in the case which accentuate its unreasonableness and unfairness.  In the American village and small town, the use of alcoholic drinks presents almost no good aspect.  The countryman sees nothing but the vile and sordid side of it.  The village grogshop, the bar of the smalltown hotel, in America has presented little but the gross and degrading aspect of drinking.  Prohibition has meant, to the average farmer, the abolition of the village groggery and the small-town barroom.  That it plays a very different part in the lives of millions of city people—­and for that matter that it does so in the lives of millions of industrial workers in smaller communities—­is a notion that never enters the farmer’s mind.  And to this must be added the circumstance that the farmer can easily make his own cider and other alcoholic drinks, and feels quite sure that Prohibition will never seriously interfere with his doing so.  Altogether, we have here a case of one element of the population decreeing the mode of life of another element of whose circumstances and desires they have no understanding, and who are affected by the decree in a wholly different way from that in which they themselves are affected by it.  Many other points might be made, further to emphasize the monstrosity of the Prohibition that has been imposed upon our country.  Of these perhaps the most important one is the way in which the law operates so as to be effective against the poor, and comparatively impotent against the rich.  But this and other points have been so abundantly brought before the public in connection with the news of the day that it seemed hardly necessary to dwell upon them.  My object has been rather to direct attention to a few broad considerations, less generally thought of.  The objection that applies to sumptuary laws in general has tenfold force in the case of National Prohibition riveted down by the Constitution, and imposed upon the whole nation by particular sections and by particular elements of the population.  A question of profound interest in connection with this aspect of Prohibition demands a few words of discussion.  It has been asserted with great confidence, and denied with equal positiveness, that Prohibition has had the effect of very greatly increasing the addiction to narcotic drugs.  I confess my inability to decide, from any data that have come to my attention, which of these contradictory assertions is true.  But it is not denied by anybody, I believe, that, whether Prohibition has anything to do with the case or not, the use of narcotic drugs in this country is several times greater per capita than it is in any of the countries of Europe—­six or seven times as great as in most.  Why this should be so, it is perhaps not easy to determine.  The causes may be many.  But I submit that it is at least highly probable that one very great cause of this extraordinary and deplorable state of things is the atmosphere of reprobation which in America has so long surrounded the practice of moderate drinking.