The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1907-12-04
LAURENS, S. c., DECEMBER 4, 1907.
PROHIBITION AGAIN.

another election in this county, and it
is just as well to discuss the matter a
little. In u opinion the question is
one Of expediency rather than Of prin-
ciple. Our judgment is that prohibi-
zion would be fairly well enforced in
this county. The average Laurens
white man doesn't want whisky. He
will not go out Of his way to buy it.
Even those who occasionally get drunk
as a rule do so because the whisky is
easy to get. Nine out of ten men who
would go to a ~dlspensary on a salesday
in December and buy a flask would not
think about troubling themselves to
spend half an hour or an hour trailing
Il blind tiger to get it. Most men who
sometimes take q drink when it is
handy would not juggle with q negro
who happened to have a Jug from which
he was retailing in dark places.
OF course there would be some whis-
ky sold, in spite of prohibition, in Lau-
rens. Perhaps a good deal would be
sold, but blind tigers, so long as they
were not permitted to sell openly, and
30 long as the policemen and other law
officers watched them, would not sell in
a month what an open ~dispensary sells
in a day.
Some whisky would be imported for
personal consumption by well-to-do per-
IONS. Perhaps some is imported by
them now. This imported whisky
would yield no revenue to the county,
but it would be consumed by the i'm
porters at their homes, and those who
drink only at home rarely give trouble.
1t is not necessary for the police Off
GERS to watch them and arrest them for
disorderly conduct.
The argument is made that prohibi-
ton deprives the poor man of his
whisky and leaves the rich man to get
his by express. This is true in some
measure. Those who think that the
poor man should not be robbed of the
inalienable right to squander his money
for liquor, and to tank up freely, will
have to make all they can out of the
argument. We are quite aware that
prohibition takes away a good deal of
ones personal liberty. 1t is not Demo-
cratic doctrine. We are free to say that
it is un-Democratic doctrine; but, al
though we set up to conduct a Demo-
cratic newspaper, we do not claim
Democracy to be infallible, The dis
pensary system is even more un-Demo-
cratic than ic rrol;H,k,o~ Tlo No.
cratic idea is the unrestricted sale of
whisky, licenses to be imposed only for
purposes # revenue. The chief argu-
ment for prohibition in this country is
the negro. The average q is not
much more responsible than a child.
Hence he is demoralized by the whisky
traffic. He makes no attempt to con
troll his appetite for it, and his useful
ness as a laborer is greatly impaired.
Besides, his tendency to commit crimes
is multiplied. If there were no negroes
in auren county, and all the people
were fairly we'll educated and law-abid-
ing, we should be an advocate of the
sale of whisky, with as little restriction
about it as possible, because we think
it does more harm to make a few men
good by tying the hands of the whole
community than to suffer the presence
of an occasional inebriate. But we
have many more negroes in Laurens
than we have white people, and it is
not to be disputed that the sale of
whisky adds to the embarrassments of
the race question. Even the low-down
white man rarely sinks to the level of
the mo account" negro, except when
he is drunk, but whisky does cause the
white man to forget his race some
times. Every incident of that kind
damages the whole community.
The argument that the ~dispensary is
a go~od-paying institution is of course
an empty one. When a man buys a 40
cents bottle, let us say that the county
gets 10 cents profit. That 10 cents is
saved; it reduces the taxes. What be-
comes of the whisky? When some poor
devil has drunk it is the county any
richer? Does the bottle of whisky cause
him to make more cotton and corn? But
ii the 40 cents be spent for meal or
calico it will help the man and his
family to live better and to do more.
1t will help them to make more cotton
and corn. Whisky is a luxury, even if
it do not cause drunkenness. So is soda
water. Drinking soda water is very
pleasant, but it does not make the
world weather.. Hence the money
spent for whisky in Laurens county is
money lost, money burned, money
thrown away. The county would be
richer at the end Of the year with the
traffic abolished, even if it were neces-
sary to raise $25, 900 by taxation with
which to hire police officers to enforce
the law. Prohibition will take money
out of the county treasury, there is no
doubt about that; but it will leave a
great deal more money than there was
before in the pockets of the people.
If our d~ispensaries sell n hundred
thousand dollars Worth of whisky a
year, and the profits be twenty thou
sand dollars, the county-that is, the
people of the county-lose eighty thou.
sand dollars. The only question is, do
they get eighty thousand dollars worth
OF fun" or pleasure out of the
whisky? We think not.
We make some money through u
diSpensary out of orr eiobhor ia