Constructive Temperance Reform

I

THE cupidity of liquor-dealers, the stupidity of legislation, and the misdirected zeal of reformers are responsible for the American saloon. Its evolution from the old-time tavern or inn in which drink-selling was an incidental if important function, to an institution having no other reason for being, proved swift. In the days when the Atlantic border marked the frontier, and until post-colonial times, neither the law-making nor the law-enforcing power seemed to be greatly disturbed over excesses by the innkeepers, who were, so to speak, the community hosts at the few places of public refreshment. No doubt there was room for complaint, but the innkeepers of that period were rarely local freebooters even in regard to illicit traffic in rum with the Indians.

The first great outcry against the drink evil which arose in the fore part of the last century did not expend its force in denouncing the sellers of intoxicants. As strong drink at that time was an article of pernicious daily household use, both on glad and sad occasions, the problem as then viewed was one of influencing personal habits rather than of repressing the drink-seller. The driving force of the primitive temperance movement was a semi-religious enthusiasm for abstinence which could not indefinitely be maintained at fever heat. Gradually it began to cool, but the drink-selling institution remained, and before long it became the object of reform. This shift in the point of attack (one may date it from the early thirties of the last century) gave a direction to temperance activities that not only has persisted, but has become more and more accentuated in the course of time. Some of the unlovely traits commonly associated with drinkselling (other than that of intoxication) had surely cropped out; they became full-blown, however, only after the saloon had been declared a social outlaw.

It is fallacious to regard the saloon as a peculiar outgrowth of rough pioneer life, with its self-made code and ready forgiveness of debauchery. Perhaps the American tavern had deviated from its English prototype; but the real departure began when its extinction was declared to be the ultimate goal of reform. The frontier had not pushed far beyond the Alleghenies before the drink-seller was forced into a fight for legal existence which since has been incessantly waged in different parts of the country. He entered it primarily for defense; soon, however, he found it advantageous to attack, and thereby hangs the long unclean story of the saloon in politics over which good men so often have moralized. As drinkselling privileges were apportioned and supervised by local authorities, it was inevitable that the saloon-keeper should seek to make them his political creatures; and having obtained safety, his next step was to utilize the position for gain and non-interference. When fateful threats of prohibition impended, the saloon-keeper reached out into the wider field of politics. The point of vantage was often his, for the saloon offered a natural meeting-place to those who were troubled about local political destinies. The taste of power fed the cupidity which the saloon-keeper shares with most men.

The domination of the saloon in many places, its shameless perversion of local government, its open defiance of law and the rapacity accompanying it, are ugly chapters in our civic history; but let it be remembered that it was not the saloon at its worst against which the early reformers rose, for this is a growth of latter days ; and one who wishes to understand its gradual deterioration must carefully inquire how far this resulted from the environment created for it by legislation and reform efforts. This statement involves neither an apology for the lawlessness and political chicanery laid to the saloon, nor a reflection on the motives of reformers. Of course, in many instances, a callous public permitted the inherently dangerous traffic to go on unfettered in spite of legal prescriptions, and with the usual bad results. But the large view to be kept in mind is that the whole trend of temperance legislation has been repressive, with absolute prohibition as the final aim, on the assumption that general moderation throughout the land cannot be attained by any other means.

Yet is temperance so fragile a virtue that it will not thrive unless shielded by sumptuary legislation? Such is the working hypothesis of its strenuous advocates. They ignore the improvements that have taken place, not in consequence of repression or force, but through a complexity of influences that draw a community up to the higher levels. Therefore they heap contumely upon constructive efforts and hold out the strait-jacket as symbolizing the highest form of appeal, wholly suited to win a self-respecting nation. Failing its voluntary or compulsory acceptance, they recognize but one principle in liquor legislation, that of repression. Herein lies the reason for the disappointments of temperance reform as exemplified in the United States. This broad assertion requires some explanation in detail of the workings of our legal restrictions other than state-wide prohibition.

