Bennington semi-weekly banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 1894-1902, 1894-10-02

The reader will haar in mind that the
population OF Bennington was then some
| forty or fifty per cent. less than now.
Many readers of the BANNER have
come upon the stage since 1852 and
have but slight knowledge of the
| amount of liquor consumed under the
old license system. In those days, Ben
nington had no railroad facilities. All
commercial transactions by way of
freighting was done by teams, and that
branch of industry was carried on by our
own townsmen, men of the highest re-
spectibility, such as Jedediah Dewey g.
Son, Capt Ira Hawks & Son, Pitts &
Leonard Godfrey, Uel Hicks, and
others. To show something OF the
amount of liquor brought into town in
those days, 1 will quote from state
ment made to me by man now seventy
years old, and one of our reliable citi-
zens, whose word will not be questioned.
He says: Gas long ago as can remem-
Der, my father followed the business of
teaming between Bennington and Troy,
and when grew to manhood / took a
team and continued in the business with
my father, until 1S48, when | left the
road, but my father continued to team it
until the railroad was built. At one
time he hired an experienced teamster
and kept him on the road some four
years. We then had three teams, usual
ly making two trips, and sometimes
three each week, carrying from two to
three tons of freight.
There were in those days some half a
dozen other teamBters on the road who
handled as much, and about the same
kind of freight, per team, as we did,
which was distributed in Bennington,
much the same as ours was. The out
going freight consisted of pig iron,
ocher, clay, products of our Factories,
and such commodities as the people had
for city market. The incoming freight
consisted of supplies for the stores, gro
ceries, factories and hotel keepers, and a
very large portion of such freight was
Intoxicating liquor. Almost every store
or grocery of any pretention held a re-
tailer's license and sold liquor, and the
liquors brought in by our teams were
distributed among them and the hotel
keepers" who all, with one exception,
held an inn-keeper's license and sold
liquor.
That one exception was the Venerable
Lewis Cady, who kept the Stark House
from about 1S43 to the time of his death
in 1865, on strictly temperance princi-
pies. No one ever suspected Mr.. Cady
of selling glass of liquor. One thing
in this connection is worthy of mention:
when Mr.. Cady went into the Stark
House, he was poor man, and when he
died in 1865, he left to his heirs an es-
tate that showed he had accumulated
more property than any other hotel
keeper in Bennington during the same
years. Notwithstanding the fact that the
two upper stories of his hotel had once
been destroyed by fire, his indominable
pluck and determination to demonstrate
to the people that hotel could be kept
in Bennington on strictly temperance
principles, enabled him to rebuild his
hotel and accomplish his object, and the
fact of Mr.. Cady's success has become a
matter of history that our people will do
well ia remember.
Our prohibitory law has stood for for
ty-two years. has done good service, but
not enough of it, has withstood all the
attacks of the rum interest, aided by a
few honest, but misguided men, who
would be glad to see the rum traffic sup
pressed, but propose to vote to license
what they themselves admit to be an
evil, rather than join with temperance
men to sustain the law.
These attacks have usually come from
the larger towns on the borders of the
State, while large portion of the infu-
entail, law-abiding citizens of these
towns, coupled with the sterling princi
pies of right and justice inherent in the
voters of the interior towns have not
only held their own, but have on every
occasion strengthened and improved the
law by new and more stringent enact
ments, until, as it now stands upon our
statutes, it contains machinery enough
if handled according to it's letter and its
spirit, to close up every rum shop in
Vermont and keep them closed.
There are two things that the temper
ance people of Vermont need to learn
more thoroughly than they yet have
done: first, no law will inforce itself, and
our prohibitory law will be enforced no
further than is for the interest of those
whose duty it is to prosecute it, until
these officers have reason to believe that
sufficient number of the temperance
and law-abiding people stand ready to
back them in all honorable attempts to
enforce the laws, and that it is not the
duty of the prosecuting officer to make
complaints or hunt for evidence to pro-
cure convictions. When these are pro-
vided he is liable to prosecution, if he
neglects to use them.
The second is, that the enemy we are
fighting, like all other evils, is hard to
kill, and, when apparently suppressed,
it may not be dead, and to keep it sup
pressed we must remember: "That
eternal vigilence is the price of liberty"
THOMAS WuTTE