he will find still greater
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Speaker 1: multitudes who do not share his indignation, and in their
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Speaker 1: hearts feel much misgiving over the invasion of liberty, But
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Speaker 1: who are without the firmness of conviction or without the
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Speaker 1: moral courage necessary to the assertion of principle when such
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Speaker 1: assertion brings with it the danger of social opprobrium. The
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Speaker 1: leaders in human panitarian reforms and their most active followers
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Speaker 1: are as a rule men and women of high moral nature,
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Speaker 1: and whether wise or unwise, broad minded or narrow and fanatical,
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Speaker 1: are justly credited with being actuated by a good motive. Unfortunately, however,
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Speaker 1: these attributes rarely prevent them from making reckless statements as
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Speaker 1: to the facts of the matter with which they are dealing,
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Speaker 1: nor from indulging in calumnious abuse of those who oppose them. Hence,
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Speaker 1: thousands of persons really averse to their program give tacit
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Speaker 1: or lukewarm ascent to it, rather than incur the odium
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Speaker 1: which outspoken opposition would invite. And accordingly true, though it
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Speaker 1: is that the idea of liberty is not cherished so
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Speaker 1: ardently or so universally as in a former day, the
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Speaker 1: decline into which it has fallen in men's hearts and
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Speaker 1: minds is by no means so great as surface indications
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Speaker 1: make it seem. On the one hand, the efficiency people
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Speaker 1: and the professional humanitarians are like all reformers and agitators,
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Speaker 1: abnormally vocal, and on the other hand, the lovers of
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Speaker 1: the old fashioned principle of liberty are abnormally silent. So
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Speaker 1: far as any public manifestation is concerned. In the foregoing,
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Speaker 1: I have admitted I think as great a decline in
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Speaker 1: the current prestige of the idea of liberty as would
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Speaker 1: be claimed by the most enthusiastic efficiency man or the
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Speaker 1: most ardent humanitarian. I wish now to insist upon the
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Speaker 1: other side of the matter. Persons who are always ready
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Speaker 1: to be carried away with the current, and their name
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Speaker 1: is legion, constantly make the mistake of imagining that the
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Speaker 1: latest thing is the last. They are the first to
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Speaker 1: throw aside old and venerable notions as outworn. They look
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Speaker 1: with condescending pity upon those who are so dull as
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Speaker 1: not to recognize the infinite potency of change. And yet
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Speaker 1: curiously enough, they never think of the possibility of a
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Speaker 1: change which may reverse the current of today, just as
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Speaker 1: the current of today has reversed that of yesterday. The
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Speaker 1: tree of liberty is less flourishing today than it was
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Speaker 1: fifty or one hundred years ago. Its leaves are not
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Speaker 1: so green, and it is not so much the object
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Speaker 1: of universal admiration and affection. But its roots are deep
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Speaker 1: down in the soil, and it supplies a need of
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Speaker 1: mankind too fundamental, feeds an aspiration too closely length with
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Speaker 1: all that elevates and enriches human nature to permit of
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Speaker 1: its being permanently neglected, are allowed to fall into decay.
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Speaker 1: And even at this very time, as I have indicated above,
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Speaker 1: the mass of the people, and I mean the great
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Speaker 1: as well as small, cultured and wealthy, as well as
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Speaker 1: ignorant and poor, retain their instinctive attachment to the idea
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Speaker 1: of liberty. It is chiefly in a small but extremely
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Speaker 1: prominent and influential body of over sophisticated people specialists of
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Speaker 1: one kind or another, that the principle of liberty has
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Speaker 1: fallen into the disrepute to which I have referred. The
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Speaker 1: prime reason why the prohibition law is so lightheartedly violated
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Speaker 1: by all sorts and conditions of men, why it is
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Speaker 1: held in contempt by hundreds of thousands of our best
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Speaker 1: and most respected citizens, is that the law is a
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Speaker 1: gross outrage upon personal liberty. Many, indeed would commit the
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Speaker 1: violation as a mere matter of self indulgence. But it
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Speaker 1: is absurd to suppose that this would be done, as
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Speaker 1: it is done by thousands of persons of the highest
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Speaker 1: type of character and citizenship. These people are sustained by
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Speaker 1: the consciousness that, though their conduct may be open to criticism,
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Speaker 1: it at least has the justification of being a revolt
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Speaker 1: against a law, a law unrepealable by any ordinary process,
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Speaker 1: that strikes at the foundations of liberty. Defenders of prohibition
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Speaker 1: seek to do away with the objection to it as
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Speaker 1: an invasion of personal liberty by pointing out that all
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Speaker 1: submission to civil government is in the nature of a
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Speaker 1: surrender of personal liberty. This is true enough, but only
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Speaker 1: a shallow mind can be content with its cheap and
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Speaker 1: easy disposition of the question. To anyone who stops to
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Speaker 1: think of the subject with some intelligence, it must be
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Speaker 1: evident that the argument proves either too much or nothing
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Speaker 1: at all, if it means that no proposed restriction can
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Speaker 1: properly be objected to as an invasion of personal liberty,
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Speaker 1: because all restrictions are on the same footing as part
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Speaker 1: of the order of society. It means what every man
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Speaker 1: of sense would at once declare to be preposterous, and
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Speaker 1: if it does not mean that, it leaves the question
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Speaker 1: at issue wholly untouched. Submission to an orderly government does
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Speaker 1: of course involve the surrender of one's personal freedom in
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Speaker 1: countless directions. But speaking broadly, such surrender is exacted under
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Speaker 1: what are generally known as free institutions only to the
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Speaker 1: extent to which the right of one man to do
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Speaker 1: as he pleases has to be restricted in order to
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Speaker 1: secure the elementary rights of other men from violation, or
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Speaker 1: to preserve conditions that are essential to the general welfare.