II

The finest fruit garnered from a multitude of experiments in curbing the liquor traffic is the right of local option. If not an original discovery, we have patent-righted it and furnished examples of its proper uses as well as of its abuse. The right of the local community to decide for itself whether the sale of liquor shall be licensed or not is no longer in dispute. The applicability of this right, however, is distinctly limited. In rural districts and smaller urban communities, local prohibition can be made a success and has vindicated itself in many instances, in response to the public sense that the saloon has no place in villages and at country crossroads, because it does not meet an irrepressible want. The utility of local prohibition in larger urban centres is generally conditioned by their proximity to some place under license which operates as a ‘safety valve’ to the purchasers of intoxicants who will not be denied; and upon easy access to drink very often depends the willingness to accept local prohibition.

But where repeated trials clearly show that no decided majority exists for local prohibition, and that there is a constant shift from it to license, the actual gain for temperance is infinitesimal. The laws themselves are at fault because they permit local prohibition to ensue from a mandate of a majority, no matter how small it is and how unrepresentative of public sentiment. That it is easy artificially to propagate votes in the name of morality is as common an experience as it is disheartening. If the adoption of this or that policy did not derive its value from the force of conviction back of it, the situation would be different.

In some states local-option elections occur annually, on the ground that they serve to keep alive the temperance interests. The grave circumstance that neither one policy nor the other can get a fair trial in the course of one year, and that the opportunity for frequent changes serves to perpetuate an element ready to embark in the liquor traffic by legal means when possible, or to some extent by illegal means during dry periods, is ignored.

Some local-option devices — for example, regulations as to petitions in pursuance of which elections are held — make it possible for adroit manipulators to lay dry a community against its will. An excuse for such a prostitution of the local-option principle is found in political expediency, since each victory is held to be a step toward state-wide prohibition. County local option particularly lends itself to this purpose, on account of the legislative representation which may be secured.

If rightfully applied there can be no quarrel with the choice of the county as the unit in local-option elections, provided it is populated chiefly by rural inhabitants or by village folk. But when a county contains a municipality of considerable importance, and the extra-mural vote is utilized for the purpose of overcoming the known majority for license in the city, the very essence of the law, the right of choice, is violated. Then hateful transgressions of prohibition begin and persist until abated by a return to license. Meanwhile civic virtue generally, as well as ardor for temperance, is certain to have suffered. A counterpart of the folly of coercive prohibition enactments is the wanton campaigning for license in a community which is clearly opposed to the liquor traffic. On the other hand, liquor-dealers can hardly be censured for seeking to regain territory which has been won for local prohibition by devious means and contrary to the known wishes of its citizenship.

It belongs to the credo of the prohibition confession that all beverages with alcoholic properties are equally harmful. The suggestion that, if some distinction were made, greater continuity might be gained for a no-license policy will, therefore, be scorned as a subterfuge for undermining the very object of local prohibition. Scientists, to be sure, agree that beverages containing less than two or two and one fourth per cent of alcohol are non-injurious; and in countries whose progressive liquor legislation is largely shaped by teetotalers, beverages of this kind are exempted from taxation and declared non-intoxicating.

American laws forbid the use of certain liquors even if they are not intoxicating! Thus, in West Virginia, all malt-brewed drinks, ‘whether intoxicating or not,’ are prohibited. The State of Washington, in its new prohibition law, bars all liquors ‘which contain any alcohol and which are capable of being used as a beverage.’ North Dakota defines among the forbidden drinks, not only malt liquors of any description, but ‘all so-called fruit “ades,” imitation ciders,and beverages under whatever name or description,’ and forbids them to ‘ be manufactured and sold to be used as a beverage or a substitute for intoxicating liquors.’

The same sort of legislation is made to apply to the dry areas of license states. For example, in Indiana it is not lawful to sell any malt liquor in localoption territory even if it is non-intoxicating. In Iowa long ago the courts upheld this view: ‘A beverage containing alcohol is an intoxicant, regardless of whether the quantity of alcohol contained in it is or is not of itself intoxicating.’ In Wisconsin the sale of malt liquor containing alcohol is made an offense in local prohibition districts, ‘ though the beverage is non-intoxicant.’

