St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1903-04-01
The Druggists Licenses.
EDITOR CALEDoNIAN:

EDITOR CALIFORNIAN:
At the risk of inviting the retort mind
your own business" cannot forbear a
reflection or two on the reported action
of St. Johnsbury's selectmen in fixing the
fee for fifth class on druggists licenses at
500, and the refusal of your druggists
to take out any licenses. OF course they
refuse. Sales being strictly limited under
their license to physicians prescriptions
and sales of any other kind being almost
certain of detection with business ruin
the inevitable consequence, A druggist
would be very foolish to pay 500 for
such license. He could not hope for
legitimate trade enough to pay it and to
cover the other expense and trouble re-
CURED in the monthly returns to the
county clerk. If you had-wbich is not
of course supposable-any druggists who
desired to do any other liquor trade, be
would be infinitely safer to do it without
any license at all, when his chances of de-
lection would be about the same as
under the old prohibitory law, with
punishment severer, and hardly moiety
of that under license.
The selectmen in fixing the fee at this
exhorbitant figure are within their tech
meal power under the unfortunate phras-
ing of the law which says mot less than
$40" This, be it remembered, is the
work of the enemies Of the law, not its
friends who tried to make it $40 unquali-
fedly). But their action means practi-
cal notification OF the law and says that
there shall be no lawful traffic whatever
in Intoxicating liquors in st. Johnsbury,
even for the most necessary purposes, for
which even prohibition provided through
the town agencies. Even to save life, for
which liquor is often necessary, no one
can lawfully purchase and no one sell
without risking $500 fine. Do the peo-
pie of st. Johnsbury really want such a
DO they believe it will be
really promotive of temperance
The idea of this druggist license, strict
and carefully guarded, was to take the
place in no license towns of the town
agency, loose as ingenuity could make it
and prolific of abuse and community
Generalization. And this misrepresenta.
ton to which this future of the law was
subjected in the referendum campaign,
and by which man usually so candid
and just minded as your distinguished
townsman, ex-chief Justice Ross, was car
ried away, is we'll demonstrated hv this
result of your selectmen's action. If this
license merely meant free rum without
the consent of the people, if a general
liquor business could be done under it
with any sort OF safety, no one who de.
sired to do such business would hesitate
A moment to pay 500 a year for this
chance. If indeed there were no severer
restrictions than on the old town agen-
lies, or than under the druggist license
n Massachusetts, any druggist in
st. Johnsbury-and several of them for
that matter could we'll afford to pay
$500. 1t is simply because all the talk |
0y which so many good people were fool
I'd with regard to this feature OF the law,
was utterly baseless, that men who want |
TO sell liquor for other than medicinal
purposes dare notify it under this license
and men who would sell only for medicinal
purposes, within the limits of the law,
cannot afford to pay 500 for the license.
c. H. DAVENPORT.
Brattleboro, VT, Mar, %, 1903.