elements in the population that place the lowest valuation upon the esteem
of the public, and that are, on the whole, least worthy of it. In
consequence the American saloon is, by common consent, the very worst
institution of its kind in the world. Such is the immediate result of good
intentions working by the method of excommunication of a trade.

This degradation of the personnel and the institution proceeds at an
accelerated rate as public opinion grows more bitter. In the end the evil
becomes so serious, so intimately associated with all other evils, social
and political, that you hear men over their very cups rise to proclaim,
with husky voices, "The saloon must go!" At this point the community is
ripe for prohibition: accordingly, it would seem that the initial stages
in the process, unpleasant as were their consequences, were not
ill-advised, after all. But prohibition does not come without a political
struggle, in which the enemy, selected for brazenness and schooled in
corruption, employs methods that leave lasting scars upon the body
politic. And even when vanquished, the enemy retreats into the morasses of
"unenforcible laws," to conduct a guerilla warfare that knows no rules.
Let us grant that the ultimate gain is worth all it costs: are we sure
that we have taken the best possible means to achieve our ends?

In the poorer quarters of most great American cities, there is much
property that it is difficult for a man to hold without losing the respect
of the enlightened. Old battered tenements, dingy and ill lighted
tumbledown shacks, the despair of the city reformer. Let us say that the
proximity of gas tanks or noisy railways or smoky factories consign such
quarters to the habitation of the very poor. Quite possibly, then, the
replacement of the existing buildings by better ones would represent a
heavy financial loss. The increasing social disapprobation of property
vested in such wretched forms leads to the gradual substitution of owners