by the dirty work in the blackness, by the
squalor in which the company houses are built, turns men to drink for
reaction and lamplight and comradeship. The similar fevers and
exasperations of factory life lead the workers to unstring their tense
nerves with liquor. The habit of snuggling up close in factories,
conversing often, bench by bench, machine by machine, inclines them to
get together for their pleasures at the bar. In industrial America there
is an anti-saloon minority in moral sympathy with the temperance wave
brought in by the farmers. But they are outstanding groups. Their
leadership seldom dries up a factory town or a mining region, with all
the help the Anti-Saloon League can give.

In the big cities the temperance movement is scarcely understood. The
choice residential districts are voted dry for real estate reasons. The
men who do this, drink freely at their own clubs or parties. The
temperance question would be fruitlessly argued to the end of time were
it not for the massive agricultural vote rolling and roaring round each
metropolis, reawakening the town churches whose vote is a pitiful
minority but whose spokesmen are occasionally strident.

There is a prophecy abroad that prohibition will be the issue of a
national election. If the question is squarely put, there are enough
farmers and church-people to drive the saloon out of legal existence. The
women's vote, a little more puritanical than the men's vote, will make
the result sure. As one anxious for this victory, I have often speculated
on the situation when all America is nominally dry, at the behest of the
American farmer, the American preacher, and the American woman. When the
use of alcohol is treason, what will become of those all but unbroken
lines of slum saloons? No lesser force than regular troops could dislodge
them, with yesterday's intrenchment.

The entrance of the motion picture house into the arena is indeed
striking, the first enemy of King Alcohol with real power where that king
has deepest hold. If every one of those saloon doors is nailed up by the
Chautauqua orators, the photoplay archway will remain open. The people
will have a shelter where they can readjust themselves, that offers a
substitute for many of the lines of pleasure in the groggery. And a whole
evening costs but a dime apiece. Several rounds of drinks are expensive,
but the people can sit through as many repetitions of this programme as
they desire, for one en