NATIONAL INDIGNATION

As July 1 approaches the agitation against national prohibition is growing more and more powerful. The cities of the country are holding series of indignation meetings. On Saturday the thousand representatives of organized labor paraded in Washington as protest against the ban on beer a delight wines. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, warned the Senate that nothing could do more to bring about a repetition of conditions in Russia tan keeping beer from the laboring man.

While we feel that the structure of American society is too sound to crumble like that of Russia and that Mr. Gompers was exaggerating to carry a point, nevertheless we believe national prohibition will involve grave economic consequences. According to the labor leaders of St. Louis, twenty-five thousand men in that city alone will be thrown out of work. Throughout the Middle West, in Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin, the same story can be told; thousands of men trained to a certain trade suddenly thrown on the mercy of the country. No handicraft during the period of the industrial Revolution was ever more thoroughly put out of business by the introduction of machinery than the trade of there men will be fetor the prohibition enactment.

Of all times to enforce such legislation, the present is the worst. Army and navy demobilization has flooded the country with surplus labor. It will be two or three years at least before industry can settle down to normal conditions. To add to this economic unrest by increasing the number of the unemployed is the worst kind of statesmanship.

Apart from all economic considerations the effects of national prohibition on the temper of the laboring classes will be most alarming. Whether it has been scientifically proven that hard work needs a stimulant or not makes no difference to the worker. He believes he needs that stimulant and resents bitterly interference with what he considers his personal liberty. Foreign agitators can seize this opportunity of pointing out that the government of the United States is as despotic as any in Europe and that the only means of salvation for working men is to do away with all government.

Prohibition is defended on moral grounds, and to a certain degree these arguments carry weight. Distilled liquors are most harmful to the health and morals of the population and three manufacture should be forbidden. But the bad effects of beer and light wines are very slight. These good effects consist in making a great number of people contented. On narrow dogmatic moral grounds absolute prohibition is right. On those of expediency and common sense absolute prohibition is wrong, and should not be tolerated to go into effect July 1. Were the country given a few months delay such a movement against prohibition would arise that the dry legislation would have to be repealed.