Nevertheless it must be apparent to every one who troubles to investigate, that prohibition invariably works great good wherever it is made effective.  Take, for example, Birmingham.

There was one year—­I believe it was 1912—­when there was an average of more than one murder a day, for every working day in the year, in the county in which Birmingham is located.  On one famous Saturday night there were nineteen felonious assaults (sixteen by negroes and three by whites), from which about a dozen deaths resulted, two of those killed having been policemen.

All this has changed with prohibition.  Killings are now comparatively rare, arrests have diminished to less than a third of the former average, whether for grave or petty offenses, and the receiving jail, which was formerly packed like a pigpen every Saturday night, now stands almost empty, while the city jail, which used continually to house from 120 to 150 offenders, has diminished its average population to 30 or 35.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

BUSY BIRMINGHAM

The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism.  Birmingham is all business.  If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know—­a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended.  Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age.  Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of his own.  And, like Birmingham, he is a little bit naive in his pride of success.  His life is divided between his office and his home, and it would be difficult to say for which his devotion is the greater.  He talks business with his wife at breakfast and dinner, and on their Sunday walks.  He brings his papers home at night and goes over them with her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the children, she is deeply interested in his business and often makes suggestions which he follows.  This causes him to admire her intensely, which he would not necessarily do were she merely a good wife and mother.

He has no hobbies or pastimes.  True, he plays golf, but with him golf is not a diversion.  He plays because he finds the exercise increases his efficiency ("efficiency” is perhaps his favorite word), and because many of his commercial associates are golfers, and he can talk business with them on the links.

His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized city lot.  It is filled with very shiny mahogany furniture and strong-colored portieres and sofa cushions.  It is rather more of a house than he requires, for his tastes are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a large house, for the same reason that he and his wife ought to dress expensively—­that is, out of respect, as it were, to his business.