Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1894-06-13
Temperance and Prohibition.

pefance congress" In session at FrO-
hibition Park, +" on Staten Island, which
exhibits the customary tendency to
identify the cause of temperance with
that of legal prohibition of the liquor
traffic. We are very much inclined to
the opinion that the cause of temper
ance has been greatly hindered these
many years by this persistence Of its
most, ardent advocates in the policy of
prohibition and in efforts to carry it
into the political action of the people.
The Prohibitionists have assumed the
attitude of monopolizing the temper
ance cause, and have shown a dispo-
sition to exclude from the ranks of
workers in that cause all who do not
believe in the legal suppression of the
liquor traffic.
The familiar claims are reitel ated in
the congress that the prohibition
policy is practicable because it has been
successfully established in the State of
Maine. Whether it has or not is still a
matter of dispute, and on that ques-
ton there is much conflicting testi-
mony. The venerable Neal Dow says
that the liquor traffic is entirely un-
known in three-fourths of the territory
of that State. but Maine has much ter
ritory that is sparsely peopled, and the
temperance sentiment is pretty strong
in the rural districts of all New Eng
land. There has been much evidence
that in populous places, like Portland,
Bangor, and Lewiston, there is just as
much liquor drinking as in places of
the same size elsewhere, whatever may
be the fact about the existence of
'grogshops," and the decline in the
West Indian rum trade, of which Mr..
Dow speaks, has not been confined to
the ports of Maine. There is not the
least reason for believing that the peo-
pie of Maine are to-day more temperate
in their habits than those of Massa-
|chusetts or Connecticut in communities
CT corresponding character.
But opposition to the prohibition
policy is not based entirely on the be-
lief that it cannot be enforced, though
that belief is very general in large
cities and populous towns and is the
result of experience and observation
The test of the policy is to be found in
Portland and Bangor rather than in
Aroostook County; in New York and
Brooklyn, rather than Chautauqua.-
But there are many people who would
be glad if ''grogshopsn and saloons
lieve In trying to suppress them by
law. There are plenty of people who
are total abstainers by conviction and
by practice, but who are not believers
in prohibition. Why should they be
virtually excluded from the councils
and congresses of temperance people
And there is another distinction that
it would be useful to recognize. There
are plenty of temperance people who
are not total abstainers, and who dc
not admit that any and all use of slim
or dangerous to society. 1t seems tC
be extremely difficult for believers i'll
prohibition, and even for earnest ad
vocates of total abstinence, to acknOwl-
edge this distinction. The fact is that
the bulk of the temperance people in
| this country, at least those who live IN
| cities, have no sympathy with temper
ance movements that insist upon total
abstinence for all men as the only rule
| to be tolerated and insist upon the en-
forcement of total abstinence by law
A great deal more effective work
could be done for promoting habits OF
temperance among the people and
doing away with the evils and miseries
that undoubtedly spring from the use
of intoxicating drinks if organizations
devoted to that cause were broader
and more liberal in spirit and in meth
DDS. To limit temperance to total
abstinence is to restrict very largely
the influences that might be used for
| its promotion. To confine organized
efforts for the promotion of temperance
TO the methods of the ProhibitiOnists
is to curtail their effect to such a de-
gree as to make them useless precisely
where they are most needed. An inter-
national temperance congress at this
late day should afford an occasion for
broadening the spirit, liberalizing the
methods, and multiplying the agencies
of what ought to be a great social and
moral movement, and not In any sense
political movement.