No one is sacrosanct on this flaming issue. Government buildings are said to contain plenty of liquid refreshment for the parched throats of these eloquent advocates of a “dry” country. So long and loudly have they proclaimed their insincere doctrine that at the end of a forensic day they doubtless require a long, cool drink. Let them be seen in all their inglorious hypocrisy. Let the whole land laugh at them; for it is only through laughter that they can be reached and hurt. A law that is winked at by those who framed it is not worth the cost required to set it up in type. But of course nothing will be done. No names will be named. The same hypocrisy will be practised here. When someone higher up is to be uncovered, the loudly proclaimed “investigation” will come to a sudden end. There are too many criminals in exalted places. We are the laughing-stock of the world as it is; but if the whole truth were known!... Economically, the people will have to have it driven home to them that Prohibition is a mistake. We are forever talking about the tariff; yet the most that our tariff can bring in is about $350,000,000 a year gross. The year 1914 was the banner year in the United States in producing beer. There were 66,000,000 barrels sold. If we had not had Prohibition thrust upon us, the normal growth would have been a production of about 100,000,000 barrels. The Government always collected revenue at the source--there was no bookkeeping, merely a stamping, a labeling of each barrel, and that was all there was to it. Think of the tax upon this one product alone which we are losing! In 1918 Canada imposed a tax of 15c on a gallon of beer. In 1922 it was 42½c a gallon. There are thirty gallons in a barrel, which means $13.60 a barrel now, or more than two and a half times as much as before. Multiply 100,000,000 barrels by $13.60, and you arrive at $1,360,000,000 revenue collected at the source, with no obstructions. This is four times as much as our tariff bill would give to the country. Moreover, if beer were restored, innumerable collateral businesses would be given new life. The bottling industry, corking, glassware--all these would be resuscitated, everyone would be happy, and personal taxes would be immeasurably lessened. As things now are, we are burdened with surtaxes, etc., which impoverish all kinds of industries and make for intense ill-feeling. Crying out for no change in our laws, it is the Prohibitionists themselves who have altered our statutes. Can they not be changed again? It may be that the Eighteenth Amendment will never be annulled. There are those, however, who are hopeful even of that. But Congress is privileged to define what constitutes an intoxicating beverage; and the Volstead Act is not static. The people will elect men to represent them at Washington who will liberally interpret the Eighteenth Amendment. Therein lies the remedy for much of our discontent.