The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1904-09-21
The Brice Bill Agitation.
Anderson Daily Mail.

A good deal is being said in the pa
pers now about the Brice bill-a meas
ure which allows counties to vote out
dispensaries. The bill was an issue i'll
some of the counties in the recent
campaign.
Looking at it from n standpoint
there can be no objection to such a
measure. The people surely ought to
have a right to. say whether they
want dispensaries or not. Surely the
people of a county ought to have the
right to say whether or not whiskey
shall be sold in their midst.
But the advocates of the Brlce bill
do not claim that they are contending
for this principle. Their avowed pur-
pose is to cripple, and kill if possible,
the %dispeDsary law as a mean of reg
ulating the liquor traffic. So far as
we can recall, not a single advocate
of the Brice bill has claimed to be
working in the interest of temperance
OR trying to decrease the evil OF
whiskey.
If the people who are trying to
break down the dispensary law will
go to work and force its enforcement
in letter and spirit-they will do
more toward securing temperance than
they will ever do by their present
tactics.
For the ~dispensary law is not being
enforced. The policy, of the dispen-
sary management seems to be to IN.
crease the sale and use of whiskey
instead of decreasing it. The tenden-
cy all the time is to make it easier to
get whiskey, rather than to make it
more difficult.
If the ~dispensary law is enforced,
according to the letter of the law as
it stands today on the statute books
and according to the spirit in which
it was promised to the people, this
would not be the case.
The temperance people and the pro-
hibitionists make the mistake of join
ing hands with those who want TO 60
back to the old barroom system
those who want to go back to the old
plan of allowing individuals to sell
whiskey for a profit.
If the prohihitionists and temper
ance people will only be consistent
and work with the right end in view
they can do a great deal. The first
thing they should do is to secure the
enforcement of the law. They should
not only stamp out blind tigers wher-
ever they exist, but they should see
that dispensers follow the law in MAX
ing sales in these institutions, and
that the State %dispensary is conducted
with a view of decreasing the sale
and use of whiskey by the citizens of
the State instead of trying to increase
it.
The temperance people can do this
if they will try, and if they will make
a beginning they will find that they
will receive the support of all those
who are believers in the dispensary
law and want TO see it enforced.
And this class constitutes a majority
of the people of the state.
But so long as the temperance
people consider themselves too good
to ''touch the unclean thing" and
refuse to do anything to have the eX-
listing law enforced, a great many
people are going to be content to let
things rock along pretty much as they
now exist. The plain, common
people had much rather see some eff
fort to have the present law enforced
before having the law repealed.
The Brice Bill agitation is not going
to accomplish anything, because the
people see through it. Instead of
being a movement in the direction of
temperance it is an effort to break
down the ~dispensary system. That
some very sincere and high minded
people are connected with the move
ment does not disguise its real intent
in the least.