Wake Up ! Montreal

B. I. HAET,

PROTEGTBB

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A Crime and Vice Breeder.

Wake Up! Montreal!

Commercialized Vice and Its Contributories

By E. 1. HART

Secretary, Joint Committee of Co-operating Churches. President, Prisoners’ Aid Association of Montreal. President, Canadian Citizenship Association.

the witness press

1919

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Toronto

https://archive.org/details/wakeupmontrealcoOOhart

CONTENTS

Introduction Five Master-Evils,

1. The Cigarette 3

II. The Drug Habit 9

III. Gambling 14

IV. Drink 20

V. The Social Evil 29

Contributories to Vice,

I. The Police 37

II. The Bench 39

III. The Law 42

IV. The Lack of Eeformative Institutions 46

V. The Lack of Proper Recreational

Facilities for Young Women .... 50

VI. The ‘^Movies’’ 55

VII. The Prevailing Immodesty of Female

Attire 60

VIII. The Delinquent Home 62

IX. The W ant of a Civic Conscience ... 68

ILLVSTBATI0N8,

A Crime and Vice Breeder Frontispiece

The Most Notorious House in Canada — No.

6 St. Justin St 32

The Fullum Street Female Jail 46

4. The Dining Boom in the Protestant Female Jail 48

One of Our Public’’’ Schools on St.- Law- rence Boulevard . ....... . 58

Map Chart — -Where Potential Criminals Are Growing Up

66

WAKE UP! MONTREAL!

INTRODUCTION

There is an important distinction between VICE and COMMERCIALIZED VICE, The former is a habit physically and morally injur- ious to the one who acquires it; the latter is an organized business through which unscrupulous persons seek to make money out of the vicious inclinations of their fellows. The former can only be successfully dealt with by moral and religious forces; the latter must be eradicated by processes of law, supported by enlightened and resolute public opinion.

If vice were left to propagate itself alone the problem would not be so difficult, but when there are joined to it great commercial interests, ready to back it up with immense capital, the work of restraining its effect upon the public is multiplied. Giant corporations are behind some of our popular vices to-day. Provincial and Federal legislatures may pass restrictive or even prohibitive laws, but they mean little while it is possible for the agents of these corporations to slip bribes into the hands of corruptible legisla- tors and officials. It is a sad commentary upon our humanity that there is absolutely no vice so —1—

deep, no sin so black, but that there are men and women who can be found to invest them- selves and their money in its propagation.

There are at least five vices characteristic of modern civilization which have been commer- cialized and are causing untold havoc among multitudes in all classes of society. These five ^^MASTEB EVILS’^ are entrenched in Mont- real, so much so, that some social experts have declared that our city is ‘Hhe rottenest city on the continent.’^

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FIVE MASTER EVILS

I. The CIGARETTE.

The first master evil of which I shall speak is one that is not considered by a large part of our community as an evil at all. It is the innocent-looking, little cigarette.

In placing the cigarette in the category of vices, I fully appreciate the fact that, by the un- thinking, the uninformed and the selfish, I shall be denominated an ^‘intolerant,’’ a “fanatic,” a ‘ ‘ Puritan, ” a “ molly-coddle ” or “ the limit. ’ ’ I care not what I may be called so long as I am able to persuade some of our young people to accept and to act upon the scientific statement that the cigarette is one of the most insidious and deadly evils of the day; that it blights and blasts health and morals, arrests development, deadens the thinking faculties and makes suc- cessful achievement impossible.

Dr. D. H. Kriss, a physician who has made a special study of the cigarette evil, declares that it is as great a national menace as alcohol has. ever been.

