The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1900-04-20
PROHIBITION IN hawaii

FhNUtNff tVF ~ NH " WV
Rev. Dr. q. V. Bishop. who USUALLY
ssfikes q keynote In any dlscussior
which eaiists his moral or intellectual
powers. says OF prohibi,ory liquor
laws that Il 10 unwise 20 impose them
on q community where public senti-
ment u averse TO their enactment.
The reason why 10 that they could
not be enforced and would soon en-
cumber the statute books. With many
people there ia a superstitious fancy
that laws in some degree enforce
themselves and that II morally de-
sirable statute is put on the books 1t
achieves q desirable end. Nothing
could be more misleading. Even a law
30 basic as that which confers the Fed
erai suffrage upon the freed blacks Is
made a dead letter In the Southern
States OF the Union simply because the
white people won't have It. Various
blue" laws remain in technical force
but without legal efficacy. They are
to all intents and purposes dead be-
cause the people they were framed for
refuse to obey them. When things
reach that pass in a country where
moral legislation Is not TO be enforc-
ed by the bayonet, the only thing for
the iaw-making power to do Is to bow
to the popular objection--and after
that to see that no more attempts are
made TO fly in the face of 1t.
II there Is one thing the experiment
ing with prohibitory liquor laws has
proved 1t Is that In no community
where the majority or even large mi
nority OF the residents want to use
spirituous or malt beverages can they
be deprived of them. The drug
stores" OF Maine, the blind pigs" of
South Carolina, the "speak-easys" Of
Iowa tell their own story OF evasion.
Speaking Of Maine, which has had
prohibition on It's statute books for
great many years, the arrests for
drunkenness run from $4,000 to $1,000
annually despite the fact that every IL
licit seller conceals as many OF his
tell-tale customers as he can. We adj
init that there are places In Maine and
other prohibition States where drink
of whisky or beer cannot be had for
love or money, but they are generally
small villages where the teetotal senti
ment La solid and ,vigilant and possess
ed of the great majority OF votes. In
the larger places where an active class
OF liquor men or their sympathizers
exists probably not much less liquor is
drank than the average per capita
consumption in wide-open New Eng
land towns.
II Honolulu felt on the liquor Ques-
ton as the small Maine towns do pro-
hibition would be as practicable here
As DIR. Bishop puts 1t: Whatever
may be the case with Americans, the
British, the Germans and the Portu-
guese, who form large element In
the community, do not recognize any
thing morally wrong in the consump-
ton of alcoholic beverages" Nor for
that matter do considerable proper
ton of Americans and natives and
probably 80 per cent of the Asiatics.
What we have left in Hawaii is tee.
total residue so small, comparatively,
that It could not reasonably hope to
enforce prohibition statute for an
hour-no. not with Congress behind 1t.
What then? We see nothing more
practicable than to urge the continu-
ance of the present high license sys-
TEN. High license" says DR.. Bishop,
lis the best we can DO here" Time has
proved that fact over and over again. |
Whether this solution will always be
the better one depends upon the sue
cess OF moral suasion in changing the
character Of our electorate. If the to-
can create a public SEN
timent here such as they have done in
some thousands of small Mainland viii
lagos and as may be found in 30 large
a place as Pasadena, CAL, then prohibit
ton will come to us Or from US as a
matter of course. But anything which
omits that preliminary strikes us as it
apparently does DR.. Bishop as being
waste of valuable time
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