A Study of American Liquor Laws
IN 1889, a group of about eighteen gentlemen began to contribute to the Century Magazine a series of articles on social questions of immediate interest. These articles were written by single members of the group, but were criticised before their publication by the other members. Among the subjects dealt with were Labor Reform and the Government of Cities.
Meetings of the group were held from time to time in New York city, at which there was a useful interchange of opinion on various social topics. In 1893, these gentlemen decided to enlarge the number of the group to fifty, and concentrate their attention on the drink problem in the United States. The selection of the new members was made chiefly from Eastern cities, in order that it might be possible to procure large meetings of the committee in New York city twice a year; but there were, nevertheless, a few members from distant places, like Milwaukee and St. Louis. The members of the committee bore their own traveling expenses, but a few thousand dollars were raised by private subscription, mostly in New York and Boston, to defray the expenses of their investigations.
This committee, meeting in New York city on May 1, 1893, appointed four sub-committees on different aspects of the drink problem: one on the physiological aspects, one on the legislative aspects, one on the economic aspects, and one on the ethical aspects. The subcommittee on the physiological aspects of the problem began work almost at once by setting on foot several series of investigations concerning the effects of alcohol on the animal economy. Some preliminary reports on these investigations have been published already in scientific journals. The sub-committee on the ethical aspects of the problem thought it expedient to delay their work till the other sub-committees had made some progress in their respective fields. The sub-committee on the economic aspects waited until it should be determined what parts of numerous desirable investigations should be undertaken by the National Bureau of Labor at Washington. The fields to be occupied by the National Bureau having been determined toward the close of the year 1895, the sub-committee on the ecomomic aspects of the drink problem then began the prosecution of several interesting inquiries.
The sub-committee on the legislative aspects of the drink problem, which consisted of Charles W. Eliot, Seth Low, and James C. Carter, received from the Committee of Fifty appropriations of sixty-five hundred dollars. In April, 1894, the sub-committee engaged Dr. Frederic H. Wines, of Springfield, Illinois, and Mr. John Koren, of Boston, Massachusetts, to investigate the working of the liquor legislation in several States of the Union, in which that legislation, or its history, has been characteristic or especially instructive.
Mr. Koren began work on the first day of May following, in the State of Maine, where prohibitory legislation has existed since 1851. He spent three months in Maine, and then studied for three months the working of the local option law in Massachusetts, — chiefly in Boston and North Adams, the latter place being a large town with a considerable proportion of operatives in its population. From Massachusetts he proceeded to Pennsylvania, and gave three months to a study of the working of the Pennsylvania license law, — chiefly in Philadelphia. Next, he studied the working of the dispensary law in South Carolina, during February, March, and April, 1895. He then gave three months to a careful revision of his four reports. Mr. Koren, therefore, worked continuously for the sub-committee from May 1, 1894, to August 1, 1895. Lastly, he devoted six weeks in September and October, 1895, to an extension of his field work in Pennsylvania, particularly in Pittsburg, Wilkes-Barre, and Reading.
Dr. Wines began his studies for the sub-committee about the first of August, 1894; and his first task was an elaborate investigation of the working of the Missouri law in the city of St. Louis. He then studied the history and operation of the Iowa legislation, and in April, 1895, presented to the sub-committee a careful report on that remarkable legislation. He next went to Ohio, and investigated the working of the so-called mulct law, under which no licenses are issued, but a tax is levied on every liquorseller. Finally, in the summer of 1895, he prepared a report on the working of the liquor legislation in Indiana. He gave to the investigations above mentioned nine months of his time between August 1, 1894, and September 1, 1895.
