The Success of Prohibition
The Hon. Neal Dow says that the State of Maine has to pay $12,000,000 as her share of the “National Drink Bill, while half a million will cover the cost of all the liquors smuggled into the State and sold in violation of the law. We call it a million.” Nobody in Maine disputes this; therefore Mr. Dow continues:— “We save at least twelve millions annually as the result of prohibition, and indirectly as much more, resulting in making Maine one of the most prosperous States in the Union, while in the old rum time it was the poorest, our people spending in strong drink the value of our property of every kind, in every period of less than twenty years, as the people of the Union are now doing in every period of less than thirty-five years. The Maine law is no ‘failure,’ but a great success.” Dr. B. W. Richardson, the well-known scientist, has given some interesting estimates of the value of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors. He says that in a population of 35,000,000, it would save more than 200,000 lives per year. According to this ratio, total abstinence would save in the United States, counting our population 56,000,000, more than 320,000 lives annually, or, to put it in another form, the use of such liquors costs this country over 320,000 lives per year, or 876 per day.