These figures are taken from the Anti-Saloon League YearBooks, and they represent reports gathered from a hundred cities throughout the land, chosen by the League, somewhat arbitrarily, it might seem, but possibly according as the figures could be got from the city officials. In the 1924 Year-Book all these valuable statistics are omitted, apparently because of the increases since 1920; which are exceeded, as will presently appear, in 1923.

Both here and elsewhere, prohibitionists take the average for three years previous to prohibition, 1914-16 or 1915-17, compare it with the three years following, 1919-21 or 1920-22, and rightly giving the credit for the great decrease in 1919-20 to prohibition, attribute the rising figures since to feeble enforcement and to the disregard for law brought about by the war. If it were not for prohibition, they even say, there would in 1919 and 1920 have been large increases instead. But, as we shall see, the effect of the war has not been such in England, where it ought to have been rather more apparent; and surely if the figures for arrests, above, and for seizures, below, mean anything, and all the agitation for enforcement be of any avail, the law has in the last three years been better enforced than in the two before. If it has not, how drenched, then, and soaked in liquor the country must be ! The truth is, surely, that upon the law-abiding element the repressive measures at first had great effect, but that more and more human nature has revolted and found the means of evasion.

This inference is supported by the figures for 1923. I myself have had them computed by machine, and hope the results are trustworthy. The basis of the statistics furnished is now three hundred cities instead of one hundred, but since the combined population is also stated we can arrive at proportions of quite comparative value :—

FIGURES FOR THREE HUNDRED CITIES.

The corresponding totals in 1922 for the three hundred cities instead of the hundred, as given above, are 2,110,041 and 442,789, which makes the subsequent increase perhaps still more palpable.

In 1924, the figures, for drunkenness at least, were still mounting. Mr. W. C. Bruce, United States Senator, in an article in Current History (August, 1925), gives them for the year in sixteen cities in the south, where prohibition is supposed to be most effective, and in only four of the smaller ones is there a decrease. In Washington, under the shadow of the Capitol and the White House, there were 10,354 arrests for intoxication as compared to 8,128 in 1923. (More than a year ago it was announced that " 2,500 social and political leaders in Washington" were to be indicted for violation of the prohibition laws.) Also he gives the figures for eighteen northern and western cities, and a decrease appears only in six. Statistics for all offences he has not gathered.

What now, for comparison, are the statistics of England and Wales as regards "persons proceeded against?" (Whitaker, 1924):

Here, then, in 1921, for a population of a little less than 38,000,000 as compared to nearly 21,000,000, we have about half the number of arrests for all causes and a little more than a third the number of arrests for intoxication. In America (see above) the number of arrests for this cause per thousand in 1921 was 9.6, in 1922, 12.9, in 1923, 14.3-whereas in England and Wales, in 1921, it was 2.1. All taken together, what could more completely confute the assertion of Mr. Wayne Wheeler, Chief Counsel of the AntiSaloon League, justly traversed by Mr. Franklin, that in the absence of prohibition crime inevitably increases, or even drunkenness ?

The figures are no doubt very treacherous, and under "total arrests" allowance should be made not only for traffic violations, which must be more numerous in America (they account for

*Possibly the number of such is less than the number of those arrested, and my comparison is somewhat unfair.

VOL. 243. NO. 495.

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90,000 of an increase even in the 1920 total for England) but for some violations of the prohibition law, which do not come under the head of drunkenness; and yet, on the other hand, it must be remembered that arrests by federal officers are here not included, and that the American police are less exacting and efficient than the English. For this last statement (if such be needed) the authority again is our Bar Association Report (pp. 8, 17). Possibly (though not probably) policemen in England are particularly indulgent with drunken men, and American policemen particularly austere; and yet, on the other hand, there is in that country less reason to keep one's drinking under cover. But, in any case, after all allowances, who would have expected six times the number of arrests for intoxication in a land under prohibition rule ?

Though New York is one of the very freest-drinking places in the country-"95 per cent. wet" according to the recent prohibition map-it has a very small number of arrests for intoxication, only 10,643 in the year 1923. In the same year, in Boston, with 748,000 inhabitants to the 5,600,000 in New York, there were 39,609 arrests for drunkenness; in Philadelphia, with a population of 1,823,000, there were 45,226; in Buffalo, with 506,000, there were 12,181; in Chicago, where intoxication, one would think, would be as little noticed or punished as anywhere under the canopy, with 2,701,000 inhabitants, there were 75,800 of such arrests.*

And now for the gaols for sale! The story appears in the 1924 Year-Book (p. 108), and is repeated by Mr. Wayne Wheeler and Miss Cora Stoddard, both leaders of prohibition organizations, in their pamphlets and articles, widely disseminated. I have no means of proving or disproving it; but the State where seven are reported to stand empty is Massachusetts, and the town where one is for sale is Lowell. In the Year-Book for 1923 every town in Massachusetts (nineteen, including Boston and Lowell itself) shows large and in some cases enormous increases in arrests for all causes, and for drunkenness, too, during 1922 as compared with 1921, and during 1921 as compared with 1920. Pittsfield is the only exception: in 1921, arrests for intoxication fell off, but in 1922 rebounded to almost twice the number (450 instead of 263).

