For about thirty years I have been closely allied with the brewing industry and was daily brought in contact with the brewers. I have been interested in a number of breweries as a stockholder. I have been intimately associated with many brewers throughout the country. I am therefore thoroughly familiar with the inner history of the beer business and the political corruption, crime, vice and degeneracy closely interwoven therewith. CHAPTER II. PROHIBITION BANISHES CRIME Naturally, I am not a prohibitionist. Nevertheless, I dispute the contention of the brewers that they did not oppose but, instead, actually approved the enactment of the recent "bone-dry" prohibition legislation forbidding transportation of alcoholic beverages into states which prohibit the sale and manufacture of intoxicants, on the ground that its drastic measure would have a "reactionary effect" and thus result in the return of a number of the present "dry" states into the "wet" column. Vaporings of this sort sound very much like the old sour grape story and have their origin in the fertile brain of the publicity manager of the beer trust. Absence of drunkenness, law and order, and the reduction of crime to a minimum, have invariably followed the "dry" wave. Prohibition has emptied the jails, and the people are gratified with the new order of things. Everybody is happy except the liquor interests. A town in Georgia, having no further use for its jail, not having had an occupant for a long time as the result of the bone-dry law, has rented it out for another purpose. The most remarkable proof comes from the national capital. Washington became saloonless on November 1, 1917. During the month of November--the first dry month--official figures made public by the commissioners, comparing arrests for drunkenness during November, 1917, and the same month a year ago, show that during November, 1917, 199 arrests for drunkenness were made, as against 838 for November, 1916, a reduction of 639, or 76 per cent. The greatest number of arrests for any one week in November, 1917, were 61, while the greatest number for the same period a year ago were 218. In Decatur, Ill., which went "dry" four years ago, the population has increased from 25,000 to 45,000. It is claimed that the criminal cases have lessened 90 per cent, that the building of factories and houses has increased 30 per cent, that 2,700 savings depositors in banks were added and that there were 37 per cent less cases of public charity yearly. Nor will the loss of revenue permanently affect conditions. The enormous wealth of the country will soon adjust that phase of the situation. Authorities assert there is no license city that keeps within its budget, whereas there is no dry city that is not financially improved by the ousting of the brewers. CHAPTER III. WHAT IS BEER? In the well known European beer drinking countries nothing but hops and malt are permitted in brewing.