180 



CONGRESS. (THE ARMY BILL.) 



wheat flour, as the principal constituent in quan- 

 tity, with any other grain, or the product of any 

 other grain, or other material, except such ma- 

 terial, not exceeding 5 per centum in quantity, and 

 not the product of any grain, as is commonly 

 used for baking purposes: Provided, That when 

 the product resulting from the grinding or mix- 

 ing together of wheat or wheat Hour with any 

 other grain, or the product of any other grain, 

 of which wheat or wheat Hour is not the prin- 

 cipal constituent as specified in the foregoing 

 definition, is intended for sale, or is sold, or offered 

 for sale as wheat flour, such product shall be held 

 to be mixed flour within the meaning of this act.' 



" SEC. 14. That section 18 of said act is hereby 

 repealed. 



" SEC. 15. That the provisions of this act shall 

 take effect on and after the first day of July, 

 1901, except where otherwise expressly provided." 



The Army Bill. Early in the session the 

 House took up and passed a substitute for the 

 Senate bill to increase the efficiency of the mili- 

 tary establishment of the United States. The 

 main point of discussion w T as an amendment, 

 offered by Mr. Littlefield, of Maine, to abolish 

 the army canteen. Mr. Grosvenor, of Ohio, said: 



" I have a grave apprehension that the adoption 

 of this amendment will do harm and not good. I 

 am going to vote for the amendment, and I am 

 going to state my reasons for it. I am satisfied 

 that no amount of testimony, though one should 

 rise from the dead, will disabuse the minds of the 

 vast majority of the people of this country upon 

 this question. 



" I know very well that it was believed firmly 

 believed and distinctly understood that the 

 adoption of the prohibition law in the State of 

 Maine a great many years ago was going to 

 create a condition of absolute immunity from 

 the evils caused by the sale of liquor in that 

 State, and consequently be a great moral ob- 

 ject-lesson that was to sweep over the country; 

 and yet I have lived to see the time w r hen the 

 object-lesson of Maine is a warning to statesman- 

 ship from one end of the country to the other. 

 No man now seriously believes that the attempts 

 at State prohibition can be successful, and local 

 option of towns or municipal corporations, with 

 taxation and stringent limitations, is the best 

 course. 



" The result in Maine does not stand alone. 

 The same is true of the results in Kansas and in 

 Iowa, and the same will be true of every other 

 State that relinquishes the regulation of and the 

 taxation and partial prohibition of liquor traffic 

 and which substitutes the attempt at prohibition. 

 But the people of this country have the impres- 

 sion firmly fixed that we will have a temperate 

 army, a virtuous military army, if this canteen 

 is only abolished. I think the experiment must 

 be tried. They will not hear the testimony of 

 men who say that it is a great modification of the 

 saloon. 



" All the saloon features have long ago been 

 eliminated from the army canteen. Therefore 

 the people of the country have the impression 

 that drunkenness will be eliminated, in the abso- 

 lute teeth of the testimony that if you drive out 

 the sale of light wines and beer in the canteen 

 the soldier will go and get drunk on the outside 

 of the limits of the camp or reservation. There 

 is not a saloon-keeper in the United States of 

 America to-day resident near an army post who 

 does not favor the abolition of the canteen in the 

 army not one. I can take you to a city where 

 they are now standing ready to come down upon 

 the army posts so soon as the canteen is abolished. 



" I am going to vote to abolish it, and if good 

 comes from it, if temperance comes from it, and if 

 sobriety in the army conies out of the result, I 

 shall thank God that I had the privilege, of vot- 

 ing for it. If I am mistaken, and good comes from 

 it, nobody will be more willing to testify to it 

 than I will. If no good comes from it, and we dis- 

 cover that we made a mistake in overriding all 

 the opinions of the army officers of the country, 

 all that I have heard from, then we can easily 

 retrace our steps. 



" But when there is such an uprising, such a 

 great moral determination among the people of 

 this country, I am willing that the experiment 

 shall be made, and this, too, even in the light of 

 the unreasonable criticism which has been made 

 of the Attorney-General and the false and mali- 

 cious attacks upon the President, all of which 

 have been utterly without foundation. I over- 

 look the false and scandalous assaults upon the 

 President by a petty preacher, a petty candidate 

 for office, a peregrinating libeler who traveled 

 over the country during the recent campaign and 

 impugned the motives of the President of the 

 United States. While I condemn these things, 1 

 vote for the amendment with the hope that good 

 shall come of it.'"' 



Mr. Parker, of New Jersey, arguing against the 

 policy of the amendment, said: 



" Mr. Chairman, I do not sympathize with the 

 views of the man who decides to vote for this 

 amendment in order to please any general senti- 

 ment which through ignorance has grown up 

 among the people of the United States, and there- 

 by knowingly votes to hurt the soldier. We are 

 trustees for the soldier. We are charged to speak 

 and act for his temperance and his good order, 

 and when we abolish the canteen system of the 

 post exchange, temperance in the army will have 

 received almost a death blow. 



" The adoption of this amendment, we think, 

 would be a calamity to the cause of temperance. 

 None greater could befall that cause in the army 

 and in the Soldiers' Home than the prohibition of 

 the canteen feature of the post exchange. This is 

 not a matter of theory, but one of actual experi- 

 ence. Soldiers, as well as every one else, resent in- 

 terference with their personal freedom. To adopt 

 this amendment means that those who would 

 otherwise drink beer in moderation under the 

 eyes of their fellows will go outside w r here they 

 will get strong drink, and that all the evils that 

 once existed will be renewed. 



" In old times w r e had the sutler's canteen, the 

 sutler being employed by the Government to sell 

 liquors as desired, and at that time the army 

 was a whisky-drinking army. Later we had the 

 post-trader system, where the post-trader, a pri- 

 vate individual, was licensed to sell whisky to 

 soldiers, and then w r e also had a whisky-drinking 

 army. It was an army in which pay-day meant 

 absence from the post of half of the command^ 

 men imprisoned by the score in the guardhouse, 

 men who overstayed their leave, and men who 

 were fleeced by dive-keepers on all sides. 



" There were rows of liquor saloons at the gates 

 of every post, where vile liquor and sometimes vile 

 drugs were dispensed, and where all the abomi- 

 nations that are annexed to such places were put 

 in the way of the young men who were in the 

 army. At last an experiment was tried; at first 

 at but one post. It spread gradually through the 

 army until it has become a matter of regulation 

 in all posts and is called the post exchange. 



" This post-exchange system is one developed 

 for and by Americans. By the army regulations, 

 of which I annex an abstract, the post exchange 



