A Cloud from Canada
Seitz, Don C
A CLOUD FROM CANADA By DON C. SEITZ In the following article an interesting thesis is advanced: "Rich as these United States are, they cannot endure eternally the economic drain brought about by...
...More ships than those of fishermen speedily found their way to this rendezvous, bearing richer cargoes than salt and seines...
...Failing, however, to secure swift repeal it may be safely asserted that nullification is first and erasure second in the process of eliminating Volstead and his works...
...The South stands in the way of the repeal of the one...
...WHEN the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect through the operations of the Volstead Act, it was met with similar legislation on the part of the Canadian provinces...
...Not at all...
...Quebec prospered in revenues and trade...
...There is nothing equivocal about this, but the northern states, in which many slaves were still held, showed no zeal in making local laws for the purpose of rendering up bondsmen...
...The results amazed even best wishers...
...Of larger effect, however, and more far reaching in the case of the United States, was that on the rich province of Ontario, alongside of so much of our own best territory...
...She could not build roads, maintain adequate schools, or do any of the things her people required for their welfare...
...The islands fed Rum Row off the New York coast, snuggling safely beyond the three-mile limit that then marked the freedom of the waves...
...The day before, October 30, Ontario, by a decisive vote, affirmed her faith in Ferguson's course...
...Do not imagine that Quebec drew all her prosperity from the pockets of the inhabitants...
...More schools, more teachers, and ample road-building became possible...
...the educators for facilities...
...It proceeded to do so in several instances, and despite some rioting carried its point...
...It would have cost money and Maine is not greatly given to spending hers on other folks...
...Cuba, Bermuda and the Bahamas take toll, "climate" being far from the sole attraction of West Indian resorts...
...In season this drain became too great to be withstood...
...It did not name Negroes, but required that No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on the claim of the party to whom such labor or service is due...
...Suction is being applied in all directions...
...Boston is rising anew...
...Curiously she did not...
...Indeed Canada is an example of a land driven by financial decay to repudiate its anti-liquor legislation...
...They were smugglers of all sorts of rich wares, not the least of which were wines and liquors...
...Nothing remained but to yield...
...Economics can always be relied upon to erase false moves whether made for moral or protective reasons...
...A CLOUD FROM CANADA By DON C. SEITZ In the following article an interesting thesis is advanced: "Rich as these United States are, they cannot endure eternally the economic drain brought about by the operations of the Eighteenth Amendment...
...With a bottle a day ahead, they wore out the path...
...Motorists were not slow to discover its picturesque merits and pleasant ending...
...It made no special appeal to the palate but was good for votes...
...Ontario had been made dry largely at the behest of farmers who grew grapes and made wine cooperatively...
...Its terms are worth reciting: Section 1. No judge of any court of record of this commonwealth and no justice of the peace, shall hereafter take cognizance or grant a certificate in cases that may arise under the third section of an Act of Congress, passed February 12, 1793, and entitled "An Act respecting fugitives from justice and persons escaping from the service of their masters," to any person who claims any other person as a fugitive slave within the jurisdiction of the commonwealth...
...The province of Quebec, hard pressed because of economic conditions originating with the war, found its scant cash flowing ever away, and readily traced its destination...
...To the money taken away by these processes add the $300,000,000 annual loss in internal revenue, the cost of enforcement and a majestic line of evils, and it becomes certain that economic forces are at work to end Volsteadism...
...The money flow toward Quebec grew wide and deep...
...Between the conditions so created in Quebec and the French Islands, Newfoundland, where church influences govern, was being pushed toward bankruptcy...
...He announced his purpose three years ago to adopt the Quebec policy and put it through...
...The duty to return runaway servitors was plainly stated in the constitution...
...Accordingly, in 1793 a fugitive slave law was passed by Congress to which small heed was paid, and when anti-slavery agitation in the forties enhanced escaping over Mason and Dixon's line, it was called into use...
...Montreal was soon a centre of attraction for the inhabitants of the moral city of Toronto...
...How, it will be asked, can the revolution be brought about...
...She took on the Quebec system to great advantage, though still contributing to France...
...Instantly the western neighbors, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, in turn had to follow to save their bacon...
...For one thing it is already under way...
...The warehouses bulged with bottles and a most profitable commerce came into being...
...The motor car was clamoring for highways...
...The loss to Canada is duplicated in a measure to Mexico, and Rum Row is not wholly out of business...
...They became bone dry-much more so, indeed, than our own territory, and constituted a bulwark to the North that left the ocean the only copious source of liquor supply...
...By a treaty of which, in view of its past history, America had every right to be ashamed, the line of liberty was moved out nine miles farther and Volsteadism boasted of victory...
...To a wet Canada these venturers were of no great importance, as the illicit trade was almost wholly in luxuries...
...Newfoundland had also adopted prohibition, and the vessels making port at the islands grew from smacks to steamers, laden heavily with wines and spirits...
