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Results of Prohibition in U.S.A. 1923.
The late President Harding, in his Annual Message
to Congress on December 8th, 1922, summed up the
existing conditions in these words : " In plain
speaking, there arc conditions relating to its enforce
ment which savour of nation-wide scandal. It is
the most demoralising factor in our public life.
Most of the people assume that the adoption of the
Eighteenth Amendment meant the elimination of
the qiiestion from our politics. On the contrary,
it has been so intensified as an issue that many
voters are dispo.sed to make all political decisions
with reference to this single question."
Dr. Angell, President of Yale University, declared
in his address to the graduating students last year
that " the violation of law has never been so general
nor so widely condoTicd as at present."
Justice Clarke, of the United States Supreme
Court, addres.^ing the students of the New York
University Law School, said : " The Eighteenth
Amendment required millions of men and women to
abruptly give up habits and customs of life which
they thought not immoral or wrong, but which, on
the contrary, they believed to be nece.ssary to tlieir
reasonable comfort and hapi^jiness, and thereby,
as we all now sec, respect not only for that law, but
for all law, has been put to an unprecedented and
demoralising strain in our country, the end of which
it is difficult to see."
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of
Columbia University, in an address delivered before
the Ohio State Bar Association last January, made
the assertion : " That disregard ofJaw, disobedience