IS IT JUSTICE? by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 23.

IS IT JUSTICE?

By Editor

MINNESOTA has a new law making drunkenness a petty crime, and punishable by a fine and imprisonment. Concerning this law, the Detroit Commercial Advertiser says:—

“Public sentiment will be mightily aroused against the infamous justice of a law that will add tenfold burdens to the unhappy family of the drunkard, robbed in any event, to a greater or less degree, of his wage-earning ability as the supporter of the home. If to this loss is added fines amounting to fifty or one hundred dollars, or enforced absence as a wage worker during ninety days’ imprisonment, the punishment will in fact fall upon the man’s family far more than upon himself. Indeed, the whole system of dealing with drunkenness in the courts throughout the country is full of injustice to the man’s generally dependent family, who are, in the shape of fines, robbed by the law, or, by his confinement in prison, robbed of his wage-earning assistance. The money taken from the innocent family of drunkards, in the shape of fines or detention in prison, makes an appalling total throughout the United States every day in the week; and this treatment of drunkenness produces no decrease in the number of drunkards from one year to another. Practically the law punishes the drunkard’s family, and when he cannot pay at their expense for his day’s or night’s ‘fun,’ puts him where he will be ‘sobered up,’ well housed, well fed, and finally sets him free, in good physical condition to withstand the ‘wear and tear’ of another carouse.”

The Advertiser further says that “if drunkenness is to be punished, it should be done with a whip.” We have no particular fault to find with that proposition, but the one that had occurred to us was that the punishment should be shared by the accessary before the fact, that is, by the saloon keeper. It is too often the case that the drunkard is the victim of a well-nigh ungovernable appetite, the product of the saloon keeper’s seductive arts. Then why should the abettor, the sharer, of the crime be allowed to go unpunished while the penalty of the law falls upon the head of his luckless victim? or why should the saloon keeper be allowed to fill his coffers with ill-gotten gains while the man whom he despoils is pursued by the law, and stripped of his remaining possessions. Such a law is, however, the logical results of the license system. And so long as men are authorized to deal out intoxicating drinks, paying the State for the privilege, they cannot of course be held wholly accountable for the results. We trust the time will come when justice may be done in such matters.