of commercialism to retain the system and at the same time cultivate a spirit antagonistic to it. Probably the quicker and surer way would be to suspend all intercollegiate athletics for a college generation by agreement of groups of colleges, during which period every effort should be made to establish the tradition of athletics for education. If an institution could not survive such a period of transition, it is a fair question whether the institution has any reason for survival.

Typically American though our frantic devotion to intercollegiate athletics may be, we shall not long tolerate a system which provides only a costly, injurious, and excessive régime of physical training for a few students, especially those who need it least. The call today is for inexpensive, healthful, and moderate exercise for all students, especially those who need it most. Colleges must sooner or later heed that call: their athletics must be for education, not for business.

I

ARE we about to become an alcoholfree nation? Or must the long struggle against intemperance continue until mankind has reached a state of development in which its present weaknesses have been turned into strength? There is no lack of loud trumpetings in anticipation of an early and final victory over the alcohol enemy. The confident predictions impress the uninformed to a point of belief. More cautious observers are perplexed, while others rush into the fight for their own ends. The attitude of a very large portion of the public toward the present stage of drink reform in this country is one of drift, more or less marked by uneasy forebodings. Too many lack the bearings to be gained from the history of the temperance movement in its various stages, without which the present trend of things cannot be understood

nor can any reasonable forecast be made for the future.

Moral suasion was the sole reliance of the temperance reform in its earliest manifestations. To create and sustain a desire for personal abstinence was the great aim. About a century ago enthusiasm for this virtue surged like a wave over much of the land. But when its force seemed about to wane, there crept into the minds of some men the belief that to pillory the drinker was not enough so long as the purveyor of drink remained unscathed. Then arose a demand for force where suasion appeared to fail, and the idea took root of compelling temperance by prohibiting the manufacture and sale of all intoxicants, which found its first full-fledged expression in the State of Maine about 1850. Many advocates of abstinence deprecated this recourse to the 'strong arm of the law'; but they were given a scant and hardly courteous hearing.

And there was need of law, for the saloon, supplanting the old-time tavern, had in many places become a menacing institution. Gradually the battle for temperance shifted from the drinker to the drink-seller and those behind him. Old-style temperance revivals continued for many a year, to be sure, but the suppression of the saloon as the ultimate source of the drink evil became the vital issue. Within the decade of 1850-1860 twelve states followed the example of Maine and enacted prohibition, and in the next twenty years (1860-1880) Kansas and Rhode Island, and by 1890 the Dakotas, were added to those twelve. Thus in the space of forty years no less than seventeen commonwealths embraced the prohibition faith.

During the prohibition campaigns of the earlier periods, as now, the anti-saloon feeling was the mainspring of the agitation. In this detached students of the history of the prohibition movement concur without dissent. The saloon as we know it is distinctly the offspring of rough pioneer conditions, and whether one looked to the large urban centres or to the sparsely settled new states, it had not merely become a centre of inebriety and affiliated vices, but had reached corruptingly into political life. The legal measures for controlling the drink traffic were of the crudpoor makeshifts, the results of political compromise rather than of statesmanship. But in training the heaviest fire so exclusively at the drinkseller, the appeal for personal abstinence became dangerously subordinated in the temperance campaigns. Earnest men and women bewailed this trend but were powerless to stop it. Yet to this blind reliance upon mere law to

est sort

1 Illinois, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and New York.

effect a moral change in the individual, we may trace the undoing of many a seemingly promising prohibition victory, won at great cost.

Of the seventeen states which between 1850 and 1890 had given their allegiance to prohibition, only three (Maine, Kansas, and North Dakota) have clung to it steadfastly until this day. We need not concern ourselves here with the history of the various enactments and repeals. The short life permitted prohibition in a number of states and their failure to renew the experiment after a test are, however, sufficient evidence that the majorities behind the law were more or less of a fictitious character, or that the benefits promised did not materialize. Two of the states under consideration compromised with their consciences. Iowa grew content to 'mulct' liquor-dealers and Ohio to 'tax' them, a distinction in terms but not in fact, both methods being in contravention of constitutional law. Meanwhile, the states that continued to uphold prohibition did so largely in name. Spasms of enforcement alternated with periods of open violations of the law.

