STATEMENT OF MISS PHOEBE W. COUSINS.

Miss COUSINS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of committee, in the first session of the last Congress it was my privilege to hear some of the arguments for the Hepburn-Dolliver bill and in turn to refute a part of them from my point of view in an extempore speech of ten. minutes.

Since then I have been a sojourner in prohibition Kansas for over a year, and I am glad of the opportunity to give a few facts and recount my observation of its workings.

And first I submit the opinion of this bill by one of its authors, whose name is the hyphenated half of its title, Senator Dolliver.

In a speech at Kansas City, Mo., at the close of the last session of Congress on "Public Virtue" the honorable gentleman said:

In my judgment we are overestimating the value of legislation as a cure for the moral defects of a community. The family itself should shoulder the burden of moral affairs. They acquit themselves of responsibility by passing an act on the subject. For over twenty-five years I fully believed that the way to stop drunkenness was to amend the constitution of Iowa. I have concluded that what is needed is an amendment to the constitution of the citizen, and have abandoned the idea of making men sober by law.

If the gentleman decides after a twenty-five years' tussle with the question in his own State that he can't stop drunkenness in Iowa by an amendment to its constitution by what method and how does he propose to have this bantling which bears his name jack up the Constitution of the United States so as to stop tippling in all the States of the Union, and insert a Federal prohibitory direction that all the citizens thereof shall be made sober by inhibition, when he had thrown up the job in one State after a quarter of a century's trial? Of the results in Iowa I will speak further on.

The Rev. Mr. Dinwiddie, secretary of the Anti-Saloon League, stated in the first hearing of this bill-which statement you will find on page 246 of the printed record that three States-Maine, Kansas, and North Dakota-had absolute prohibition, and no sales of liquor were allowed save for pharmaceutical purposes.

Either the gentleman must have been misinformed as to these States or he misrepresented the facts as they are known to the most casual observer.

I shall review for your digestion the situation, as it came under my observation, as a refutation, later on, of the Reverend Dinwiddie's assertion, and merely wish to say as a passing note that the continual reiteration of the Biblical phrase, which is used so generally by divines and their allies, the members of the W. C. T. U.'s, to bolster up their demand for total abstinence-" Look not upon the wine when it is red," etc.-is not warranted in the Scriptures by this solitary test on prohibition.

We

From Genesis to Revelations the cultivation of the vine, the vintage of grapes, and the use of wine is found throughout its pages, both as a beverage and as a commodity of trade and commerce. have no record previous to the flood of vineyards or wine vats or drink offerings, and yet Scripture tells us that, notwithstanding the absence of these so-called demoralizers of the race, the inhabitants of the earth became so vilely wicked that God repented of his Garden

of Eden experiment, and decided to sweep the whole into oblivion, save Noah and his three sons.

After the flood had subsided Noah is found in conference with the Lord, at the foot of Mount Ararat, and not only is deeded the whole earth for himself and sons, but the promise is given that the curse is removed no longer should thorns and thistles grow, but the whole earth should blossom as the rose.

And the first thing which Noah did, in substantiation of this great honor, was to plant a vineyard, grow grapes, and formulate a wine, the brand of which is not given, but judging from the effect upon Noah, its stimulating attribute was quite as effective as the wood alcohol of to-day.

When Melchisedek, the king and high priest of Salem, goes out to meet Abraham on his return from rescuing his nephew Lot from kidnappers, he carries with him both wine and bread as a signet of rejoicing, and this communion service is found in every stage of the Jewish nation's existence, both religious and secular.

I find that Ham, the off-colored son of Noah, to whom was given the land of Canaan as his one-third patrimony, and was the only one of the three who stuck to his job and made a success of it, was also the raiser of grapes, as well as a brand of milk and honey, which made his country renowned as the land of promise, and one for which his less favored brethren who lost their patrimony became wanderers over the earth, landed in Egypt as slaves, were manumitted by Moses, yearned to possess after a forty-years' tramp through the wilderness, and who found, when they reached the border land of Ham's province, by the reports of the spies, who returned with a bunch of the sample grapes borne on the shoulders of two men, on a pole, that the inhabitants were giants of the Anak type, so terrifying in their aspect and so impossible of subjugation that the Israelites refused to go further, but turned back into the wilderness for another forty years of cultivation of the grape and like conditions of their off-colored brother's land, which should fit them to finally cope with the Hercules and Samsons in Canaan.

