The fact is that the American people are tired of Constitutional Amendments. I have heard sound-thinking men say that when our own private constitutions need an amendment, we can be depended upon to add one. We are not fools--in spite of the reformers. We still believe that there is something in the old judgment of the survival of the fittest. The worthy emerge; the unworthy remain where they belong, or sink to the depths. It is all very well to say that those who become blind through the drinking of wood-alcohol deserve their wretched fate; that if one takes such chances he deserves to lose his eyesight, if not his life. For myself, I cannot look at the matter quite so coldly. I have the deepest sympathy for those who, in good faith, drink something which turns out to be something else. They have simply humanly slipped; and but for this one lapse from grace they may be most estimable citizens. I think it is far more terrible that a decent manufacturer should go blind because an unreasonable and unenforceable law is on our books than that a million worthless imbeciles should lie in the gutter, drunk. I have known only a few “reformed” drunkards who ever amounted to a continental in after years; they were hardly worth saving. It is not very pleasant to think of an able citizen stricken at the height of his career; and his loss to the community is much more important than the so-called salvation of a dozen roustabouts. During the Christmas holidays of 1921, in and around New York City alone, there were twenty-six persons made blind, or killed outright, through wood-alcohol poisoning. And during another Christmas season wood-alcohol caused fifty-nine deaths in Massachusetts alone. Somehow I do not like to contemplate such catastrophes. But the professional reformers may be made of sterner stuff than I. Let us have done with the folly of something so radically false as Prohibition. In the old days, when a man got drunk, he broke the social code; now, he breaks not only that, but the penal code as well, thereby committing two offenses against society. But it is curious how little he cares about the second offense. With an easy conscience he deliberately goes about it--in fact, rather rejoices that he has proved himself such a devil. Drink, as no one will deny, is an inherently evil thing--a terrible force. But so is electricity a terrible force. Yet, rightly used, both are the reverse of evil. But just as the Prohibitionists will not recognize the good to be found in alcohol, they refuse to admit the evils resulting from the present drastic laws. They fail to realize that Prohibition, for them, is in itself a debauch, a kind of wild orgy, a sadistic spree. To strap us all to the water-wagon, snap the whip and keep us there for life, seems to be their idea of a good time.