How can the "back-room" evil be stopped? Is it legal (i.e. constitutional) to prohibit the sale or serving of liquor to women?
Has the removal of screens reduced the volume of consumption? Has it improved the character of saloons? Has it solved the problem of Sunday prohibition for any length of time? What has been the general effect of it in the tenement districts?
Should the state undertake to regulate the liquor business or to enforce liquor laws?
Is it possible to devise any working plan which will apply with equal effectiveness and equity in communities of compact and of scattered population?
Should, or should not, the principle of self-government be carefully preserved in the whole scheme of legislation to regulate the liquor business?
Whether the present prohibition wave shall wash away the legalized saloon, as ocean waves have from time to time engulfed peninsulas, islands, and whole continents, depends upon the power of American educators and American officials to answer right such questions as the foregoing. The great danger is that we shall, as usual, over-emphasize lawmaking, underemphasize lawbreaking, and go to sleep during the next two or three years when we should be wide-awake and constantly active in seeing that the law is enforced. Unless exactly the same principles of law enforcement are applied in "dry districts" as we have urged for eradication of smallpox, typhoid, scarlet fever, and adenoids, local and city prohibition are doomed to failure. There must be:
1. Inspection to discover disease centers—"blind pigs," "blind tigers," etc.
2. Compulsory notification by parents and landlords, and by police and other officials.
3. Prompt investigation upon complaint from private citizens.
4. Prompt removal of the disease and disinfection of the center.