Windham County reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1901-1906, 1903-01-23

private profit from sales. But with
The agents multitudinous oppor'
tunity to sell water for whiskey OF
10 do an additional business on his
priyate account, this amounts to much
less than intended. Abuse Is thoss
and times safer and more iiKeiy 10,
him than for the druggist, for whom J!
spells simply business ruin to be caugn'
violating his license. Wherever there
are checks or guards against an agent
crookedness they are the device OF Int
commissioners or selectmen. Inc la"
neither contains nor suggests them:
The town agency system, in short. IL
about the loosest and most demora!iz
ing ingenuity can concoct, generating
wholesale community hypocrisy ano
moral perjury, and every little whiie
exhibiting financial crookedness In purr'
chases of liquor and in accounts win
the state. The proposed druggist sub
stitute is the most carefully guarded
that exists in the world. The closest
approach to it is in Kansas, but even
there, though it lacks full half OF
the guards here, it works well where
the Judge of Probate, to whom returns
are made, instead of the county clerk
is in earnest for honest enforcement.
Here beyond him is the States Attor'
ney, County Judges and Grand jury
and the town s interest to watch.
There is little practical danger of this
druggist license being violated. Inc
only trouble with it is that 1t IS toe
strict. even to the point OF unfairness
and here again is where the Problbi'
tionists of the Legislature got IN theli
fine work. The Democratic bill, from
which this in common with most OF the
best features of the law are taken, also
allowed sales on sworn and detailed at
fidavits, subject to all the penalties ol
perjury, from the purchaser, instead OF
Putting him to the expense or pre-
scription--a procedure less liable &c
abuse than the prescription method be-
cause it involved the peril OF perjury,
when a simple lie to the doctor might
suffice If only one means were to be
allowed it would better have been the
affidavit. The Democratic bill also had
one other guard against the druggist II
requiring him to make oath each month
that the sales shown by prescription and
affidavits returned, were the only ones
he had made. These provisions were
struck out by the Prohibitionists oveI
the opposition the license men.
How many town agents do you sup
pose there are in the state to whom
word has been passed to make their
sales without asking any questions SO
as to help prohibition" to survives
At least there are agents who are selling
in that way that never did it before.
And it is a vast and swelling stream OF
free rum that is pouring through them.
Indeed those were weighty words OF
Bishop Hall few days ago that, with
conditions as they now are, rejection
of the new law means frightful demon
alization. With prohibition broken, as
it was morally by the vote last Sep
TENDER and by the action of all three
parties, and on top OF that by all the
exhibitions OF politician trickery in its
behalf in the late Legislature and by
the abandonment of all the moral idea
there was in it by its own advocates,
when they lined up solidly in support
of measure that would make the state
rumseller instead of licensees, and
that contained no issue except that OF
where the profits of the rum traffic
should go-prohibition, nominally re-
tanned, would be less enforceable than
ever, growing weaker and rottener
every day.
$50 fallen! So lost. The light withdrawn
Which once he wore
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore"
In truth, Prohibition, which in youth
had high but mistaken purpose, has
passed away. Even il local. option IL
cense be defeated now and permanent
ly, it inevitably means the adoption of
the South Carolina scheme of socialism
in the Battell bill. So the Prohibi-
tionists we're really more consistent
than they realized in seizing upon the
real issue. But sober. conservative cit
liens ought at least to prefer fair
trial of system which American ex-
perience recommends and which en-
bodies the best results of experience in
other states, before plunging into one
that may be fitted for Russia and
Sweden but bullying with corruption
and the political machine, is totally
inconsistent in its whole conception
with American ideals and methods.
The proof is decisive through the
town agencies that towns and coun-
ties cannot successfully handle the
liquor question in socialistic way.
What reason is there to suppose that
the state, further removed from the di
rect eye and control of the people, with
multiplied for vast cor
ruption such as has repeatedly shamed
South Carolina under the same system
and with the certainty that the means
will be utilized to build upa great po-
litical machine such as always appears
under our mode of government when 1t
undertakes more than the most neces-
sary functions-t that the state can do
it better or even so we'll? The ''tigur-
ing which about every town now does
to cheat the state out of its share of
the agency profits only illustrates in
small way what is inevitable under any
departure from that true
American principle that THAT govern
ment is best which governs least. -
At least the present practical duty,
with prohibition gone, is to secure
two years trial of local option to see
how it works and afford an intelligent
basis for action, when the Battell bill
comes again before the next Legisla
ture, as it surely will. Even the be-
levers in that measure ought to be
willing to stand that test.
G. H. Davenport.