CHAPTER X

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PROHIBITORY LAWS AND THEIR EFFECTS.

We have now reached a point at which we may properly recur to a topic already suggested and inquire a little more carefully into the actual working of the prohibitory laws. On this head we shall confine ourselves chiefly to the testimony of men who have made the matter a thorough study, and that not at a distance, but in the very midst of the operation of such laws, and as Maine is the state which led the way in the prohibitory movement and has since followed that course with most persistency, it is proper that it should occupy most of our attention during the inquiry.

Not long ago a number of the most prominent men of the state, men of different political parties, wholly above reproach, and especially fitted by official position or private observation to form a just opinion in the premises, became so well convinced of the evils of the present system, and its detrimental effect on the people, as to unite in an effort for its amendment. Their movement took form in the presentation by Mr. Fox of Portland, a lawyer of high reputation and a member of the Legislature, of the following proposed Act:

“_State of Maine, 1879._

“An Act in relation to Cider, Native Wines, Ale, Porter, Lager Beer and Malt Liquors.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in Legislature assembled, as follows:

“Cider, Native Wine, Ale, Porter, Lager Beer and other Malt Liquors, when pure and unadulterated, shall not be considered intoxicating liquors within the meaning of the laws of this State.”

The bill was referred to the Committee on Temperance and able arguments in its favor were made by Gen. Gorham, L. Boynton, Hon. Nathan Webb and C. G. Yeaton, all men highly respected by the people of the state, of the strictest integrity, and with no inducement to make other than an impartial statement. Three gentlemen who have successively held the office of county attorney of Cumberland county for about fifteen years past and who are all Republicans, have unanimously testified against the present prohibition law. They are Gen. Chas. T. Matlock, C. F. Libby, Esq., and Nathan Webb. Similar views are held by such men as Gen. W. S. Tilton of Logan Springs, Judge Goddard, postmaster of Portland, M. P. Frank of Portland, Speaker of the House, Dr. Edw. Dana and many other influential citizens. No party, however, was willing to go to the people on this issue and the bill failed to pass, although there is good reason to hope that when the next attempt is made some who have previously upheld the present law will have learned to take a different view. Much new light is constantly thrown on the influence of the present statute, and can hardly fail to produce an adequate effect. A minority report of the committee was presented and contains so much of interest and importance that we cannot do better than to reproduce it in these pages. Its statements are those of men who understand the subject of which they treat and are worth a careful reading.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TEMPERANCE, OF THE FIFTY-EIGHTH LEGISLATURE OF MAINE, 1879.

“The Committee on Temperance have listened to the able and exhaustive arguments presented on both sides of the matter in hearing, and the minority of said committee respectfully present their views in dissent from the report of the majority. The law regulating the sale of intoxicating liquors, commonly known as the prohibitory liquor law has had a trial of more than a quarter of a century. Its severity has no parallel in the laws of any other civilized country. Although enforced with all the power of the state, court records show that the number of prosecutions and convictions is increasing, at great expense to the tax payers. Country towns pay their share for the enforcement of this law in cities without corresponding benefit to themselves. The cost of its execution is a burden on an over-taxed people. A detailed statement which is hereto annexed shows the cost for officers to enforce the law.”

The details are here omitted but “the total reaches the enormous amount of $220,000. The records of the Insane Hospital show a gradual increase of patients caused by excessive use of intoxicating liquors. At the present time that institution has nearly double the number of inmates from that cause alone, which it had when the present prohibitory law was enacted. While the law, with singular inconsistency, does not recognize pure and beneficial kinds of intoxicating liquors as property when intended for sale by other than city or town agencies, and makes no distinction between the sale of adulterated liquors and pure liquors, it authorizes their indiscriminate sale in numerous city and town agencies. Liquor-drinking is not done openly to so great an extent but the consumption is as large. It is notorious that quantities of strong liquors have for years been transported into the state from the Provinces, and especially from Massachusetts, which has drained us of millions of dollars which might have been kept at home under liberal laws. Liquor runners from New York and Boston penetrate every nook and corner of our state to rob our people and eat out their substance. Liquors are also imported in bond, and under the protection of the Federal Government they cannot be seized in bulk. They are consumed in families and in club-rooms which have been organized in large towns and cities, under that most dangerous guise of social drinking. The liquor agencies authorized by law have vended in some years more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of liquors for medicinal, mechanical and manufacturing purposes only, as is supposed. We consider these liquor agencies as leeches upon the people. The question is whether a law, the severity of which is without example, having failed to accomplish the ends for which it was designed, according to experience and the testimony of officials serving under it, who with singular unanimity give their verdict against it, ought to be so amended that cider, native wines, ale, porter and particularly lager beer, shall not be considered within the meaning of the statute.