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Speaker 1: If a steals, he steals from B. If he murders,
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Speaker 1: he kills B. If he commits arson, he sets fire
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Speaker 1: to B's house. If a man makes a loud noise
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Speaker 1: in the street, he disturbs the quiet of hundreds of
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Speaker 1: his fellow citizens, and may make life quite unendurable to them.
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Speaker 1: There are complexities into which I cannot enter in such
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Speaker 1: matters as Sunday closing and kindred regulars, But upon examination
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Speaker 1: it is easily enough seen that they fall in essence
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Speaker 1: under the same principle. The principle of restraint upon one
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Speaker 1: individual to prevent him from injuring not himself but others.
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Speaker 1: A law punishing drunkenness, which is a public nuisance, comes
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Speaker 1: under the head I have been speaking of. A law
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Speaker 1: forbidding a man to drink for fear that he may
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Speaker 1: become a drunkard does not, And in fact the prohibitionists
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Speaker 1: themselves instinctively recognize the difference, and avoid, so far as
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Speaker 1: they can, offending the sense of liberty by so direct
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Speaker 1: an attack upon it. It is safe to say that
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Speaker 1: if the Eighteenth Amendment had undertaken to make the drinking
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Speaker 1: of liquoric crime instead of the manufacturer and sale of it,
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Speaker 1: it could not have passed, or come anywhere near being passed.
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Speaker 1: There is hardly a senator or a representative that would
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Speaker 1: not have recoiled from a proposal so palpably offended to
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Speaker 1: the instinct of liberty. Yet precisely this is the real
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Speaker 1: object of the Eighteenth Amendment. Its purpose, and, if enforced,
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Speaker 1: its practical effect, is to make it permanently a crime
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Speaker 1: against the national government for an American to drink a
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Speaker 1: glass of beer or wine. The legislators state and national
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Speaker 1: who enacted it knew this perfectly well. Yet if the
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Speaker 1: thing had been put into the amendment in so many words,
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Speaker 1: hardly a man of them would have cast his vote
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Speaker 1: for it. The phenomenon is not so strange or so
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Speaker 1: novel as it might seem. It has a standard prototype.
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Speaker 1: In the history of Rome. The Roman people had a
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Speaker 1: rooted aversion and hostility to kings, and no Caesar would
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Speaker 1: ever have thought of calling himself Rex. But Imperatu went
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Speaker 1: down quite smoothly, and did just as well. In addition
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Speaker 1: to its being a regular relation of individual conduct in
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Speaker 1: a matter which is, in its nature the individual's own concern,
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Speaker 1: prohibition differs in another essential respect from those restrictions upon
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Speaker 1: liberty which form a legitimate and necessary part of the
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Speaker 1: operation of civil government. To put a governmental ban upon
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Speaker 1: all alcoholic drinks is to forbid the use of a
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Speaker 1: thing in order to prevent its abuse. Of course, there
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Speaker 1: are fanatics who declare and believe that all indulgence in
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Speaker 1: alcoholic drink, however moderate, is abuse. But to justify prohibition
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Speaker 1: on that ground would be to accept a doctrine even
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Speaker 1: more dangerous to liberty. It is bad enough to justify
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Speaker 1: the proscription of an innocent indulgence on the ground that
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Speaker 1: there is danger of its being carried beyond the point
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Speaker 1: of innocence. But it is far worse to forbid it
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Speaker 1: on the ground that, however innocent and beneficial a moderate
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Speaker 1: indulgence may seem to millions of people, it is not
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Speaker 1: regarded as good for them by others. The only thing
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Speaker 1: that lends dignity to the prohibition cause is the undeniable
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Speaker 1: fact that drunkenness is the source of a vast amount
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Speaker 1: of evil and wretchedness. The position of those who declare
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Speaker 1: that all objections must be waived in the presence of
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Speaker 1: this paramount consideration is respectable, though in my judgment, utterly wrong.
