FOOLING WITH GUNPOWDER 
 
 REPLY TO THE PIERRE S. DU PONT ARTICLE IN THE APRIL, 1928, CURRENT HISTORY 
 
 By BOYD P. DOTY 
 
 Attorney World League Against Alcoholism 
 
 The name du Pont is almost synonymous 
 with gunpowder and other high ex- 
 plosives. One would think that the chair- 
 man of the Board of Directors of a great 
 manufacturing concern whose product is 
 a dangerous commodity like explosives 
 would naturally be of a cautious bent and 
 be careful about “rushing in where angels 
 fear to tread.” Not so, however, with 
 Pierre S. du Pont. Perhaps a life-long 
 contact with a dangerous commodity has 
 made him reckless in dealing with other 
 dangerous subject matter. It may have 
 engendered a spirit of courage and driven 
 out fear. 
 
 As one reads Mr. Dupont’s article, “The 
 Eighteenth Amendment not a Remedy for 
 the Drink Evil,” in the April, 1928, number 
 of Current History, one is somehow driven 
 to feel that men of great affairs who 
 usually like to be considered hard-headed, 
 cold-blooded, clear-sighted, logical and 
 certain, seem to leave behind all their 
 native and acquired characteristics which 
 have made them so successful in the busi- 
 ness and industrial world when they enter 
 upon the consideration and discussion of 
 the drink question. Facts which must be 
 ordinarily sifted to the last grain in de- 
 termining the business course of a cor- 
 poration may be utterly ignored or ac- 
 cepted without question if liquor is in- 
 volved. Conclusions are hastily drawn. 
 Generalities are broadly and frequently 
 stated, and when there is no other corner 
 in which to hide, indefinite and elusive 
 questions are resorted to. The whole his- 
 tory of the drink evil and the attempts 
 to restrict or eliminate it are briefly 
 ignored. Such at least is the impression 
 one gets in reading the above article by 
 Mr. Pierre S. du Pont. 
 
 RECOGNIZES EXISTENCE OF 
 “DRINK EVIL.” 
 
 Mr. du Pont at least furnishes one com- 
 mon ground for agreement in the state- 
 ment of his subject, in that he does 
 recognize the fact that there is such a 
 thing as the “drink evil.” Now, that 
 being admitted, then the questions which 
 naturally arise are, What are the causes 
 producing the drink evil? What are the 
 
 methods which have been tried to reduce 
 or eliminate the drink evil? What is the 
 history of that evil? And have we found 
 the best remedy to date? Or is there some 
 other method that as yet has not been 
 proposed and thoroughly tried? 
 
 It may be interesting to take up one by 
 one the statements made, propositions ad- 
 vanced or questions asked by Mr. du 
 Pont and find to what extent there is a 
 degree of truth in what he says, a sound- 
 ness of logic in the proposals he makes 
 and the legitimate character of the ques- 
 tions which he asks. And we shall ex- 
 pect to hold Mr. du Pont to as strict ac- 
 count for what he says as if he were 
 advising the Board of Directors of E. I. 
 du Pont de Nemours and Co. In fact we 
 should hold him to much stricter account 
 for the issues involved are incomparably 
 greater than any issues which Mr. du 
 Pont has ever been called upon to pass 
 judgment upon or rather advise upon. 
 The matter about which he so smoothly 
 writes involves the happiness, the health, 
 the wealth, the material and the spiritual 
 prosperity of 120 millions of people, pos- 
 sibly of file world, whereas a right or 
 wrong policy of the du Pont Co. deter- 
 mines only a matter of dividends for a 
 handful of people. 
 
 THE POWER TO PROHIBIT 
 
 Mr. du Pont launches into his article 
 with- a broad sweeping statement that 
 during the past eighty years it has never 
 been proposed in any of the United States 
 to “forbid the use of intoxicating liquor 
 for beverage purposes.” Mr. du Pont 
 could just as truthfully have said that no 
 state prohibits the use of putrid meat or 
 decaying oysters or the drinking of water 
 with typhoid germs in it, but Mr. du Pont 
 and everyone else knows that the sale of 
 any kind of food deleterious to health, 
 whether the individual to whom it might 
 be sold knows of its dangerous character 
 and is willing or not to take the risk of 
 eating it, is nevertheless subject to the 
 most rigid kind of regulatory and prohibi- 
 tory laws. One may eat putrid meat if he 
 is foolish enough to do it, but one may 
 not sell it to one who may be foolish 
 enough to buy it. One may drink typhoid- 
 
charged water from a well, but the public 
 claims the right to seal that well on the 
 public highway so that the passing throng 
 may not be menaced thereby. Even gun- 
 powder cannot be sold to any and all 
 parties applying in any quantity to be 
 used for any and every purpose, for it is 
 recognized that in gunpowder there are 
 extraordinary possibilities in which the 
 public is directly concerned, and therefore 
 its use even for such a patriotic purpose 
 as fireworks, cannon crackers, etc., is 
 limited at the point where it interferes 
 with the safety, peace and good order 
 of the general public. Gunpowder is a 
 very useful commodity, but even after 
 having been lawfully acquired it cannot 
 be used for any and every purpose which 
 the purchaser may conceive of, but only 
 for such purposes, at such times and such 
 places and under such regulations and re- 
 strictions as will promote the purpose 
 and best interests of society. 
 
