PROHIBITION of alcohol is as far advanced today for the entire world as it was a quarter of a century ago in the United States. Stating the matter in terms of millions of square miles and millions of human beings, there is a dramatic exactness in the comparison between the conditions then and now. It is this:

Twenty-five years ago only one-seventeenth of the area and one-sixteenth of the population of the United States were under laws demanding complete prohibition. In this year, 1923, one-seventeenth of the area of the world and one-sixteenth of all the people of the earth are living under such absolute laws, which they have imposed upon themselves.

Again, twenty-five years ago only a very few enthusiasts, then called fanatics, dared to believe that such a thing as the Eighteenth Amendment of the American Constitution would ever become an actuality. But the enthusiasts of twenty-five years ago were right, and their breed has so increased throughout the world, because of the American example and because of new, inexorable demands for sobriety in other countries, that the enthusiasm and prediction of 1923 are for an entire globe free of alcohol.

It has become a question of “When?” just as it was really nothing but a question of “When?” all through the nineteenth century in the United States. To answer this world-wide question of “When?” with a “Never!” is to make the most foolish guess of all the guesses that may be made.

To go to the other extreme and predict with preciseness that the world will be dry in ten, twenty or thirty years from now would be as unjustifiable perhaps as were those cocksure declarations from all men in all countries, on Armistice Day of 1918, that this earth was on the very eve of peace and the orderly resuming of its affairs.

Read more on World Prohibition here

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1. World War 1 War Debts 1925
2. World Car Market 1927
3. Grape Growing During Prohibition
4. Belgenland World Cruise 1925-26
5. Frequency of Droughts 1930

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 10:49 am and is filed under 1920's, Prohibition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.

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