*Disorderly conduct included; whether they are arrested when not disorderly one cannot say.

In Lowell itself that year there were 4,712 arrests for all causes; in 1921, 3,922; for intoxication in 1922, 2,051; in 1921, 1,787. In 1923 the situation grew still worse. Most of the towns listed (now 33 in number) showed further increases both in arrests for all causes and in arrests for intoxication. Lowell in the one category rising to 5,043 and in the other to 2,426. Lowell, it would seem, must greatly trust the future; like the pacifists, she must hold that the mere presence of a gaol provokes to crime, as an army and a navy provoke neighbouring countries to aggression. And if also the other gaols be empty, crime in that State must, like the auk or the albatross, be now nearly extinctor else the criminals be at once discharged or bailed and in due course acquitted-and the indubitable drunkenness in Massachusetts must be coming to be merely of that innocent sort which leads to the finable offence of fast driving.*

Wherever or however the swelling number of such or other offenders may be lodged, there is small comfort in the above or in other statistics. The "prison population," a still more important matter, is definitely increasing. I do not mean the Federal prisons-these, it is said, with the new type of offender which is of prohibition's own breeding, now overflow. I mean State prisons, for the natural and immemorial felonies. According to the Bar Association Report (pp. 28-29) the number of inmates in every one of the forty-two States for which the data are complete— Arizona, New Hampshire, and New Jersey alone excepted-has risen, one year after the other, during 1920, 1921, and 1922. Even these States show increases in single years, though not continuously. This is a startling fact, in view of the enormous number of homicides, burglars, robbers, thieves, and other criminals who, as we all suspect, and as the statistics furnished by the Bar Association and Crime Commission indicate, go undetected, unseized. In England, on the other hand, the numbers in prisons diminish. According to the Bar Association Report (p. 7) the total admittances to English prisons in 1913-14

*One of my colleagues thinks the explanation lies in the growing disposition of judges nowadays to commit offenders to the workhouse instead of gaol or prison. This would explain why in the Bar Association Report the prison population of Massachusetts and a few other States had in 1922 relatively decreased since 1919, a fact which Mr. Wheeler (see below) attributes to prohibition.

were 151,116; in 1920-21, 49,080. The great prison at Reading has been closed-on the strength of the statement in the above Report, I believe it.

Here again there is misrepresentation. Mr. Wayne Wheeler, in whom the light is as darkness, declares, in his controversy with Senator Bruce in the number of Current History already cited that crime is abating. Mr. Wheeler must have some authority which to him seems sound for saying that since 1917 the number of prisoners in the country has decreased 5.8 per 100,000, but I find none. The Bar Association Report (cited above) indicates for 1919-20, on the other hand, an increase of 16.6 per cent., and the report of the Bureau of Commerce, July 14, 1924, an increase still greater. The total of those present, January, 1923, in State prisons and reformatories (not including Federal prisons or gaols and workhouses) was 77,340, and the number committed from January 1 to June 30 was 19,518. In 1922, the

State-prison population" was 75,376. But all this, really, is neither here nor there: that there should be so few in the prisons is even the burden of our complaint. Is it not for that reason that the National Crime Commission, with many eminent men upon it, has recently been founded? Eleven thousand murders or homicides last year, three hundred thousand robberies, and how many hundred thousand thefts, embezzlements, forgeries, and other offences heaven only knows-if half the authors of these were caught the prisons, without prohibition, would be crowded. And in the face of a fact that every one of our writers on public affairs (including prohibitionists like Mr. Britt) takes for granted, to declare that crime is diminishing seems wholly reckless and unreasonable-like Mr. Wheeler's assertion that because of prohibition venereal disease is vanishing away.†

*Current History, October, 1925, statement of Mr. Mark Prentiss, who initiated the Crime Commission.

+North American Review, September, 1925, p. 31. I have consulted a great authority in one of our chief medical schools, and he says this statement is unfounded. The disease is on the wane, but this is owing to propaganda-to widely disseminated information how to prevent contagion-and to our greatly improved methods of treatment. Immorality has not diminished, he assured me; and prohibition has nothing to do with the matter," for, as you know," the scientist added, "there is more drinking now among young people, and particularly among the girls, than before the war."