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Speaker 1: But any man who justifies prohibition on the ground that
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Speaker 1: drinking is an evil, no matter how temperate, is either
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Speaker 1: a man of narrow and stupid mind, or is utterly
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Speaker 1: blind to the value of human liberty. The ardent old
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Speaker 1: time prohibitionist, the man who thinks, however mistakenly, that the
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Speaker 1: abolition of intoxicating drinks means the salvation of mankind, counts
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Speaker 1: the impairment of liberty as a small matter in comparison
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Speaker 1: with his world saving reform. This is a position from
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Speaker 1: which one cannot withhold a certain amount of sympathy and respect.
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Speaker 1: But to justify the sacrifice of liberty on the ground
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Speaker 1: that the man who is deprived of it will be
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Speaker 1: somewhat better off without it is to assume a position
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Speaker 1: that is at once contemptible and in the highest degree dangerous.
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Speaker 1: Contemptible because it argues a total failure to understand what
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Speaker 1: liberty means to mankind. Dangerous because there is no limit
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Speaker 1: to the monstrosities of legislation which may flow from the
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Speaker 1: acceptance of such a view. Esau sold his birthright to
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Speaker 1: Jacob for a mess of pottage which he wanted. These
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Speaker 1: people would rob us of our birthright, and, by way
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Speaker 1: of compensation, thrust upon us a mess of pottage for
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Speaker 1: which we have no desire. Rejecting then the preposterous notion
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Speaker 1: of extreme fanatics, whether the fanatics of science or the
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Speaker 1: fanatics of moral reform, we have in prohibition a restraint
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Speaker 1: upon the liberty of the u s individual which is
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Speaker 1: designed not to protect the rights of other individuals, or
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Speaker 1: to serve the manifest requirements of civil government, but to
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Speaker 1: prevent the individual from injuring himself by pursuing his own happiness.
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Speaker 1: In his own way, the case being further aggravated by
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Speaker 1: the circumstance that, in order to make this injury impossible,
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Speaker 1: he has denied even such access to the forbidden thing
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Speaker 1: as would not except in a sense that it is
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Speaker 1: absurd to consider, be injurious. Now, this may be benevolent despotism,
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Speaker 1: But despotism it is, And the people that accustoms itself
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Speaker 1: to the acceptance of such despotism, whether at the hands
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Speaker 1: of a monarch or an oligarchy or a democracy, has
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Speaker 1: abandoned the cause of liberty. For there is hardly any
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Speaker 1: conceivable encroachment upon individual freedom which would be a more
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Speaker 1: flagrant offense against that principle. Then, is the one that
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Speaker 1: makes an iron bound rule commanding a man to conform
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Speaker 1: his personal habits to the judgment of his rulers as
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Speaker 1: to what is best for him. I do not mean
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Speaker 1: to assert that it necessarily follows that such encroachments will
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Speaker 1: actually come thick and fast on the heels of prohibition.
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Speaker 1: Any specific proposal will of course be opposed by those
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Speaker 1: who do not like it, and may have a much
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Speaker 1: harder time than prohibition to acquire the following necessary to
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Speaker 1: bring about its adoption. But the resistance to it on
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Speaker 1: specific rounds will lack the strength which it would derive
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Speaker 1: from a profound respect for the general principle of liberty.
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Speaker 1: Whatever else may be set against it, it will be
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Speaker 1: impossible to make good the objection that it sets an
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Speaker 1: evil precedent of disregard for the claims of that principle.
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Speaker 1: The Eighteenth Amendment is so gross an instance of such
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Speaker 1: disregard that it can hardly be so passed by anything
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Speaker 1: that is at all likely to be proposed. And if
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Speaker 1: the establishment of that precedent should fail actually to work
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Speaker 1: so disastrous an injury to the cause of liberty, we
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Speaker 1: must thank the widespread and impressive resistance that it has aroused.
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Speaker 1: Had the people meekly bowed their heads to the yoke,
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Speaker 1: the Prohibition Amendment would furnish unfailing inspiration and unstinted encouragement
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Speaker 1: to every new attack upon personal liberty. As it is,
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Speaker 1: we may be permitted to hope that its injury to
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Speaker 1: our future as a free people will prove to be
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Speaker 1: neither so profound nor so lasting as in its nature
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Speaker 1: it is calculated to be. Before dismissing the subject, it
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Speaker 1: will be well to consider one favorite argument of those
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Speaker 1: who contend that prohibition is no more obnoxious to the
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Speaker 1: charge of being a violation of personal liberty than are
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Speaker 1: certain other laws which are accepted as matters of course.
