PROHIBITION 
 
 AS A 
 
 PROMOTER OF PROSPERITY 
 
 FROM A MANUFACTURER’S 
 POINT OF VIEW 
 
 ‘By COLONEL PATRICK HENRY CALLAHAN 
 
 Manufacturer and Employer of Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Formerly President of the National Pmnt, Oil and Varnish Association 
 
 Address delivered at the 
 
 Congress of the World League Against Alcoholism 
 Winona Lake, Indiana 
 August ig, ig2y 
 
 THE AMERICAN ISSUE PRESS 
 WESTERVILLE. OHIO 
 
PROHIBITION AS A PROMOTER 
 OF PROSPERITY 
 
 FROM A MANUFACTURER’S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 I have just come from a dinner where twenty-five or thirty of us Ken- 
 tuckians got together, as Kentuckians do, under the leadership of Mr. Graham, 
 the Anti-Saloon League Superintendent of our state, and at the close of the 
 dinner we sang the old song, “The Moon Shines No Longer on the Kentucky 
 Home,” It has been said of us prohibitionists that we are long of face and 
 ^tern of character, and that we have none of the sweetness of life. On the 
 contrary, when I think of the battles, and embittered battles, that we have 
 been through during the last ten or fifteen years, it is astonishing that we are 
 able to retain these days our usual abundance of good humor. 
 
 As my dear friend. Bishop Nicholson, has told you, I come from Ken- 
 tucky and the metropolis of the state, and I have seen the remarkable degree 
 of prosperity that prohibition has brought to my city. Furthermore, he has 
 told you of my having been, a few years ago, president of the second largest 
 business association of the countrj'. Therefore, I think I can speak with 
 some experience on this matter of prosperity, on this matter of flourishing 
 business, and how much prohibition is responsible for this prosperity. Pros- 
 perity, as you perhaps know, does not apply to all classes at the same time. 
 We have had in this country for the last four or five years a great degree of 
 prosperity for certain classes, including the iron industries and almost all the 
 urban industries. On the other hand, mining and those employed in mines, 
 either coal or mineral, and farm labor and farmers themselves, have had no 
 prosperity except in small spots. But industry has been prosperous in a marked 
 degree ever since the introduction of prohibition. 
 
 Very close estimates could be made of the amount of money spent for 
 intoxicating liquor before the time of prohibition. We had our Internal Reve- 
 nue Department and we had the state returns as well, and we estimate that 
 for liquor of all kinds there was apirroximately five billions of dollars spent 
 annually. Professor Fisher of Yale estimates the former expenditure for liquor 
 to be nearly si.x billion dollars, but we 'will just consider the lesser amount 
 of five billions. Five billion dollars or even four billions actualy saved out 
 of the five bilions formerly spent on liquor, and added to the usual purchasing 
 power of the nation, will go a long way toward making the “wheels go spin- 
 ning,” as we business men say. To say four billion dollars of a saving is very 
 conservative, and when this sum of money is put into circulation for not only 
 necessities but those luxuries and things that go toward a better form of liv- 
 ing, it is going to mean a great deal of prosperity for all these lines of trade 
 and traffic. This prosperity also reflects itself directly and indirectly in all 
 other lines of business and professional activity. 
 
 Those people who make a study of economics sometimes differ as to what 
 is the cause of prosperity. There is one school, the conservative kind, or 
 rather the thought that prevailed a hundred years ago, that if the upper class, or 
 nowadays, the finance or money interests, were prosperous that would of itself 
 expand, it would make investments and bring returns, give employment and 
 
additional employment, and that general prosperitj" would prevail therefrom. 
 The other school of thought says that when the farmers have fine crops and 
 the workers in the factories and the mines get good wages, they produce a 
 purchasing power and make profits for the financier in just the reverse of the 
 above. I believe nowadays most of the economists have concluded that you 
 can not have .general prosperity very long unless there is a general prosperity 
 among the masses where the bulk of the purchasing begins. 
 
 During the last several years, all workers but the miners and the farmers 
 liave been prosperous. Farm labor is now down to twenty millions of our 
 population and more than 70% of our population is dependent on industr}', 
 business and transportation, and either by compulsory methods of prohibition 
 or personal desire we have now adopted a type of thrift or saving that has put 
 money into savings banks, into building and loan societies, in seven years, 
 to the equivalent of the previous twenty-seven years before. We all known it 
 is not human nature for all of us to save mmney. I believe for every dollar 
 that has been saved, ten dollars have been spent, which is a very conserva- 
 tive calculation. This money has been spent in moving pictures, radio equip- 
 ment, entertainments at home, better and more expensive forms of dressing, 
 and certainly there have been improvements in the sanitary and hygienic form 
 of living in America in the last seven j^ears that have put all the plumbing 
 fixtures people ahead, doubling their business everywhere for the last seven 
 years. With the good wages of today, which are twice the wages of seven 
 years ago, a portion of the same put in the bank and a much larger portion ex- 
 pended, you may naturally expect to see stores prospering and all forms of in- 
 dustries that make products that go into home life, advertising, selling, and 
 prospering. 
 
 The American people and the working people, especially now, have a fash- 
 ion of living that is all their own in comfort, sanitation and hygiene, spending 
 money for entertainment and amusement, the like of which was never dreamed 
 of in other countries and by previous generations. That in turn has brought 
 about a wonderful purchasing power that causes a prosperous, flourishing con- 
 dition in this countrj" of ours. Just the other day the Brotherhood engineers 
 of this country on only" the Eastern lines were given an advance of six mil- 
 lion dollars in their wages, which is the estimate for only one year. Every- 
 body who is studying economics realizes that that means six more million 
 dollars to go into building and loans and savings banks, although perhaps nine 
 out of ten of those dollars will be spent for additional luxuries, additional im- 
 provements in living, and being spent largely in the cities, of course, it will 
 bring additional prosperity to the cities and their factories and employees. Iii 
 Louisville. Kentucky, we have seen this very great improvement in business 
 and the professions. There was a time when whisky, as has been said by me. 
 was to Louisville what motor cars are now to Detroit, or steel to Pittsburgh. 
 It was just as much a part of our fabric of finance and our social structure. 
 There were 29 distilleries, one of them m.aking 400 barrels of whisky a day. 
 But we now have a city with varied industries that give steady employment 
 and pay fine wages and in five years of prohibition we have showed as much 
 growth in population and building as during the previous fifty years. 
 
 Prohibition, Prosperity, Peace and Plenty- go hand in hand. 
 
 PRINTED IN U S. A