vestigation was made all but two or three had paid the United States special tax, which is prima facie evidence of violation of the liquor law. Druggists can not legally sell liquor for medicinal purposes, as this is the purpose for which the city agency exists. Not less than twenty of the forty-five drug stores in Portland are merely dramshops in disguise.
Much of the family trade is supplied by wholesale dealers and by bottlers of mineral waters, and a number of express companies are ready to place orders for their customers in Boston and other cities, while some of the local expresses fill orders for liquors from their own well-supplied storage rooms.
Of the one place in the city where liquor is legitimately sold, Mr. Koren says: "On the occasion of the writer's first visit to the Portland liquor agency he was greeted with these words by one of the attendants: ‘This is nothing but a legalized rum shop—that's all.’ The statistics abundantly vindicate this assertion. It was explained that certain formalities were observed. Thus the name and address of each purchaser are recorded. ‘Of course,’ the informant went on, ‘there are some we don't sell to and won't sell to (for instance, intoxicated persons and habitual drunkards), but if a respectable person comes in we don't ask questions.’"
The inquiries of the committee's agent were not confined to cities. Farmington, the county seat of Franklin County, sixty miles back from the seacoast, was spoken of by well-informed prohibitionists as a place where the law worked under the most favorable conditions. The town contains four villages and had three thousand two hundred and seven inhabitants in 1890, of whom only one hundred and seven were of foreign birth. Yet here liquor selling is far from being unknown. "Five United States special liquor taxes were paid for by residents in 1894. At two of the hotels both malt and distilled liquors are supplied to guests in their rooms, and not infrequently to others who drop in; but there are no bars. At one of the three drug stores, at least, liquor can be bought by any trusted customer. Furthermore, it is said by old residents that illicit sales are carried on intermittently at from one to three other places, but their identity is not easily revealed. An official, whose duty it is to enforce prohibition, is quoted as saying that ‘from one to six packages of liquor arrive by express every day.’"
The report contains a review of the working of prohibition throughout the State by counties. Every city in Maine, except Auburn, has its United States licenses, and in no manufacturing town with a large number of French-Canadian operatives has the prohibitory law ever been strictly enforced. The tipplers of Auburn find prohibition endurable, for a short bridge connects their city