 Now, intoxicating liquor in which the 
 primary constituent is alcohol is likewise 
 a dangerous commodity. It has been 
 so recognized from the beginning of time 
 and from the days of Noah until now. 
 From the days of light natural wine 
 which made Noah’s sons ashamed of their 
 father down to the days of Pierre S. du 
 Pont alcohol by all the sages of the pass- 
 ing ages has been declared an enemy of 
 man. With all this Mr. du Pont will 
 probably agree. 
 
 MIXED IN HIS PHRASEOLOGY 
 Mr. du Pont says: 
 
 “Prohibition is a means of procedure 
 only; in it there is nothing of 
 morality, nor is it really a social or 
 political question; nor is it the first 
 time that the importance of a remedy 
 has been raised to exceed that of the 
 disease to be cured.” 
 
 Now, not to be too critical, one may 
 nevertheless say that Mr. du Pont is 
 slightly mixed in his phraseology. In the 
 quotation above his subject is prohibition 
 and “it” in the following clause refers to 
 prohibition, when what he evidently means 
 is the liquor question is not a social or 
 political question. Now is it? If the 
 statements made in the opening para- 
 graphs of this article are true, namely, 
 that one may not permit an open well 
 filled with typhoid germs to be accessible 
 to the passing public or may not sell 
 putrid meat or even give it away because 
 of the effects upon either the ignorant or 
 the wise public, and if one may not sell 
 explosives indiscriminately and if one may 
 
 not use them indiscriminately because of 
 the effect upon the rights of others, gen- 
 erally called the rights of society, is it not 
 quite possible that there may be some 
 similar reason for prohibiting the kind of 
 use which may be made of alcohol? Time 
 was when the only known uses of alcoholic 
 liquors were beverage and to a less ex- 
 tent medicinal. Now there are many 
 other and legitimate uses. 
 
 WHAT THE COURTS HAVE SAID 
 Along with many others, Mr. du Pont 
 seems to think that all of the things that 
 have been said about alcoholic beverages 
 may be traced to reformers. The Su- 
 preme Court of the United States long 
 before an Anti-Saloon League was even 
 dreamed about, before the days of the 
 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 
 before the days of the Prohibition party, 
 as far back as 1847, eighty-one years ago, 
 the highest judicial tribunal in Christen- 
 dom, in the famous license cases (5 How. 
 504) through Chief Justice Grier said, 
 
 “It is not necessary for the sake of 
 justifying the state legislation now 
 under consideration, to array the ap- 
 palling statistics of misery, pauperism 
 and crime, which have their origin in 
 the USE or ABUSE of ardent spirits.” 
 
 A few years ago the same court, speak- 
 ing through Mr. Justice Harlan, in the 
 case of Mugler v. Kansas, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 
 297, said: 
 
 “We cannot shut out of view the 
 fact, within the knowledge of all, that 
 the PUBLIC HEALTH, the PUBLIC 
 MORALS, and the PUBLIC SAFETY, 
 may be endangered by the general use 
 of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact 
 established by statistics accessible to 
 every one, that the idleness, disorder, 
 pauperism, and crime existing in the 
 country, are, in some degree, at least, 
 traceable to this evil.” 
 
 Only a few years later, in the case of 
 Crowley v. Christensen (137 U. S. 86, 11 
 Sup. Court Rep. 13) , the Supreme Court 
 left no doubt about the status of the liquor 
 traffic, declaring that to the use of ardent 
 spirits obtained at the retail liquor 
 saloons of that day more than to any 
 other source was attributable the crime 
 and misery of the time, and then settled 
 once and for all the broad fundamental 
 constitutional question that 
 
 “There is no inherent right in a 
 citizen to sell intoxicating liquors hy 
 retail. It is not a privilege of a citi- 
 zen of the state or of a citizen of the 
 United States.” 
 