These investigations cover eight different kinds of liquor legislation. They are not complete statistical inquiries, for the reason that it is impossible, with any resources at command of the Committee of Fifty, to obtain satisfactory statistics on this subject for any State of the Union. It would require the authority of the general government and an immense expenditure to make an exhaustive statistical inquiry on the subject of the consumption of alcoholic drinks ; and it is very doubtful if even the national government could obtain all the important facts on this most difficult topic. The considerable consumption of alcohol for medicinal and industrial purposes masks the consumption for drinking purposes. The amount of alcohol produced in the country gives, of course, no clue to the amount consumed as drink in any single State. The internal revenue laws of the United States and the freedom of interstate commerce complicate the whole situation. Neither have the researches of Dr. Wines and Mr. Koren resulted in complete statistical statements of the number of arrests for drunkenness, or for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, or of the number of crimes attributable to alcohol. Indeed, one of the results of their investigations is that no secure conclusions can be based on any such statistics now in existence, so much are the accessible statistics affected by temporary, local, and shifting conditions. Nevertheless, these reports give a trustworthy account of the legislation in each State dealt with, and of the efforts made in the several States to enforce the laws enacted ; and they give some indications of the success or non-success in promoting temperance of the various kinds of legislation described. They inevitably deal also with the social and political effects of the various sorts of liquor legislation. Within these limits, they are believed by the sub - committee to be accurate and impartial. It should be noticed that no legislation since 1895 is included in their survey.
The reports relate to communities which differ widely in character. Some relate to compact, and some to scattered populations ; some to people mostly native-born, and some to communities in which there is a large admixture of foreign-born persons. The principal occupations in the States examined differ widely. Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis contain chiefly a manufacturing and trading population, while the population of South Carolina and Iowa is principally agricultural.
The difficulties in the way of researches of this kind are enormous. In matters which affect private character, truthful reports are proverbially hard to obtain. The accessible statistics are incomplete or inaccurate, or both. The effects of intemperance in promoting vice and crime are often mixed with the effects of many other causes, such as unhealthy occupations, bad lodgings, poor food, and inherited disabilities; and it is very difficult to disentangle intemperance as a cause from other causes of vice, crime, and pauperism. At every point connected with these investigations the studious observer encounters an intense partisanship, which blinds the eyes of witnesses and obscures the judgment of writers and speakers on the subject.
The reports deal with some communities in which the local sentiment has been in favor of the enforcement of restrictive laws, and with others in which the sentiment has been adverse to such enforcement. On the whole, the reports embrace a sufficient variety of legislative enactments, and a sufficient variety of experience with these enactments, in communities of various quality, to make the conclusions to be drawn from them widely interesting and instructive. Taken together, they certainly present a vivid picture of the perplexities of such inquiries, and give effective warning against the easy acceptance of partial or partisan statements on the subject.
From the eight reports thus obtained the sub - committee derived a statement of results and inferences, which omitted all reference to similar legislation and experience in other States, and made no pretension to any exhaustive or universal character. It is evident that methods which succeed in one place do not necessarily succeed in another. Moreover, none of the eight reports deal with the question under European or cosmopolitan conditions.
The results of the investigation and the inferences from it which the subcommittee laid before the Committee of Fifty include a consideration of prohibition, its successes, failures, concomitant evils, and disputed effects; local option; the systems of licenses ; licensing authorities ; restrictions on the sale of liquors; druggists’ licenses; and the effect of liquor legislation on politics.
Prohibitory legislation has succeeded in abolishing and preventing the manufacture on a large scale of distilled and malt liquors within the areas covered by it. In districts where public sentiment has been strongly in its favor it has made it hard to obtain intoxicants, thereby removing temptation from the young and from persons disposed to alcoholic excesses. In pursuing its main object, — which is to make the manufacture and sale of intoxicants impossible, or disreputable if possible, — it has incidentally promoted the invention and adoption of many useful restrictions on the liquor traffic.
But prohibitory legislation has failed to exclude intoxicants completely even from districts where public sentiment has been favorable. In districts where public sentiment has been adverse or strongly divided, the traffic in alcoholic beverages has been sometimes repressed or harassed, but never exterminated or rendered unprofitable. In Maine and Iowa, there have always been counties and municipalities in complete and successful rebellion against the law. The incidental difficulties created by the United States revenue laws, the industrial and medicinal demand for alcohol, and the freedom of interstate commerce have never been overcome. Prohibition has, of course, failed to subdue the drinking passion, which will forever prompt resistance to all restrictive legislation.