The assumption of the law is that there cannot be any proper substitute for intoxicating liquor, regardless of its percentage of alcohol, or even when it is minus any trace of alcohol, so long as it is labeled by the terrifying name of ‘malt.’ Presumably, the singular theory is that even harmless drinks must needs create an appetite for alcohol provided they suggest an affinity with the intoxicating kind. Current legislation thus systematically repudiates the lesson of experience, — namely, that by forbidding non-injurious fermented drinks one invites the use of the most dangerous intoxicants. Hence the disquieting rise in the production of distilled liquors during the years in which the most notable victories for state and local prohibition were won.

Like prohibition legislation, our efforts to develop effective systems of license control are vitiated through false concepts. Under favorable conditions two motives struggle for mastery in shaping license policies: one is the desire for as much revenue as the traffic will bear; the other, the desire to prevent intemperance. As the two motives are hostile, if not mutually exclusive, a poor compromise results.

We have steadfastly clung to the inherited conception of the liquor traffic as a singularly profitable business and therefore to be taxed heavily, altogether subordinating the consideration of taxation as a possible means of promoting temperance. The Federal government sets a bad example. In declaring every beverage containing more than one half per cent of alcohol subject to taxation, it confuses the definition of intoxicants and makes difficult the substitution of the lighter for the more alcoholic drinks. In levying taxes on the usual alcoholic drinks, the Federal government makes a distinction as to kind between distilled and fermented liquors, but solely for the purpose of revenue and based upon the amount that production will stand. The idea of employing the tax-levying power to discourage the use of distilled liquors as the real generators of alcoholism is foreign to our Federal legislation. The true reason why spirits escaped the latest war tax was the fear that an extra impost would curtail production! Furthermore, fermented liquors are taxed merely according to quantity, not according to kind. The least alcoholic and most wholesome beers are made to share the same burden as the heavy ales. Doubtless the Federal government would be severely put to it were it deprived of all income from the manufacture and sale of liquor; but must the good of society be wholly divorced from systems of laying taxes?

The fatuous pattern of Federal legislation is more or less reflected in state laws: the desire for revenue has been allowed to dominate. Self-evidently, the liquor interests fight for low taxes. Their natural opponents have proceeded on the theory that, since the traffic does so much harm, the greatest possible number of dollars should be extracted from it in reparation; and legislators generally are eager to grasp at an excuse for seeking additional revenue. To be sure, the system of high license has been evolved on the ground that a heavy fee would serve to weed out superfluous saloons, facilitate supervision, eliminate the less responsible and unsubstantial dealers, and thus elevate the whole tone of the trade. But experience has not vindicated this theory except in minor details.

A fundamental defect of the highlicense system from the taxation point of view is that a uniform fee is exacted, and not one based upon the amount of alcohol sold. Another just as fatal defect is that high-license legislation fails to recognize the taxing power as a means of promoting temperance by encouraging the sale of the least alcoholic beverages. The suggestion that there could be any choice between alcoholic ‘poisons’ is extremely repugnant to extremists, who regard all liquors as equally typifying the ‘demon alcohol,’ and refuse to recognize a mid-road between prohibition and excess — moderation — to which a rational license system should lead.

That high license puts many saloons out of existence is not an inherent merit, for this can by done by statutory limitation of licenses such as exists in several states, and by a proper regard for reasonable public demands in granting selling privileges. Meanwhile, the resulting concentration of the emoluments from the traffic into fewer hands tends to unify an undesirable power.

As at present operated, the highlicense system acts as an incentive to push sales in order to show profit, and, unhappily for temperance, under the usual method of classifying licenses the temptation is particularly to push the sale of distilled liquors. Indeed, saloons given over solely to fermented drinks lead a precarious existence in high-license places, for the big profit lies in selling whiskey. This neglect of elementary but far-reaching principles, which characterizes most of the license legislation, must be weighed against the largely illusory advantages supposed to be incident to high fees — the simplification of control, the close observance of rules on account of the cost of the privilege, the greater inducement for men of substance, and therefore of responsibility, to enter the trade, and so forth.

