No caterpillar ever crawled into its cocoon and came out
so changed as came this drink question out of Congress. It
went in temperance and came out prohibition. It went in
license and came out enforcement. It went in personal
choice and came out a national mandate. It went in an
individual right and came out a social responsibility. It
went in a brewer and barkeeper and came out a bootlegger
and a kitchen still. It went in local option and came out the
Eighteenth Amendment.

DALLAS LORE SHARP

Booze an' iloquence has both passed out iv our public
life. . . . A statesman wud no more be seen goin' into a
saloon thin he wud into a meetin' iv th' Anti-Semitic
league. Th' imprissyon he thries to give is that th' sight iv
a bock beer sign makes him faint with horror, an' that he's
stopped atin' bread because there's a certain amount iv
alcohol concealed in it. He wishes to brand as a calumny
th' statement that his wife uses an alcohol lamp to heat her
curlin' irns. Ivry statesman in this broad land is in danger
iv gettin' wather-logged because whiniver he sees a possible
vote in sight he yells f'r a pitcher iv ice wather an' dumps
into himsilf a basin iv that noble flooid that in th' more
rugged days iv th' republic was on'y used to put out fires
an' sprinkle th' lawn.

FINLEY PETER DUNNE

LIQUOR WAS a power in Congress before prohibition was. The
fondness of Washington legislators for the bottle was supplemented
by the lobby of the liquor trade. The Internal Revenue Act of 1862
put a license fee of twenty dollars on retail liquor dealers and a tax
of one dollar a barrel on beer and twenty cents a gallon on spirits. The
drys always accused this act, signed by Abraham Lincoln himself, of
making an evil traffic legitimate and of corrupting politics for half a
century. However true this accusation, it is undeniable that the United
States Brewers' Association was formed in the same year. The object

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