A most stubborn patient, one that refuses to die no matter what happens, is John Barleycorn. By that name, permit us to repeat, are designated alcoholic beverages, and it was originated by the popular American novelist, Jack London, who published under that name a book dealing with the alcoholic habit.

According to general expectation John Barleycorn was to die the day the Eighteenth Amendment came into force after Congressman Volstead had succeeded in having his notorious law enacted. But die he did not. Scott McBride, the head of the Anti-Saloon League in our state, declared last week, with tears in his eyes, that John Barleycorn is not dead; in fact, that he is not even asleep. And those who follow the process of drying up the United States will certainly agree with that statement. Besides, McBride is not the only man who has reached that conclusion. That John Barleycorn is not dead is known to every congressman, every federal prohibition officer, and every little child. Everybody knows it, and it is no longer a matter of prophecy but a matter of experience that the Eighteenth 2Amendment and the Volstead Act are no solution of the question of drinking, and that if there is any real prohibition, it cannot be found anywhere else in the whole vast country but in the federal and state lawbooks.

Everything is as it was before, except one little thing: While alcoholic beverages were being sold openly in pre-Volstead days, they now are being sold secretly or semi-openly, and the authorities are not strong enough to stop it. Instead of in saloons, whisky is now being sold by so-called "bootleggers," and their business is one of the most lucrative ones in America. United States Attorney James C. Beck estimates that during the past year the illegal trade in alcoholic beverages has brought three hundred million dollars to men who by now have developed their methods to perfection and find their business a richer gold mine than any in Alsska.

The famous moonshiners in the mountains of our Southern states are mere pikers in comparison with the modern whiskey makers and smugglers. The moonshiners used to feel contented with a primitive still in inaccessible hills, and the people who 3bought their whisky bought it only because it was dirt cheap. At times they would have a battle with the agents of the Treasury Department and would be arrested; at times they would shoot and kill one another; but hunting moonshiners was, on the average, an exciting pastime rather than a serious business. The up-to-date smugglers are, of course, quite a different matter. Their business has spread all over the country and they have agents in European countries, in Canada, in Mexico, and in various British islands, and everything is being run on a big scale. The whisky is not transported in high boots as was the custom with the moonshiners, but in automobiles, railroad trains, ships, and airplanes; and if there were another, still more modern method, our smugglers would be sure to be using it.

What proportions the whisky business has actually reached in the United States nobody knows, and whatever the public is being told about it is mere guesswork. There can be no doubt, however, that its proportions would stun the prohibitionists, in the first place, and, in the second, the congressmen who thought that all that was needed to change human nature was to pass the Volstead Act. Whether 4or not our congressmen are surprised by the proportions that the whisky business has reached is not known; but that they know about it is shown by the fact that their committee on taxation wants to impose a four-dollar tax on a gallon of alcohol, and this tax is expected to bring seventy-five million dollars a year to the Government. It takes an enormous quantity of alcohol to bring that amount in taxes, and the congressmen are not likely to believe that all of it would be used for industrial and medicinal purposes. That, of course, refers only to alcohol and alcoholic beverages put on the market in a regular and legal way, and not the enormous flood of beer, wine, and all kinds of hard liquors sold surreptitiously.

The Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act have solved nothing at all. The manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages has not been stopped, much less the drinking of them. Large cities are not any drier now than they were before prohibition, the only difference being that the traffic in alcoholic beverages was formerly above board and legal, and now it is on the sly and illegal. Already it has grown to such proportions that the authorities are unable to supress it.

The chief prohibition commissioner declared recently that he expects to take action personally in order to make Chicago bone dry, since local authorities are unable to do so. He has taken personal action in New York already, but there are so far no indications that that action has met with any success. The only result has been that the courts are swamped with work which they are unable to take care of, and thousands of cases remain untried. This situation has caused the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, former President Taft, to request the appointment of eighteen additional federal judges, a measure that would do away with infinite delays in trying violations of the Volstead Act. He declared openly that more judges are necessary as a direct consequence of the Volstead Act, and that this is not the only measure necessary for its enforcement. Prohibition officials say openly that it is impossible to make the United States, particularly the cities, dry without an immense army of detectives, and even then it is more than likely that our country would not be "dry as a bone". There are things that cannot be "legislated away," and drinking is one of them. But the worst part of the whole situation is the fact that there are hundreds of thousands, or rather millions of people who had always 6been law-abiding citizens, who would not think of doing anything that was not quite right and proper and who now, knowingly, transgress the law and do not admit that they are doing anything wrong or illegal. The people are losing their respect for law, and that is a most serious matter. No doubt congressmen had not foreseen this, and now are trying to change the Volstead Act so that it may, at least to some extent, comply with the wishes of the public. And in the meantime, John Barleycorn not only lives, he--according to Mr. McBride--doesn't even sleep.