Of the endless variety of restrictive measures drafted upon license systems, it may be said in passing that a few are obviously useful, many trivial, some stupid, and still others merely irritating. Whatever makes for concealment invites circumvention of the law and should not be permitted; and no one can sensibly advocate relaxing restrictions against selling to minors and intoxicated persons, or those governing hours of sale, or regulations generally intended to hold the traffic in check. But laborious enactments prescribing whether drink may be consumed standing or sitting at a table, with or without food, and excluding the most harmless forms of diversion; and a multitude of others which aim, in brief, to make the saloon a drink-shop pure and simple, not only belong to the unessentials but directly hinder constructive effort. They are merely the expression of the extreme view that drink-selling is in itself an immoral occupation.

Some hold the crux of liquor legislation to be the choice of authorities vested with power to grant and revoke selling privileges. A sense of this is reflected in the numerous experiments with different already existing or specifically created bodies to whom jurisdiction in licensing has been entrusted. From the diversity of legislation upon this subject as illustrated in different states, and from the experience it has led to, some general conclusions can be drawn.

Local political bodies such as city councils or county commissioners are often tempted beyond their strength when awarded control of liquor licenses, which in a peculiar way requires freedom from approach and a desire to set public good above self-preferment. Locally appointed boards have been found to be too easily ‘reached.’ To give elective police officials the authority to confer privileges which they are set to watch over is merely an insidious invitation to graft. Licensing boards appointed by the governor of a state for specified localities have given a measure of success, of which perhaps Boston furnishes the most notable example. Of course this method appears to be a perversion of accepted principles of local self-government.

In some states the courts grant licenses notwithstanding the reasonable theoretical plea that executive functions should be absolutely divorced from the judicial. In practice, this plan is perhaps of unequal value; but where best developed, as in Pennsylvania, it has on the whole proved an efficient method of licensing, and it has been adopted in a few states. The hearing of applications for licenses as well as of remonstrances in open court is helpful, particularly when the law prescribes that in granting licenses the needs of the community shall be a primary consideration.

Probably no system of licensing authority can be devised that will wholly satisfy grasping dealers and prohibition zealots. Dissatisfaction with the numerous experiments, except that involving the judiciary, — which had not been tried, — finally led the state of New York to adopt its present tax law which practically eliminates the judicial function in granting licenses. The weighty objection to it is, however, that it tends to over-emphasize the importance of the liquor traffic as a source of revenue. The more a state is made to realize the ease with which millions in tribute can be levied on drink-selling, the less it will be disposed to subordinate the desire for a low tax-rate to the application of measures wherewith to conquer alcoholism.

III

This hasty review of some of the principal elements in our liquor legislation but inadequately portrays the chaotic conglomeration of statutory provisions which from year to year is accumulated in the name of temperance control — which is never really achieved, since it proceeds on outworn and mistaken principles. The crude output is a logical result of current methods, for the persons chosen to draft liquor laws seldom need qualify through general fitness or knowledge of many intricate questions. It is a hit-or-miss job amid the distracting bustle of a busy legislative session.

To complicate the situation there are always two outside elements to be reckoned with: First, those who reform for hire, abetted by well-meaning obstructionists whose wisdom in liquor legislation is bounded by a desire to harass the traffic which the law assumes to protect when it is legalized; secondly, the liquor interests, which fight obstinately, partly to hold their own, partly to ward off new financial burdens or irksome regulations.

It is highly significant that the outcome of legislative effort commonly is hailed as a victory for the ‘drys’ or the ‘wets,’ as the case may be, and that when new statutory regulations have been adopted we almost studiously refrain from searching out their effect. The inarticulate public, the long-suffering patient upon whom this or that legal nostrum is to be tried, usually remains dumb, from fear of incurring the enmity of either side, or from indifference, or because it does not see that, as between license legislation of proved incapacity to promote temperance, and prohibition, there is a third choice — the choice of tried experiments based upon a rational conception of the many elements that constitute the whole problem.

Progressive temperance reform demands that the patchwork of rusty principles underlying our present liquor legislation in part be discarded, in part rebuilt from the bottom up. The following paragraphs indicate summarily the objectives in law-making adapted to our needs.

