Overreached Themselves.
By Editor
THE Sunday-School Times contains the following item:— "When the payment of a one-thousand-dollar license fee became an annual necessity, the saloon-keepers of Monmouth, Illinois, concluded that unless unlicensed competition were stopped, the liquor business would go into a decline. So they secured a stringent enactment against the unauthorized importation of liquors in bottles and jugs. Presently prohibition succeeded license in that place, and now the saloon-keepers mourn that they have closed against themselves the only gate through which they might have smuggled in their poison. For to use the so-called bottle system is now a very serious offense against local law." This is the only instance we have heard of where "high license" helped to diminish the amount of liquor sold and in this case it was only by means of a prohibitory law secured by the liquor men themselves. It was rather a roundabout way of securing entire prohibition, but it was sure. We would recommend this course of action to all communities: First, allow no one to sell liquor without a license, and second, allow no one to have a license.