It is a settled conviction among Americans of Puritan antecedents, and among all other Americans, native born or alien, that have come under Puritan influence, that the dispensing of alcoholic beverages is a degrading function.  This conviction has not, to be sure, notably impaired the performance of the function.  But it has none the less produced a striking effect.  It has set apart for the function in question those elements in the population that place the lowest valuation upon the esteem of the public, and that are, on the whole, least worthy of it.  In consequence the American saloon is, by common consent, the very worst institution of its kind in the world.  Such is the immediate result of good intentions working by the method of excommunication of a trade.

This degradation of the personnel and the institution proceeds at an accelerated rate as public opinion grows more bitter.  In the end the evil becomes so serious, so intimately associated with all other evils, social and political, that you hear men over their very cups rise to proclaim, with husky voices, “The saloon must go!” At this point the community is ripe for prohibition:  accordingly, it would seem that the initial stages in the process, unpleasant as were their consequences, were not ill-advised, after all.  But prohibition does not come without a political struggle, in which the enemy, selected for brazenness and schooled in corruption, employs methods that leave lasting scars upon the body politic.  And even when vanquished, the enemy retreats into the morasses of “unenforcible laws,” to conduct a guerilla warfare that knows no rules.  Let us grant that the ultimate gain is worth all it costs:  are we sure that we have taken the best possible means to achieve our ends?

In the poorer quarters of most great American cities, there is much property that it is difficult for a man to hold without losing the respect of the enlightened.  Old battered tenements, dingy and ill lighted tumbledown shacks, the despair of the city reformer.  Let us say that the proximity of gas tanks or noisy railways or smoky factories consign such quarters to the habitation of the very poor.  Quite possibly, then, the replacement of the existing buildings by better ones would represent a heavy financial loss.  The increasing social disapprobation of property vested in such wretched forms leads to the gradual substitution of owners who hold the social approval in contempt, for those who manifest a certain degree of sensitiveness.  The tenants certainly gain nothing from the change.  What is more likely to happen, is a screwing up of rents, an increasing promptness of evictions.  Public opinion will in the end be roused against the landlords; the more timid among them will sell their holdings to others not less ruthless, but bolder and more astute.  Attempts at public regulation will be fought with infinitely greater resourcefulness than could possibly have been displayed by respectable