1. In dealing with the liquor traffic, the desire for revenue must give way to the employment of the tax-laying power as a means of minimizing the drink evil. Since the ‘curse of alcoholism’ flows from spirits and not from beers and light wines, the heavy hand of the tax-gatherer should in the first instance be laid on distilled liquors to the point of their utter repression. So drastic a measure would defeat its own purpose unless legislation at the same time encouraged the substitution of fermented drinks in place of the distilled, through a system of carefully graduated taxes upon fermented liquors in proportion to their alcoholic strength.

Physiologically, there is a wide gulf between the possible injury from the ordinary use of pure light beers, and the indubitable damage to the individual as well as to society through a habitual indulgence in distilled spirits. The recent Alcohol Commission of Norway says on this point: ‘At the outset it must be conceded that the danger to society from alcoholic drinks differs utterly according as their alcoholic strength is large or small. Furthermore, it seems clear that while the strongest of them — that is, whiskey — must be subjected to particularly severe regulations, the opposite is true of the weakest drinks of this sort. Quite on the contrary, the latter should be subjected to lenient regulations, since an increasing extension of their use will serve to replace the stronger beverages, and therefore, in the opinion of the majority, represents an essential means in the warfare against the abuse of alcoholic beverages.’

This view has obtained recognition in the laws, not only of Norway but of Sweden and Denmark, where beers containing 2.25 weight ( = 2.8 volume) per cent of alcohol are exempt from taxes. The result has been greatly to stimulate their production and gradual substitution for stronger alcoholic drinks. In Denmark at one time the manufacturers protested against this innovation as a ruinous experiment, declaring that wholesome beer of such a low percentage of alcohol could not be produced; but experience proved them wholly wrong. Their chief energy now appears to be directed to the manufacture of the tax-free grade of beers. In Norway, malt beverages for purposes of taxation are divided into three classes, the lightest being exempt from imposts and the others taxed in proportion to their alcoholic strength, with a limit of 51/2 per cent, above which no beers may be manufactured.

It is interesting to observe that even the prohibitionists represented on the Norwegian Alcohol Commission conceded the wisdom of freeing the lightest malt beverages from imposts, but would limit the exemption to those not exceeding two per cent in volume of alcohol. The consensus of opinion therefore is that certain malt drinks must be regarded as non-intoxicants and should be dealt with accordingly. Only persons whose vision is wholly blinded by prejudice or obscured by the cobwebs of ignorance are expected to enter a denial.

In any scheme of liquor-tax reform the Federal government must necessarily lead the way. Is that an insuperable circumstance? Congress has not shown itself impervious to a consideration of the moral aspects of the drink question, and may be persuaded to employ the one safe method of counteracting the use of the real intoxicants. The suggestion that the Federal government can best accomplish this by monopolizing the manufacture of distilled liquors seems perilous under our political conditions; but an expropriation of the distilled-liquor interests might be effected without a direct burden on the government, through an extra tax on beer, covering, however, a definite period of time.

The principle of taxing liquors with the object of promoting temperance must be carried into the liquor legislation of each state, particularly in respect to the classification of license privileges and the fees exacted. Locally, the makers of beer should not pay a uniform license fee, but one based upon the nature of their product, always exempting malt drinks under a specified strength. Selling-places should pay license fees in proportion to the amount and kind of liquor sold. The prevailing inelastic methods of imposts virtually make it impossible for the vender of fermented drinks alone to subsist. In a perverted enthusiasm for repression, we have thus actually put a premium on the sale of ‘hard liquors,’ since under high-license systems they are the really profitable articles of sale. As the constant object should be to discourage the use of distilled beverages, they must be placed under exceptional restrictions, and might conceivably be altogether forbidden as an article of consumption on the premises; or the number of places in which they could legally be sold might be restricted to the lowest limits consistent with the suppression of an illicit traffic.

Although we are not yet a winedrinking nation, it is likely that a gradual suppression of the manufacture and sale of distilled liquors would lead to an increasing use of wines. Special regulative measures would have to be enacted governing the production and sale of vinous products. There is no reason in equity why wine production, including the so-called fruit wines, should not be subject to taxation after the manner of other fermented drinks. Governmental supervision is needed to prevent adulteration and the manufacture of spurious articles.