There have been concomitant evils of prohibitory legislation. The efforts to enforce it during forty years past have had some unlooked-for effects on public respect for courts, judicial procedure, oaths, and law in general, and for officers of the law, legislators, and public servants. The public have seen law defied, a whole generation of habitual law-breakers schooled in evasion and shamelessness, courts ineffective through fluctuations of policy, delays, perjuries, negligences, and other miscarriages of justice, officers of the law double-faced and mercenary, legislators timid and insincere, candidates for office hypocritical and truckling, and office-holders unfaithful to pledges and to reasonable public expectation. Through an agitation which has always had a moral end, these immoralities have been developed and made conspicuous. The liquor traffic, being very profitable, has been able, when attacked by prohibitory legislation, to pay fines, bribes, hush - money, and assessments for political purposes to large amounts. This money has tended to corrupt the lower courts, the police administration, political organizations, and even the electorate itself. Wherever the voting force of the liquor traffic and its allies is considerable, candidates for office and office-holders are tempted to serve a dangerous trade interest, which is often in antagonism to the public interest. Frequent yielding to this temptation causes general degeneration in public life, breeds contempt for the public service, and therefore makes the service less desirable for upright men. Again, the sight of justices, constables, and informers enforcing a prohibitory law enough to get from it the fines and fees which profit them, but not enough to extinguish the traffic and so cut off the source of their profits, is demoralizing to society at large. All legislation intended to put restrictions on the liquor traffic, except perhaps the simple tax, is more or less liable to these objections; but the prohibitory legislation is the worst of all in these respects, because it stimulates to the utmost the resistance of the liquor-dealers and their supporters.
Of course there are disputed effects of efforts at prohibition. Whether it has or has not reduced the consumption of intoxicants and diminished drunkenness is a matter of opinion, and opinions differ widely. No demonstration on either of these points has been reached or is now attainable after more than forty years of observation and experience.
Experience with prohibitory legislation has brought into clear relief the fact that sumptuary legislation which is not supported by local public sentiment is apt to prove locally impotent, or worse. On this fact are based the numerous kinds of liquor legislation which may be grouped under the name of “ local option.”
In the legislation of the eight States studied, five forms of local option occur: In Massachusetts, a vote is taken every year at the regular election in every city and town on the question, Shall licenses be granted ? and the determination by the majority of voters lasts one year. In Missouri, a vote may be taken at any time (but not within sixty days of any state or municipal election) on demand of one tenth of the qualified electors, town or city voters having no county vote, and vice versa, and the vote being taken not oftener than once in four years ; but in counties or municipalities which have voted for license, no saloon can be licensed unless the majority of the property-holders in the block or square in which the saloon is to be situated sign a petition that the license be issued. In South Carolina, every application for the position of county dispenser must be accompanied by a petition in favor of the applicant, signed by a majority of the freeholders of the incorporated place in which the dispensary is to be situated; and more than one dispensary may be established for each county, but not against a majority vote (operative for two years) in the township in which the dispensary is to be placed. In Ohio, local prohibition is permitted, the vote being taken at a special election on the demand of one fourth of the qualified electors in any township. In Indiana (law of 1895), a majority of the legal voters in any township or ward of a city may remonstrate against licensing a specified applicant, and the remonstrance voids any license which may be issued to him within ten years.
