CARVER BELIEVES PROHIBITION IS GAINING FORCE

The following article on the possibility of Prohibition enforcement was written for the Crimson by Thomas Nixon Carver, David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy in the University. Professor Carver's article is a prohibitionist's view of the article by President Lowell which appears in the current Atlantic Monthly.

It was, of course, to be expected that the wet propagandist would misconstrue President Lowell's recent article on Reconstruction and Prohibition. There is little in it to justify their attempts to use its as a polemic. It is judicial in tone and shows an ability to see two sides to the question. It admits the high moral purpose of the supporters of the 18th amendment, virtually endorsing Mr. Hoover's characterization of prohibition as a great experiment, noble in purpose and far reaching in results. As to the results, the article says, "Prohibition has no doubt done good. It has abolished the saloon; it has diminished the absence from the factory of workmen through have not yet had an administration that was definitely committed to the support and enforcement of the law. We are about to have such an administration. It would seem rather obvious, at least, to one who is not scared lest the new administration might succeed that the thing to do is to give it a chance. If, after eight years of sincere effort by a friendly administration, there is no marked improvement it will be time to consider a change.

There are other possible changes besides the kind of modification, which the wets went. Modification may proceed in either of two directions. It may proceed in the direction of softening the law, permitting 2. 75 percent beer, which would please no one, or light wines and beers which are, as a matter of fact, intoxicating, or of putting the government in the business of selling liquor. On the other hand, it make take the form of stiffening the law, imprisoning where it now fines, and applying the penalties to purchasers as well as to sellers. The wets of the seaboard cities are peculiarly incapable of judging the temper of the American people. There is at least an even chance that when or if modification comes it will take the latter rather than the former direction.

The opening paragraph of President Lowell's article calls attention to a fact which disposes of the arguments so frequently put forward by the wets that prohibition is the cause of the general moral laxity of the crime wave and other unsociable phenomenon of the present day. It states, "As strenuous exertion is followed by fatigue, so a violent moral effort, when the cause that produced it is removed, is succeeded by moral lassitude and therewith a turning of attention into very different channels. That this revulsion of spirit should be expected to follow peace is now recognized by those who have thought about the subject." It would appear to a judicial observer that the laxity of enforcement is itself one of the numerous results of this moral lassitude.

The comparison which President Lowel makes between prohibition and reconstruction has some validity but it will not do to push it too far. The two movements are alike in that both followed a great war and that they resulted in certain amendments to the constitution. There is also a fact of resemblance in that there was a certain element of moral fervor in both. The small element of moral fervor in both. The small element of moral fervor in the reconstruction policy of the North following the Civil War was overwhelmed by the constitution of the storm of hatred engendered by the war. Anyone who can even faintly remember the political campaigns of the post-war period with their turgid oratory and their violent editorials is aware that hatred of the South was the chief political asset of most successful candidates. The ferocious denunciation of every Democrat as a friend of rebels, the continued waving of the bloody shirt, the cartoons of Thomas H. Nast, the editorials of Petroleum V. Nasby all indicate as clearly as anything could that the reconstruction policy was actuated more by a desire to punish the South than by a desire to benefit the negro. Very naturally such hatred could not last. To the credit of the North everybody has been thoroughly ashamed of that attitude ever since, and for that reason it would be impossible, even if it were desired, to bring any active moral support to the amendments that were added to the constitution during the heat of that post-war period.

Prohibition, on the other hand, has not been the product of war hatreds. There is, therefore, not likely to be any such revulsion of feeling as occurred on the subject of reconstruction. It is to be hoped that the question will be ultimately decided not on the basis of feeling but on the basis of an intellectual understanding of the problem and a judicious weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of various attempts to control what all fair minded persons acknowledge to be at the present time a great evil. Every civilized country is trying by one method or another or control the evil of drink. We are trying a somewhat more drastic experiment than any other. It is really the greatest social experiment of modern times and deserves the most careful and persistent study