w be expected to have in these
circumstances? Upon the mind of a man intensely convinced that the law
is an outrage, how much impression can be produced by the mere fact
that it was passed by Congress and the Legislatures, when the real
attitude of the members of those bodies is such as it is seen to be in
their private conduct? How much of a moral sanction would be given to
a law against larceny if a large proportion of the men who enacted the
law were themselves receivers of stolen goods ? Or a law against
forgery if the legislators were in the frequent habit of passing
forged checks? It happens that the receiving of stolen goods or the
passing of forged checks is a crime under the law, as well as the
stealing or the forgery itself; and that the Prohibition law does not
make the drinking or even the buying of liquor, but only the making or
selling of it, a crime; but what a miserable refuge this is for a man
who professes to believe that the abolition of intoxicating liquor is
so supreme a public necessity as to demand the remaking of the
Constitution of the United States for the purpose! Not the least of
the causes of public disrespect for the Prohibition law is the
notorious insincerity of the makers of the law, and their flagrant
disrespect for their own creation.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAW ENFORCERS AND THE LAW

DAY after day, month after month, a distressing, a disgusting
spectacle is presented to the American people in connection with the
enforcement of the national Prohibition law. No day passes without
newspaper headlines which "feature" some phase of the contest going on
between the Government on the one hand and millions of citizens on the
other; citizens who belong not to the criminal or semi-criminal
classes, nor yet to the ranks of those who are indifferent or disloyal
to the principles of our institutions, but who are typical Americans,
decent, industrious, patriotic, law-abiding. It is true that the
individuals whom the Government hunts down by its spies, its arrests,
its prosecutions, are men who make a business of breaking the
Prohibition law, and most of whom would probably just as readily break
other laws if money was to be made by it. But none the less the real
struggle is not with the thousands who furnish liquor but with the
hundreds of thousands, or millions, to whom they purvey it. Every time
we read of a spectacular raid or a sensational capture,