Yet the struggle of these twenty years had by no means been barren. In spite of obvious failures of prohibition exemplified by repeals of the law, laxity of enforcement, and other troubles, the temperance movement up to this period, aside from any influence on individual lives, had one great achievement to its credit: men began to realize as never before the political as well as social perils of an uncurbed liquor traffic. A return to ante-prohibition conditions was unthinkable. One result of the search for some constructive remedy was the high-license law of Nebraska, enacted in 1881, which automatically reduced the number of licensed places and thus was expected to secure better control. This device was

eagerly adopted by a certain class of reformers, and, variously expanded, for instance by the statutory limitation of the number of saloons and a host of minor restrictive measures, it has remained the foundation stone of those laborious structures, the modern license laws.

But a far more important and valuable heritage of the earlier temperance movement was the status secured for the principle of local option. While local prohibition was applied both in Europe and the United States prior to the state-wide experiment of Maine, the distinction of legally recognizing the principle that the local community has the right to license or veto the drink traffic belongs to this country.

For more than a decade subsequent to 1890 the usually troubled waters of temperance reform remained comparatively unruffled. The prohibition propaganda had perceptibly weakened, notwithstanding the advent of the prohibitionists as a political party. Meanwhile, a mass of new liquor legislation crept into the statute books, though for the greater part of a trivial nature except as it afforded the local-option principle freer play. There was, however, one notable departure from the routine temperance propaganda. The State of South Carolina established its dispensary system, whereby the state assumed supreme control of drink-selling for public account. In time this experiment, now practically abandoned, became the entering wedge which eventually rent the solidarity of the liquor traffic in the Southern states. The dispensary system was copied locally by Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina, bidding fair to spread widely. Meanwhile the seemingly dormant prohibition forces had slowly gathered new strength. In the Northern and Western states the responses to their pleas had become fitful and of less promise.

But the South was now ready to lend a willing ear. Several circumstances combined to make it so. The saloons, purveyors of distilled spirits almost exclusively, had grown notoriously lawless; drunkenness was rampant, and behind all loomed the spectre, partly imagined, partly real, of danger from the uncontrolled elements among the Negroes. The dominant religious forces of the South, peculiarly fitted to be a vehicle for temperance propaganda, lent their full strength to the movement against the saloon. Perhaps more important still, there had come into being an organized force, manned by professional temperance reformers, who took command of the fighting line, namely, the so-called Anti-Saloon League. Victories soon came apace. In the space of a few years Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi outlawed the manufacture and sale of intoxicants. Alabama later recanted her faith for a time, but has once more turned to prohibition.

The wash of the rising prohibition wave soon reached beyond the South. There the ground for prohibition had been sedulously prepared by a liberal application of the local-option principle. The modus operandi was unconcealed and simple: first, to lay 'dry' as much territory as possible by local veto and then to follow up with state-wide prohibition. This method of working toward state-wide prohibition by means of county-option laws has been pushed vigorously and in some places with notable success.

Long ago national prohibition could be discerned as the ultimate aim of the extreme and commanding element of the temperance forces. But now it has become the issue; it has indeed entered into all the campaigns of the last few years. Still, it would be hasty to declare that this issue was the decisive

Such, in broad outline, is the history of the temperance movement in the United States so far as it is reflected in legislation. Of its minor manifestations- the campaign for compulsory temperance teaching, the innumerable restrictive enactments whereby it has been sought to curb excesses of the licensed traffic or to enforce prohibition - there is not space to write. When it is asked what has been the actual gain for temperance from the ceaseless agitation, exhortation, and forced legislation, an adequate answer is far from being simple. On turning to the Year Books of the Anti-Saloon League or of the Prohibitionists, we find the case blandly set forth thus: 'So many states brought under prohibition rule; so many square miles of "dry" territory in license states; and so many million inhabitants living in areas from which the saloon has been banished,' and so forth. Such superficial if pretentious evidence is unsatisfactory and hardly merits analysis. One need not rehearse the oft-told sordid tale of persistent, gross violations of prohibition law enduring in some states from one generation to another; nor point to the vast populations nominally living in 'dry' territory but having abundant facilities for obtaining intoxicants when they desire. Over against the extravagant claims that more than half of the population of the United States has for several years experienced the blessings of prohibition in some form, stand the irrefutable official figures of the production of alcoholic liquors. By successive stages the output of spirits, beer, and

