Temperance Reform in the South
THE progress of temperance reform in the South, so far as it is indicated by the legal status of prohibition, is thus summarized by the New York Sun:— That steady extension of the prohibitory system which has been going on in the South has reached North Carolina. The Raleigh Legislature has adopted a measure making optional in rural towns either total prohibition or the alternative of a dispensary on the South Carolina plan as a substitute for the barroom. There are ninety-seven counties in North Carolina, and sixty of these had already adopted prohibition before the passage of this measure. Both Texas and Mississippi are now practically prohibition States. A pioneer in the movement was Georgia after the adoption of the dispensary system in South Carolina, and Florida and Arkansas were soon afterward added through the establishment of absolute prohibition in fifty counties of Alabama, thirty of Florida, and fifty of Arkansas. The most remarkable thing in the temperance movement in the South is that it has been successful without the intervention or even the co-operation of any formally organized prohibition party there. The forces enlisted in the cause in the South are moral, social, and religious. In Tennessee two thirds of the counties have adopted prohibition, and that State is the next on the program of the temperance men for “ransom from rum,” as the agitation is called in the South. In view of these facts, it is interesting to remember that the prohibitory law has been repealed in Vermont, and that at the last session of the Maine Legislature an effort was made to do the same thing in that State. Will the South yet lead the North in temperance sentiment?