A writer in Harper^ s Weekly says: “Cigar- ettes are not mere rolls of tobacco. They are not drugged with expensive poisons as charged, but they have a peculiarity. The combination of burning paper and tobacco makes a compound which is neither tobacco smoke nor paper smoke,

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but has a name which chemists know and a smell which everybody knows. There is not much of the new compound, but in what there is of it lies the idiosyncracy of the cigarette. Thomas A, Edison may be supposed to know what he is talking about when he says: ^Acro- lein is one of the most terrible drugs in its effect on the human body. The burning of ordinary cigarette paper always produces acrolein. That is what makes the smoke so irritating. I really believe that it often makes boys insane. We sometimes develop acrolein in this laboratory in our experiments with glycerine. One whiff of it from the oven drove one of my assistants out of the building the other day. I can hardly exaggerate the dangerous nature of acrolein, and yet, that is what a man or boy is dealing with every time he smokes an ordinary cigar- ette.’’

In giving evidence before Mr. Justice Co- derre, in connection with a military exemption case in January, 1918, Dr. J. E. Duhe, one of the best known French-Canadian medical auth- orities in this city, said: ‘^This war has shown us doctors one thing that we feared, but which we never thought so appalling; the prevalence of diseases among the young generation. It is true that the fine flower of our manhood has already enlisted and responded to the call of voluntary service, but the situation as, we find it, is still very grave, and I express the wish that in the near future the problem will be tackled with energy by the Government.”

Asked by His Lordship to what cause he at-

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tributed most of the disease found, Dr. Dube unhesitatingly replied: the cigarette ha-

hit/^ never could understand,’’ he cmtin- ued, ‘^why tobacco companies did such enor- mous busines:s. I do now, however. Our young men are perverted, not so much by the excessive use of liquor as by cigarettes. I have examined scores of young men who confessed to me that they smoked from two to five packages of cig- arettes every day. In a very few cases, com- paratively, I found disease due to the excess of liquor, but the ravages of the cigarette habit are beyond expression.^’

^‘The Little White Slaver/’ as Mr. Ford, of automobile fame, calls it, must be held re- sponsible for keeping out of khaki during the AVorld’s greatest war, thousands of young men in Quebec. According to one Montreal re- cruiting officer, twenty per cent, of those who were examined at one local recruiting station were rejected because of their overfondness for the cigarette.

Mr. Owen Dawson, late Secretary of the Juvenile Delinquent Court of Montreal, in his report for the year 1916, says: ‘‘Over eighty per cent, of the boys before the Court during the year were cigarette smokers.” Judge Choquet, of the same Court, says that we can- not deal too severely with the evil. He stated not long ago that fully ninety-five per cent, of the cases of theft among the boys brought be- fore him, were due to a desire either to go to picture shows or to obtain cigarettes.

So seized were the members of our Canadian Parliament with the harmful character of cig-

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arettes a few years ago, that they unanimously passed an act making it a crime for any one to sell or give cigarettes or cigarette-papers to per- sons under sixteen years of age, and for any youth of that age to have cigarettes in his pos- session. That law is a dead letter in Montreal. It is so dead that boys, hardly out of their baby- clothes, can walk along any of our streets, stand in any of our public places and boldly puff away at cigarettes without challenging the attention of the police or even the rebuke of an elder.

Some idea of the alarming growth of the cigarette habit in Canada may be gathered from the following statistics: In 1876 the ' cigarette was practically unknown in our country ; in 1900, 100,000,000 were manufactured; in 1915, 1,088,858,656; in 1916, 1,307,276,750 and in 1917, 1,664,709,973. In four years the manu- facture of cigarettes has doubled. This tre- mendous increase is of course, due to the War, when in the name of patriotism, enterprising tobacco companies, supported by well-meaning individuals and organizations, fairly deluged our boys at the front with cigarettes. The popularity of the cigarette among our men in khaki has undoubtedly had its influence upon the small boy at home who always loves a sol- dier. He cannot understand why he should be denied that which so apparently adds to the happiness and comfort of his hero. To make him understand, is the dilemma of some of his anxious elders.

It is a wonder to me that every boy in Montreal is not a cigarette fiend. There is

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enough to make him become such. Wherever he goes, wherever he looks — in the papers, in the magazines, in the street cars, in the shops, on the poster-boards, against the sky line in giant let- ters of flame by night, even in our churches, are compelling reminders of, and appeals to the habit. Our boys must be saved from this curse ! The future manhood of Canada is in peril !