In the fifteenth, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth chapters of Numbers, and in Deuteronomy, in a lesser degree, I find the direction of Moses and the priests as to the burnt offerings, meat offerings, sin offerings, and "drink offerings to the Lord" which must be brought into the Temples at stated periods. Each bullock calls for a half hin of wine, a lamb one-third, a kid one-fourth "as a drink offering to the Lord," while the goat, which is indicated as the atoning sacrifice, takes the whole offerings of all the rest.

The wine which is indicated in any of these chapters would float a modern battle ship, and the question arises, "What was done with this drink offering? Vats must have been there and storage plants which could hold this vast amount of liquids, while it must be inferred that both people and priests were generous users of the grape juice, and patrons of that art, the growth of grapes and distillers of wine, which is shown all through the old Scriptures as one of the most important branches of commerce and trade, as well as the element of the blood which gave energy to all the human faculties. Wine is constantly referred to in the old Talmudic versions as the "blood of the earth."

In the New Testament, Jesus, the great Teacher, turns water into wine at the marriage feast, and Paul, his exemplar, says "take a little wine for the stomach's sake," while Christ in his last communion service with his disciples follows strictly the old régime of Melchisedek and the Jews in breaking bread and drinking wine as a token of fellowship with all who love the good.

What then are the results of prohibition? In Senator Dolliver's State it has depopulated that fine area. By the last census of Iowa, since 1900, over 30,000 of her citizens have left the State. The schools report 45,000 less children in attendance, and a reporter of the Minneapolis Tribune writes of a recent trip through the State, after a thorough tour of the agricultural districts "that empty farm houses dot the land in all directions."

Ten bankers of Iowa committed suicide in 1904, whether from weak tea or cold water is not stated.

The fact is, gentlemen, that men of independence and strong character will not submit to the espionage, the spying, the contemptible methods, and impertinent attempts to control the personal liberty of others which prohibitory laws always engender. They prefer to move on, even to less. favored conditions of climate and soil and surroundings.

It has been suggested that the rate rulings of the railways are largely responsible for this exodus. But the more alarming feature of this, from which none may escape, is that our franchises are rapidly passing into foreign syndicates control. The lords and dukes of Canada and Great Britain own three-fifths of our Northern Securities stock, while the Rock Island is entirely owned abroad, and other lines are passing into a like un-American ownership.

What of Maine and Kansas? In a recent speech at a banquet in New York the governor of Maine stated that prohibition was a profound failure and the people were the only ones of all the New England States who had held on to it, in the face of its disintegration of the morals and manners of the entire community, and in time it must be repealed.

Of Kansas and its "pharmaceutical" humbug, Thomas Benton Murdock, a well-known writer and editor says, in the Kansas City Star:

THE KANSAS WHISKY BOTTLE.

From the Missouri border to the western confines of Kansas, along every line of railway on both sides of the track, in the sunflower patches along the right of way, in the haymow of every livery stable in every town, in every alley and back stairway, in the top drawer of every bureau of every hotel, in the cellarway of many homes, can be found the Topeka drug-store bottle.

I have seen the 4-ounce, the pint, or half-pint bottle. It is the same shape, the same greasy, unlovely appearing piece of glassware, which suggests the Topeka drug-store stuff-the cheapest in the land.

The Star, in commenting upon Mr. Murdock's arraignment, says: In this accurate and graphic description Mr. Murdock, with his characteristic intuition, presents the real gist of the Kansas liquor question, where prohibition encourages not only evasion and deceit, but, what is even worse, a depraved taste.

Of my own personal observation I can enforce Mr. Murdock's review, with an emphatic indorsement of the demoralization rampant

in Kansas.

In a little town of 800 inhabitants I have seen porters and maids carry out bottles by the hundreds from rooms and stairways where they have been thrown. Little boys follow men into the drug stores, with corkscrews, begging the gift of a drink for the privilege of uncorking the bottles, to which bottles these men have sworn falsely, as having all the diseases of the calendar.

The schools are invaded with this demon of falsity, and boys were expelled during my stay there for drunkenness and inebriety, a condition unknown in towns and cities, where the license system prevails and where children are protected by the law from illicit drinking. The solemnity of an oath is entirely ignored and the foundation stone of truth in character is rapidly disintegrating under such conditions. Young men who are clerks and porters in the hotels, whose characters are still in the formative period, are sent by the patrons to buy these bottles so aptly described, and commit perjury with the utmost nonchalance as they gleefully swear that the person indicated by the bottle has Bright's disease, liver complaint, lung trouble, gallstones, appendicitis, or whatsoever physical disability may present itself to these young men's minds. These sales, I presume, the Rev. Doctor Dinwiddie would indicate as "for pharmaceutical purposes " alone.