“History shows that every nation has its peculiar stimulants in stronger or milder forms. Men crave stimulant. It is an undeniable fact, both in the light of history and experience, that in countries like Germany, France, etc., whose climate is not unlike ours, drunkenness is known scarcely more than the strong liquors which cause it. Cheap light wines and nutritious malt beverages supersede strong drink. Everybody uses them at his meals and as a common beverage. The people of those countries are among the healthiest, happiest, most prosperous and temperate on the face of the globe. We appeal to the wisdom of this Legislature and the consideration of the people whether it would not promote the cause of temperance and the material welfare of our state to give the amendment proposed a fair trial. It would tend to promote harmony by removing an irritating and festering sore from our politics. Good citizens without distinctions of party view with alarm the inroads that this law in its operation is working upon our social and material interest, driving away business, depreciating real estate, shackling enterprise, cheating labor, increasing taxes, educating intolerance and hypocrisy, influencing elections and encouraging bribery and perjury and the clandestine compounding, sale and use of poisonous liquors.”

DARIUS H. INGRAHAM of Portland. GORHAM L. BOYNTON of Bangor. F. B. FARREL of Van Buren. ARTHUR MOORE of Machiasport.

This is the statement of men whose characters stand so high as to give great weight to their opinion and leave nothing to be objected to their statement of fact.

Again, Governor Garcelon is not a man to make hasty or unfounded statements in an important matter and he has been for many years an eminent physician of large practice and a close observer of the habits of the people. But read this summary of an address delivered by him before the Maine temperance convention: “He called attention to various kinds of intemperance, which have generally escaped the notice of reformers in that state. He spoke of the use of tobacco as an increasing evil, especially among the young, and said that in addition to chewing and smoking, snuff-dipping was becoming prevalent, a fact of which many are ignorant and which excites surprise. The use of opiates, Governor Garcelon remarked, had increased to an alarming extent. Many a man, he said, had appeared upon the stand advocating temperance, who had in his pocket a bottle of laudanum or black drops, which pave the way to an early grave. The ladies carry chloroform and ether to moisten the handkerchief with which to allay nervous excitement. As a practicing physician and observer of human nature, he placed all these forms of intemperance in the same category with the intemperate use of spirituous liquors, all of which demand correction. Is the change from the intoxicating liquors to opium an improvement? Governor Garcelon has, undoubtedly, done the people a timely service by directing attention to this and other evils, and if followed up it will be found that the ‘Maine Law’ has not been the grand instrument of reform which it is claimed to be.”

At a convention held at Bangor, Me., July 1, 1879, a resolution in favor of local option was presented by Mr. Charles F. Swett, a considerable part of whose speech is here reproduced, as it deals in facts of great importance to the present discussion:

“In supporting this measure, I wish to distinctly define my position. I am a practical temperance man; a total abstainer. I have belonged, and do now belong, to every temperance organization in the state of Maine, except the Reform Club. I have had much experience in endeavoring to ‘reclaim the fallen and save others from falling,’ and I therefore claim to be as conversant with the practical workings of our prohibitory law as any man in this hall, and I declare, from my experience, that that law, so far as it contributes to lessening the evils of intemperance, is a complete failure, and a costly one to the people of this state. * * * In Cumberland county there are four deputy sheriffs, whose business it is to enforce the liquor law. These men get from $7,000 to $9,000 per year for their services. Of course they never reform a drunkard, but they can afford to contribute $3,000 a year towards the campaign fund—and they do—and the people furnish the money. Every liquor-seller thrown into jail for sixty days pays the high sheriff a profit of $1.50 per week. When there is an average of say fifty of these cases his profits will be $4,000 per year, from this source alone. The people furnish the money, and the sheriff ‘comes down handsomely’ for the campaign fund. True, there are no men reformed, but the party gets the ‘sinews of war.’ And so it is all over the state.

