The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1903-01-21
TWENTY YEARS OF EACH.
Col. Albert Clark of Boston Writes
of the Vermont License Question.

Phoenix his opinion of the best course
for Vermont to pursue with regard to
the license law. This opinion is the
result of an inquiry from the Phoenix
made without knowledge Of Col
Clark personal views on the matter
Col Clark S reply follows:
To the editor of The Phoenix:
beg your pardon for not sooner
complying with your request for my
opinion as to the relative merits of
prohibition and of license and local
option, as l have witnessed the prac
tical operation of both systems for
20 years in Vermont and 20 years in
Massachusetts.
With the exception of certain dras-
tic laws enacted in recent years for
the more effective enforcement of
prohibition, but which were really no
part of the system, and the chief effect
of which was to bring it into dis
credit, am clearly of opinion that So
called prohibition is for whole State
much preferable to license. Why l
say 'so-called" is because the laws
in Maine, New Hampshire and Ver-
mont never prohibited the sale of
liquor; they regulated it, by provid-
ing that authorized persons in each
community might sell it for chemical,
mechanical and medicinal purposes if
they had added one other use. namely
for beverages, suppose no one would
have called them prohibitory
The object of those laws was to
discourage drinking, and thai is why
agents were not authorized to sell for
that purpose. Was the object accom-
plished?> To a great extent, Yes.
Even in the cities and towns where
| the law was most violated it operated
to create and maintain sentiment
that drinking is disreputable, and
| therefore it kept the majority of men
and women from it, This wholesome
restraint does not prevail under IL
cense, hence drinking is much more
common and excessive. Without GO
ing into statistics, it is fact that
Notwithstanding all the failures of
prohibition, and the lax and corrupt
administration of the law in some
places, as whole it has diminished
pauperism and crime wherever it has
been tried, and has therefore lessened
taxation and increased the material
prosperity of the people. 1t would
have done more if it had been better
enforced.
Recently, however, an opinion has
been growing that law which takes
away personal liberty is unnatural
and unwise and that it involves evils,
such as hypocrisy and perjury, which
are greater than the drink evil.
Without attempting to deny these
evils or to estimate their relative bad
ness, call attention to the fact that
they exist under license, especially
when coupled with local option, to
the same extent, and license brings
other evils which are greater. The
present generation in Vermont has
| llOU sCOh OiihiN ou a bio-
tance, and, chatting under the evils
charged to prohibition. it has inclined
to fly from the ills it has to others
that it knows not of. But think that
if all the people of Vermont could
look into the saloon sections of any of
our license cities and towns almost
any evening, and go into the munich
pal courts, especially on Monday
morning, Or see how the hospitals,
the houses of correction, the peniten-
tiary and the almshouses are thronged
with people who were carried there
by the curse of drink, they would
speedily come to firm conclusion not
to risk such results in their State.
If they could also see the corruption
of the police, the blindness of witnes
SEES, the blackmail levied upon vari
Gus classes of misdemeanants and the
degradation of politics by the free
use of liquor, they would conclude
that when the fine house of some
thrifty" States attorney in Yer
mont has been pointed to as proof OF
, the failure of prohibition. the whole
story has not been told, for there are
others.
Now if there are people who fee
that this is not a free country unless
, they can buy liquor as easily as they
can buy cigars; if there are people
who believe that the population ant
business of Vermont will increase j!
liquor is obtainable as easily there
as in Massachusetts and New York
if existing law cannot be executed
because public opinion is not equal t.
it; if there is general unrest and de
termination to make some kind of
Z change, why not try to take stel
forward instead of step backward
0 Everybody comedies that liquor i
dangerous if taken to excess. Thi
0 being so, why license men who ar
! not generally the hest in the com