As wines enter the retail trade, they must be subject to restrictions placing the heaviest sorts in a class with distilled liquors. For the rest, taxes should be levied, as in the case of beers, according to alcoholic strength. The displacement of whiskey would fail of its purpose unless the substitution of noxious imitation wines is prevented.

2. The employment of the tax-laying power in the interests of temperance would be a vain endeavor under loose or inadequate apportionment and supervision of the privileges to sell intoxicants. The essential details of an ideal licensing system cannot be developed in a few sentences. The starting-point is the selection of licensing authorities. In general the choice seems to lie between the local judiciary and a state agency. As between the two, in view of the extraordinary complications into which state machinery may be thrown through political manœuvres, it is likely that in most states the judiciary would render the better service. The system should, so far as possible, be uniform for the entire state. Local licensing bodies through their almost inevitable entanglements with politics respond poorly or not at all to their duties.

The control of the retail traffic by producers of liquor is directly harmful and makes for a tied-house system comparable to that of England. The retailer should not be the slave of a master whose one motto may be to push sales, but a free agent responsive to public influences. Besides, the temptation to use saloon control for political purposes must be eliminated in every way. That some producers insist upon decorum and strict obedience to law in the saloons owned or controlled by them does not in the least prove that proper observance of public welfare can best be obtained through their proprietorship. One notes with interest that brewers round about the country are beginning to realize the unsoundness of a policy which not only puts the odium of bad saloon conditions on their shoulders, but provides an incentive to antagonize efforts for betterment.

Aside from the few ancient methods of keeping drink-selling within legal bounds, mention must be made of a wholesome device of individual licensing which lately has come into use in Europe. Briefly, the plan consists in ‘blacklisting’ all persons known or found to be alcoholics, and strictly forbidding all sales of spirits to them; all others must present official credentials before being permitted to purchase distilled liquors in limited quantities. So far the plan has yielded highly promising results. That an inquisitorial procedure is necessary can hardly be more repugnant to the individualist than prohibition with its incessant ‘Thou shalt not.’ Whether this manner of individual licensing is practicable in connection with our present selling system, which leaves so many loopholes for law-evasion, is another question. Its institution under the company system of liquor-selling is comparatively simple.

3. The local-option privilege must be maintained, but the legislation that has grown up around it needs to be recast in important respects, so that in practice local option shall mean what the term implies, and not become a subterfuge for seeking political ascendancy or coercing the local community to adopt a given policy against its will.

Three things seem to be especially needful in order to make local prohibition successful. First, the vote should be taken at intervals of not less than three years, so that the plan decided upon may be thoroughly tested. Second, much more than a majority, perhaps a two-thirds vote, should be required to determine the issue. It is instructive to observe that the Norwegian Alcohol Commission in its recent report recommends that in all localoption elections those who abstain from voting shall be counted as against prohibition, on the theory that its advocates will be sure to appear at the polls, and in order to prevent a stampede against license contrary to the desires of most of the voters. Third, the units in local-option elections must be so defined that urban (not village) communities may get their preference respected. It is mere travesty of the localoption principle and a perverted use of power when, for instance, under the county-unit system, an important municipality within the county finds its wishes in licensing matters overridden by the rural population from remote parts.

A fourth element might be recognized in legislation, — namely, giving the voters a choice between absolute local prohibition and the exclusion from sale of all alcoholic beverages above a specified strength. It means a logical extension of the principle upon which the taxation of liquors should be based, and would insure a continuity of the no-license policy now lacking in many places, besides offering a safeguard against the too common violations of prohibition. The suggestion naturally will be regarded as dealing a death-blow to local prohibition by those who conceive that all alcoholic liquors are equally of the devil, harmful to use and sinful to sell; and the commonplace but wholly unsubstantial objection will be raised that the slightest relaxing of prohibition conditions would soon destroy the whole structure.

