Mrs. Grundy. (Tracy City, Tenn.) 1903-1930, 1904-05-26
To Destroy the
Rum Power.
By Henry George.
(Continued from last week.

dollar tax on whiskey lessen
drunkenness? Did the reduc-
ton of fifty cents increase it?
Is there more drunkenness
among the rich, whose power to
purchase all they want is not les
sened by the artificial enhance
ment in the cost of liquor, than
there is among the poor, on
whose power to purchase this
enhancement must most serious
ly tell? Is it not notorious
that men too poor to get proper
food, clothing, and shelter for
themselves and their families do
still manage to get drunk? And
among the temperate men or to-
tai abstainers who read this page,
is there one whose abstinence is
due to the costliness of liquor?
All our restriction, even to the
point of absolute legal prohibit
ton, does not, except perhaps in
some places to strangers and in
some small communities, really
prevent the man who wants
liquor from getting it. Where it
even closes the open saloon it
only substitutes for it the drug
store, the club room, the back
door and the kitchen bar.
On one Sunday in New York l
had to ride from the upper end of
the island to the Aston House to
get a little liquor for medicinal
purposes, but it was only because
one of the periodical raids against
Sunday selling was on, that |
was stranger, and perhaps that
| looked like a temperance man.
People known to the saloon
keepers or druggists could get
all they wanted. | have never
lived in a prohibition state, but
have never been in one where
there seemed any difficulty in
getting liquor. In Burlington,
Iowa, | saw saloons openly doing
business; in Des Moines | saw
| young men drunk in the hall of
the principal hotel at midday;
in Lewiston, Maine | was recent
ly told that there were some
three hundred places where IL
quor was sold, mostly kitchen
bars, and in a Vermont town
prosecuting attorney, even then
prosecuting some offences against
the prohibitory law, took me into
his back room and producing a
bottle and glasses from a closet
and setting them on the table
remarked, at is against the law
to sell or to give liquor as a bev-
erage, but there is no law to pre-
vent a man from taking it if he
sees it lying around"
But the artificial enchantment
in the cost of liquor by taxation
and restriction does have the
effect of promoting adulteration.
With no tax whatever upon
spirits they would be too cheap to
make adulteration pay. But
every artificial increase in cost is
a premium on the substitution of
poisonous mixtures for the pure
article. The abuse of liquor is
bad enough; but there can be no
question that much of the evil
that is attributed to liquor is due
to authorizations not really emit
tied to the name. DR.. Willard
H. Morse, in the North American
Review, says: ''If two puppies
are fed, the one on the whiskey
of the saloons, and the other on
the purest product Of distillation,
the autopsy of the former will
show a diseased brain, while the
brain of the latter will be found
to be normal" Drug store whis-
ky is reputed worse than saloon
whisky, and the worst whisky
of all is said to be prohibition
whisky.
And the effect of these poison.
Gus authorizations which our re-
strictions promote and encourage
is, it must be remembered, not
merely to make the drinking
habit more deadly, it is to pro-
duce quicker and stronger
craving on the part of those who
partake of the stuff, and thus to
make confirmed drinkers-to
produce a diseased condition of
body and mind which urges the
victim to satisfy the insane
craving at all risks and costs.
That the abolition of all taxes