178 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After 
Economic Association to convoke a “round table” on 
this question at its annual meeting in St. Louis in 
1927. It was desired that I have both sides repre- 
sented, the wet and the dry; yet I could find not a 
single economist in the United States who was willing 
to take the wet side in this “round table.” 
[ found many economists who were opposed to 
prohibition on the ground of personal liberty, or 
other grounds, but not one who was opposed to it on 
economic grounds. The commission sent by the 
British Government to the United States to examine 
into the elements of American prosperity, reported 
prohibition as one of the prime causes for the ex- 
traordinary gains in national efficiency and in real 
income since the war. 
Fallacy of Revenue Loss 
Finally, there remains the contention of economic 
loss on account of deprivation of governmental 
revenues from excise taxes, levied upon the liquor 
traffic before prohibition. Thus the Association 
Against the Prohibition Amendment declares that 
the “bill for prohibition exceeds the total revenue re- 
ceived by the Federal Treasury from individual in- 
come taxes, which in 1928 were $882,727,114.” The 
pamphlet adds: 
“The itemized bill which we have made up 
from government figures on current expenses and 
official reports of pre-prohibition finances, comes to 
$9136,000,000.”