And not only is our young manhood in peril, but our young womanhood as well. The growth of the cigarette habit among girls and young women has already reached the danger- ous stage. Among prostitutes, dance-hall and cabarejb habitues in Montreal, the use of the cigarette has been common for years, but now it is becoming no strange sight to see girls and young women lounging about our first-class ho- tels, at teas, bridge-parties and musicales, puf- fing away with all the abandon of veterans. This very day, in the early afternoon, in passing through the tea-room of the Windsor Hotel, I saw three girls — one with her feet stretched out on the top of a chair — enjoying their cigarettes in company with a couple of young men. To one side was a table with empty wine glasses. What kind of mothers will such girls make? What kind of a race will spring from such a stock ? And yet, these girls, if they were rebuked for the habit, would hotly and pertinently reply that they had as much right to smoke cigarettes as their brothers.

So alive to the evils of the cigarette habit have many in the United States become, that now even business firms look upon it as an ene- my to good business. In Detroit sixty-nine

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merchants have agreed not to employ the cig- arette nser — boy or man. W anamaker asks this question of every applicant: ^‘Do you use cig- arettes?/’ Marshall Field and Company and the Morgan and Wright Tire Company have this rule, ‘‘No cigarettes can be smoked by our em- ployees.” Thomas A. Edison, in ansAver to the question whether he used cigarettes, says: “I never smoked one in my life and no man or boy who smokes cigarettes can work in my labora- tory. In my opinion there are enough degen- erates in the world without manufacturing any more by means of cigarettes ! ’ ’

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IT. THE DRUG HABIT.

My attention was first directed to this vice shortly after coming to Montreal some eleven years ago. Two drug habitues with whom I had become acquainted used to call at my house whenever they were short of cash or in some trouble — and that was not infrequent. One of these men had been a member of the Sunday School of my church as a boy and he had not forgotten the way back to it. Once he had been a clever and skillful mechanic, but drink and drugs got a strangle hold upon him, he lost position after position and finally became an emaciated, staggering wreck, aimlessly wan- dering about the city during the day and sleep- ing at night in some park or yard or down at the Old Brewery Mission. More than once I have found him in a dead stupor lying at my back-door.

Every effort was made by myself and others to cure the poor fellow of the habit. He was sent to a sanitarium and after a sojourn of sev- eral months returned apparently a new man. But though he was stronger physically his will was still very weak; he had not been back tep days before he had sold his clothes and was as bad as ever.

There is no person more to be pitied than the drug fiend, for there is no craving so in- tense as that which possesses him. To satisfy

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that craving men will lie, steal and commit any crime, and women will sell their bodies and even their children. More than once in Canada and in the Orient have I witnessed the excruciating tortures of a man who had been deprived of his usual narcotic.

Dr. Edwin F. Bowers, in the last number of an American magazine in speaking of Drug Fiends says: ‘‘While of course, it is impossible to obtain accurate figures on the subject, owing to the veil of secrecy which mists and clouds it over, it is conservatively estimated that there are in America 1,500,000 victims of habit-form- ing narcotic drugs — more victims of narcotics than there are of tuberculosis.

“Men, women and even little children are enslaved by the insidious habit which is sweep- ing into its clutch each year an additional hun- dred thousand victims. Fifteen per cent, of all practicing physicians, and thousands of nurses and druggists are addicted to narcotics. Drugs are the common tragedy of the professional world — of doctors, lecturers, actors, writers, scientists, teachers and students — of all those who seek doubtful relief from the penalty of overwork, as well as mere sensation seekers, or those who are attempting escape from violation of moral law.