The main advantage of local option is that the same public opinion which determines the question of license or no license is at the back of all the local officials who administer the system decided on. The Missouri provisions seem to be the completest and justest of all. One year being too short a period for a fair trial of either license or no license, Massachusetts towns and cities have to guard themselves against a fickleness from which the law might protect them. Under local option, many persons who are not prohibitionists habitually vote for no license in the place where they live, or where their business is carried on. Persons who object to public bars, although they use alcoholic drinks themselves, may also support a local no license system. By forethought, such persons can get their own supplies from neighboring places where license prevails. If their supplies should be cut off, they might vote differently. There has been no spread of the no license policy in Massachusetts cities and towns since 1881, except by the votes of towns and cities in the immediate vicinity of license towns and cities.
The facts about licenses and the methods of granting them are among the most important parts of the results of this study. There is general agreement that licenses should not be granted for more than one year. The Massachusetts limitation of the number of licenses by the population (1 license to 1000 inhabitants, except in Boston, where 1 license may be issued for every 500 inhabitants) has worked well, by reducing the number of saloons and making the keepers more law-abiding ; but the evidence does not justify the statement that it would work well everywhere. The Missouri restriction (no license within 500 feet of a public park) and the Massachusetts restriction (no license within 400 feet of a schoolhouse) are both commendable. Another Massachusetts provision, to the effect that the holder of a license to sell liquors to be drunk on the premises must also hold a license as an innholder or a victualer, is well conceived ; but the means of executing it have not been thoroughly worked out. In New York, a similar provision led to great scandals, and had to be repealed. Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, licenses only taverns and restaurants to sell intoxicants for consumption on the premises.
County courts have been, and still are, common licensing authorities in the States reported on. Officials elected for short terms, like the mayor and aldermen of cities, make bad licensing authorities, for the reason that the liquor question thereby becomes a frequently recurringissue in municipal politics. A Massachusetts law of recent date provides for the appointment by the mayor of any city of three license commissioners, each to serve six years, one commissioner retiring every second year. This arrangement provides a tolerably stable and independent board, without violating the principle of local self-government.
Every licensing authority should have power to revoke a license promptly, and should always have discretion to withhold a license, no matter how complete may be the compliance of the applicant with all preliminary conditions.
The objections to using courts as licensing authorities are grave. In cities licenses are large money prizes, and whoever awards many of them year after year is more liable to the suspicion of yielding to improper influences than judges ordinarily are in the discharge of strictly judicial duties. Wherever the judgeships are elective offices, it is difficult for candidates to avoid the suspicion that they have given pledges to the liquor interest. Since judicial purity and reputation for purity are much more important than discreet and fair licensing, it would be wiser not to use courts as licensing authorities.
There are also grave inherent objections to the whole license system, when resting on the discretion of commissioners, which the experience of these eight States cannot be said to remove. No other element connected with a license does so much to throw the liquor traffic into politics. It compels the traffic to be in politics for self-protection. It makes of every licensing board a powerful political engine. A tax law avoids this result, and is so far an improvement. The Ohio law is a case in point.
Bonds are generally required of licensees. Experience has proved that wholesale dealers get control of the retailers by signing numerous bonds for them. This practice can be, and has been, prevented by legislation of various sorts, — as, for example, by enacting (Iowa, 1894) that no person shall sign more than one bond, or (Pennsylvania) that bondsmen shall not be engaged in the manufacture of spirituous or malt liquors. The appearance of office-holders and politicians on numerous bonds, as in Philadelphia, might be prevented by a law declaring that holders of elective offices shall not be accepted as bondsmen for licensees.
Before a license for a saloon can be issued. Massachusetts requires the consent of the owner of the building in which the saloon is to be, and the consent of the owners of property within twentyfive feet of the premises to be occupied by the saloon. Iowa requires the consent of all property-holders within fifty feet of saloon premises. The Missouri provision is a thorough one, and can be evaded only at considerable cost and risk. Known methods of evasion are building and selling tenements so as to increase the number of voters in the block, and dividing ordinary lots into many small lots held by different persons.
