Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/639

XI and XII. High License and Local Option.—Certainly the examination of these statutes and reports of their results in forty-nine States and Territories leaves it beyond question that so far the very best results have accompanied the combination of these two provisions. Perhaps the best example is in the largest of the communities to be affected—viz., in the State and city of New York. Here, by separating the plebiscitum or referendum into four local options—viz., (1) selling liquor to be drunk upon the premises where sold, (2) selling liquor not to be drunk upon the premises where sold, (3) selling liquor by apothecaries only on physician's prescription, (4) selling liquor by license granted to "hotel keepers" only—the result obtained has been, I think, precisely what I contended for in the paper of five years age, namely, the value of liquor has been recognized, and its sale provided for without denying its dangers as a temptation, or the disastrous effects of drunkenness. To use the exact words of the commissioner's report: "The tendency is to recognize the propriety of the sale of liquors by hotels and pharmacists in many communities where they will not, by their votes, approve the sale by saloons and groceries; and while there are now twenty less absolutely 'no-license' towns than when the law took effect, there are very many less saloons and groceries where liquors are dispensed." And this while not in any way compromising or dallying with the proposition which the prohibitionists and temperance societies insist upon (and which is all they have as a basis for their claims), viz., the consequences of intoxication and the public policy of its prevention. To show that, as a fact, an equivalent result has been reached in every State in the Union where high license and local option are united, would unduly tax these pages. But one or two prominent examples are of the paradoxical results—as gratifying as they are paradoxical—that the fewer the places where liquor is sold the larger the revenue to the State, and the less the drunkenness, may be cited. In the State of New York in two years of high license the reduction in selling places was 5,484; the increase of revenue to the State was $9,094,646.01; the decrease in the number of arrests was 22,689. In the city of New York alone the reduction in places was 1,204; the increase of revenue was $3,549,851.90; the decrease in the arrests for drunkenness was 3,044. Similar results are reported invariably as the fruit of high license elsewhere in the United States. In the city of Chicago, under an exceedingly high license, the reduction in one year was 200 in the number of saloons, while the increase of revenue was $1,250,000; and yet the decrease in the number of arrests was 1,217, Contrast this result with the condition of affairs in the triple-steel-barred prohibition State of Maine! Says an ex-Mayor of Portland: "I went into office perfectly free; I think I