“Perhaps the most pitiful fact connected with the use of drugs is the extreme youth of a majority of the addicts. Narcotics are peddled sometimes within one hundred feet of a school- house and boys and girls of from fourteen to eighteen become enslaved to their effects. Dr. Jackson E. Campbell, city prison physician, tes-

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tifying before the Senate Public Health Com- mittee a few years ago, made the startling as- sertion that within a radius of a few blocks of Third Avenue and 149th Street, New York, more than one thousands school children had ac- quired the heroin habit, or were in danger of be- coming ^joy riders,’ because of their use of the drug. ’ ’

^^We are now consuming more habit-form- ing drugs than all Europe combined. Our con- sumption of opium is far greater, per capita, than that of China, long looked upon as the worst of all drug-sodden countries. . . .Since 1860 there has been an increase of three hun- dred per cent, in the importation and consump- tion of opium in all its forms in America as against only one hundred and thirty-three per cent, increase in population.”

The article of Dr. Bowers is a startling and an appalling revelation of the drug habit in the United States, but what about the extent of the habit in Montreal ? It is impossible to give even approximate figures in regard to it, but from what can be learned from various sources the habit is alarmingly on the increase.

The hundreds of gamblers who play night after night in our numerous clubs and who live upon their nerves must have their ‘‘dope;” the thousands of professional prostitutes, whose con- stitutions become weakened through vice and whose spirits naturally become depressed, are obliged, in order to continue in their business, to resort to something that will quickly revive them; the white slavers, the pimps, the crooks and all who exploit their fellow-men in our Underworld find their most potent ally in the —11—

drugged drink — all these classes which form no small proportion of this metropolitan city will give one some shadowy idea, at least, of the ravages and abuse of drugs. In addition to these that I' have named, think of the large, unnamed class who in clandestine and less revolting ways turn to them for rest or stimulation.

To provide these_ various classes of our population with drugs an illicit business is carried on which, according to experts, is at least two hundred times larger than the legiti- mate, and the profits made are anywhere from three hundred to three thousand per cent.

There is hardly a week that passes but some man or boy appears in Court to answer to the charge of selling cocaine or opium, or having it in their possession. At the Windsor Street Sta- tion, within the last week, a Eussian was ar- rested with a suit case containing three hundred one ounce phials of morphine valued at $5,000. A few weeks ago at the same station a trunk, shipped by a Chinaman for Toronto, was seized by the Canadian Customs officer. It had secret- ed between mattresses ninety-six tins of opium worth $4,800. A year or so ago some sixty or seventy pounds of opium were seized by In- spector Belanger and his men in an old and lonely farm house near the Back Eiver. In this house was a complete manufacturing plant, the largest plant ever raided by the police. It is not very long since when at one time there were brought before Judge Leet eleven boys and a young man accused of selling cocaine. Every one of the boys had plainly stamped upon his features the hall-marks of a dope fiend.

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It has been declared by those who know Montreal’s Underworld that members of onr police force are interested in the traffic in drugs; that some of them even control it, while pimps, Chinese merchants and others are their agents or retailers. It is common knowledge in the ^‘district” that a former police officer made a fortune out of dope.

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III. GAMBLING,

A third master-evil in our midst is GAMBLING, In every part of the wide world the gambling instinct is more or less developed. In some countries gambling is little more than a quiet affair between a few individuals about a table with cards or dice and for small stakes. In other countries it is almost a national habit, an organized system that is yearly driving thousands of persons into financial ruin, into embezzlement, into prison, into the asylum and into suicide.

Montreal is behind no other city in its de- votion to gambling. In fact there is no city on the continent that has a greater propensity for it. We have our widely-known horse-races at the Blue Bonnets, Dorval and other race- tracks, patronized by Society’s ^^best” and at- tended by huge crowds, where hundreds of thousands of dollars are won or lost in a short afternoon. We have our fashionable clubs where the idle rich while away most of the day and night in playing for prizes or money. We have our underworld dens and secret clubs with the most cosmopolitan lot of frequenters any city can produce.