 2 
 
In later decisions is has been held both 
 by state and federal supreme courts that 
 there is no inherent right in a citizen to 
 purchase intoxicating liquors for beverage 
 purposes. Why? The reasoning of all of 
 these courts is based upon the broad 
 principle that under the social compact 
 upon which civilization rests in its organic 
 relations the admitted rights of individuals 
 as such are subservient to the rights of 
 the group as a whole. The illustrations 
 of the operation of this principle are 
 almost without number and so generally 
 recognized and accepted that the matter 
 is no longer open to controversy. Even 
 one of Mr. du Pont’s powder houses can- 
 not be placed when and where Mr. du 
 Pont’s agents or representatives may most 
 desire. It is a commodity with a recog- 
 nized hazard attached and therefore can- 
 not be used for any and all purposes at 
 any and all times. The right of the in- 
 dividual to use du Pont powder is subject 
 to the larger, more comprehensive and 
 equally well-established right of the group 
 to protect itself. 
 
 SOCIETY HAS RIGHTS 
 Mr. du Pont says that the “drinking of 
 liquor in moderation is no crime, not even 
 a proved injurious act.” Much often de- 
 pends upon one’s definition of “crime.” 
 The anti-prohibitionist is wont to set up 
 straw men to knock them down, then 
 point to his valorous deeds. The sale of 
 alcoholic liquor for beverage purposes is 
 not based upon any assumption that the 
 drinking of liquor either in moderation or 
 excess is a crime per se, but it is based 
 upon the anti-social character of the act 
 of drinking which renders the individual 
 who drinks unfit to perform his positive 
 obligations to society and which may 
 make him a positive menace to society. 
 It is in the “may” of the matter that the 
 right to prohibit the manufacture, sale 
 and distribution of alcoholic beverages 
 rests. It is because there is a possibility 
 of harm coming to the group from the 
 use of liquor by an individual that the 
 manufacture, sale and distribution of it is 
 prohibited. We do not wait until a man 
 armed to the teeth runs amuck upon the 
 public streets and actually kills somebody 
 before his weapons are taken away from 
 him. We prohibit the individual from 
 having the arms in his possession because 
 of the possibility of even a sane man 
 using them improperly and with danger 
 to the safety of the general public. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH 
 But Mr. du Pont says, “The drinking of 
 liquor in moderation is not a proved in- 
 
 jurious act.” Injurious to whom and how 
 much? In the case of Crowley v. Chris- 
 tensen above cited, the Supreme Court 
 said: 
 
 “It is urged that as the liquors are 
 used as a beverage and the injury fol- 
 lowing them, if taken in excess, is 
 voluntarily inflicted and is confined to 
 the party offending, their sales should 
 be without restrictions, the contention 
 being, that what a man shall drink 
 equally with what he shall eat is not 
 properly a matter for legislation. 
 There is in this position an assumption 
 of fact which does not exist — that 
 when the liquors are taken in excess, 
 the injuries are confined to the party 
 offending. The injury, it is true, first 
 falls upon him in his health, which 
 the habit undermines; in his morals, 
 which it weakens, and in self-abase- 
 ment, which it creates. But, as it 
 leads to neglect of business and waste 
 of property and general demoraliza- 
 tion, it affects those who are im- 
 mediately connected with and de- 
 pendent upon him.” 
 
 But says Mr. du Pont: 
 
 “This refers only to liquors 'taken in ex- 
 cess.’ I said ‘the drinking of liquor in 
 moderation is not a proved injurious act.’ ” 
 
 Now Mr. du Pont and his organization 
 undoubtedly employ highly-trained chem- 
 ists. Mr. du Pont undoubtedly has a per- 
 sonal physician to look after his health. 
 Will Mr. du Pont be willing to accept the 
 scientifically trained judgment of these 
 men as to whether or not he is right? 
 The success of the du Pont Powder Co. is 
 dependent largely upon the fact that it 
 has accepted and adapted to its use in- 
 formation of a scientific and of an 
 economic character. Is Mr. du Pont will- 
 ing to accept scientific truth only for 
 business reasons because it makes him 
 dollars and does he reject it when it in- 
 terferes with his personal views upon the 
 subject of prohibition? Why is it that 
 men refuse to accept truth because they 
 do not like it? Is Mr. du Pont not aware 
 that scientists of Germany, as well as of 
 England and America, join in the ir- 
 resistible conclusions from myriads of ex- 
 periments and have established as beyond 
 question the fact that the use of even so- 
 called light alcoholic beverages such as 
 beer and wine is a menace to the human 
 body and its functions? Why will Mr. du 
 Pont accept scientific truth in the busi- 
 ness world and refuse to accept it as ap- 
 plied to the liquor problem? 
 
 3 
 
PROVINCIALISM OF MR. du PONT 
 Mr. du Pont says: 
 
 “The great majority of our people 
 have no respect for this kind of a law 
 (prohibition) even if they think good 
 has come of it or are willing to observe 
 it.” 
 
