THE LIQUOR-LICENSE EVIL.
By Editor
ON second thought the people of Vermont are coming to their senses on the prohibition question. Two years ago, through the influence of the liquor traffic upon her politicians, the state voted to substitute high license for prohibition, but at the election held a few weeks ago, eleven of the fourteen counties voted to return to prohibition. The vote is said to have been the result of actual experience of the evils of the licensed saloon. The Burlington News says that “it beats all how many men who voted for license suddenly discovered, after thirty days' experience, that it was a failure.” The New Voice says:— North, east, south, and west the prohibition movement is sweeping on this winter season, with an ever-increasing importance. Liquor men never were so awake to their imminent peril of utter defeat and extinction. Oregon has secured a referendum on a strong state local prohibition bill. Maine, at the other limit of the nation, is proving, by persistent enforcement, that liquor men can not dazzle the brave patriots with the high license bait. But despite all this apparent reverse, statistics still show an increasing aggregate in the manufacture and consumption of alcoholic beverages throughout the country as a whole. Strong drink has a terrible hold on the people. A domestic, in a fashionable family in one of California's smaller cities, recently told of the club to which her mistress belongs. From every meeting of the club, some of the women go home drunk. And the club is composed of members and adherents of a certain nominally Protestant church. Were it not for the strenuous efforts of temperance advocates to combat the evil, the demon of strong drink would soon swallow up the great majority. Conservative temperance people do not realize how much they owe to the untiring efforts of the stalwarts to hold in check the terrible evil. Speaking of the work of high license, Dr. Gregg, of Allegheny, Pa., says:— It has given the liquor traffic commercial respectability, so that now it is a financial temptation financed by vested interests. Under the sanction of license the curse has intrenched itself in commerce, and has become mighty. It dictates to Legislatures, intimidates politicians, silences pulpits, and subsidizes the press. It has become our leading business; it is our greatest commercial organization; and yet its issues are evil, and only evil. The New York Tribune sums up the license evil as follows:— The liquor traffic costs more every year than our whole civil service, our army, our navy, our Congress; including the river, and harbor, and pension bills; all we pay for local government, all national, state, and county debts, and all schools of the country. In fact, this country pays more for liquor than for every function, and for every kind of government. We spend more for drink than we do for bread. Does this indicate that the license system is a success? No system laying claim to brain or morality of any kind could be more of a failure.