One night, not long ago, in company with a police official and a friend, I made a tour of some of the gaming places in our underworld. Particularly were we interested in those that

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we visited in ^ ^ Chinatown/ ’ on Lagauehatiere Street. In one place we saw about thirty men, in another about sixty — all gathered around long tables, while at the head, the manager or the book-keeper was kept on the jump collecting the bets and drawing in the chips. The bets were anywhere from ten cents to five dollars. One Chinaman, the week before, we learned, had lost one thousand dollars on the game in one of these clubs. With a large number of our Chinese population, gambling is a mania. They will work in the laundry or shop all day and play all night. It is no wonder that so many of them resort to opium and cocaine. In close proximity to the gambling dens that we visited are opium joints, in one of which eight China- men were seen reclining on couches or bunks smoking away at the seductive drug. Adjoining one of these joints is the store of the Chinese Doctor’’ — a big, fat fellow, with one of the hugest necks that I ever saw on a man. Cun- ning is written in large letters upon the face of the doctor and about him have gathered many strange tales and legends. His store is the most curious place in this city, weird in many re- spec'ts, with dried snakes and other reptiles hanging from the ceiling and suspended from cases, with all kinds of bottles, boxes and jars, filled with powders made from snakes and the bones of animals — sure cures for various ma- ladies.

Bad as are the Chinese gambling dens in our city, they are not one whit worse, no, not even as bad as many of the English and French clubs and pool-rooms which are licensed by the

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municipality or the Provincial Government. Some of these places are veritable nurseries of hell where boys as well as young men congre- gate and learn the devious ways of vice and crime. I have in my possession the names of thirty-four clubs operating in Montreal, all li- censed to^ sell liquors at any hour of the day and every day in the week. In every one of these places, gambling is going on, in some of them that which is worse. A side-light was thrown on one of our well-known clubs last No- vember, in Court, when it came out in -the evi- dence that several men spent the night in the place with a number of girls, all under twenty years of age. One of the men in the affair missed his diamond pin and charged a member of the party with its theft, or you and I would never have heard of this unsavory incident. At one of our fashionable clubs on Sherbrooke Street, within the last month, one man in three hours won $23,000. In a large office-building on St. James Street, it is declared by those who know, that from two to three hundred bets are made daily at the tobacco stand on horse- races. A large proportion, if not all, of these races occur across the border in the United States.

During the last ten days our local newspa- pers have given full-page accounts of a Court case of fraud in which an elderly citizen was persuaded to part with $125,000 on the ponies in Buffalo.

Since the crusade against horse-racing be- gan in Canada the number of ^‘handbook men’’ has considerably increased. It was reported a

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few months ago that there were at least fifty such gambling agents plying a most lucrative business in the downtown district alone. No one knows how many are operating uptown. When our Police Department had a reform spasm last year, these handbook men, accord- ing to the newspapers, received instructions that they were well-known at headquarters, that no longer the blind eye’’ would be turned upon them, but that they would be closely watched and severely punished if caught. For the in- formation of the curious, I might say, in pass- ing, that few of these handbook men, up to the present, have been caught.

One of the most baffling forms of gambling going on in Montreal at this time is through an innocent-looking, little machine, popularly know as the ^^Slot Machine.” It will be usual- ly found in some pool-room, barber-shop, ice- cream parlor, tobacco store or shoe-shine stand, hidden away, generally, in some corner, unnot- iced by the ordinary eye. This little machine is more than coining money for its owners who rent the space which it occupies.

Just what a serious menace the slot-mach- ine has become in our city, may be gathered from the evidence of a witness, interested in the placing of these machines, who appeared one day last year before the Board of Control. He stated that he had received a profit from ten machines in six weeks’ time of $4,000, while a certain company, which he named, made a profit of no less than $40,000 a month. As there are several companies engaged in this business, the annual sum expended by their patrons must be

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enormous. The tremendous profits of these ma- chines indicate that the chances against winning are very great, yet in spite of this fact, they are being played by an increasing number of boys and men. Children have been known to steal to gratify their passion. Complaints are be- ing made continuously to the authorities from parents, teachers, ministers and others regard- ing this evil, and though frequent raids and seizures have been made by the police, the thing continues.

