The Logic of Prohibition; By Matt S. Hughes (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...witness against a monstrous evil; not the few legislators who glut the pigeonholes of unsympathetic committees at national and state capitals; and not the majority of the voters in sovereign states who have decreed prohibition for great commonwealths. These, strange as it may seem, are not the prohibition fanatics. That species must be sought elsewhere. As an evidence of fanaticism the wets charge that prohibitionists are trying to dictate what men shall eat and drink. There is no truth in the assertion. It would be just as true to declare that all those who vote wet are trying to perpetuate the wineroom, the gambling den, the political corruption and all the vice, crime, pauperism, disease and death which are the inevitable outcome of the saloons in any community. The prohibitionist does not attempt to say what a man may eat or drink. He may eat decayed rats or drink cellar-poison in the fullest enjoyment of "personal liberty." The prohibitionist is interested in what a person makes and sells. He insists that when it comes to selling certain things in the open market the act ceases to be an individual matter and becomes a social problem. The right of any man to drink intoxicating liquors under conditions which do not interfere with the rights of others is not challenged. But the ordinary, garden-variety of prohibitionist says that a man ought not to be allowed to carry on a money-making traffic in diseased meat, infected milk, rotten vegetables, dangerous drugs and destructive explosives. That is a matter of public welfare. Prohibition only says to men: "Thou shalt not sell." None of those who are commonly branded as fanatics have gone so far as to say to individuals: "Thou shalt not drink." The prohibitionists are against the...