“The cost of the execution of the prohibitory law is a burden upon our over-taxed people. The report of the temperance committee of our last Legislature showed that although the ‘law was enforced with all the power of the state,’ court records prove that the number of prosecutions is annually increasing, at great expense to the tax payers. From June 1, 1877, to June 1, 1878, the cost of enforcing the prohibitory law, in Cumberland county alone, reached $28,000. In the same ratio, applied to the population of the whole state, the cost reaches the enormous sum of $220,000, annually. But we would not complain of the expenditure even of this vast sum if the results were, in any degree satisfactory. But they are not. The advocates of the Maine law make bold claims, but their claims are not substantiated by the facts. Outside of Maine, and even in the back towns of this state, remote from the cities, people are given to understand that liquor is not sold in Maine, and therefore there is less crime here than formerly. Neal Dow says, ‘We have little crime here because we have banished its cause.’ Let us look at the facts. In 1851, there were 87 convicts in the state prison. We had then a population of 584,000, while to-day it is probably 625,000. Last year’s state prison report shows the number of convicts to be 206, while 69 more were serving in jail work-shops. So the number of convicts has increased, _under the prohibitory law_, over threefold, while our population has remained comparatively the same. Does that speak well for prohibition? Now, take the city of Portland. In 1856, there were 650 arrests for drunkenness, in a population of 27,000. In 1876, twenty years later, with a population of about 30,000, there were 1800 arrests for drunkenness, and in no year of the last eight has the list fallen below 1,200. And this under a vigorous enforcement of the prohibitory law. Does that speak well for prohibition? During last week, over 200 barrels of liquor were brought into Portland, by the various railroads and steamboats, _for home consumption_. Does that speak well for prohibition?

“The secret drinking in club-rooms in Portland is threefold that which formerly took place at open bars, while the traffic outside has been driven into worse and worse hands every year, until it has, with a few exceptions, been taken away from respectable men, whose interest it would be to conduct it with some show of decency, and given into the undivided management and control of the low and criminal, so that while ‘the law is enforced with all the power of the state,’ the upper classes get drunk at the club-rooms, and the lower classes get drunk at the shops in the slums. Does that speak well for prohibition? The vilest liquors possible to make are manufactured for the market in this state, and even our state liquor agent could not, or did not, _keep pure_ liquors even for medicinal purposes.

“Private club-rooms have multiplied in Portland, under the operation of the prohibitory law, (there being over 80 in that city at the present time,) and our young men just starting out in life are exposed to all the dangers of the drunkard’s life, and no law can stop them. In these club-rooms, boys who would never go to saloons to get drunk, who would never learn to gamble were it not for their club-room temptations, who would, in short, grow up honest and respected citizens, are being ruined every day. This evil ought to be remedied by prompt and decisive

## action. Fathers who love their sons; mothers who pray for their boys;

sisters who mourn over their disgraced brothers; wives who weep over the wreck of what were once good men and true husbands; citizens who care for the good name and prosperity of their communities, ought to labor to shut these accursed gates of hell! Let us commence the good work by striving to repeal the prohibitory law, which is a positive detriment to the cause of temperance, an incubus upon the mercantile interests of Maine, and a curse to the young men of our cities.”

In Massachusetts we have very important testimony to the same effect, a part of which is very ably and carefully summarized in an article which we insert here, retaining for convenience a portion at the beginning which might equally well be placed under a different heading:

“The state Board of Health of Massachusetts, in the Tenth Annual Report, published in January, 1879, say, under the head of ‘Intemperance’: ‘A more severe public judgment of drunkenness, in recent times, has undoubtedly tended to very much decrease its prevalence; and it is generally believed that light German beer is used more and more each year, at least in our state, to the exclusion of stronger liquors—_a change which it is of course desirable to hasten by legislation, so far as that can be done, either by removal of restrictions on the sale of mild liquors, and heavily taxing the stronger spirits, or by any other just and proper means_.’ This is the reiterated public expression of men to whom the state of Massachusetts has committed the general care for the health of her people. For the former public utterance of this opinion the chairman of the Board, for years past, has been most bitterly assailed by prohibitionists; but, undaunted by these intemperate and abusive attacks, the state Board of Health confirm the statement of their honest conviction by repeating the same, and embodying it in an important public document.

“In harmony with this public expression of opinion by the state Board of Health, appears the action of the Committee on License of the Board of Aldermen of the city of Boston. In their report of September, 1878, to the City Council, this committee say: ‘It may be objected that the committee have been too liberal in their recommendations of the issue of licenses, but their experience has convinced them that the “lunch rooms,” established chiefly for the sale of lager beer and edible refreshments, ought to be regarded as victualing saloons, even if facilities are not maintained for regular meals, and no cooking is done on the premises. The committee feel satisfied that the consumption of lager beer, now so general, tends, in fact, to exclude from sale and use more ardent spirits, and thereby diminishes crime and pauperism. It is well known that in the old countries, where beer and light wines are accessible, without restraint, at a small expense, and are freely used by all classes of people, cases of intoxication are very rare. The committee are confident that drunkenness, and consequently pauperism and crime, will be diminished in this state, if no restrictions were placed on the sale of lager beer, for it then could be provided at such a low price as to effectually supersede the use of strong liquors. They therefore submit for the consideration of the City Council the following order:

“‘_Ordered_, That his Honor the Mayor be requested to petition the next Legislature for such amendment of