But alarming though the vice of gambling is in Montreal, it is made more alarming by reason of the fact that so-called Christian Churches are countenancing some forms of it in connection with their efforts to raise money. Under a refined name, in apparently innocent guise and for a supposedly good purpose, the Gambling Devil is accomplishing at bazaars and picnics what elsewhere is being accomplished by the crack of an ivory ball or the turn of a dice box. Across the face of a large and beau- tiful church on Bernard Avenue, a few weeks ago, I saw a huge streamer announcing to the public that a raffle would take place on a cer- tain date in the interests of the church. One Sunday night, after service in a mission in Emard Ward, I was attracted by the brilliantly lighted basement of a church on Monk Boule- vard. With my companion I went in and found the basement crowded to the doors with all kinds of things for sale. In a half-a-dozen different nooks, I saw young men and women and little children gathered about some wheel of fortune or other instrument of chance, paying their

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coppers or five cent pieces for a try. When the Church stoops to such reprehensible means for augmenting its funds, is it any wonder that the vice of gambling fattens and thrives and is becoming uncontrollable in this city?

It has been repeatedly stated by denizens of the Underworld that Montreal is in the grip of a powerful gambling trust, the members of which are in a position to determine who and who are not permitted to carry on the different branches of the business. The trust has its collectors who gather toll from all kinds of sources, such as clubs, houses of prostitution and slot-machine companies. A percentage of the proceeds goes for police protection and the bal- ance is divided among the members of the trust, most of whom, if not all, are residents of Mont- real. How real and powerful this reputed trust is, time, we hope, will soon reveal.

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IV. DEINK,

A fourth master-evil in Montreal is DEINK. Drink has been and continues to be the most flagrant example of commercialized vice. Were there no capital invested in breweries and dis- tilleries, were not thousands of men in Great Britain, the United States and Canada vitally interested financially in the manufacture of liquor, it would be a comparatively easy matter to overcome the natural appetite for drink. But these men with their invested millions have stood squarely in front of every effort at re- form and every piece of legislation passed to reduce the evil of the traffic. By intimidation, by persecution, by bribes, by violence and by murder they have sought to gain their selfish and cruel ends.

In the United States the day of capitalized drink is about ended, in many provinces of Canada it is ended, but in the Province of Que- bec, in ninety municipalities — particularly the great municipality of Montreal, the traffic is ‘Agoing strong.”

For more than two hundred years Mont- real has been the stronghold of the Liquor Traf- fic in Canada. Its breweries and distilleries are the oldest in the land. More liquor has been sold here and drunk, twice over, than in any other Canadian city.

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The saloon has been during all these years, and is to-day, the social shrine and the munici- pal drawing-room where unprincipled men have gathered, shaped and controlled the destinies of the city. There is not a candidate for public office whom it will not seek to influ- ence; there is not a police official, nor a public contractor whom it will not try to bribe and cor- rupt ; there is not a soldier boy anxious to fight the battles of liberty and democracy whom it does not covet and aim to debauch. What does it care for victory or liberty or democracy? It cares only for self, for patronage, for dividends.' There is hardly a crime committed in our city that it has not inspired or abetted. There is hardly a young man or young woman who has departed from the path of virtue, but who has done so under the excitation of its spark- ling but deadly glass. There is not a house of shame but has its bottle. Those who steal virtue know that alcohol relaxes the morals while it stimulates unholy desires. The removal of liquor from houses of prostitution in Cincinnati a few years ago was followed by the closing of half the houses. The saloon and the brothel are twin partners in commercialized vice. But while the saloon is the greatest sinner as a liquor institu- tion, the licensed club is not far behind. In some respects it is far worse. Many a young man who would not be seen entering a saloon will go into a ‘^respectable’’ club.

