ried
and disillusioned people. But the movement that prohibited alcohol
across the Atlantic has the toil and sacrifice and devotion of three
generations behind it. It is not a thing of yesterday. As far back as
1834 the selling of liquor to Indians was forbidden by law.
Seventy-six years ago (in 1846) the first Prohibition Law was enacted
in the State of Maine. Fifty-seven years ago the Presbyterian General
Assembly excluded liquor distillers and liquor sellers from the
membership of the Church. In 1873 the Women's Temperance Crusade
movement was inaugurated--a movement whose ideal was to make the United
States safe for women and children by the suppression of the saloon.
In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League was formed--an organisation that brought
the various societies into unity and fused them into the strength of
steel. There were long years of work in school and of teaching in the
churches ere on the 18th December 1917 the Amendment in favour of
Prohibition passed the Legislative Assemblies at Washington. Having
passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, it had to be
ratified by a majority of the various States. The States had seven
years in which to ratify; but within one year and two months forty-five
States, with a population of over one hundred millions, ratified the
Amendment. Only three out of the forty-eight States failed to ratify.
On the 29th January, it being certified that three-fourths of the
States had ratified as the Constitution requires, the 18th Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting alcohol, became law.
And on that night the leaders of the movement held a service of
thanksgiving in Washington, and when the hour struck ushering in the
first day of the new era, Mr. W. J. Bryan began his address by reading
the words: 'They are dead that sought the young child's life.' An
Amendment to a National Constitution which has the generations behind
it is not one to be repealed. To repeal it requires now a majority of
three-fourths of the States! The one great fact to remember, is that
by local option two thousand two hundred and thirty-five counties in
the United States had made an end of the liquor traffic in their areas
before Prohibition became the national law, and that there were only
three hundred and five counties in all the States which had not
declared themselves dry before Prohibition became the law. If anything
be certain under the sun it is that Prohibition i