Statement by Arthur Arlett

MR. ARLETT: Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen: Like some other things that you have heard here tonight, the geographical designation of my residence is not true. I live in "My City, Oakland." (Laughter and applause.) However, for many years I did live in the benighted community of Berkeley. They knew so little of the statistics you have heard, that by charter and by ordinance and by developing a great national monument in its State University, they were so very foolish as to do this terrible thing that Mr. MacDowell says the rest of the state must never do.

Mr. MacDowell took a good deal of your time and even some of his own to tell you that you would not understand what the second amendment was, and never told you that it was not an anti-saloon amendment. I wrote in a considerable measure that second amendment. Over my name will go to every one of the voters of this state the argument in favor of it. I have spoken perhaps to more than a quarter of a million people in the state in the last year in favor of it. I have listened to a great many addresses from my colleagues in this campaign, and not once have I ever heard anybody refer to it, but here, as an anti-saloon amendment,

Now, then, the division between the two amendments is exactly as Dr. Gandier suggested, the manufacture and the wholesale sale on one side, and the retail sale on the other.

Mr. MacDowell seems to be concerned that the Commonwealth Club will not be able hereafter, if this second amendment is adopted, to serve wine at these functions; intimating that probably it would be well if, under some local option measure, we could close our saloons, but should not touch this privilege. I say, in the spirit of democracy, that you have not any more right to have liquor here than the hod carrier has to have his liquor down at the waterfront saloon; and if spirituous liquors are to be permitted only in places of this kind, we had better do away with our boasted democracy.

Mr. MacDowell also suggested that if these measures were carried they would become law in five days. Of course they will, but they do not become effective until the month or the year stated by Dr. Gandier. You need not be afraid, friends, that some cataclysmic event is going to happen. These amendments may or may not be adopted. If they are, either one of them-and either one is tremendously drasticwe shall only be taking our place here upon the last forward bulwark of occidental civilization with all the rest of North America.

On the Pacific Coast, from the Arctic regions of Alaska clear down to the Mexican line, the only place where the sale of alcoholic liquors is

legalized is in our own fair state. When the horror and the challenge of war came to Europe, when the testing time came upon those people, immediately they sought to eliminate liquor because of its waste; I believe that if our occidental civilization and our dreams of democracy are to prevail, we have got to eliminate every element of waste possible.

Another point mentioned by Mr. MacDowell was that it is wetter in Kansas than in certain license states; and then in a moment he seemed to contradict it by saying that the market for our hops and our barley was being rapidly reduced. How do you square both the statements? Somehow or other, if I were a wet and honestly felt, as they proclaim, that prohibition increased my market, I would be for prohibition rather than in opposition to it.

He tells you, friends, that alcohol is a food. I don't know anything about it. I do not feed on that sort of stuff. But whether or no it is a food according to the chemist in his laboratory, whether the wise men who profess to lead in such things say it is a food or poison-and they seem to disagree on it-I know this-and that is the point I am particularly interested in-it seems to be destruction let loose when it gets into one of my laborers of a Monday morning. Instead of prohibition making them cowards it increases virility. Notwithstanding the belief may be generally held in a community in any agency or instrument that tends to decrease the power of labor, decrease ability to avoid accidents, or which generally reduces efficiency, when I help to pay the bill, I have a right to say something about the conditions under which those beliefs may be developed.

He tells you something about the experience north of us in these commonwealths. For two or three years last past, it has been my high privilege to represent you in the place of the Governor in offering welcome to the official guests at our Exposition. There I met the Governors of our commonwealths. I met the great men of industry and of finance and science. I met these leaders, and presented, as best I could, the greatness of our state to them. This year, since taking up this task, I have communicated with those men; and every one of them write to me that they are for prohibition. I read one hundred and seven letters recently from leading men all over this western country where the prohibitory blacklist has settled down over the commonwealth, which were sent in response to letters from a society connected with the University of California. One hundred and two out of the one hundred and seven said that prohibition seemed to be a success; business did not seem to be injured; and many of them went on to say enthusiastically that prohibition seemed to be a good thing; and in the major portion of those letters occurs this phrase, "I voted wet."

Major Blethen may be the delectable gentleman that Dr. Gandier has said he is, or he may be the arrant coward or sycophant that Mr. MacDowell says he is, but the facts cannot be distorted. If one-half of the murders and suicides have been eliminated, and the number of arrests has dropped fifty per cent, and the savings banks have increased their depositors by 7,165, something has happened to the commonwealth of Washington that seems to be worth while. I am interested in a bank myself, and if prohibition will put any considerable number of those 7,165 new accounts into my bank, I shall be glad I was in favor of it.

There recently sat in one of our great clubs two bankers from the city of Seattle. There was some of this California hospitality being served to these visiting friends, and the host of the day said that he was a little afraid that these long-eared fanatics—he did not call us nice names-would put this thing through, and went on to recite the terrible horror that would be, but his visitors said: "Forget it. We used to talk that way. We were wet, but no man in Seattle that we know of, unless he is intimately related to the liquor business, now is anything but dry." All the theories of Mr. MacDowell fall flat to the ground before the testimony of the business men and the officials of the so-called dry

states.

