64 THE BUSINESS OF FAEMING 



and in national, state, and municipal governments. 

 It has plunged our nation into a spirit of "un- 

 rest," that has made us " reform mad." Multi- 

 tudinous organizations have sprung up on every 

 hand with reformation or correcting of alleged 

 evils as their purpose, which have influenced our 

 legislative bodies of cities, states and nation to 

 fill to a surfeit our statute books with laws for the 

 regulation of everything imaginable, whose ob- 

 jects are to correct real and imaginary evils and 

 so many of which are never enforced. 



Many of these would-be reformative laws strike 

 at old unalterable laws of trade, commerce and 

 society, that no legislative enactment can ever 

 alter, change or reform. Yet in the maddening 

 desire to reform something, the very conditions 

 that bring about much of the evils of society are 

 entirely overlooked. We enact the laws that sim- 

 ply lop off the branches of the tree of evil instead 

 of the law that will strike at its root so as to de- 

 stroy the tree itself. 



It is universally admitted that the liquor traffic 

 is the source of nearly all crime, poverty and im- 

 purity, costing our nation incomputable sums of 

 money to pay for its destruction and devastation, 

 yet when we strike at this monstrous tree of evil 

 we lop off a branch here and there with a state 

 prohibitive, local option, or regulative license 

 trimmer, which may mar the shape of the tree, 

 but the tree lives on and seems none the worse 

 for the trimming. Is it not time we strike at the 

 tree's root with one single nation wide prohibi- 

 tion against the manufacture and sale of intoxicat- 

 ing liquors, and at one blow eliminate a multitude 



