The Salt Lake Herald

TO PROMOTE PROHIBITION.
In the United States senate a few days ago Mr. Tillman introduced this resolution:
"That the committee on interstate commerce be instructed to consider and report by bill or otherwise what legislation is desirable or necessary to enable the states in the exercise of their police powers to control the commerce of liquors and all alcoholic beverages within their borders so as to aid the cause of temperance and to prevent the encouragement by the United States government of illicit dealing in the same."

Senator Tillman explained that the courts have held that state local option and other laws designed to compel temperance and prohibition interfere with interstate commerce. He stated that the express companies are flooding local option southern states with whisky from other states, and the supreme court had held that the traffic cannot be interfered with because of its interstate character. Much of this whisky goes to express companies under fictitious names, and anybody who is familiar with conditions can go to them and secure the intoxicants by paying the express and c.o.d. charges.

The senators discussed the question for a time, and then Senator Knox offered a bill which seems to contain the solution of the problem. The measure provides that "all intoxicating liquors transported into any state or territory or remaining therein shall, upon arrival within the state, and before or after delivery to the consignee, be subject to the laws of such state, in the same manner as though such liquors had been produced in such state or territory, and shall not be exempt therefrom by reason of being introduced in original packages or otherwise."

Senator Tillman promptly withdrew his resolution and the Knox bill was sent to the committee on judiciary, from which a favorable report is expected in due course.

The measure should become a law. It will not prevent a citizen of a prohibition state from sending away for intoxicants for his own personal use, but it will prevent the broadcast distribution of whisky by manufacturers through the express companies to anyone who has the price of a jug of the stuff.

It is the business of the national government to encourage, rather than to discourage, the states in their efforts to bring about a much needed reform.