 Does Mr. du Pont mean to say that all 
 prohibitory laws acquire this status in the 
 minds of the American people or just 
 laws prohibiting beverage alcohol? If he 
 means only the latter, Mr. du Pont ought 
 to get away from his Eastern Philadelphia 
 environment long enough to know that 
 there are many millions of adults in the 
 United States who believe in prohibition 
 just as conscientiously and have just as 
 much respect for their theories about the 
 Eighteenth Amendment. Provincialism 
 is no longer a distinguishing characteris- 
 tic of the backwoodsman. Of the per- 
 centage of the people who believe in this 
 we will say something later in connection 
 with Mr. du Pont’s other statements re- 
 garding the majorities back of prohibition. 
 
 Mr. du Pont further says: 
 
 “Those who formerly drank to ex- 
 cess may now do so and, if the record 
 of drunkenness is a criterion, they are 
 still active in their old time pursuits.” 
 
 If any one is really interested in know- 
 ing something about the barest facts on 
 this particular phase of Mr. du Pont’s con- 
 tention, one should read the companion 
 article in the same number of Current 
 History in which Mr. du Pont’s article ap- 
 pears, by “Pussyfoot” Johnson, the title of 
 which is “European Drink Evil an Object 
 Lesson to America.” There are tables 
 showing that in 1926 the total number of 
 arrests per ten thousand population in the 
 city of New York itself was only 14.26 as 
 against actual convictions for drunkenness 
 in greater London of 48 per ten thousand, or 
 less than one-third, even assuming that all 
 of those arrested in London were convicted. 
 If they were not, the ratio would be larger. 
 Even Paris shows from 1920 to 1924, in- 
 clusive, nearly three times as many ar- 
 rests for intoxication per ten thousand of 
 population as were made in New York, and 
 this is the capital city of the greatest wine 
 country of the world. Glasgow, Liverpool 
 and Edinburgh show a much larger per- 
 centage of arrests for drunkenness than 
 does New York City. If one were to accept 
 the force and follow the logic of Mr. du 
 Pont’s reasoning, all laws — regulatory, ad- 
 ministrative or prohibitive — should be re- 
 pealed because, perforce, people scoff at 
 the law and get drunk now. 
 
 Prohibition may not be perfect. It may 
 not be accepted 100 per cent any more 
 than the Ten Commandments are. And 
 yet, according to the tables of Mr. John- 
 son, or even those to be found in the 1928 
 World Almanac, published by the wet New 
 York World, there is only a small portion 
 of the same number of drunks in that 
 great cosmopolitan city of New York where 
 people really must be voluntarily observ- 
 ing the Constitution because there is no 
 state law to be obeyed and there is only a 
 handful of federal agents to enforce the 
 federal law. 
 
 Du PONT ON THE CONSTITUTION 
 Mr. du Pont says that after the adoption 
 of the Eighteenth Amendment “Congress 
 proceeded to disregard the Constitution of 
 the United States just as the legislatures 
 had disregarded the mandates of the state 
 Constitutions and expressed wishes of the 
 people.” The best, the only complete an- 
 swer to Mr. du Pont’s ideas about the con- 
 stitutionality of the acts of Congress is the 
 series of about fifty decisions of the United 
 States Supreme Court which has passed 
 upon every phase of the Eighteenth 
 Amendment and the laws for its enforce- 
 ment which the ingenuity of man could 
 bring up for discussion. All of those de- 
 cisions have held both the - amendment 
 and the laws constitutional in every de- 
 tail. Yet Mr. du Pont says they are un- 
 constitutional. 
 
 BEGGING THE QUESTION 
 Mr. du Pont is apparently not above 
 begging the question, for he says: 
 
 “Though sale for all beverage pur- 
 poses is forbidden by Constitution, this 
 law (Volstead Act) permits it if the 
 beverage be sacramental in charac- 
 ter.” 
 
 We submit that this is a plain begging 
 of the question, for Mr. du Pont to insist 
 that the sacramental use of alcoholic liq- 
 uors is a beverage use. 
 
 Then, again, Mr. du Pont is much dis- 
 turbed by the fact that the Constitution 
 prohibits only the use of alcoholic liquors 
 for beverage purposes but that “this law 
 (Volstead act) forbids manufacture, sale 
 and transportation for use in cookery.” 
 Does not Mr. du Pont know that denatur- 
 ed alcohol may be used for cooking vege- 
 tables if applied in the right way; that is, 
 as a source of heat rather than as a chem- 
 ical compound of the food? 
 
