LOCAL OPTION; ITS RESULTS.
So far as tried, the Local Option law has been eminently successful. The Legislature gave such a law to the people of Pennsylvania in 1872. The vote of the people, taken in the same year, resulted in establishing Prohibition in forty-one of the sixty-six counties of the State. The result was a reduction of nearly one-half in the sales of wholesale and retail liquor dealers for the first year. A vigorous effort was made at the next session of the Legislature to have the law repealed, on the ground that it had well-nigh ruined, and, if not repealed, must utterly destroy, the liquor business in the State. This plain matter of history is in itself the best demonstration of the practical efficiency of the law. Ledgers will not lie, and their testimony is that a Local Option law in Pennsylvania destroys the liquor business. Our best witnesses for this law are the men who clamored for its repeal at Harrisburg and the men who fought with true but unavailing heroism in its defense. It was clearly foreseen by friend and foe, that, if the law remained, it must soon result in Prohibition for the entire State, for every Prohibition county was a standing illustration of its excellence and a great educator of public sentiment, thus augmenting the force that had already wrested two-thirds of the counties of the State from the accursed traffic and making certain its final complete triumph in the State. The influence would then have spread to other States, till at last the nation would have been delivered from this its greatest curse. It was the clear foreshadowing of these events, so terrible to the one side and so glorious to the other, that brought so much money and political influence on the one side and so much heroic effort by our most gifted sons on the other, to the final and successful struggle for repeal at Harrisburg.