It has been a common practice to require every applicant for a license to file a certificate, signed by twelve or more respectable citizens, testifying to the applicant’s citizenship and good character. This certificate is of some value to a careful licensing authority ; but it may conceal the carelessness of an unconscientious authority. In connection with a tax law it might work well. In 1872—73, at a time when the Supreme Court of Iowa had declared local option unconstitutional, Iowa demanded that this certificate should be signed by the majority of the voters in the township, cily, or ward for which the license was asked, — thus securing a kind of local option.
As a rule, the upper limit of license fees in cities and large towns has by no means been reached. The examples of Missouri and St. Louis (combined fee), North Adams in Massachusetts, and Boston prove that the traffic can be made to yield much more revenue than has been supposed. In 1883 the principal fees were doubled in Boston without diminishing the number of applications. They were raised again in 1888. In St. Louis, the traffic pays a state tax, a county tax, an ad valorem tax on all liquors received, and a municipal tax which sometimes reaches $300 a month. When a license attaches to a place, and not to a person, the owner of the shop fixes the rent, not by the value of the building for any business, but by the special value of the license. That is a profit which the municipality might absorb in the license fee.
The most important question with regard to any form of liquor legislation is this : Is it adapted to secure the enforcement of the restrictions on the sale of intoxicants which experience has shown to be desirable? — assuming that only those restrictions can be enforced which commend themselves to an enlightened and effective public sentiment. The restrictions which the experience of many years and many places has proved to be desirable are chiefly these : —
There should be no selling to minors, intoxicated persons, or habitual drunkards.
There should be no selling on Sundays, election days, or legal holidays in general, such as Christmas Day, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July. Where, however, such a restriction is openly disregarded, as in St. Louis, it is injurious to have it in the law.
Saloons should not be allowed to become places of entertainment, and to this end they should not be allowed to provide musical instruments, billiard or pool tables, bowling-alleys, cards, or dice.
Saloons should not be licensed in theatres or concert - halls ; and no boxing, wrestling, cock-fighting, or other exhibition should be allowed in saloons.
Every saloon should be wide open to public inspection from the highway, no screens or partitions being permitted.
There should be a limit to the hours of selling, and the shorter the hours, the better. In the different States saloons close at various hours. Thus, in Maine cities in which saloons are openly maintained, the hour for closing is ten P. M., and in Massachusetts it is eleven P. M. ; but the county dispensaries of South Carolina close at six P. M.
It has been found necessary to prevent by police regulation the display of obscene pictures in saloons, and the employment of women as bar-tenders, waitresses, singers, or actresses.
Most of the above restrictions can be executed in any place where there is a reasonably good police force, provided that public opinion accepts such restrictions as desirable. If public sentiment does not support them, they will be disregarded or evaded, as they are in St. Louis, although the Missouri law is a good one in respect to restrictions on licensees. The prohibition of Sunday selling is an old restriction in the United States (Indiana, 1816), and the more Sunday is converted into a public holiday, the more important this restriction becomes, if public sentiment will sustain it.
All restrictions on the licensed saloons have a tendency to develop illicit selling ; but much experience has proved that illicit selling cannot get a large development by the side of licensed selling, if the police administration be at all effective. It is only in regions where prohibition prevails that illicit selling assumes large proportions. In license cities, where the regulations forbid sales after ten or eleven o’clock on Saturday evening and sales on Sundays, the illicit traffic is most developed after hours on Saturday and on Sunday.
The selling of intoxicants by druggists has been a serious obstacle in the way of enforcing prohibitory laws. In Iowa, when the law of 1886 closed large numbers of saloons, the druggists were almost compelled to sell liquors, — at least to their own acquaintances and regular customers. In Maine, the sale by druggists has always been a favorite mode of evading the law. States which have insisted on the proper education of pharmacists, and maintained a state registry for pharmacists, have had an advantage when the closing of saloons has brought a pressure on drug-shops to supply intoxicants ; for the supervision of the State secures a higher class of men in the pharmacy business.