 The Supreme Court has sustained all of 
 tne regulations incident to the enforce- 
 ment of the constitutional amendment be- 
 cause the Supreme Court says that Con- 
 
 4 
 
gress and the legislative bodies are the 
 judge of the necessities for such regula- 
 tions and that all that Congress has thus 
 far done is not a violation of their powers 
 under the Constittuion. Mr. du Pont ought 
 to write a brief and submit it to the mem- 
 bers of the Supreme Court to show them 
 how wrong they are. For business advice 
 we should be inclined to consult Mr. du 
 Pont, but on questions of constitutionality 
 of acts of Congress we shall still go to the 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 REVOLUTION BUGABOO 
 
 We are solemnly warned that “the 
 United States is in the throes of revolu- 
 tion.” The cause for this upheaval seems 
 to be that the fundamentals of govern- 
 ment have been disregarded in the ad- 
 mittedly desirable abolition of the saloon 
 and the attempt to stamp out drunken- 
 ness. We are informed that the people 
 generally are not “so very much concerned 
 with the question of drink” but because 
 the Declaration of Independence has been 
 dragged in the dust. What a sweet morsel 
 this is: 
 
 “We hold these truths to be self-evi- 
 dent, that all men are created equal, 
 that they are endowed by their Cre- 
 ator with certain inalienable rights, 
 that among these are life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness.” 
 
 Yes, this is a sweet morsel, unknown in 
 thousands of homes before the Eighteenth 
 Amendment was adopted. Yes, the lives 
 of the mother and the children were at 
 the mercy of the drink-crazed father. 
 Liberty — something to be dreamed about 
 but never realized, and happiness was to 
 be found only beyond the Jordan. 
 
 WHOSE RIGHTS ARE IN JEOPARDY? 
 Whose rights are to be considered now? 
 Let us face this question frankly. The 
 right of the brewer and the distiller to 
 manufacture the liquor? The right of the 
 saloonkeeper to sell it? The right of the 
 drinker to buy it? Or the right of society 
 as a whole or the drinker’s family in par- 
 ticular, to be protected from the manu- 
 facture, the sale and the drinking? Mr. 
 du Pont thinks only of one group. We 
 have previously cited the decisions of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States to 
 show that the right to manufacture, to 
 sell and even to buy is not one of these 
 inalienable rights which our forefathers 
 said were endowments of their Creator. 
 Why do sane business men talk such fool- 
 ishness? Why can’t they think straight 
 about prohibition as well as about busi- 
 ness? 
 
 We will pass over Mr. du Pont’s inad- 
 vertence regarding the reason for the 
 Declaration of Independence. The tyran- 
 ny of the majority. What majority? The 
 old and threadbare fallacy that a major- 
 ity of our people are forbidden against 
 their express wish to manufacture, sell 
 and transport beverage liquors? This is 
 the first time we knew that the 178,000 sa- 
 loonkeepers and their bartenders put out 
 of business by the Eighteenth Amend- 
 ment, the 1,247 brewers and their em- 
 ployees, and the 507 distillers and their 
 employees were a majority of 110 millions 
 of people in 1920, but Mr. du Pont con- 
 tends, 
 
 “So today a great number of our 
 people, perhaps a majority of them, 
 forbidden against their express wish 
 to manufacture, sell or transport bev- 
 erage liquor, are revolting against the 
 tyranny of their fellows.” 
 
 WHENCE CAME THIS MAJORITY? 
 But perhaps this is a new crop of indi- 
 viduals that has sprung up since the 
 Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, for 
 the Eighteenth Amendment must have 
 been adopted by a constitutional majority 
 which required three -fourths of the states 
 to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment be- 
 fore it could be put into the Constitution; 
 but Americans never do things by halves, 
 and so New Jersey, yes, New Jersey, be- 
 came the 46th ratifying state in 1922. The 
 total number of votes cast for the ratifica- 
 tion of this amendment in these 46 legis- 
 latures was four times as many as the 
 number of votes cast against it. More than 
 a score of the legislative bodies cast a 
 unanimous vote for the amendment. 
 Whence came all of this overwhelming 
 sentiment in state legislatures for the 
 Eighteenth Amendment? Are Congress- 
 men and legislators likely to be so utterly 
 ignorant of the wishes of their con- 
 stitutents and so wholly unmindful of the 
 wishes of the voters at home? Something 
 ought to be done about it and something 
 probably would have been done about it 
 if Mr. du Pont’s contentions were true, 
 but each succeeding Congress has had 
 larger majorities on this identical question 
 than the Congress that submitted the 
 Eighteenth Amendment. The people of 
 the United States have had five successive 
 biennial opportunities in which to change 
 the personnel of Congress if they were not 
 in favor of what had already been done. 
 Something’s wrong somewhere. With 
 rare exceptions most of the states have 
 very emphatically approved of more effec- 
 tive and stringent regulations by their 
 legislators each succeeding year. 
 