Now, he has told you that if prohibition carries 293,000 bread winners will lose their opportunity to earn their bread. That is one-half of the bread winners in the state, and if that is true one-half must be getting their livelihood out of booze. I leave it to you to judge.

They tell you about the terrible loss that will come to the financial institutions here. But when you go into these states that are trying it you will find the almost universal testimony that prohibition is a good thing-not from the man who says "For God's sake, don't quote me,” but from the man who dares to stand up and say, "This is the fact."

I have been a regulationist. I believe in carefully working out this problem. It was a sort of apologetic note that I heard in Mr. MacDowell's argument that this business fundamentally needs to be regulated. Nevertheless, I used to believe in it. But after I had attempted to fight some political battles in my city, after I had been engaged in contests for state-wide political reform, I have found that you cannot cage that kind of an animal.

There is only one way to handle booze-cut it out. That is the only way that the average business man can be sure that the Industrial Accident Commission will not summon him for a great loss.

The gentleman said, if you adopt No. 2 you are going to eliminate and destroy the wine interests of this state. Theodore Bell said before a committee of the Legislature (and I heard him read the same before

three or four audiences in this state), that 42,000,000 gallons of wine had been made in this state, and less than 2,000,000 were sold in the state. The second amendment has not a thing to do with the shipment of the goods out of the state; it does not have anything to do with the local sale of it as far as used within the state. If then it is true that less than five per cent of the wine product is to be affected by amendment No. 2, how is it that this association of industries of the state can justify its assertion? Ninety-five per cent of their product goes outside of the state, and this proposition No. 2 affects only five per cent, yet in every vineyard throughout the state you will find they have coupled the two propositions together as destructive of this industry. They have not been able to see the difference between the grog shop and the industry.

When the Wine Association-I am talking now about the aggregate wine interests-sent Mr. Bell to the Legislature more than a year ago with a regulatory measure it never got even onto the floor of the Legislature, because within thirty days the agencies for distribution cancelled orders for more than 70,000 gallons of products of our wineries. When you read those two amendments, when you read the arguments presented over and over again, you will find that the second amendment is not framed to be anti-saloon. It simply says, if you are rich enough to eat at the St. Francis or at the Pacific Union, and I am so poor as to have to eat at a place on Brannan Street, I am going to be on your level. We are saying that the retail sale must be obliterated by amendment No. 2.

If the use of alcohol prolongs life, all of the actuary tables must be wrong. The men who run the life insurance game must be twisted pretty badly in their perspective. I am pretty fat, as you will notice— forty-seven pounds overweight. A little while ago I tried to get ten thousand dollars' worth of insurance. They wouldn't take me at first, but later they found I had not had a drink for twenty-one years, and they accepted my application. That is a personal testimony that came from a foolish and benighted life insurance company. If any of you men go out and try to get insurance, do they ask you if you eat meat, or eat toasted corn flakes for breakfast? No, but they do ask how much booze you drink? Somehow or other it has something to do with the actuaries' table, and we generally know it.

In the three minutes that I have left, I would like to suggest to you just this one fundamental: I am a business man, kind of a cheap, small, little insignificant sort of a business man; but I am in business, and I think I put in as many hours of my day chasing the nimble dollar as most of you. I am after more business all the time; and I tell you that when these friends on the other side tell me that my programme is going

to hurt business, it makes me pause. But, on the other hand, I like to think that the purpose of government, the hope of democracy, the justification of our gathering together on such occasions as this, and on the other occasions that this Club gathers, for the study of our own problems, that it is for the one great purpose of making men. And we have got to come to the realization of the fact that the thing of supreme value in this state, the thing that is most worth while, is the human spirit. If there is an agency or institution within the commonwealth that tends to warp, to dwarf, to make small and crooked any human life in it, that thing ought to go, no matter what the cost is.

Our programme, we claim, not only has that kind of an idea in it, but it has a method that makes it possible without vital hurt to any legitimate industry, without vital hurt to any legitimate investment; it makes it possible to preserve that ideal and to accomplish this great reform. (Applause.)

Remarks by President Hodghead

THE PRESIDENT: It appears that I am a little bit behind the times in the matter of residential statistics. I do not like to take issue with one of the speakers when I do not belong to the debating team. I did not exactly refer to the speaker as a resident of Berkeley, but I think my language was that he belonged in Berkeley. You may remember that in the course of his argument he referred feelingly to those battles against liquor that he has fought over there in "my city," and now, after these four ordinances have been adopted and thoroughly enforced, I am informed by the speaker that he has moved out. (Laughter.)

In the equal division of time here, the next speaker (who is the same speaker) on the negative, will have ten minutes to reply to the arguments which have been presented. I now re-introduce Mr. MacDowell.

Remarks by George M. MacDowell

MR. MACDOWELL: Ladies and gentlemen: I apprehend that the prohibition forces of this country and of California believe, if they can get prohibition interjected into the constitution of the various states, and perhaps nationally, that they will have reduced the manufacture and the consumption of liquor. The press association of the Dry Federation of this state, and of other states in which there are contests this year, have been putting out garbled statements that the manufacture, sale and distribution of liquor has been reduced because the prohibition territory has been increased. If this has come to your notice, I desire to call your attention to the report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue at