DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT?
Our opponents allege, again, that “prohibition does not prohibit;” that the saloons are simply transformed into drug stores, and keep on selling liquor as before; and that drinking and drunkenness have really increased since the prohibition law went into effect. If these assertions are true, what have they to complain of? If prohibition does not prohibit, why do the men who want to open saloons, and make a living by making their fellow-men drunk, oppose prohibition? If a saloon can be so easily transformed into a drug store, why don’t all the saloon-keepers adopt that course? If drinking and drunkenness have increased, why are those who profit by drinking and drunkenness, and all their allies and supporters, so bitterly opposed to prohibition?
The distress of the gentlemen who so vehemently argue that “prohibition does not prohibit,” recalls one of President Lincoln’s quaint stories. Gen. Grant was winning victories in the West, but his success inspired the usual jealousies and rivalries, and the President was frequently advised that Grant was a failure, and urged to remove him. This criticism and fault-finding continued even after the surrender of Vicksburg. The wiseacres insisted that Grant had made a fatal mistake in paroling Pemberton’s army, and argued that the paroled men would, in a brief time, swell the ranks of other Confederate armies. The President had been patient until then, but when this argument was made, he turned on the critics, and, with a sly twinkle, asked: “Did you ever hear about Bill Sykes’s yellow dog?” They said they hadn’t. “Well,” said Mr. Lincoln, “Sykes had a yellow dog he set great store by, but there was a lot of boys in town who didn’t share Sykes’s opinion. In fact, they regarded Sykes’s yellow dog as a nuisance. So they finally fixed up a cartridge with a long fuse, put the cartridge in a piece of meat, dropped the meat in the road near Sykes’s house, and then, having perched themselves on a fence near by, with the end of the fuse in their hands, whistled for the dog. When he came out he scented the meat, and bolted it, cartridge and all. The boys touched off the fuse, and in a moment there was an explosion. Sykes rushed out to see what was the matter, and found the ground covered with pieces of yellow dog. He picked up the biggest piece he could find, and after mournfully regarding it for a moment, sorrowfully said: ‘Well, I guess he’ll never be much account again—as a dog.’ And,” added the President, “I guess Pemberton’s army will never be of much account again—as an army.” Looking at the fragments of the whisky traffic scattered over the State, in jails, or seated on store-boxes swearing that “prohibition doesn’t prohibit,” or across the border in Missouri—looking at these scattered fragments, it may fairly be said that, like Sykes’s dog, the whisky business in Kansas will never be of much account again—as a business.