Du PONT VS. Du PONT 
 
 Mr. du Pont speaks about the “express 
 wish” to manufacture, sell and transport 
 beverage liquors. Who has expressed 
 such a wish? When and where and how 
 did they express it? Will Mr. du Pont 
 put his hand upon the facts and en- 
 lighten the general public? This majority, 
 whoever they are, “are revolting against 
 the tyranny of their fellows.” This would 
 not be so impressive were it not for the 
 fact that later on in his article Mr. du 
 Pont sagely remarks that one of the 
 groups of supporters of prohibition is the 
 bootleggers. Now, bootleggers are those 
 who sell beverage liquors, because nobody 
 but a bootlegger sells beverage liquors to- 
 day. Either bootleggers who sell the bev- 
 erage liquor and rumrunners who trans- 
 port it and the moonshiners who manu- 
 facture it are revolting against the pro- 
 hibition law, or else they are supporting it. 
 They cannot be doing both of these things 
 at the same time. Yet, Mr. du Pont says 
 that the bootleggers are “in active co- 
 operation with those who have made pro- 
 hibition a semi - religious issue.” Just 
 another illustration of how loosely this 
 business man thinks when he thinks 
 about something other than business. 
 
 FRANKNESS OF MR. Du PONT 
 CONSIDERED 
 
 The frankness of Mr. du Pont must be 
 commended in his admission that during 
 the first year under national prohibition 
 the number of arrests for drunkenness 
 fell to only 44 per cent of the 1914 num- 
 ber. If Mr. du Pont, however, had made 
 a comparison of the number of arrests in 
 the last year preceding the beginning of 
 the war-time prohibition restrictions in 
 1918, the per cent would have been much 
 below 44 per cent, usually fixed at about 
 25 per cent. Mr. du Pont naively says, 
 “Gradually as various sources of 
 liquor supply have increased in the 
 United States, arrests for drunkenness 
 have also increased, until the total in 
 recording cities is now equal to that in 
 pre-war times.” 
 
 Mr. du Pont probably says more than he 
 intended to say, for what he really says 
 is that the more liquor there is available 
 the more drunks there will be, and he ad- 
 mits that drunkenness is an evil, for the 
 title of his article is concerned with “a 
 Remedy for the Drink Evil.” Now, if 
 prohibition could reduce the number of 
 arrests for drunkenness in 1920 to 25 per 
 cent of what they were in 1917, then pro- 
 hibition enforced would clearly be a dis- 
 
 tinct boon to society as a whole. And 
 after all we can ignore Mr. du Pont’s 
 claim of the majority who wish to manu- 
 facture, sell and transport beverage 
 liquors, for they are the commercial class 
 who seek to profit by violating the law 
 and who, common sense tells us, are in a 
 mere fractional minority of the nearly 120 
 millions of people of the United States. 
 
 DRUNKENNESS CASES DECREASING 
 
 But Mr. du Pont says that in these re- 
 cording cities the number of arrests for 
 drunkenness is now as large as it was in 
 pre-war times. If one were to make the 
 comparison between 1914 and 1926, let us 
 go to the wet New York World Almanac, 
 page 506, and we will find that in New 
 York City, according to the official figures 
 furnished by the Police Commissioner in 
 1914, there were 23,122 arrests for intoxica- 
 tion, while in 1920 there were only 7,804. 
 Evidently those who “wish to manufac- 
 ture, sell and transport beverage liquors” 
 and therefore “are revolting against the 
 tyranny of their fellows” had not yet 
 gotten into action in 1920, but little by 
 little they established their lines of com- 
 munication and discovered year by year, 
 a little better each time, how to evade the 
 law, defy the Constitution and break down 
 the morale of the offiicials with whom 
 they came in contact. But it is quite sig- 
 nificant that the peak of this increase 
 was reached in 1923, since which time it 
 has decreased to 12,330 or just a little 
 more than one-half the number of ar- 
 rests in 1914. 
 
 Yes, and there is another thing to keep 
 in mind, that in the twelve years from 
 1914 to 1926 the population of New York 
 increased almost 750,000, three-fourths of 
 a million people, or about 12 per cent, but 
 the number of arrests for drunkenness in 
 1926 was only a little more than one-half 
 of the number of arrests for the same 
 cause in 1914. 
 
 Moreover, the additional fact must be 
 borne in mind that while under the state 
 law of New York the manufacture, sale 
 and transportation of alcoholic liquor is 
 not forbidden, drunkenness is still a 
 crime and that the degree of drunkenness 
 calling for arrest is much less today than 
 it was ten years ago, yet in spite of these 
 circumstances the decrease is very re- 
 markable. 
 
 AN UNFORTUNATE SELECTION 
 
 Mr. du Pont is rather unfortunate in 
 his selection of England, or in fact any 
 other European country, as a basis of 
 comparison as indicated in the tables of 
 
 6 
 
Mr. Johnson’s article above referred to. 
 American cities with their newly met and 
 widely diverse nationalities, subjected in a 
 peculiar sense and to an unusual degree 
 to the political influence of their new and 
 adopted country, nevertheless are leaving 
 their European sister cities behind in 
 their advance toward sobriety. This is so 
 apparent that further attention need not 
 be given to this phase of Mr. du Pont’s 
 contention. 
 
