The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1904-11-10

The fiscal year 1908 was partly under
prohibition and partly under license, so
as to be impossible Of comparison, and
it WIS also in abnormal because OF the
act Of ~ raising The amount exempted
! from local taxation from 81 500 to So,
600, which naturally brought a rush Of
deposits before the next April Elimin
lating therefore that year, we find the
first ,ear OF localoption-hcense record
ling an improvement, as compared with
1.-THE three last years Of prohibition,
lgreater By oven 10 per cent III the whole
humber of depositors, and by i35 per
cent IN the increased average OF depos-
Its; or coniining The comparison to de-
lpositors who are residents oil the state,
l4tM per cent greater in point Of mum
Der and 20a per cent greater in point
iof increase OF their deposits.
Further, the small depositors, o. those
who have less than $500 to their cred.
! it, number now 1874 ,426, OF 1885 more
than year ago and o,35i more than al
The close Of The last full year Of prohi-
bitiona = x per cent. increase, despite
the fact that they have been years o.
greatly increased cost OF living, con
lrespondingly lessening the laborina
lmans ability To save. The increase u
the amount Of deposits OF This class iii
the two years has been S3,18S,545.
The significance Of these figures ear
hardly be denied now by the gentlemen
who made such claims as they did last
Y spring on the supposition that they
would show Just the opposite Of what
lnow officially appears
! t4st,s fts.a t,ae. fhnf H..4aattsas al
/ the greater by contrast with what hap
lpened just after the adoption 81 pro
| hibition. Except panic aud hard times
\ years (056 Mt the close of the civil war
Is, near the end OF the prolonged bus
mess suffering following ~, and The
brief panic 81 $3.50 the only years thai
have shown actual decreases Of saving,
bank deposits were three OF those i'm
mediately following the going into CT
fleet of The prohibtory law, the tisea
years 1855 rs, while the increase foI
/ 1856 was only SIS. Except the last o
these years, it was . period Of grea
/ prosperity, and though the savings bani
system was then young, the preceding
years had All shown deposits CROWNS
BIZ leaps and bounds, with increases
greater cacll year than for the year pre-
vious By from 80 to 40 per cent, unit
( for the fiscal year ending Aug. 81, 1858
the increase was $997712 Prohibition
went into effect in March, So, and fo
! the next fiscal year there was drop O
lover 100000, 81 to S196,ss0, and thl
next Of over 100000 more, making {
net decrease Of $4,3s2, which in thl
next three years aggregated SSi, s6s
l (1he data for nh these figures may b
found on p. 1874 81 Inspector Platt's re
port for 1902 Of on pp. l29.S0 Of thi'
years report.)
Their significance also has enhance
ment III the experience OF the whole d
New England, where savings bank de
posts averaged some 40 per cent bet
! ter III her three local option than IN hei
three prohibition statesa fact thai
many good people were misled about il
the referendum campaign by compari
sons, industriously circulated by The
Anti-Saloon League, between these pro
| hibiti0n states and selected ones on
I West
So many factors enter into the mat
ter that it might be too much to claim
that such saowings as these, though al
one way, positively prove the case foi
local option. But they do, eertainl!
and decisiyely, in SO far, disproye VIVA
has been said against IL; and they aifort
confederation OF what all the other evi
dence, capable Of exact aseertainmen
and analysis, indicates, that prohibi
ton, as state system at least, only
aggravates the evil 1t seeks to cure
And this on tie simple principle, d
true always as when Edmund Burke
uttered, that when law undertakes I,
do more than law onght to do it al
ways ends by doing less than it ought.