What Prohibition Has Done to America | Page 6

history that our system of self-governing States has proved itself of
inestimable benefit in another way. It has rendered possible the trying

of important experiments in social and governmental policy;
experiments which it would have been sometimes dangerous, and still
more frequently politically impossible, to inaugurate on a national scale.
When these experiments have proved successful, State after State has
followed the example set by one or a few among their number; when
they have been disappointing in their results, the rest of the Union has
profited by the warning. But, highly important as is this aspect of State
independence, the most essential benefits of it are the training in
self-government which is emphasized in the above quotation from Mr.
Nordhoff, and the adaptation of laws to the particular needs and the
particular character of the people of the various States. That modern
conditions have inevitably led to a vast enlargement of the powers of
the central government, no thinking person can deny. It would be folly
to attempt to stick to the exact division of State functions as against
national which was natural when the Union was first formed. The
railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone, the immense development of
industrial, commercial, and financial organization, the growth of
interwoven interests of a thousand kinds, have brought the people of
California and New York, of Michigan and Texas, into closer relations
than were common between those of Massachusetts and Virginia in the
days of Washington and John Adams. In so far as the process of
centralization has been dictated by the clear necessities of the times, it
would be idle to obstruct it or to cry out against it. But, so far from this
being an argument against the preservation of the essentials of local
self-government, it is the strongest possible argument in favor of that
preservation. With the progress of science, invention, and business
organization, the power and prestige of the central government are
bound to grow, the power and prestige of the State governments are
bound to decline, under the pressure of economic necessity and social
convenience; all the more, then, does it behoove us to sustain those
essentials of State authority which are not comprised within the domain
of those overmastering economic forces. If we do not hold the line
where the line can be held, we give up the cause altogether; and it will
be only a question of time when we shall have drifted into complete
subjection to a centralized government, and State boundaries will have
no more serious significance than county boundaries have now. But if
there is one thing in the wide world the control of which naturally and

preeminently belongs to the individual State and not to the central
government at Washington, that thing is the personal conduct and
habits of the people of the State. If it is right and proper that the people
of New York or Illinois or Maryland shall be subjected to a national
law which declares what they may or may not eat or drink--a law which
they cannot themselves alter, no matter how strongly they may desire
it--then there is no act of centralization whatsoever which can be justly
objected to as an act of centralization. The Prohibition Amendment is
not merely an impairment of the principle of self-government of the
States; it constitutes an absolute abandonment of that principle. This
does not mean, of course, an immediate abandonment of the practice of
State self-government; established institutions have a tenacious life,
and moreover there are a thousand practical advantages in State
selfgovernment which nobody will think of giving up. But the principle,
I repeat, is abandoned altogether if we accept the Eighteenth
Amendment as right and proper; and if anybody imagines that the
abandonment of the principle is of no practical consequence, he is
woefully deluded. So long as the principle is held in esteem, it is
always possible to make a stout fight against any particular
encroachment upon State authority; any proposed encroachment must
prove its claim to acceptance not only as a practical desideratum but as
not too flagrant an invasion of State prerogatives. But with the
Eighteenth Amendment accepted as a proper part of our system, it will
be impossible to object to any invasion as more flagrant than that to
which the nation has already given its approval. A striking illustration
of this has, curiously enough, been furnished in the brief time that has
passed since the adoption or the eighteenth Amendment. Southern
Senators and Representatives and Legislaturemen who, for getting all
about their cherished doctrine of State rights, had fallen over
themselves in their eagerness to fasten the Eighteenth Amendment
upon the country, suddenly discovered that they were deeply devoted to
that doctrine when the Nineteenth Amendment came up for
consideration. But nobody