 Mr. du Pont is mildly enthusiastic over 
 the fact that England has taught us a 
 lesson by “reducing the consumption of 
 alcohol to one-half of what it was before 
 the world war.” I have before me the 
 April, 1928, number of the Alliance News, 
 which is the official organ of the United 
 Kingdom Alliance, an English temperance 
 publication, containing an elaborate dis- 
 play of detailed statistics with tables and 
 charts enabling one to get at almost any 
 phase of the English drinking situation. 
 We pass on a few facts which may throw 
 some light on this alleged decrease. The 
 fact of the matter is that the high peak 
 year of consumption of beer, wine and 
 spirits in the United Kingdom was reached 
 in 1874 and ’75. From that period wine 
 has shown a more or less consistent, very 
 gradual decrease from approximately 55 
 gallons per capita per year to less than 30 
 gallons per capita in 1917, then a sudden 
 rise to 40 gallons in the years 1918 and 
 T9, and some variation to 1927 where the 
 consumption is about 38 gallons. The 
 consumption of spirits has declined from 
 the end of 1875, when it reached the high 
 peak of approximately 128 gallons per 
 capita, to the next high peak in 1899 and 
 1900 when it stood at about 111 gallons, 
 with a rapid decrease in 1915 when it 
 stood at approximately 75 gallons, with a 
 sudden drop during the war to the low 
 point in 1918 of approximately 34 gallons. 
 In 1919 and ’20 it reached the level of ap- 
 proximately 48 gallons per capita and has 
 gradually declined to approximately 29 
 gallons per capita in 1927. There were 
 manifest reasons for a sharp decline in 
 England in the consumption of all liquors 
 from 1914 on. Beer especially from its 
 high peak of 1874 and ’75 fell and rose 
 again to a lower peak in 1899 and 1900 and 
 then fell off very rapidly to the beginning 
 of the World War, at which time the con- 
 sumption fell off from 27 standard gallons 
 per capita to 10 gallons in 1918. Consump- 
 tion more than doubled between 1918 and 
 1920, jumping from 10 to 20 Y 2 gallons. The 
 1927 consumption was approximately 17 
 gallons. The figures above given for wine 
 are based upon wine gallons, that of spir- 
 
 its upon proof gallons. Incidentally this 
 means that with the dilution of these spir- 
 its to their commercial strength the quan- 
 tity of spirits purchased and drunk was 
 much larger. The beer measure is the 
 standard gallon. 
 
 Compare the per capita consumption of 
 wine, spirits and beer in the United States 
 for any period prior to national prohibi- 
 tion. 
 
 Now, in the face of these facts what be- 
 comes of Mr. du Pont’s claim that En- 
 gland has reduced to one-half its con- 
 sumption of alcoholic beverages prior to 
 the World War? The fluctuation previous 
 to 1914 varies according to the material 
 prosperity and the purchasing power of 
 the drinking public. The high peak years 
 1874-’75, 1899-1900, and 1913 were years of 
 industrial prosperity, but each succeeding 
 high peak period was lower than for the 
 preceding high peak period. Mr. du Pont 
 must be perfectly well aware of the fact 
 that England has been passing through a 
 severely abnormal industrial and economic 
 period since the war. This had its imme- 
 diate effect upon the consumption of liq- 
 uors throughout Great Britain. 
 
 THE REVENUE LURE 
 
 Mr. du Pont is attracted by the revenue- 
 producing features of the English revenue 
 system. This is a natural viewpoint for 
 Mr. du Pont to take. He reckons that 
 “with a population of 42 million this 
 means 3,200,000 pounds (or $16,000,000) 
 each year from one million inhabitants.” 
 In other words, $16.00 per capita. Now, 
 what would this mean for the United 
 States? It means that if we were paying 
 revenue at the same rate on intoxicating 
 beverages under an internal revenue sys- 
 tem, our 118 millions of people would have 
 paid in liquor tax alone $1,888,000,000. Mr. 
 du Pont, evidently basing his figures upon 
 a smaller population, says that the return 
 would be $1,850,000,000 a year. From whom 
 would this come? It would come from the 
 drinkers. It would come from the families 
 represented in 1926 in the 46,762,240 sav- 
 ings depositors of this country. It would 
 mean that thousands of families would 
 have gone without their flivvers. It would 
 mean, aside from the evil effects of the 
 drink itself promiscuously distributed and 
 consumed, the decrease of manpower, 
 which would put us back on a level with 
 the drinking countries of Europe. Mr. du 
 Pont ought not to forget that fact. Lloyd 
 George and other British statesmen have 
 sounded the warning to their fellow coun- 
 trymen that “England drunk cannot com- 
 