Of these clubs there are many in Montreal and if their history were written the revela- tions would stagger our citizens. God only knows the number of tragedies that have been enacted

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within their walls and the pitiful wrecks of once promising young manhood that they have turned adrift.

The David Club is still fresh in the mem- ories of the residents of Maissoneuve. The orgies that went on in that place are incred- ible. Employees of a large company operating in the neighborhood, receiving high wages, were being continually inveigled into the club and as a result the business and the discipline of the company severely suffered. The club was owned by local politicians — an unscrupulous and powerful clique — and it was only after a long and hard fight last year, on the part of the company and the churches that it was closed by the License Commissioners.

Keep out the saloon, the licensed club, the brewery and the distillery and you keep out two- thirds of the crime and vice from which we have suffered.

We have talked much in recent years about reform in our civic administration; we have de- nounced in unmeasured terms graft and graf- ters, incompetency and fraud in connection with our City government, and no body of citizens ever had more abundant reason for complaint and protest than the citizens of Montreal. I do not hesitate to say that no matter how good a Mayor or Board of Commissioners we may have, we shall never have a clean and truly effective administration of civic affairs as long as we allow the liquor traffic to have a legalized and a recognized place among us.

Some idea of the wide ramifications of the Liquor Traffic and its tremendous hold upon

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our community may be gathered from a recent article by Professor Stephen Leacock of McGill University, in the Montreal Daily Star, under- the caption, ^^Wet or Dry?’’ The article is a most illuminating and candid one for it shows that old John Barleycorn has not only many friends in Montreal’s ^ ^ Underworld, ” but that he has many friends in Montreal’s ^ Overworld,’ In it he says:

Nobody seems willing to bear witness to how widely diffused is the habit of normal, wholesome drinking, and of the great bene- fits to be derived from it. The University where I have worked for nearly twenty years contains in its faculties a great number of scholarly, industrious men whose life-workj cannot be derided or despised, even by the salaried agitator of a prohibitionist society. Yet the great majority of them ^^drink.^^ I use that awful word in the full, gloomy sense given to it by the teetotaller. I mean that if you ask these men to dinner and offer them a glass of wine, they will take it. Some will take two. I have even seen them take Scotch and soda. During these same years I have been privileged to know a great many of the leading lawyers of Montreal, whose brains and energy and service to the community I cannot too much admire. If there are any of them who do not drink,” I can only say I have not seen them. I can bear the same dreadful testimony on behalf of my friends who are doctors; and the same, and even more emphatic on behalf of all the paint- ers, artists and literary men with whom I

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have had the good fortune to be very closely associated. ’ ’

Professor Leacock is in a position to know of what he is speaking. He is a popular and in- fluential citizen, with an international reputa- tion as an author, and naturally has a very large circle of acquaintances. When he states in an article upon one of the most serious sub- jects before the Canadian public that the ma- jority of his professional friends in this city do not hesitate to take a ‘‘drink,/’ it should lead every citizen who has the real interests of the city and the province at heart to pause and think.

This article was written to strengthen the cause of the “Wets.” I imagine that it will have the very opposite effect and will put one more argument at the command of the “Drys.” It certainly will tend to shake the confidence of many parents in the institution which he repre- sents as being an absolutely safe one for the education of their sons and daughters. It will stimulate the desire among the sober and the m.ore progressive elements of our community to see that in this age of light and efficiency only those who' stand for the highest will oc- cupy the highest positions of responsibilty and influence.

It has already convinced many that the professor, though a reputed authority in Politi- cal Economy, is a back number in his subject. He is away behind the times and the spirit of the age and needs to take a post-graduate course in some of the many progressive parts of the world where prohibition has been honestly and

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successfully tried. The article has shown that the professor is as far out of date in his Moral Philosophy as he is in his Political Economy. In referring to the drunkard class he says: ^‘It is a pity to destroy the comfort of the home, and amenity of social life for the sake of so small and so worthless a fraction of humanity. ’ ’ Those words are a plain rejection of Jesus’ law of the survival of the weak for the German super- man’s law of the survival of the strong. They are anti-Christian. How far they are from Paul’s unselfish words : — ^ ‘ It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. ”

God help us to open our eyes as citizens to the subtility, the enormity and the iniquity of the traffic in strong drink. If our eyes were open we would not wait till next May for pro- hibition; we could not tolerate the evil another day.

