"REGULATING" THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
By W. N. G.
It would seem that men would sometime learn the utter impossibility of making the liquor traffic anything but an unmitigated evil. The efforts to "regulate" it only add emphasis to the fact that it can not be regulated. Its very essence is lawlessness, a selfish disregard of the welfare of mankind. The law-making powers might just as well try to regulate the entire work of Satan. The only checks that ever are placed upon the liquor trade are prohibitive as far as they go, and the effect of all liquor laws, short of absolute prohibition, is limited in the main to the desire of a small per cent. of dealers to9pose as law-abiding citizens. The only regulation that works any appreciative check upon the evil is prohibition. The State of New York has had its Raines Law, which, on its passage, was much lauded by temperance men and religious journals. But, notwithstanding its many so-called "good features," it has proved a failure, and the present Legislature has had a prolonged contest trying to patch it up. The New York Voice says of the original law:— "Under the original law, as the courts construed it, hotels and incorporated clubs were permitted to sell liquors on Sundays. Hence nearly every saloon became a 'hotel' or a 'club,' and the officers were powerless to prevent it. Bedlam reigned in these thousands of dives. . . . When a criminal starts out to sell liquor, he is pretty sure to secure a Federal permit. The penalty for selling without it is very severe, and Deputy U. S. Marshals are watchful. Great numbers of clandestine liquor-sellers hold these permits who do not have a State license. Most of the Raines Law fake clubs, fake hotels, and genuine dives of New York City have these permits. The Voice has made a list of all the Federal permits held in New York City on Jan. 1, 1897, and also a list of all who have paid their State license. Only names of retailers were copied. These lists show that there are more than 4,000 persons in New York City to-day holding Federal permits to sell liquor at retail who have no State license." The Raines Law is ostensibly a very stringent excise law, but the Voice has shown from the public records that more than 4,000 retail liquor institutions are run in the one city, in spite of its provisions. Such are the attempts to "regulate" the law-defying, soul-destroying liquor traffic. Yet professed Christian temperance men will dally with it, and compromise with it, and think they have gained a great moral victory if they get it in some way nominally "regulated" on Sunday. W. N. G.