...So far the nation shows no signs of falling apart...
...These, like the Volstead Act, were federal statutes with federal provisions for enforcement...
...Two years ago New Brunswick, Maine's eastern neighbor, yielded to the pressure...
...One immediate result was the enactment by Massachusetts of a statute, on March 24, 1843, called An Act Further to Protect Personal Liberty...
...The police commissioner of the country's greatest city has advised the Federal Enforcement Bureau that he has other business to attend to...
...Rich as these United States are, they cannot endure eternally the economic drain brought about by the operations of the Eighteenth Amendment...
...Prime Minister Ferguson, able man that he is, discerned the cause...
...Two states, Rhode Island and Connecticut, never accepted the amendment...
...So it has now come to pass that tiny Prince Edward Island, inhabited by potato-raising farmers, out of the tourist track and handy to St...
...In the long run, the majority rules by reason of necessities rather than of opinions...
...She could not lift herself to wealth by her bootstraps, and drew tremendously upon her neighbors...
...Section 2. No sheriff, deputy-sheriff, coroner, constable, judge, or other officer of the commonwealth shall hereafter arrest, detain or aid in the arrest or detention or imprisonment in any jail or other building belonging to the commonwealth, or to any county, city or town thereof, of any person for the reason that he is claimed as a fugitive slave...
...The pioneer prohibition state of Maine, in its hunt for tourist travel, opened a route to Quebec, via Jackman, following closely the trail taken by Benedict Arnold on his bold raid in November and December, 1777...
...She, too, could no longer stand the economic strain, or see American tourists flocking to her neighbor and giving her attractions the go-by...
...the North in that of the other...
...To justify what is occurring we need only to recall the practices under the several fugitive slave laws...
...Their force is ever being roundly exerted...
...Pierre and Miquelon, alone remains arid in British North America...
...Seitz, being vacuum-cleaned out of its very pockets by surrounding countries which are not dry...
...more from the little specks in the ocean, lying some thirteen miles off the south coast of Newfoundland, noted on the maps as "St...
...The government was free to catch the levanting darkies-if it could...
...But when the dominion became dry, the situation altered...
...This could be bought in quantities of not less than four gallons through government express offices...
...Ontario receded...
...The nation's money is, if we may credit Mr...
...The Canadian figures for 1928 show that 3)645,455 motor cars were registered as entering the dominion from the United States...
...New York, Wisconsin and one of the Dakotas have decided that enforcement is none of their troubles...
...It is all a fine mess and a sufficient manifestation of the fact that sumptuary and franchise laws have no place in the constitution...
...Much came oversea direct from Scotch distilleries...
...Section 3. Any justice of the peace, deputy-sheriff, coroner, constable or jailor, who shall offend against the provisions of this law, by in any way acting directly or indirectly under the power conferred by the third section of the Act of Congress aforementioned, shall forfeit a sum not exceeding $1,000 for every such offense, to the use of the county where the offense is committed, or shall be subject to imprisonment not exceeding one year in the county jail...
...On October 31, 1929, Nova Scotia, oldest of all in dehydration, by a majority of more than twenty thousand in a vote of one hundred and thirty, fell into the well...
...This flat defiance of the constitution and the federal powers did not lead to a declaration from Washington that Massachusetts was in rebellion or nullifying the laws of the nation...
...She had lived by selling her resources for songs, and now these were gone...
...The estimate is that their passengers left a grand total of $200,000,000 behind, neatly adjusting an unfavorable trade balance...
...The author thinks he sees a way out of the difficulty: the pressure of economic fact upon public opinion.-The Editors...
...Uncle Sam, looking upon Maine as the alma mater of dryness did not bother about it, but left it to the state which has Dirigo for a motto to stop the flood...
...Indeed the clause is still there...
...They, alone, were salvaged by France from the vast domain lost to England as the outcome of the Seven Years' War, to be a harbor of refuge for the fishing fleets that crossed annually from Normandy and Brittany...
...From poverty and despair she rose to affluence...
...The South had joined the union under the clause protecting what it deemed rightful property and had every right to demand its enforcement-from the federal government, but not Massachusetts...
...creditors for their dues...
...Pierre and Miquelon...
...In this extremity she traced the cause of her economic distress to the dry act and repealed it, substituting therefor government sale and control of the liquor traffic...
...vastly from the United States...
...It was moving to France, via St...
...Where the treasury had been empty it began to bulge...
...Logically the situation is the same today anent the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act...
...Pierre et Miquelon...
...The indications for 1929 are much greater, with a corresponding increase in the dropping of dollars...
...The prohibition states in the Southland are once more in the same situation as they were previous to emancipation, with the added embarrassment that they are nullifying an amendment-the Fifteenth-granting votes to persons of African descent, whose grandfathers are in doubt...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 18