 7 
 
pete with America sober.” We cannot 
 have our pie and eat it. We cannot have 
 our prosperity in the forms of multiplied 
 comfortable homes for the common peo- 
 ple, automobiles, radios and telephones for 
 everybody, building and loan and savings 
 bank deposits beyond parallel in the his- 
 tory of the world, and at the same time 
 raise nearly two billions of dollars of rev- 
 enue by taxing the sale of a commodity 
 the consumption of which would not only 
 decrease tremendously our producing pow- 
 er but also divert the fruits of that pro- 
 ducing power from automobiles, savings 
 banks, building and loan companies and 
 the education of our young people to the 
 coffers of the brewers and distillers and 
 saloonkeepers who formerly waxed fat in 
 America. Why is it that a man who thinks 
 straight on his own business lines can’t 
 think straight when he deals with the eco- 
 nomic issues involved in the drink ques- 
 tion? 
 
 THE CRUX OF THE WHOLE MATTER 
 But perhaps Mr. du Pont is thinking 
 straighter than we suppose. Perhaps the 
 answer, however, may be found in the fol- 
 lowing remarkable statement by Mr. du 
 Pont. We will let him speak for himself : 
 
 ‘‘As our average income tax collec- 
 tions for the years 1923-1926 from in- 
 dividuals and corporations were $1,- 
 817,000,000, resulting in a considerable 
 surplus, it is fair to say that the Brit- 
 ish liquor policy applied in the United 
 States would permit of the total abo- 
 lition of the income tax both personal 
 and corporate. Or, this liquor tax 
 would be sufficient to pay off the en- 
 tire debt of the United States, interest 
 and principal, in a little less than fif- 
 teen years.” 
 
 DO WE NOT HAVE HERE THE GIST 
 
 OF MR. Du PONT’S THINKING? He, 
 forsooth, would like to be relieved of the 
 payment of his income tax and take it out 
 of the drinkers’ homes of America. Such 
 drinking as is being done today is admit- 
 tedly being done largely by the rich. The 
 actual economic loss to the world in gen- 
 eral caused by those who drink today is 
 not so great as it would be if taken from 
 the earnings of the man who has only 
 sufficient for the necessities and the com- 
 forts and a few of the minor luxuries for 
 himself and family. Economically con- 
 sidered, what does it matter if Mr. du 
 
 THE AMERICAN ISSUE PUBLISHI 
 
 Pont‘s income tax-paying friends with an 
 income of a million or so should spend 
 ten, twenty-five or fifty thousand a year 
 for booze and on that should pay a tax 
 levied by the government? That would be 
 a mere bagatelle as compared with release 
 from the payment of income tax on mil- 
 lion dollar incomes, and Mr. du Pont’s in- 
 come tax-paying friends for whom he ap- 
 parently holds a brief would gladly ex- 
 change position with their English tax- 
 paying brothers. Do we not have here the 
 crux of the whole matter? This is not the 
 first time that such an argument has been 
 advanced. An employer of labor about a 
 year ago advanced the same theory that 
 if we were to place Great Britain’s tax 
 upon and permit the sale of liquor, the 
 employees of the factories could pay the 
 taxes now being paid by the employer. 
 This is indeed a sordid argument and does 
 not belong to the twentieth century, but 
 it is the plain unvarnished argument of 
 this chairman of the Board of Directors of 
 a great corporation. 
 
 No wonder that the rank and file of the 
 producing class of America do not respond 
 to that kind of an argument. No wonder 
 that this numerically large group has seen 
 and appreciates the value of the prohibi- 
 tion policy and has at each succeeding 
 election registered their approval of the 
 men who have given America a chance to 
 accept prohibition and who also endorse 
 those men who stand for its rigid appli- 
 cation and enforcement. 
 
 No, Mr. du Pont, you cannot fool the 
 people of America. That kind of finan- 
 cial, economic sophistry will not find its 
 way into their pocketbooks. To use an 
 old American phrase, the average Ameri- 
 can head of the family and the average 
 co-partner in that headship, recently en- 
 dowed with suffrage, know very well 
 “which side of their bread is buttered.” 
 No, no, Mr. du Pont, you will have to fig- 
 ure some other way to get rid of paying 
 income tax without unloading it on a new 
 crop of drinkers in America. Is this the 
 reason why the president of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Railway Company and other rep- 
 resentatives of great corporate interests 
 with stupendous incomes often avowing 
 total abstinence as the rule of their own 
 lives are yet insisting upon the right of 
 the poor man to drink good liquor — if 
 only he will pay in that way the expenses 
 of government? 
 
 CO., WESTERVILLE. OHIO. U S A. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 s