It must thus be seen that prohibition breeds cant, hypocrisy, fraud, perjury, and like secret vices, while honeycombing the State with far greater evils to the rising generation than open saloons, properly watched and safeguarded, could possibly produce. Furthermore, this bill will not stay the sale of liquors in town, village, or hamlet. The bootlegger would spring up by the thousand, where now he counts but the hundred. I used to watch from my window, during harvest time in Kansas, this enterprising smuggler dispensing his wares to the tired laborer at close of day, behind an old barn which served as a partial screen for this bargain and sale counter. The number of bottles which came from his capacious boots, pockets, and hat to the numerous patrons who centered about this Falstaffian dispenser were marvelous to behold, and to gratify my curiosity I sent an inspector over to the barn, to whose shelter the harvesters retired to indulge in their libations to the gods, and found the surroundings to be even worse than the Augean stables so graphically described in ancient verse and fit subject for the Herculean cleansing. In the winter season I faced another part of the village and there studied a different division of this "pharmaceutical " exploitation— the "speak easies" and "joint " sections.

In an old building which bore the title of "Restaurant and café,” to whose uninviting outwardness there came an astonishing procession day by day of all kinds and kindred patrons, I learned through my inspector that this Mecca contained a motley assortment of old tables and chairs, uninviting crockery, forks and spoons of dilapidated brass, with cheese and crackers smelling of the ancient order of the hibernating mouse, all of which were thrown in for 10 cents—or less which entitled the holder of this bill of exchange to a lotteryprize stick with a hook attachment, which dexterously lifted a plank in the floor and revealed an Aladdin lamp in transformed rows of this Topeka whisky bottle-reposing upon the bosom of Mother Earth, and only awaiting the magic touch of the male magician to become a thing of beauty and a joy forever-in his gastronomical

world. Or a check at the door would indicate a coupon slide in the wall which disclosed a similar feast of the "red eye" and entitled the fortunate possessor to fill his pistol pocket with a flask or two and retreat wheresoever he willed, as a Ganymede cupbearer to Reverend Dinwiddie's "pharmaceutical" humbug.

Thus the drug store, the boot legger, and the speak easy, of Kansas, enforce the prohibition law to the utter demoralization of all concerned.

And finally, gentlemen, I point you to the report of Mr. Yerkes, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, last September, on this question of alcoholic devices-in patent medicines, whose sale is enormous in prohibition States-directing his deputies to impose the tax-the same as on liquors, as this report avers "they are composed chiefly of distilled spirits without the addition of drugs or medicines in sufficient quantities to materially change the character of the whisky". and he refers to figures collected in Massachusetts recently, showing the immense sales, one such compound with a high percentage of whisky, having been bought to the extent of 300,000 bottles in one year in prohibition communities of one New England State. In October Mr. Yerkes issued a similar ultimatum on drinks."

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"Essence

The officials of his department reported "that prohibition communities throughout the country consume an enormous amount of these alleged essences of lemon, vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger, sold by country merchants, drug stores, and others as flavoring extracts." And, according to their investigation, the sales "were sufficient in some communities in one day to have flavored all the pies made in the neighborhoods for five years."

Many of these compounds contained more than 50 per cent of pure alcohol, and all from 25 to 80 per cent of alcoholic strength, and these goods had no sale outside of prohibition districts.

The appeals which have been made to your committee hitherto on the "home" influence, in reference to this bill as a protection to the children and young men of this nation, comes with bad grace, it would appear, from a people which have instituted the "curfew bell " as a substitute for the parental authority and restriction-which ought to be of sufficient strength to keep their children within the confines of home at night and to lessen the number of street arabs, whose alarming increase comes equally from the Christian firesides as out of the slums and purlieus of the poor and forsaken.

I am not one of those who believe that all of the goodness of the race centers in one of the sexes-the woman- -or the condensed badness inheres in the other--the man.

The virtues do not descend in a straight line to Mother Eve, or the vices remain in unbroken length with Father Adam. Nature is an exact accountant, and a just one. She gives to the daughter the characteristics of the father, and to the son the attributes of the mother, while in the final adjustment she will be found to equally balance the measure. There are just as many good women as good men, and no more; equally as many bad women as bad men, and no less. The crossbreed of divinity and deviltry are everywhere to be found in the sexes as Nature's true scale of balance.

If the man to-day is charged with neglect of his home, at the club of the rich, or the bar and saloon of the poor, so, too, there centers in