been no doles.
The nation can thus come through a crisis of unemployment without half
its number becoming a charge on the remainder. That is possible
because the sources of waste are sealed up. Statistics amply prove
that drunkenness is rapidly disappearing. The Salvation Army ceased
its rescue work among the drunkards in New York because there were no
more drunkards to be rescued. In Pittsburg I found the jail well-nigh
empty and the poorhouse without sufficient inmates to keep it clean.
It is the same everywhere. One great employer of labour, whose opinion
I asked, said: 'Prohibition has given us a good Monday in our factory.'
That was the most terse and effective testimony to Prohibition that I
heard. There is no broken time owing to drunkenness. Industrial
efficiency has been increased 20 per cent. One man who had an interest
in a big hotel told me that the profits from soft drinks
(non-alcoholic) were last year double the profit they used to make by
the sale of alcohol. Hotels never had such a time of prosperity as
they have had lately. The reason is that men can bring their wives and
children to stay at the hotels with perfect safety. The proprietor of
the biggest hotel in a city where I stayed told me that he was glad to
be rid of the bar and that he would never have it back on any account.
A Canadian-Scot who has prospered greatly told me how he became a
Prohibitionist. 'I am interested in a mine in the north,' said he,
'and I went to visit it. I saw the men wasting their substance and
their lives in the saloons--lying around drugged, with their pockets
empty. It was shocking. I used to give $500 to fight Prohibition.
When the wet agent came to my office after that for my subscription, I
said: "Get out! I'll give $500 a year in the future to make an end of
all saloons!" It is thus the movement spreads. The moderate drinker
is as determined as the Rechabites that the saloon shall never open its
door again--and it never will. One of the oddest testimonies in behalf
of the success of the new law was this saying: 'In Detroit there has
been a falling off in the taxi-cab trade.' The inference is that
everybody can walk home now. 'We saw,' says Mr. Harold Spender, 'only
a single drunken man in America for three weeks, and then he was a
politician going to Washington.' In a period of three months I saw
none. Though this reform has been in operation for so short a time, it
has already effected the