For the first time dealers in alcohol recognize the possibility of a great national movement and of national prohibition. Both the defects in methods hitherto used to oppose saloon legislation and the reasons for meeting the present situation by new methods are presented in the May issue (1907) of the _Transactions of the American Brewing Institute_. Under the title, "Social Order and the Saloon--the Measure of the Brewer's Responsibility," Mr. Hugh F. Fox, known throughout the Union as a defender of child rights, advocate of probation and children's courts, promoter of health and education, outlined a plan for research that is indispensable to the proper settling of this great question. Whether brewer or anti-saloon leaguist, total abstainer or moderate drinker, employer or trade unionist, it is necessary to the intelligent control of alcohol that each of us approach this momentous question of control or abolition of the saloon in the spirit expressed in this paper, whose thoroughness and whose social point of view would do credit to a church conference. The address is quoted and its questions copied because both show how much depends upon knowing whether laws are enforced and how much greater is the difficulty of coping with a conciliatory antagonist who professes willingness to submit to tests of evidence. The regulation of the liquor business involves fundamental questions of the function and scope of government, and there is hardly any department of organized human activity that has been the subject of so much experiment and futile tinkering.... The only people who are perfectly consistent are the prohibitionists, whose policy is abolition. Let us, however, try to detach ourselves from any personal interest that we may have in the subject, and consider it impartially as a matter of public concern. What the brewer as an individual cannot do, the brewers as an organization have done successfully in many places in spite sometimes of official negligence, corruption, or incapacity. The Texas Brewers' Association is reported as having successfully prosecuted two thousand cases against keepers of disreputable resorts during the past three years. The object of their campaign was to purify the retail liquor trade from unclean and law-defying elements. The greatest gain that has come to society, as distinguished from the individual, through the temperance movement is its effect in unconsciously informing the public that the regulation and administration of licensing is in itself a great and vital problem; and as a secondary result of such agitation, I should cite the growing sensitiveness of all persons in the business to the power of public opinion.