Going from matters merely unwholesome to actual poisons, the course of legislation on intoxicating liquors is too familiar to the reader to make it necessary to more than refer to it, with the general observation that in the North and East the tendency has been toward high licensing or careful regulation, always with local option; while in the West originally, and now in the South, the tendency is to absolute "State-wide" prohibition and even to express this principle in the constitution. How much this extreme measure is based on the racial question, in the South at least, is a matter of some debate; and the working of such laws everywhere from Maine to Georgia, of considerably more. One may hazard the guess that the wealthier classes have no difficulty in getting their liquor through interstate commerce, while the more disreputable classes succeed in getting it surreptitiously. Prohibition, therefore, if effective at all, is probably only effective among the respectable middle class where, perhaps, of all it is least needed. In the older States, at least in Massachusetts, there has been a decided tendency away from prohibition in the last twenty years, and even from local prohibition in the larger cities. Worcester, for instance, after being the largest prohibition city in the world, ceased to be so this year by the largest vote ever cast upon the question. Whatever may be said of the strict prohibition of liquor dealing, no one can have any objection to such laws as applied to cocaine, opium, or other poisonous drugs, and we find statutes of this sort in increasing number; while the manufacture and sale of cigarettes to minors or even in some States, their consumption, is strictly prohibited, under criminal penalty. Laws of a similar sort were aimed at oleomargarine when invented, but this probably not so much to protect the health of the people as the prosperity of the dairymen. The mass of such legislation has emerged from the scrutiny of the courts, State and Federal, with the general result that only such laws will be sustained as are aimed to prevent fraud; but the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine under that name cannot be prohibited. Artificial coloring matter may be forbidden, but a New Hampshire law was not sustained which required all oleomargarine to be colored pink; so it may be guessed that the laws of those States which make criminal the sale or use of cigarettes to or by children "_apparently_" less than sixteen or eighteen, will hardly be sustained as a constitutional police measure; yet such laws existed in 1890, while the State of Washington in 1893 made the sale even of cigarette paper criminal.