Would Prohibition Be a Financial Loss or Gain?

Would Prohibition be a Financial Loss or Gain?

BY GEORGE GARDNER

The only argument that has been given against prohibition is a financial one, and that has been considered from the stand- point of the liquor interests. Liquor causes crime that costs the United States $300,000,000 annually; and we pay for it with our taxes each year, to say nothing of the annoyance this crime has been to society. It has thrown upon us more than two million paupers that we have to feed, clothe and warm. Ellwood, in his Sociology and Modem Social Problems, estimates the annual cost of crime in the United States to be $600,000,000. He estimates that intemperance fig- ures as the cause in about fifty per cent of the cases. Other inves- tigations have found intemperance to be the cause of eighty per cent of the crime. The work of this committee, however, did not seem to be so complete as the work Ellwood based his conclusions upon. And still, other committees have placed the estimate a lit- tle lower than Ellwood.

But as the data was gathered in 1900, and the cost of crime has been increasing, the cost due to drink would be over $300,- 000,000 rather than under. Ellwood also estimates that we have ten million paupers in the United States, and gives intemperance as the cause of twenty-five per cent* of the poverty. He also cites the report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, which gives thirty-nine per cent as the cause and another report of a ;

committee of fifty that found intemperance to be directly, and in- directly the cause of forty-one per cent of pauperism. Two mil- lion would be a very conservative estimate of the people we care for, because of liquor.

There is also a great economic loss owing to the inefficiency of workmen due to drink. This fact is not disputed, and the em- ployer is quite willing to advance a temperate man faster than he is one who drinks.

The cost of liquor for the United States, in 1914, was $1,127,- 734,395. f This is an enormous amount of money. It is more

*Warner, in his "American Charities," gives the same estimate. f'The World Encyclopedia and Almanac," by the Press Pub. Co- lor 1915, page 250.

f

WOULD PROHIBITION BE FINANCIAL LOSS OR GAIN? 919 than the value of the wheat* crop for that year, and more than the value of the cotton. What a quantity of flour that money -

would have bought If put in fifty-pound sacks and twelve of !

them placed side by side, that wide string of sacks would reach round the great earth. That flour would bread the nation and give each of our ninety-eight million people four hundred forty- six loaves. Our seven great western mining states, Utah, Montana, Ari- zona, Nevada, California, Colorado, and Idaho, produce gold, sil- ver, copper, lead and zinc each one of these minerals run into ;

the millions of dollars each year. At Bingham alone there is a great mountain of copper. Steam shovels took enough from this mountain, in 1913, to load four wagons side by side and make a string of wagons reaching from New York to San Francisco. But all of this copper, together with the lead, gold, zinc, and silver, would not pay for the cost of liquor used in that year. Nor would all of the mineral products of the United States, though they reached $882,980,1 56. We are now celebrating the completion of the Panama canal It is considered the greatest job in the world, and has required years of labor, $375,000,000 in gold, and some of the best though^ of the American people. In one year the liquor cost of the United States was three times the cost of the greatest job in the world. Surely this vast amount of money can be put in more pro- ductive fields than to produce two million paupers. Surely there can be better returns for that money than a criminal class, that causes us to pay $300,000,000 for partial safety. Surely there are other markets for the grains used in making whisky, when it is becoming so scarce that many countries are forbidding its being fed to stock. Surely there are other fields for investment when thirty-eight million acres of the finest wheat land. in the world, almost equal to the present wheat acreage of the United States, lies within a radius of three hundred miles of Salt Lake; lying- idle, waiting for development. LOGAN, UTAH

*"WorId Encyclopedia and Almanac," 1915, somewhat preliminary as the quantity or price of wheat can not be accurately given at this date. The price Las varied unusually. .

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fFrom a statement prepared by the United States Geological Survey.