Liquor Problem Lecture.

Mr. John Koren, in his lecture last night on "Wisdom and Unwisdom in Liquor Legislation," said that the trend of the wise liquor legislation of the future would be in the direction of local monopolies, established by local option, for the control of the liquor traffic under stringent restrictions and with practically no private profits.

Prohibition, he said, cannot solve the liquor problem. State prohibition is already a policy of the past, for while it has been tried in fifteen states, it exists today in only five; and in these states the prohibitory laws are scandalously administered. Local prohibition has been successful in many rural districts, but has proved ineffectual in towns and cities. Prohibition has failed, because it does not represent public sentiment.

The license system is also generally admitted to be a failure. It leaves the saloons under unrestricted private control, with the tremendous stimulation of private profits. Though the license system is as well developed as it can be, it has neither decreased the political power of the saloon nor lessened intemperance to any extent.

In the future the principle dominating wise liquor legislation must be the elimination of private profits and restriction of the traffic through means of monopolies with an absolute control of the liquor business. This system has the great advantage of taking away the main stimulus to the increase of the business, since it will not yield its profits to private individuals.

These liquor monopolies might be either state or local corporations. But while such state corporations controlling the present traffic have many advantages, they are more rigid and less adapted to local conditions than local corporations. These local corporations, in which the profit is turned over partly to the state and partly to the community, adopted at the option of the voters in any given district, have in Norway and Sweden proved remarkably successful in reducing intemperance. There is every reason to believe that in this country also they would furnish the best possible method of dealing with the liquor problem.