The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1900-08-08

tuTDS around anu goes INTO the bus :
ness itself, and thereby declares that
the business is right and conducive 10
the public welfare The State forbids
them to engage in tlre business and
then the State is educating them and
all it's citizens in the idea that liuuor
selling as beverage is justiGable on
economic and moral grounds. The
State, in its blunder;ng attempt to
correct and restrain bad business, is
teaching it's citizens that there are
good and sufficient reasons to engage
in it. 1t is very certain that man
should infer that when the State for
bids him to engage in business be-
cause it is wrong and hurtful and then
turns about and engages in that busi-
ness itself, that it is an act Of tyranny
by the State, and also an act Of dis
honesty by the State towards its citi-
zcns. And isn't the State by that
very act teaching its citizens to dis
obey it's own law?
All laws have an immense cduca-
tional influence. The dispensary sys-
TEN is radically wrong in it's cduca-
tional system is radically wrong in it's
educational tendency. 1t inculcates
radically wrong idea. One of the
happy features of the prohibition sys.
TEN is the educational influence of the
law. 1t cducatcs the conscience and
thought of the people along right
lines. 1t teaches that the liquor bust
ness is wrong; wrong in principle and
hurtful in its effects, and that it can
not be justified on moral or economic
grounds. So far as laws are educativ c
in their effect upon the minds of men,
Prohibition law lifts them up in their
moral ideals and so becomes a great
civilizing and moralizing influence
among men. The d;spensary is the
! very opposite and that is one of my
chief charges against it. 1t was to be
hoped that the dispensary system
/ would bring home to the consciences
of the people the sense of their direct
and immediate responsibility for the
liquor traffic and all its attendant
evils, responsibility which exists un
der any system Of liquor selling which
has the approval and consent of the
law. And it was hoped that the dis
pensary system would bring so square
ly home to the conscience of the people
their direct moral responsibility for
the business that 1t would become in
tolcrable tc them and they would be
forced by the protests of their own
better natures to get out Of the busi-
ness. But if the dispensary is to be
used us an agency to teach the people
that the liquor traffic is justifable, is
in fact so justi6able and good that
they themselves, as component parts
OF Che State, can afford to engage in
it, it becomes means of debauching
the public conscience. That is just
exactly the use to which it is being
turned to-day. The license system
consuses the conscience of the people;
it boguiles them with the plea that
they are really taxing an evil business,
and thus many of them fail to realize
their responsibility or think they have
discharged it in taxing bad business.
The dispensary brushes away ali that
illusion. It makes the responsibility
direct and unquestionable and it is
bound in the nature of things to have
one Of two effects upon the people,
either the dispensary, by bringing
home to the consciences Of the people
their responsibility, will arouse their
Conscience as If it were touched with
hot iron and drive them out of the
business and drive the State out of the
business sna lead inevitably to prohi-
bition, or it is bound to deaden the
oonsciences Of the people until they
acquiesce tamely in the fact that they