4. One cardinal principle in liquor legislation unfortunately has not yet intrenched itself in our statutes, — that of permitting the local community to award a monopoly of drink-selling to a private organization or company which shall undertake it, not for private gain, but for the public good. It marks the one long forward step in drink-regulation of a century. Rudimentary experiments with this method of control have taken place, to be sure, in certain of our Southern states, but under imperfect regulations or practically under no law at all.

In Sweden and Norway and already on a considerable scale in England, as mentioned in a previous article, the company system has vindicated its usefulness in several fundamental respects. It has shown itself to be the only arrangement for selling under which the consumption of distilled spirits gradually diminishes and alcoholism to that extent is lessened. It places the responsibility for an inherently dangerous traffic on citizens of high standard and integrity, who by law are made disinterested in sales, and against whom not a breath of scandal or suspicion blows. The company system, instead of being inimical to progressive liquor legislation by serving to perpetuate an undesirable industry, step by step clears the way for restrictive measures of increasing intensity, without denying due personal liberty, and permits far-reaching experiments because it substitutes the public good for the motive of private profit.

To call the company system unAmerican and repugnant to our sentiment about drink-selling, and to say that good people could not be induced to direct it, is merely to beg the question. The bald truth came to the surface some years ago when a permissive act, which would have enabled experiments with the company system, came within one vote of passage by the Massachusetts legislature. A coalition of prohibitionists and liquor-dealers defeated it. Indeed, the prohibitionists can claim the credit, for they protested loudly and incessantly against the essential unmorality of doing aught to prevent alcoholism, so long as it included the perpetuation even under the severest restrictions of the sale of liquor of any kind and in any form. How rarely our theoretical squeamishness translates itself into practice, conditions in the prohibition states show.

To what extent the company system, or a modified adaptation of it to American conditions, is applicable to large centres of population cannot be decided offhand. But its desirability for smaller urban communities can no longer be doubted. At the outset we should be content with permissive laws enabling one community after another, voting license, to award a private company a monopoly of all selling privileges. Once the system had vindicated its effectiveness on a modest scale, the demand for its wider application would become irresistible.

Opponents of the company system have argued that its logical sequence is the eventual nationalization of the drink traffic. The objection is fanciful; even in the home-lands of the system such an event seems very remote. For us, whose government is often strained to the breaking point by simpler affairs, it would be the rankest folly to seek national control of drink-selling. Other things aside, the difficulties of adjusting our dual form of government to the work would be almost insurmountable.

IV

The suggestions offered toward a programme of constructive temperance reform bear the hall-mark of experience gained through generations, and of respect for human nature even in its frailties. The general adoption of this programme — and so happy an event is conceivable — would not make the nation proof against alcoholism. There are no legal formulæ by which men can be made sober. The prohibition doctrine of coercion has failed because it postulates that the habits and appetites of mankind are amenable to regulation after the manner of some inanimate mechanism; and mistaken attempts at wholesale reform entail more social breakage than salvage.

Why should an almost infantile helplessness and despair about the liquor problem possess so many minds? We have learned that laws defective in design as well as in execution cannot cope with it. Truly constructive legislation we lack. It remains therefore to adopt better ways, although they be not easy and will cost bitter struggle into which men are loth to enter. The extremists so easily make us cowards, by branding those who venture to disagree as dangerous to society or as henchmen of the liquor interests.

Measures for the effective control of the liquor traffic require collective effort and support. There is no excuse for delegating the whole question to the self-elected body of reformers who undertake to represent a public sentiment largely fictitious or of their own creation. On a closer view the real enemies of progressive liquor legislation are found to be a compact group of men who live not only for but by the advocacy of prohibition; who are given irresponsible control of sums so large that they must sow corruption; who are not oblivious of earthly ambitions in their solicitude for temperance; and whose own reason for being is unending: national prohibition would not terminate it, for that opens endless vistas of occupation in enforcing the law.

The public is alive to the claims of temperance, yet weary of the age-long strife over the means whereby it should be promoted. The idea of more repression fills thoughtful men with troublous forebodings, for they know that willingness to abide by unpopular laws is a frail human endowment. To many, temperance reform spells merely a frantic and unwholesome endeavor to gain the unattainable; but it takes on a new meaning when constructive effort lies at its base.