These restrictions by law are eternally increasing, so that it has become almost impossible for a citizen of the republic to live a single day without violating one or more laws. In almost every relation of life the conduct of the American is minutely regulated.

Many of these restrictions are founded upon a muddled conception of the public good: their aim would seem to be to protect the innocent bystander. But we cannot see how the innocent bystander profits, when the free citizen is forbidden to go fishing on Sunday, to smoke in public, to see certain plays, to get Anthony Comstock reports and the Kreutzer Sonata through the mails; to say in public just what he wants to say—to exercise freedom of speech; to kiss his girl in the parks, or a woman to wear abbreviated skirts,—ad libitum!

These prohibitions burden the individual without conferring any appreciable advantage upon the mass, or even upon other individuals. The struggle between two wholly different theories of life—the Puritanical spirit on one hand, and the Liberal spirit on the other—is on, and it is becoming fiercer every day. Said Congressman Richard Bartholdt, in a speech made in the House of Representatives:

“The attempts to further and further restrict our liberties in a Puritan sense are carried on in the garb of a religious movement, and the ministers of all churches and the members of all congregations are constantly called upon for support and money to maintain lobbies in both the national and state capitals; and these lobbyists are cracking the whip over our lawmakers, and are urging them to pass more and more restrictive laws,—laws which in their mistaken zeal, they believe will make people good. I do not exaggerate, my friends, when I say that if this movement is not stopped, and stopped soon, the American people before long will find themselves wrapped up in a network of ‘don’t’s’ which will completely hamper their freedom of action; and instead of being freemen in all matters of personal conduct, they will be slaves fettered by the chains of un-American laws.

“Permit me, in this connection, to call attention to a most remarkable fact; namely, that the people in many cases actually vote to enslave themselves. History tells us of despots who kept their subjects in perpetual serfdom, and of rulers who robbed the people of their freedom; but there is no case on record, so far as we know, where the people of their own volition and by their own votes robbed themselves of their own birthright. The United States is the first example of this kind. The history of the human race is a constant struggle for liberty, and every concession wrung from the oppressors was heralded as a new triumph of progress and civilization. Here we have the example of a generation which, though being free, voluntarily surrenders its social liberty and forges with its own hands the fetters of slavery. Now, can you account for that? Is it because we do not sufficiently appreciate our heritage on the theory that what you inherit and what comes to you easily you do not value as what you have to fight for yourselves? Or is it because the people do not fully realize just what they are doing by joining forces with those who are conspiring against their highest interests? I leave these questions for you to answer. Perhaps we are guilty on both counts.”

If the writer were to answer these questions, she would be constrained to say that the last count is the strongest count: the people do not realize what they are doing by joining forces with those who are conspiring against their highest interests. The average American has become a chronic joiner. He does not stand for something: he must belong to something. The Prohibition movement comes along and appeals to his sentimental and emotional nature. He has been schooled to depend largely on sentiment, and trained to march with the crowd. To act as a responsible unit has been practically impossible. He has never thought upon the question deeply; he has been part of a muddled mass of humanity, thinking as the mass thought and acting as they acted: he has not been the soul-free individual he imagined himself to be; his acts and opinions have been nothing more than weak reflections of the opinions and acts of the muddled mass. He joins the Prohibition forces, and thereafter thinks less than before, because, being joined to something, he can safely trust to that something—the organized mass which, in turn, thinks and acts just as a few self-appointed and ambitious leaders think and act. There is no more for him to do now than to walk up to the polls and vote precisely as he is bidden to do. He has become a real automaton.

And he does not once realize that he has joined forces with those who are conspiring against his highest interests. He helps to pass a law that takes away his neighbor’s rights and privileges, and does not dream that in so doing he is taking away his own rights and constitutional guaranties, and as surely undermining the fabric of our free institutions and thereby hastening national decay and national ruin.