Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1906-02-02
LICENSE VS.. NO LICENSE.
Some Things Which the People of Bur-
llneton Have Learned by Experience in
the Last Two or Three Years.
re.

Huntington Free Press.
In the city election of last year the
majority for license was so small that
had the no-license forces put forth even
the average effort in the way of cam
paign work the city might have been
freed from saloons. The influences which
have been constantly increasing the senti-
nent in opposition to saloons have been at
work during the past ~ months; and the
same rate of decrease in the vote for
license as was recorded in each of the past
three years would carry Burlington far
into the no-license column.
1t should be stated in justice to truth
in this connection that this change in
sentiment has not been so much the re-
suit of what we are accustomed to re-
gard as temperance work as of the infu-
ence of what may be called the operation
of natural causes. In not a few cases II
has been discovered that a mans pocket
book is more sensitive than his con-
science, and we suspect that If we could
analyZe our motives this truth might be
found far more comprehensive than we
ourselves often think. Be this as 1t may,
the Burlington pocketbook, let us say, has
become aroused to the fact thar the
maintenance of saloons for the sale OF
intoxicating liquor as a beverage is not
right.
Our dealers in the necessaries of life
have discovered that men who formerly
paid their grocery bills, and their meat
bills, and their clothing bills, and their
coal bills, and so on, are in many instances
unable to continue this practice, because
the money which formerly came to their
bills now goes in no small degree to the
saloons. The grocer for example. who
watches a constant stream of his custom
crs flociling to a nearby saloon, while
their accounts on his books remain I'M
paid, can easily be convinced that license
f- r,.1ke a1, TO-. oil
after all.
Our banking men who have seen men,
formerly sober and industrious, gradually
withdrawing the Accommodations of years
of patient saving and wise investment
in order to pay the bills of saloon-keepers,
do not need temperance lectures to show
them the evils of the legaliZed sale of
liquor as beverage
The families of the largely increased
number OF men who are serving out terms
of imprisonment in the house of correc-
ton for intoxication, while former loved
ones are being supported in part by the
pauper department, can easily be per-
suaded that license Of liquor-selling is an
evil influence.
Business men who have studied the in
crease in the expense of our pauper de-
partmcnt from $9,499.64 in 1900 and ST.
52S55 in 1901 to $4,000 in 1905 under the
influence of the licensed saloon in Bur
EnRlOn, ana WHO nave BeFn Wnole ldtllllleS
thrown on the town as the result of the
downfall of heads of families under the
influence of drink, can hardly ask for a
more forceful proof that license does not
even pay.
Employers who have seen valued ON
ployes gradually sink under the debasng
influence of the drink habit until threats
of discharge were unavailing to check
repeated offences and until complete loss
of employment became a grim necessity,
do not need to be told what the effect of
the saloon is.
Our organized charity and philanthropic
workers, who have struggled for years to
bring sunshine and right-living to many
squalid homes in Burlington and who have
seen whole squads of men driven to
former vice and squalor since the legalized
saloon made its advent, hardly need to be
informed that license has had a debasing
effect on many of our poor people.
The people Of Burlington have been
studying an object lesson in connection
with tho legalized saloon as compared
with the sale of liquor under the ban OF
the law, and II the majority vote as they
talk, there is little question what the
outcome will be.