Leadership Quote by Roger Q. Mills

Prohibition, in Mills's telling, isn't a noble experiment that went awry; it's a con job that never stopped being a con. The line lands because of its prosecutorial rhythm: "introduced" suggests a public debut, a sales pitch; "nursed" implies private maintenance, the ongoing care required to keep something artificial alive. Fraud isn't a side effect here. It's the design spec.

Mills was a Texas Democratic senator and a hardened defender of small-government orthodoxy in the late 19th century, when temperance crusades were increasingly braided with Protestant moral authority, nativist anxieties, and new styles of mass political organizing. His intent is to delegitimize Prohibition at the root, stripping it of the comforting narrative that reformers were merely overzealous. By calling it fraud twice, he implies a knowing coalition: politicians posturing as moral guardians, interest groups converting virtue into leverage, and a state apparatus eager for expanded control while claiming to protect public health.

The subtext is almost modern: Prohibition isn't about alcohol; it's about power, class discipline, and the right to define "respectability" as law. "Introduced" hints at the initial marketing - saving families, restoring order. "Nursed" points to what follows: selective enforcement, carve-outs, backroom compromises, and a constant need to rationalize obvious failures. Mills's cynicism functions as a warning shot against reform as theater, where the policy outcome matters less than the moral performance and the machinery it builds.