The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-11-09

his election in 1889 to the revolt of the
AUTHORIZATION Republicans, and owes
his reelection to the same cause. The
Democracy favored local option with q
license of $500; the Republicans endorsed
prohibition. Had this issue of prohibi-
ton been ont of the canvass, there is not
the slightest doubt that Iowa would have
elected the Republican ticket by
handsome majority. The prohibitory law
has been in force in Iowa over seven
years, with about the same results that
are found in other prohibitory states, like
Maine, Kansas and Vermont. The official
returns of the United States internal rev.
enue department are quoted, showing that
federal liquor license taxes in 1890 were
collected from one person or saloon to
every ass people. There are few non-pro-
hibition states where SO many dramshops
exist. From the same returns it appears
that Vermont holds one federal liquor
license for every S65 people, Kansas one to
every 1913 and Maine one to every 702 peo-
ple-all prohibition states. On the other
hand. many licensed states are cited where
the federal licenses number less than one
to every 1,0OO persons.
Anybody who has ever lived for term
of years in prohibition state knows that
in all cities and large towns prohibition
becomes a farce of Stree rum" with its
natural coincidents of subterranean dog
geries, wholesale perjury, police corrup-
ton and class persecution. Local option
and high license is about the best solution
of the difficult problem of liquor regula-
ton. Local option leaves every commun-
in the cities and large towns,
where prohibition would become the
farce of free rum, high license
serves to tax the traffic for its protection
and tends to place it in as responsible
hands as possible. 1t is not pretended
that any liquor law will do much to stop
intemperance; for we do not look to law to
make people temperate any more than We
look to law to compel people not to be
poor or extravagant. High license makes
the people who profit by the sale of liquor
pay something toward meeting the in
creased expenditure imposed by the abuse
of the traffic on the government. To say
that by taxing the liquor traffic the gov
eminent enters into partnership with the
liquor seller is absurd. You might as well
say that by taxing shops that sell any arti-
Gle with which it was possible to cause
self-destruction that the government was
responsible for suicides.
The prohibitory law in theory deprives
all persons without discrimination of all
legal opportunity to buy liquor for other
than medicinal purposes. SO that COM
pulsory total abstinence 10 exactly what
the law means, since there can be no legal
purchase within the state, and no legal
purchase at all, saving to those whose
individual means are equal to the expense
of the procurement of liquor without the
state lines or the successful secret estab-
lishment and conduct of a private wine
press or whisky still. A large class of
citizens, having the same rights to equal
be deprived of legal privilege that
is not the peculiar prerogative of any
class, rich or poor, and compulsory total
abstinence, for the want of legal oppor-
tunity to purchase, would be exactly the
condition of all who had not the acct.
dental fortuitous ability to buy beyond
the Jurisdiction of tho law. This is the
absurdity to which the logic in e1onera-
ton of the law leads. The law in practice
must be broken, or you have only
privileged class of liquor users, privileged
by their money, not by their superior
moral merit or discretion. The state,
without reference to the moral, mental or
physical sanity of the citizen denies him
legal opportunity within its borders to in
dulge the exercise of his private Judgment
and purchase drop of alcohol save
as q medicine. That is. the state
in the face of the civilized world
treats liquor, the use or disuse
Of which is not standard of moral con-
duct, whatever the abuse may be, Just as
though it was an article like obscene
books, contraband of commerce by the
universal consent Of the English-speaking
Christian world, while on the other hand
every civilized nation, including our own,
alcohol and its traffic. Such law, at war
with the experience of history, at war
with the social and political philosophy
of the ablest thinkers of Europe and
America, has within itself the conditions
of its own decay, its constant failure and
in due time of its own fall. The justifica-
ton Of such law must be found not in
the principles of morality, but in the re-
quirements of public policy.
The principle of regulation is the true
substitute for the philosophical error of
prohibition. The distinction between reg.
ulation, the reasonable, practical right of
society, and prohibition, the unreason-
able, impracticable might of society. is
one that prohibition zealots try constantly
to confuse in the public mind. Prohibi-
ton drives the traffic into dark places and
into the hands of the most reckless and
irresponsible persons; it facilitates and
encourages the adulteration of LIQUOR:
it creates the mean, despicable ma
chinery Of persecution, spies, informers,
etc.-infuences that only breed de-
ceit, hypocrisy, intolerance, neighborhood
hates and diseordancies, and to no pur-
pose, for the record of its experiments
show more increased inebriety in Maine
within forty years than we find in New
York and Massachusetts. 1t is not the
true and proper function Of law to trv and
abolish or prohibit the use of every thing
liable TO abuse, but to restrain and punish
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