The checks on the selling of liquor by druggists are chiefly these : first, none but a registered pharmacist shall be entrusted with a license ; secondly, no druggist shall sell in small quantities without a written prescription by a physician, and this physician must not be the druggist himself or one interested in the drug-store. The sale of liquor by druggists cannot be perfectly controlled, however, by either or both of these regulations.
Under all sorts of liquor laws, great difficulty has been found in getting the courts to deal effectively and promptly with liquor cases. Alike under the license law in Massachusetts and under the prohibition law in Maine, this trouble has presented itself. In Maine, after more than forty years’ experience, and after frequent amendment of the law of 1851 with the object of preventing delay in dealing with liquor cases, it is still easy to obtain a year’s delay between the commission of a liquor offense and sentence therefor. In Massachusetts, so many cases were placed on file and nolprossed that, in 1885, a law was passed against the improper canceling of cases. This law checked the evil. In 1884 seventy-eight per cent of all the liquor cases were placed on file or nol-prossed, in 1885 thirty-four per cent, and in 1893 only three and forty-one hundredths per cent. Wherever district attorneys and judges are elected by the people, this difficulty is likely to be all the more serious. One consequence of the delays and miscarriages in liquor cases is that the legal proceedings in enforcing a liquor law become very costly in proportion to the number of sentences imposed.
Experience in various States has shown that the penalty of imprisonment prevents obtaining convictions in liquor cases. This penalty has been tried over and over again by ardent legislators, but in practice has never succeeded, — at least for first offenses. Fines have seemed to ordinary judges and juries sufficient penalties for liquor offenses. Laws with severe penalties have often been passed, and courts have often been deprived of all choice between fine and imprisonment; but after trial such enactments have proved less effective than milder ones.
A wise discrimination is made in some States between the fines for selling liquor in counties or municipalities which have voted for no license, and the fines for selling without a license in counties or municipalities which have voted for license. The first offense requires the heavier fine. In Missouri, for an offense of the first sort the fine is from $300 to $1000 ; for an offense of the second sort, from $40 to $200. In States where a license system prevails throughout, the fine for selling without a license needs to be high. Thus, in Pennsylvania, the fine for this offense is from $500 to $5000. It is, of course, important that the fine for selling without a license should be decidedly higher than the annual cost of a license.
It has been thought necessary to stimulate the enforcement of liquor laws by offering large rewards to informers. Thus, in Ohio, half the fine imposed goes to the informer, whenever a house of ill fame is convicted of selling liquor. In South Carolina, twenty cents on every gallon of confiscated liquor is paid to the informer, and any sheriff or trial justice who seizes contraband liquor is paid half its value. Laws like these excite intense animosities, and necessitate other laws for the protection of informers. They have been effective, however, in some instances.
The subject of the transportation of liquor into or within a State has been a very embarrassing one for legislators in every State which has tried the policy of prohibition, or of local no license, or of state monopoly. Maine has struggled for more than forty years with the problem of preventing the transportation of liquor intended for sale, but with very limited success. That State, however, presents peculiar difficulties ; for it has a muchindented coast and numerous navigable rivers, so that many of its principal towns and cities are accessible by water as well as by rail. The most minute and painstaking legislation has failed to attain the object of the prohibitionists. In South Carolina, the legislature has been more successful in defending the state monopoly. The lines of transportation are comparatively few. Severe penalties have been enacted against the transportation of contraband liquor ; arbitrary and vexatious powers have been given to sheriffs, constables, and policemen ; and the activity of the local police has been stimulated by a provision that negligent municipalities may be deprived of their share of the profits of the state dispensary. Legislation of this sort intensifies political dissensions, incites to social strife, and abridges the public sense of self-respecting liberty. In States where local option prevails, transportation by express between license communities and no license communities is practically unimpeded.