It was humiliating to me to see all the other large cities of Canada under prohibi- tion during those anxious, critical days, when the Dominion and^ the Empire needed every ounce of food and energy and man-power — and Montreal, the largest and most important city of all, with three hundred and more bar-rooms crowded as never before, and its distilleries and breweries running full blast. -

Now as our boys are returning from over- seas this traffic which did all that it could to prevent them from doing their ‘^bit” for the Empire in its hour of need is doing its best to prevent them from doing their ^^bit” at home

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in the great work of reconstruction.

Hardly do they put their feet upon Quebec soil when they are approached by ^‘boot-leg- gers’’ who smuggle into their hands bottles or flasks of liquor, much of which has been “doped.” The result is that, in many cases, not only do their victims lose their senses but their cents. Those who have just received their pay wake up to find -it all gone. It is estimated that our returning soldiers will receive more than $50,000,000. That is what the Traffic is after

An observant friend of mine, while two trainloads of returned soldiers were delayed for a few minutes in the Turcot yards witnessed twenty-five sales of liquor. For several months Dominion Square has been infested with female- fiends who have been systematically furnishing soldiers and sailors with flasks of whiskey.

A day or. two ago Lieutenant-Colonel Mar- riott, 0. 0. Canadian Clearing Service at Quebec, in commenting upon the trouble which his staff is having with returned men under the influence of liquor, said, “The situation is becoming worse all the time. On Saturday night the C. P. E. refused to pull out the train as nearly half the party of three hundred and fifty men were “fighting drunk” and we had great difficulty in handling them later. Three of them were so badly drugged from the poison- ous liquor that they drank that they narrowly pulled through.” Colonel Marriott said that the whiskey runners brought the liquor down to the trains in cases, and sold it to the soldiers without any action being taken on the part of the city authorities.

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It is stated that a number of returned men who had got liquor in this city, en route to Kingston a few days ago, were in such a pitiful condition of drunkenness that the meeting at the station with their relatives was heart-break- ing. It is no wonder that the feeling in On- tario is becoming increasingly bitter against Quebec.

And yet on the heels of these dastardly acts committed by these paid devils of the traf- fic, and which are stirring to the depths every patriotic citizen throughout the Dominion, our English morning paper ^^The Gazette,’’ comes out with a flippant and sarcastic editorial up- on the ^^inquisitiveness and the relentlessness’’ of ^^Dry” Ontario officials to prevent the en- try of liquor into that province. It says: hunt for dynamite could not be keener. The sleuths are on all trains and at every station. If a traveller showns concern about his suit- case, its contents are immediately inquired into. But the business is being carried so far that protests are increasing in number and vehem- ence. The result should be at least a checking of the too enthusiastic whiskey spotters.”

Would to God that Quebec had a few of these enthusiastic ^^whiskey-spotters” denoun- ced by the Gazette, and many a brave lad who has faced ^ death for the Gazette and for me would have his scanty pay still in his pocket and many a wife and mother would have been spared the sickening sight of a doped” husband and son.

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The traitorous greed of the distiller, the brewer, the saloonkeeper, the owner of a house of prostitution ; the thirst of the man or woman who want their drink no matter who may suf- fer thereby, must no longer stand in the way of the demand for a prohibition law. Only under such a law, vigorously enforced, are the people of Montreal and Canada safe.

The problems before us in Canada arising from the war, the increasing social unrest, the return of our brave boys from the front, the expected influx of multitudes from alien lands — these demand clearness of brain, brotherliness of spirit and the sinking of personal and selfish interests for the common good. Of these essential qualities to national success and happiness