The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-06-27

in regard to the liquor traffic is that In some
way by high license and regulation its evils
may be mitigated. Tt is a question whether
it is even possible to circumscribe this evil;
that high license and regulation will lessen
it's horrors no sane man who has studied this
question will affirm. Take as an illustration
the city of Camden. We have now about
one hundred and twenty licensed houses.
Suppose by increasing our license fees from
say $40 to 1913 we should decrease the num-
Der of saloons fifty per cent, and then sup
pose these saloons should be made more re-
spectacle in their outward appearance, and,
suppose further, the proprietors would allow
no intoxicated men to hang around their bar
Let us see what we have gained by this Won
derful panacea First, it is doubtful whether
there is decrease in the sales of liquor, -our
high license friends tell us that good rum men
want to be protected, and if protected will
gladly pay the high license fee that is exact
ed Protection means that the authorities
must punish all violators of law. Furnishing
illegal dram sellers means monopoly, and
monopoly means that the men who pay high
license will sell much more liquor under the
circumstances Will our astute high license
advocates tell us why it is so much better to
sell one thousand drains in one saloon than it
would be to divide that number between two
saloons? Alcoholic poison will do its work
according to the quantity sold, whether it is
dispensed in one saloon, two or ten. AS to
the responsibility of the high license saloon
we have this to say The results of dram
drinking cannot be changed by the drinking
saloon or its surroundings. No one pretends
to say that alcohol will be the less intoxicat-
ing, only the way of taking the poison will
be improved. The saloon is to be kept clean
er, the decanters and goblets are to be of the
finest cut glass, the bartenders ere to be fash
ionably dressed and the men who drink are to
be more elegantly attired in short we are to
have more genteel way of reaching the aims
house, the prison, the gallows and the drunk
ards hell. The snare of evil doing is in the
apparently harmless approach to ruin. If
young men can be convinced that they can
drink like gentlemen, without danger of sink
ing into the pit of drunkenness, they will
drink with impunity. Rum will get its vic
tins sooner or later whether they go by the
parlor car or the emigrant line as on ordinary
railroads, the destination is the same, the
only difference is in the comfort or discom-
fort of travel. Stealing is the same whether
it be in the Office of genteel broker, in
savings bank or in a den of infamy. What
we want is to make evil doing odious, SO as to
crush it, not to make it respectable so as to
protect it. There is just one other question
that we want answered. it is this: What is
to become of the loafers, drunkards and
criminals that high license saloons will man.
ufacture? There is to be no place for such
characters in the liquor p0rlors that high
license is to create Are we to understand
that patent choher is to be hung up in every
high license dram shop SO that when tippler
reaches certain point of speed on the d0ao7a
grade this is to be applied to him like an air
brake to a car, although the brake ought to
be worked by hydraulic process.
In the progress of temperance work intelli-
gent thinkers are beginning to see that votes
are now the only factors that seem to be in
fuential with those who manipulate political
questions. The history of the last decade
proves conclusively that if words are the only
weapons that temperance men use, words are
the only returns that they may expect from
their political investments. And Just in pro-
portion as temperance men fail to keep their
pledges to vote as they pray, will politicians
fail to keep their pledges to support prohibi-
ton principles. The true temperance man is
not for party per sc; he is for principles,
first, last and always. Whether we had bet
ter have third party or organize an indie
pendent movement is question that we will
not discuss in this article. In some localities
this question must be settled by the wisdom
of the temperance leaders and workers who
have to deal in the matter. The point we
want to keep in mind is that every temper
ance man must cast his vote in such way as
shall do most to hurt the liquor traffic and
help the cause of prohibition. The liquor
question has politico- moral character that
it has political side no one can deny; that it
is in politics is a self-evident fact, and that