Nearer to our psychological interest comes the well-known war-cry, "Prohibition does not prohibit." It is too late in the day to need to prove it by statistics: every one knows it. No one has traveled in prohibition States who has not seen the sickening sight of drunkards of the worst order. The drug-stores are turned into very remunerative bars, and through hidden channels whiskey and gin flood the community. The figures of the United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue tell the story publicly. In a license State like Massachusetts, there exists one retail liquor dealer for every 525 of population; in a prohibition State like Kansas, one for every 366. But the secret story is much more alarming. What is the effect? As far as the health of the nation and its mental training in self-control and in regulation of desires are concerned, the result must be dangerous, because, on the whole, it eliminates the mild beverages in favor of the strong drinks and substitutes lonely drinking for drinking in social company. Both are psychologically and physiologically a turn to the worse. It is not the mild beer and light wine which are secretly imported; it is much easier to transport and hide whiskey and rum, with their strong alcoholic power and stronger effect on the nerve-cells of the brain. And of all forms of drinking none is more ruinous than the solitary drink, as soon as the feeling of repugnance has been overcome; there is no limit and no inhibition. If I look back over the last years, in which I often studied the effects of suggestion and hypnotism on habitual drinkers, I do not hesitate to say that it was in most cases an easy thing to cure the social drinker of the large cities, but very hard to break the lonely drinker of the temperance town. Of course, prohibition reduces somewhat the whole quantity of consumption, but it withdraws the stimulant, in most cases, where it would do the least harm and intensifies the harm to the organism where it is most dangerous. _Our Greatest Danger--Disregard for Law_ But man is not only a nervous system. Prohibition forced by a majority on an unwilling minority will always remain a living source of the spirit of disregard for law. Yet, "unwilling" minority is too weak an epithet; the question is of a minority which considers the arbitrary rule undemocratic, absurd, immoral, and which really believes that it is justified in finding a way around a contemptible law.