St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-09-16
STRONG DRINK IN MAINE.
There Is Plenty of 1t, and 1t Is the
Worst OF Its Kind.

Inere Is PIenty OF Ii, ana 1t is the
Worst OF Its Kind.
There is no lack of liquor in Maine,
though it is hard to get mixed drinks,
writes a New York Sun correspondent.
Here in Portland they are made in the
bar-rOOms in the cellars of the principal
hotels. but in the other cities and towns
the bartender shOyes out bottle and
says:
Take this or you'll get nothing.
This is prohibition state.''
All the stock needed for a bar is a
few eases of beer and few bottles of
whisky. Even this assortment is not
found in all bars. 1t is common thing
for bar to have oily a case of beer
will make over fifty drinks, and can
be stretched TO a hundred The bottles
are big as champagne bottles, almost the
same shape, but without label. They
hold quart. A quart means any num-
Der of drinks, according to the skill of
the bartender and the wretchedness of
the beer. Each drink costs 10
cents. In the ordinary glass of
prohibition there is no more beer
than could be put into fat champagne
glass. 1t is acrid. with a salty froth,
and incites desire to make war on
somebody. Five glasses apiece to a
thousand ordinarily peaceable citizens
would prOuOke them to riot. After
drinking it there is fire i'll the throat
that can be quenched only by drinking
more beer. until the flame burns the
victim into the inSensibility of drunk
eneSS. and to go on Maine drunk is
solemn business. A Maine man can
carry a flask of the Maine beer of COM
merce in his pocket and use it as our
West side politician uses his flask of
whisky.
There is an immense profit from the
sale of this beer at 10 cents for small
drink. The police get part of this
profit. They assess the SalOOnkeeper,
if the common belief goes for anything.
Then, about once in SO often the saloon
keeper is arrested and fined. The fees
of his arrest make the liquor police and
court officials happy, and it is calcu-
lated to make the amount of his fines
equal to a license of $500 or $500 year.
New individuals can be found for the
same place, so that it will not seem as if
the same man was being let off with
moderate fine for the tenth or fiji
teenth offense. The fines go into
the city or town treasury.
anu NIP Ohb NAiN Nt@A ivy bi4lO
There is enough margin left over to
give the salOOnkeeper more than the
ordinary profit, and he cannot complain.
especially as new men are hindered
from going into the business by
the necessity of having to get solid with
so many people before they start. 1t
costs money to be solid III Maine, and
man who succeeds in making a liquor
store grow where there was none before
is looked upon as a public benefactor,
besides being a man with pull.
These saloons are called oyster
houses. The sign simply says that oy-
sterS can be had within. A man who
wants oysters had better go some place
else, as the only oysters in those places
are in lot of cans on the shelves of the
front room, where there may be cigar
stand. Rows of canned goods and some
crackers, sausage and other luXuries of
a free lunch counter may possibly be
found in this room, but free lunches are
scarce in Maine. A man who has four
or five Maine beers in him wants to go
out at once and commit murder
or arson without waiting for a
free lunch. This dummy part of the
establishment occupies the part of the
room facing on the street. Back of it
is a partition going up to the ceiling,
with a lOOphole like the peephOle in a
gambling house. The space behind is
twice as large as the room in front.
Here is the bar, small and dirty, no
chairs, no tables, nothing but bare walls
and Stops of the precious beer. This is
the average and ordinary Maine bar
room. 1t must be desperate desire
that takes man in one.
The bar is of dirty brown wood, not
valuable annnnb n bother OUAr in naSa
it is necessary to have it publicly
smashed by the liquor police. Behind
are a couple of shelves with green quart
beer bottles on them. A half dozen
Jumps of glass an inch thick at the bot
tom, three-eighthS thick at the side, and
with small cavity for beer, finish the
luXuriant appointments. Occasionally
there is a bucket of water in which the
glasses are dipped after being used.
This is considered rather faStidiOuS,
and party of Maine men can get along
nicely with one glass, filled and drunk
by each in SucceSSin as 1t is paSSedo
around the crowd.
There are few good and fairly we'll
equipped bars in Portland. They sell
wine at hotel tables here, so a man can
drink somewhere in comfort. With the
relaxation of the sham enforcement of
the law the quality of the liquor i'm
proves, and there is less drunkenness in
proportion in Portland than in Augusta,
which is full of hypocrisy. In Augusta
| man at the hotel who asks for drink
is told to go to his room. A bottle of
whisky is sent up to him, and he pays
| $3.50 for it, whether he wants one drink
or five. He can take his two or three
drinks from it and carry it Off with him
an Indictment to continual tippling--
or he can sell it and break the United
| States internal revenue law, which is a
bigger thing than prohibition, or he can
give it to one of the hotel porters for a
tip, or he can sit and drink until he is
| gloriOusly drunk. Often this is just
what he does. A man who, left to him.
self, would go to the bar and take a
drink before going to bed, has a bottle
in his room, and sits and smokes and
drinks ten times as much as he other
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