ay
serve to suggest. When a given evil in human life presents itself to
our consideration, it is a natural and a praiseworthy impulse to seek
to effect its removal. To that impulse is owing the long train of
beneficent reforms which form so gratifying a feature of the story of
the past century and more. But that story would have been very
different if the reformer had in every instance undertaken to
extirpate whatever he found wrong or noxious. To strike with crusading
frenzy at what you have worked yourself up into believing is wholly an
accursed thing is a tempting short cut, but is fraught with the
possibility of all manner of harm. In the case of Prohibition, I have
endeavored to point out several of the forms of harm which it carries
with it. But in addition to those that can so plainly be pointed out,
there is a broader if less definite one.

When we have choked off a particular avenue of satisfaction to a
widespread human desire; when, foiled perhaps in one direction, we
attack with equal fury the possibility of escape in another and
another; who shall assure us that, debarred of satisfaction in old and
tried ways, the same desires will not find vent in far more injurious
indulgences ? How different if, instead of crude and wholesale
compulsion, resort were had--as it had been had before the
Prohibitionist mania swept us off our feet--to well-considered
measures of regulation and restriction, and to the legitimate
influences of persuasion and example! The process is slower, to be
sure, but it had accomplished wonderful improvement in our own time
and before; what it gained was solid gain; and it did not invite
either the resentment, the lawlessness, or the other evils which
despotic prohibition of innocent pleasure carries in its train.

CHAPTER VIII

ONE-HALF OF ONE PER CENT.

THE Eighteenth Amendment forbids "the manufacture, sale or
transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof
into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all
territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes."
The Volstead act declares that the phrase "intoxicating liquor," as
used in the act, "shall be construed to include 'all liquors'
containing one-half of one percentum or more of alcohol by volume
which are fit for use for beverage purposes."

Since everybody knows that a drink containing one-half of one per
cent. of alcoho