Dr. Wines and Mr. Ivoren both dwell at various points on the great difficulty of drawing useful inferences from tables of arrests for drunkenness during a series of years. The statistics are often imperfect ; or the tables have been constructed on different principles in different years ; or the police administration in the same city has changed its methods during the period of tabulation ; or the drunk law has been altered; or the policy of liquor-sellers in regard to protecting intoxicated persons from arrest has been different at different periods. In spite of these impediments, the tables of arrests for drunkenness may sometimes afford satisfactory evidence concerning the working of the prevailing liquor legislation, although the precise cause of the increase or decrease of arrests may remain in doubt. Thus, in South Carolina, diminution of the number of arrests was an indubitable effect of the dispensary law; but it is not sure whether the diminution of public drunkenness was due to the early hour of closing (six P. M.), or to the fact that no drinking on the premises was allowed in the state dispensaries, or to the great reduction in the total number of liquorshops in the State. In Massachusetts, an important change in the drunk law, made in 1891. caused an increase of arrests, but a decrease of the number held for trial. In Philadelphia, the proportion of arrests for intoxication and vagrancy to all arrests declined after the enactment of the so-called high-license law; but the probable explanation was that the keepers both of licensed saloons and of illicit shops protected drunken people. Another possible explanation was the inadequacy of the police force of Philadelphia. In St. Louis, where the saloons are numerous and unrestrained, public order is excellent, and arrests for drunkenness are relatively few ; but this good condition is perhaps due as much to the quality of the population as to the wisdom of the liquor legislation. The fact suggests the doubt whether the amount of drunkenness is anywhere proportionate to the number of saloons.
Iowa endeavored to carry out the philanthropic idea of removing from the liquor traffic the motive of private profit, so long ago as 1854, by legislation which appointed salaried county agents for the sale of liquor; the specific reason given for this legislation being that no private person might be pecuniarily interested in the sale of liquor. No State has thus far succeeded in carrying out this idea. The dispensary law of South Carolina proposed to create a complete state monopoly, with no private licensed traffic and no illicit traffic, and with all the profits of the business going to the public treasury. This law, if successfully carried into execution, would, it should seem, remove from the traffic the motive of private gain. The law has not been entirely successful in this respect, because the salaries of dispensers are made to depend upon the amount of business done in their respective dispensaries; and it therefore becomes the private interest of the dispenser to enlarge his business as much as possible. There is at present no American legislation effective to this desirable end.
The South Carolina dispensary law well illustrates the theoretical difficulties which beset liquor legislation. It proposes to maintain a highly profitable state monopoly of the sale of intoxicants. The revenue purpose is extremely offensive to prohibitionists; yet this motive appears plainly in the practical administration of the law, as well as in its theoretical purpose. Thus, for example, the state dispensers sell the cheapest kinds of distilled liquor, because it is more profitable to sell that liquor than any other, the tastes and capacities of their customers being considered. Again, the law does not prohibit the manufacture of distilled, malt, or vinous liquors, but, on the contrary, in some respects encourages those manufactures within the State. The fundamental conception of the law is distinctly antagonistic to the theory that liquor-selling is sinful or unholy ; for the State itself assumes the whole of that business and takes its profits. Although supported by prohibitionists at the time of its enactment, it flies in the face of all logical prohibitory theory. It has been enforced with a remarkable degree of success, but at great cost of political and social antagonisms.
The theory of the Ohio legislation is interesting in itself, and also because it suggested the present Iowa legislation. In Ohio, licensing is prohibited by the constitution ; but when a person is found selling liquor, he is required to pay a tax of $250, and to give a bond to observe certain restrictions on selling. The tax is far too low, particularly for city saloons ; and the restrictions are not sufficiently numerous, and in many places are not enforced. Under the law as practically administered, saloons are much too numerous. On the other hand, this law prevents in some measure the evil effects of liquor legislation on politics. There are no licensing authorities, no political offices for conducting or supervising the liquor business, and only a moderate amount of liquor litigation. These are weighty recommendations of the law.