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Speaker 1: A law prohibiting narcotic drugs, they say, imposes a restraint
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Speaker 1: upon personal liberty of the same sort as does a
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Speaker 1: law prohibiting alcoholic liquors. And it must be admitted that
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Speaker 1: there is some plausibility in the argument. The answer to
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Speaker 1: it is not so simple as that to the broader
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Speaker 1: pleas which have been discussed above. Yet the answer is
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Speaker 1: not less conclusive. There is no principle of human conduct
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Speaker 1: that can be applied with undeviating rigor to all cases,
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Speaker 1: and indeed, it is part of the price of the
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Speaker 1: maintenance of the principle that it shall be waived in
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Speaker 1: extreme instances in which its rigorous enforcement would shock the
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Speaker 1: common instincts of mankind. Illustrations of this can be found
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Speaker 1: in almost every domain of human action, in the everyday
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Speaker 1: life of each one of us, in the practice of
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Speaker 1: the professions, in the procedure of courts and juries, as
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Speaker 1: well as in the field of lawmaking. It is wrong
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Speaker 1: to tell a lie, and there are a few doctrine.
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Speaker 1: Are extremists who maintain that lying is not excusable under
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Speaker 1: any circumstances. But the common sense of mankind declares that
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Speaker 1: it is right for a man to lie in order
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Speaker 1: to deceive a murderer who is seeking his mother's life.
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Speaker 1: Physicians almost unanimously profess and honestly profess the principle that
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Speaker 1: human life must be preserved as long as possible, no
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Speaker 1: matter how desperate the case may seem. Yet I doubt
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Speaker 1: whether there is a single physician who does not mercifully
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Speaker 1: refrain from prolonging life by all possible means in cases
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Speaker 1: of extreme and hopeless agony. Murder is murder, and it
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Speaker 1: is a sworn duty of juries to find accordingly. Yet
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Speaker 1: the doctrine of the unwritten law, while unquestionably far too
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Speaker 1: often resorted to and thus constituting a grave defect in
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Speaker 1: our administration of criminal justice, is in some extreme cases
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Speaker 1: properly invoked to prove an outrage on the elementary instincts
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Speaker 1: of justice. In all these instances, we have a principle
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Speaker 1: universally acknowledged and profoundly respected, and the waiver of it
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Speaker 1: in extreme cases so far from weakening the principle actually
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Speaker 1: strengthens it, since if it absolutely never bent, it would
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Speaker 1: be sure to break. And so it is with basic
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Speaker 1: principles of legislation. To forbid the use of narcotic drugs
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Speaker 1: is a restraint of liberty of the same kind as
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Speaker 1: to forbid the use of alcoholic liquors. But in degree
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Speaker 1: the two are wide as the poles asunder the use
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Speaker 1: of narcotic drugs, except as medicine is so unmitigatedly harmful
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Speaker 1: that there is perhaps hardly a human being who contends
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Speaker 1: that it is. Otherwise, people crave it, but they are
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Speaker 1: ashamed of the craving. It plays no part in any
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Speaker 1: acknowledged form of human intercourse. It is connected with no
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Speaker 1: joys or benefits that normal human beings openly prize a
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Speaker 1: thing which is so wholly evil, in which, moreover, so
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Speaker 1: swiftly and insidiously renders powerless the will of those who,
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Speaker 1: perhaps by some accident, once begin to indulge in It
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Speaker 1: stands outside the category, alike of the ordinary objects of
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Speaker 1: human desire and the ordinary causes of human degradation. To
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Speaker 1: make an exception to the principle of liberty in such
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Speaker 1: a case is to do just what common sense dictates
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Speaker 1: and scores of instances where the strict application of a
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Speaker 1: general principle to extreme cases would involve an intolerable sacrifice
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Speaker 1: of good in order to remove a mere superficial appearance
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Speaker 1: of wrong. To make the prohibition of narcotic drugs an
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Speaker 1: adequate reason for not objecting to the prohibition of alcoholic
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Speaker 1: drinks would be like calling upon physicians to throw into
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Speaker 1: the scrap heap their principle of the absolute sanctity of
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Speaker 1: human life because they do not apply that principle with
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Speaker 1: literal rigor in cases where to do so would be
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Speaker 1: an act of inhuman and unmitigated cruelty. End of Chapter nine.