s of money the actual waste of
our country through indulgence in strong drink. The value of liquors
consumed is no measure of the entire wastefulness. Yet this is more than
enough to furnish all with bread.

The wrongfulness of such indulgence, from its harm to society through
reducing the power of the race, is seldom disputed. Yet the right of
society to restrict the individual indulgence is quite generally disputed.
The larger need of freedom in the exercise of judgment among mature
members of a community outweighs the need of preventing even vice. Society
does well to bring the restraints of law upon the immature, whose judgment
is not yet formed, thus supplementing by law the directive energy of
parental control. It may yet go further, and prohibit such indulgence to
all who have lost the power of self-control. But in general it has been
found impossible to enforce restriction upon vicious indulgence except
where such acts occasion direct suffering upon others, or help to maintain
an immoral business. The right of restraint and constraint, even to
prohibition, of that which fosters vice and extends its range must be
admitted by all thoughtful persons. Still, the right to prohibit and the
power to prohibit are not identical. The only sure preventive is early
education of public conscience through the training of youth to a clear
understanding of the vicious practices and their relation to the poverty
and weakness and crime of humanity.

_Destructive consumption._--A more obvious trespass upon prudential
consumption is criminal destructiveness of every kind. Until society
outgrows a condition in which fraud, theft, robbery and murder must be
warded off by locks and bars, by immense bodies of policemen and armed
militia, its wealth cannot be wholly invested for welfare. The possibility
of such crimes as arson or train obstruction and destruction shows the
condition of the best of modern communities to be far from ideal. Nobody
pretends to measure the actual waste in society resulting from such
criminal purposes. It extends to almost every detail of production and
trade, and occupies a large portion of the inventive and executive energy
of the people. Organized society attempts to restrain such waste by its
police force, or by restraining laws and in actions enforced by severe
penalties. Every honest man is financially interested in the conviction of
every knave. Sympathy with fraud, even in trifles, is contributing tow