Although the Iowa legislation was originally suggested by the Ohio law, it has a very different theoretical basis. In Iowa, prohibition is the rule ; but by paying a fee or tax, and submitting to numerous well-devised restrictions, a liquor-seller may procure exemption from the operation of the prohibitory law. Neither the Ohio theory nor the Iowa theory is satisfactory from the point of view of the prohibitionists, any more than the theory of the South Carolina dispensary law. In the present state of legislation, different laws must be judged by their practical effects, and not by the ethical theory on which they rest.
It cannot be positively affirmed that any one kind of liquor legislation has been more successful than another in promoting real temperance. Legislation as a cause of improvement can rarely be separated from other possible causes. The influences of race or nationality are apparently more important than legislation. That law is best which is best administered. Even when external improvements have unquestionably been effected by new legislation, it often remains doubtful, or at least not demonstrable, whether or not the visible improvements have been accompanied by a diminution in the amount of drinking. Thus, a reduction in the number of saloons in proportion to the population undoubtedly promotes order, quiet, and outward decency ; but it is not certain that the surviving saloons sell less liquor in total than the previous more numerous saloons. Again, it is often said that restrictions on drinking at public bars tend to increase drinking at home or in private, and there is probably truth in this allegation ; but comparative statistics of public and private consumption are not attainable, so that it is impossible to hold a well-grounded opinion on this point. The wise course for the community at large is to strive after all external, visible improvements, even if it be impossible to prove that internal, fundamental improvement accompanies them.
Almost every sort of liquor legislation creates some specific evil in politics. The evils which result from prohibitory legislation have been already mentioned. Under a license system, there is great liability that the process of issuing licenses will breed some sort of political corruption. Whenever high-paid offices are created by liquor legislation, those offices become the objects of political contention. When a multitude of offices are created in the execution of liquor laws, they furnish the means of putting together a strong political machine. Just this has happened under the dispensary system in South Carolina, where a machine of great capacity for political purposes has been created in a short time, with the governor of the State as its engineer. The creation of this machine has intensified the bitter political divisions which caused the adoption of the dispensary law and made possible its enforcement. The activity of liquordealers’ associations in municipal politics all over the United States is in one sense an effect of the numerous experiments in liquor legislation which have been in progress during the last thirty years. The traffic, being attacked by legislation, tries to protect itself by controlling municipal and state legislators.
The commonest issue over which contentions about local self-government have arisen has been the liquor issue. The prohibitionists early discovered that local police will not enforce a prohibitory law in places where public sentiment is opposed to the law. They therefore demanded that a state constabulary should be charged with the execution of that law. This issue has arisen in States whose legislation stops far short of prohibition. Thus, in Missouri, the governor appoints the excise commissioner who is the licensing authority in St. Louis; and in Massachusetts, where local option and high license prevail, the police commissioners of Boston are appointed by the governor. So far as enforcement of the laws goes, state - appointed officers or commissions have often brought about great improvements. In South Carolina, the dispensary act could not have been enforced had it not been that the governor was empowered to appoint an unlimited number of constables to execute that one law. He was also empowered to organize at any moment a metropolitan police for any city in which the local officers neglected their duties in regard to the enforcement of the dispensary act. Nevertheless, violations of the principle of local self-government are always to be deplored, unless a municipality has exhibited an absolute incapacity to govern itself, or unless the violations are plainly based on another valuable principle, namely, that of voluntary coöperation for common ends whose scope transcends the limits of single municipalities.
There are, of course, other promising directions for efforts to promote temperance, such as the removal of the motive of private gain in stimulating the liquor traffic, the substitution of non-alcoholic drinks for intoxicants as refreshments or means of ready hospitality, and the giving of a preference in certain employments to total abstainers or to persons who never drink while on duty, particularly in those employments which have to do with the care or supervision of human beings, animals, and machines, or with transportation by land or sea; but since these interesting topics do not strictly belong to the present legislative aspects of the drink problem, the subcommittee did not dwell on them.
A volume will shortly be published which will contain the evidence on which the conclusions of the sub-committee are based.
Charles W. Eliot.