It has been seldom indeed that the fundamental evil of American public opinion has come out so clearly; namely, that no one dares to be on the unpopular side; just as in fashion and social life, every one wants to be "in it." No problem has in America a fair hearing as soon as one side has become the fashion of mind. Only the cranks come out with an unbalanced, exaggerated opposition and thus really help the cause they want to fight against. The well-balanced thinkers keep quiet and simply look on while the movement rushes forward, waiting quietly for the reaction which sets in from the inner absurdity of every social extreme. The result is too often an hysterical zig-zag movement, where fearlessness might have found a middle way of steady progress. There must be indeed a possible middle way between the evil of the present saloon and the not lesser evil of a future national prohibition; yet if this one-sidedness of discussion goes on, it is not difficult to foresee, after the legislative experiences of the last year, that the hysterical movement will not stop until prohibition is proclaimed from every state-house between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Exaggerated denunciation of the prohibition movement is, of course, ineffective. Whoever simply takes sides with the saloon-keeper and his clientele--yes, whoever is blind to the colossal harm which alcohol has brought and is now bringing to the whole country--is unfit to be heard by those who have the healthy and sound development of the nation at heart. The evils which are connected with the drinking habit are gigantic; thousands of lives and many more thousands of households are the victims every year; disease and poverty and crime grow up where alcohol drenches the soil. To deny it means to ignore the teachings of medicine and economics and criminology.