Prohibition is now fairly carried out in the whole of the State, with the exception of Wichita, Leavenworth, Atchison, Kansas City, and Fort Scott. In these places the law is almost a dead letter, and drink can easily be obtained, though the saloons do not openly advertise their business. Yet, even after allowing for them, it cannot be denied that the law has led to a very considerable diminution in the consumption of liquor, and, with it, a decrease in the rowdyism which was once rampant. The number of persons paying the Inland Revenue tax has, it is true, increased within the last few years, but this is no test of the amount of the intoxicants used. The returns, prepared by the United States brewers themselves for trade purposes, of the number of barrels of beer consumed within the State in six recent years are as follows:-- 1887 16,488 1888 15,285 1889 9,700 1890 2,700 1891 2,050 1892 1,643 The amount derived by the central Government from Inland Revenue taxes has also shown a considerable decrease, though not nearly so great as the above. Innumerable statistics have been brought forward by those favourable to the law, to prove that it has had a most beneficial effect on the social and moral condition of the people. But it is an open question how far the small amount of poverty in the State and the reduction of crime are due to prohibition. I have no wish to minimise the actual good accomplished by the law, but it can serve no useful end to claim for it benefits that are produced by other causes. Kansas is a new settlement, and its surroundings and circumstances are such that we might naturally expect its people to be comparatively free from poverty and its allied evils. The problems that menace the older civilisation of the East, over-crowding, starvation wages, and lack of employment, are hardly felt there, and it is not fair to claim as the outcome of one law the results that are due to many causes. The greatest benefits of prohibition in Kansas are of another kind, impossible to show by arrays of figures, but none the less real for that. The rising generation is free from those temptations which wreck so many of our own youth. The man who is a wilful drunkard can, no doubt, find out where to obtain liquor; but he who is weak rather than wicked does not have alcohol flaunted in his face wherever he goes. A strong public sentiment against excess is created; and those who are doing battle with the liquor traffic naturally find themselves opposed to the allied evils of gambling and impurity. Hence, in the greater part of Kansas, the social evil is kept under, gambling dens are unknown, and the whisky ring is banished from politics.