Alcoholism - License a Failure and a Disgrace : Part 3

The Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
by T. S. Arthur

(Page 19 of 20)

The Liquor Power in the Ascendant Again

But in 1868, adverse influences prevailed, and after all her sad and disgraceful experience, Massachusetts abandoned her prohibition of the traffic and went back to license again; but the evil consequences began to show themselves so quickly that the law was repealed in less than a year.

Governor Claflin, in his message to the legislature in January, 1869, therefore spokes of the effect of the new license law: "The increase of drunkenness and crime during the last six months, as compared with the same period of 1867, is very marked and decisive as to the operation of the law. The State prisons, jails and houses of correction are being rapidly filled, and will soon require enlarged accommodation if the commitments continue to increase as they have since the present law went in force."

While the chaplain of the State prison in his annual report for 1868, says: "The prison never was so full as at the present time. If the rapidly increasing tide of intemperance, so greatly swollen by the present wretched license law, is suffered to rush on unchecked, there will be a fearful increase of crime, and the State must soon extend the limits of the prison, or create another."

This law was repealed, as we have seen. A year of its bitter fruit was enough for the people.

Submitting Again to the Yoke

But, strange to say, after all she has suffered from license laws, the old Bay State has again submitted to the yoke, and is once more in the hands of the great liquor interest. In 1874, she drifted out from the safe harbor of prohibition, and we find her, today, on the stormy and storm-wrecked sea of license. A miserable attempt has been made by the friends of this law to show that its action has been salutary in Boston, the headquarters of the liquor power, in the diminution of dram-shops and arrests for drunkenness. Water may run up hill in Boston; but it obeys the law of gravitation in other places. We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions from this extract from the report of the License Commissioners of that city, made February 1st, 1877: "It must be admitted that the business of liquor-selling in this city is, to a very large extent, in the hands of irresponsible men and women, whose idea of a license law ends with the simple matter of paying a certain sum, the amount making but little difference to them, provided they are left to do as they please after payment. Besides the saloons and bar-rooms, which are open publicly, the traffic in small grocery stores, in cellars and in dwelling-houses, in some parts of the city, is almost astounding. The Sunday trade is enormous, and it seems as if there were not hours enough in the whole round of twenty-four, or days enough in the entire week to satisfy the dealers."

The experience of Massachusetts is, as we have already said, the experience of every community, State or nation in which an effort has been made to abridge the evils of intemperance by licensing the dram-shop.

And to whom and to what class of citizens does the State accord, under license, the privilege of making gain out of the people's loss? For whom is every interest in the nation taxed and every industry hurt? For whom are the houses of the poor made poorer; and the supply of bread diminished? For whom are a crime-assaulted and pauper-ridden people driven to build jails and poor-houses, and insane asylums, and maintain courts and juries and a vast army of police, at the cost of millions of dollars every year? For great benefactors to whom the nation owes a debt of gratitude? For men who are engaged in great industrial or commercial enterprises? Promoters of education? leaders in the great march of civilization? Even if this were so, better not to have accepted the service than pay for it at so fearful a cost.

Who and what are these men? - this great privileged class? Let us see. In Boston, we have the testimony of the License Commissioners that liquor-selling is in the hands of "irresponsible men and women," who pay a license for the privilege of doing "as they please after payment." And for the maintenance of these "irresponsible" men and women in their right to corrupt and degrade the people, a forced tax is laid on every bit of property and every interest in the great city of Boston! What was the tax on tea to this? And yet, Boston patiently submits!

Is it better in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago or any other of our large cities? Not a whit! In some it is worse, even, than in the capital of the old Bay State. In one of these last-mentioned cities, where, under the license system so dear to politicians, and for which they are chiefly responsible, between seven and eight thousand places in which liquor is sold at retail exist, an effort was made in 1876 to ascertain the character and antecedents of every person engaged in dram-selling. We are not able to say how carefully or thoroughly the investigation was pursued, but it was in the hands of those who meant that it should be complete and accurate. One fact elicited was, that the proportion of native-born citizens to the whole number engaged in the business was less than one-sixth. Another was, that over six thousand of these dram-sellers belonged to the criminal class, and had suffered imprisonment, some for extended terms in the State prison. And another was, that nearly four thousand of the drinking-places which had been established under the fostering care of State license laws were houses of ill-fame as well! Comment is unnecessary.

We cannot lessen the evil nor abate the curse of drunkenness so long as we license a traffic, which, from its essential hostility to all the best interests of society, naturally falls into the hands of our worst citizens, who persistently violate every salutary and restrictive feature in the laws which give their trade a recognized existence.

What then? Is there any remedy short of Prohibition? We believe not.

About the Author

Timothy Shay Arthur (1809 - 1885) was a popular nineteenth-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. Virtually forgotten now, Arthur did much to articulate and disseminate the values, beliefs, and habits that defined respectable, decorous middle-class life in antebellum America.