1900

93

39

49

59

66

What the actual per capita consumption is in this country no one can tell. To measure it by the total number of inhabitants, with no allowance for nondrinkers, - abstainers, children, rural communities, and so forth, is not only ignorant but absurd as a test of the status of temperance. There is, however, one undeniable inference which must be drawn from the official statistics: the steady upward movement in the production of intoxicants could not have taken place during these years had both state and local prohibition been truly effective. With more than one half of the people alleged to live in dry territory, one would logically expect consumption to be reduced, or at least to fall behind the growth in population; but the contrary has happened, leaving entirely aside the increase in illicit distillation and the growing use of alcoholic home brews. Common sense, no less than experience, discards the explanation that the unquestioned inincrease in consumption is attributable to the license states alone. It is even less creditable to blame the influx of immigrants, especially when one recalls that those of recent years belong largely to the abstemious races of Europe.

Fortunately the claims for temperance reform rest on a solider basis than the one commonly vaunted. In the face of the larger and more widely distributed use of alcoholic beverages, particularly of beer, one may confidently assert of our country as a whole:

(1) That there is a growing tendency toward personal moderation and practical abstinence, partly as a result of a keener appreciation of the evils of alcoholism and partly through the amelioration of social standards and habits.

(2) That the public attitude toward intemperance has undergone profound changes which are reflected in social intercourse, in the demands of transportation and commerce and industries, and more and more in legislation against inebriety.

(3) That the temper of our people as a whole does not support the saloon of to-day as a desirable institution; many who vote against prohibition contend that the saloon must be removed from the country villages and crossroads, and they find support even within the 'trade' itself.

Contrasting these conditions with those of two or three decades ago, we note a measurable progress toward sobriety and cleaner living.

To whom belongs the credit? Doubtless much, very much, is due the general temperance propaganda, which, however, is by no means synonymous with the battle for prohibition. To lay dry so much territory legally is not necessarily to be counted as an achievement for temperance reform when intemperance remains as rampant as under license, and the illicit traffic gains a hold on the community quite as dangerous as that of legalized traffic. To attribute the advance made wholly to a movement which finds its chief expression in denouncing the iniquities of the purveyor of intoxicants and in preaching an ideal nowhere obtained, an ideal to be gained by force where persuasion fails, is to deny the potency of other forces making for betterment: religion, education, the demands of industry and commerce, better conditions of living, and so on. And surely these forces are quite as markedly active in

license as in no-license communities. If it be given no man to apportion accurately the effect of the manifold factors that contribute to more sober living, one can at least point out the grievous error of ascribing it entirely to a single factor.

However gratefully improvements must be acknowledged, contentment with the present state of temperance reform were but gross indifference. Usually high planes of living are reached by many a faltering step; but we are told now that temperance will become an inevitable virtue by the simple means of national prohibition. The vociferous clamor for it is a logical outgrowth of the temperance movement under its present generalship, yet it compels the admission openly made by a few of its candid adherents that state-wide prohibition has not fulfilled the rosy expectations of its sponsors. The superficial reasons for this lie at hand. In defiance of 'ironclad' statutes, federal regulations concerning interstate shipments, the limitation of quantities that may be imported for private use, the fidelity in policing, and so forth, intoxicants have always found their way into forbidden territories in sufficient bulk to frustrate the object of prohibition completely, or in greater part, through illicit sales. For confirmation one need but turn to the sinister figures published annually by the United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue, of the persons who pay the federal tax as liquor-dealers in prohibition states - let alone the numbers who avoid such risk--and of the immense growth of illicit distillation which the Federal government seems unable to check.

At times and in places a periodic degree of success attends enforcement. Kansas has recently demonstrated this after failures extending over thirty years. West Virginia just now is mak