p. 375 | Temperance by Rev. Herrick Johnson

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 24.

Temperance.

By Rev. Herrick Johnson

Failures of High License.

HIGH license leaves the fountain untouched while trying to dam up some streams. The evils of this traffic that so curse society and home, do not commonly start in the vile, disgusting dens where there is only raggedness and filth. They are born further up. Suppose you shut a few of the low dramshops. They will inevitably be opened again. The wash of the upper saloons must go somewhere. The respectable varieties need the low groggeries to take care of their cast-off rubbish. For this reason you won't find them troubling each other much, because, perchance, selling without license. Such talk is sheer nonsense. The poor, doomed victims of drink, robbed of their manhood and decency, if they step down-hill, must find the saloon down-hill. They will find it. That stream of descending lust and filth must have an outlet. If you would stop it, you must go to the top and break up the fountain. Prohibition is the word, not license. You cannot trust men with this thing any more than you can trust them with dangerous explosives. Prohibition is ever strengthening its own restrictions. License of every kind, low or high, is ever weakening its own restrictions. Prohibition thunders "No!" to every evil of the traffic. License keeps the door open for all the evils to enter in, and issues a kind of standing invitation to them. Prohibition tends to victory by its enforced denial. License tends to defeat by its legalized indulgence. License is getting rid of the evils of hydrophobia by cutting off the tail of the mad dog somewhere along its bushy end. Prohibition is getting rid of those evils by cutting the tail off just behind the dog's ears.

High license is a failure in practice. It increases revenue, but it does not lessen saloons, nor change their real character. It puts more dollars into city and county treasuries, but it does not smite and destroy the dreadful evils of traffic in strong drink. Men are sometimes content with it because it helps pay taxes. But does that make it a success? Here is the logical process: Grog-shops confessedly make criminals. Criminals necessitate police. Police cost money. High license makes the grog-shops pay the money. In that vicious circle crime is made its own successor. It says to the saloon-keepers, "Go on perpetuating crime and manufacturing criminals, but pay for it." I appeal to any intelligent judgment if that is not bad citizenship, and bad morals. If that is all of success there is in high license, I brand it as a stupendous failure. Is that all its success? I know no other. I have yet to hear of any moral or social transformation it has brought about.

On the other hand, the proofs of failure are signal. I give but two, the one covering a city, and the other a State. The city is Des Moines, Iowa, and the facts are vouched for by a gentleman over his own signature as "taken from the records of the city clerk." In 1871, with the license fee $150, there were twelve saloons. In 1872, with license at $200, there were twenty-five saloons. In 1880, with license at $250, there were forty-nine saloons. And in 1882, with license at $1,000, there were sixty saloons. The State referred to is Nebraska, where prohibition is the general State law, but high license is optional and the local exception. The fee is $1,000. The law was enacted in 1881. In 1882 the records showed 226 less saloons, but in 1883 the records showed a gain of fifty-nine. The Hon. H. W. Hardy, ex-Mayor of Lincoln, Nebraska, and father of the high license idea, testifies: "There has been no improvement in our saloons. Gambling and prostitution go hand in hand. High license has done nothing toward waking up temperance sentiment. Saloon-keepers violate the law just as they always have." John B. Finch, prominent in the advocacy of the law, and an ardent temperance man, testifies: "I was a friend of the law at its birth. I now know I was terribly mistaken in my theories. Many of the delusions urged in defense of high license have been exploded by the trial of the law."

Contrast now these statements and figures with those recently published as to the success of prohibition in Kansas. They were gathered by James A. Troutman, of Topeka. He wrote to every county attorney and superintendent and police judge in the State. Reports were received from sixty-six out of eighty-one counties. And these reports, be it remembered were made by State officers, not by temperance partisans. In these sixty-six counties the number of saloons has been reduced since May 1, 1881, when the prohibitory law took effect, from 708 to 313, of which latter number more than half are in Leavenworth. During this time the population has increased twelve per cent. In forty-one counties there is not one saloon. The fines have amounted to $95,000, and eighty-one saloon-keepers have been imprisoned, their imprisonment aggregating eleven years, five months, and nineteen days. In fifty-one counties the reports all agree that prohibition sentiment is growing stronger. In seven counties it is reported as growing weaker, and in eight, as at a stand-still. Look on these two pictures, and judge ye, does high license restrict? Does not prohibition prohibit?

It is said high license will at least shut up the unlicensed saloons, for those who have paid so heavily for their license will prosecute in self-defense. This is the absurdest of fallacies. Here are three good reasons why: First, the house of the liquor-dealer will not divide against itself. Secondly, the higher liquor-dealers are mostly violators of the law themselves. Many of them sell to drunkards; sell to minors; sell on Sundays. They live in glass houses, and they will not throw stones. Thirdly, they need these low saloons to take their refuse. They want these stations down-hill to get their own victims out of the way when they are done with them. The brotherhood is too close. Saloon-keepers will not turn prohibitionists as against their own clan.

SAYS the New York World: "The women of Ulster County may be said to have seized the demon of intemperance by the throat. They have gone to work in a manner that will either eradicate the habit of drinking from that county, or drive all the men out of it. The matrons have pledged themselves to neither buy nor sell of a man who drinks, who sells drink, or who holds that it is defensible to do either. The young women have signed a pledge which binds them to avoid speaking to all young men who cannot put themselves right on the total abstinence question. These determined women will make no exception on account of social position, wealth, genius, or influence. They intend to boycott every merchant who does not vote for prohibition."

A GENUINE temperance work is going forward in Concord, N. H. The pastors and many of the leading citizens are deeply interested. A Law-and-Order League is about to be formed. Public sentiment is so strong that one man who fitted up a new saloon at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars, and has on hand cases of liquor, dares not open them.

THE Retailer asserts that "in union there is strength." The phrase does not sound entirely new, but perhaps it explains the reason why "retailers" and distillers mix such quantities of drugs with their liquors.

THE St. Louis National American says: "The evils of the liquor traffic have not been reduced one particle by high license."