Government by the Brewers?

When it was found impossible to suppress my writings by attempts to bribe me, men were hired to poison me. After the failure of this plot to dispose of me, I was subjected to almost unbelievable insults, persecution, humiliation and injustice in the courts.

A friendly federal judge was besought to stop me by an injunction. The United States Circuit Court of Appeals set it aside.

Four futile attempts were made to influence the Post Office authorities to deny me the use of the mails.

I was twice presented with the alternative of either agreeing to stop the publication of the truth or being thrown into jail on "framed" libel charges. I chose the jail rather than renounce the right of the freedom of the press guaranteed me by the constitution of my country.

When even the jail could not silence me, a diabolical attempt was made to bury me alive in an institution for the insane, but when it was found impossible to discover the slightest trace of insanity, or drive me insane during a sojourn of a month among maniacs, I was released.

I verily believe that the honesty of the alienists in charge of the institution alone saved me from a living death.

THE AUTHOR

[Illustration: A Menace to good Government]

"_The very nature of the business of the brewer makes it imperative that they retain a strong hold on the ballot box. By those methods alone have they been able to exist in the past. By those methods alone, can they hope to save themselves_"

CHAPTER I.

MY THIRTY YEARS' INTIMATE ASSOCIATION WITH THE BREWERS

For about thirty years I have been closely allied with the brewing industry and was daily brought in contact with the brewers.

I have been interested in a number of breweries as a stockholder. I have been intimately associated with many brewers throughout the country. I am therefore thoroughly familiar with the inner history of the beer business and the political corruption, crime, vice and degeneracy closely interwoven therewith.

CHAPTER II.

PROHIBITION BANISHES CRIME

Naturally, I am not a prohibitionist. Nevertheless, I dispute the contention of the brewers that they did not oppose but, instead, actually approved the enactment of the recent "bone-dry" prohibition legislation forbidding transportation of alcoholic beverages into states which prohibit the sale and manufacture of intoxicants, on the ground that its drastic measure would have a "reactionary effect" and thus result in the return of a number of the present "dry" states into the "wet" column. Vaporings of this sort sound very much like the old sour grape story and have their origin in the fertile brain of the publicity manager of the beer trust.

Absence of drunkenness, law and order, and the reduction of crime to a minimum, have invariably followed the "dry" wave.

Prohibition has emptied the jails, and the people are gratified with the new order of things. Everybody is happy except the liquor interests.

A town in Georgia, having no further use for its jail, not having had an occupant for a long time as the result of the bone-dry law, has rented it out for another purpose.

The most remarkable proof comes from the national capital. Washington became saloonless on November 1, 1917. During the month of November--the first dry month--official figures made public by the commissioners, comparing arrests for drunkenness during November, 1917, and the same month a year ago, show that during November, 1917, 199 arrests for drunkenness were made, as against 838 for November, 1916, a reduction of 639, or 76 per cent. The greatest number of arrests for any one week in November, 1917, were 61, while the greatest number for the same period a year ago were 218.