The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-02-19
PROHIBITION IN MAINE.

In recent number Of Appleton's Ma
ga5inc Holman Day. one Of the lead
ing Journalists of New England, him
self an advocate of prohibition. never
thsless confesses that the Maine law
works both ways
That Is to say" says Mr. DAY. lin
the fifty-seven years the Maine proI1i-
bttOTy law has been on our statute
books il has never been actively. hon
estly. consistently and thoroughly en-
forced as a state law t.trollzh the
length and breadth OF Maine. / don't
mean by this that w-bTeak ers have
merely persisted IN selling despite eff
forts to enforce the law: I mean that
the trouble has been higher up: Off
Gals have never united to do their full
and plain duty in securing universal
enforcement. And there isn't an honest
man in the state of Maine who will de-
clare it as his firm belief that these Of
dcials ever viii do So
And for fear some one might accuse
him of being favorable to the liquor in
terests. he declares:
Understand at the outset that I am
not writing down the Maine law It
has accomplished many things for
which the state of Maine ought to be
grateful But the hypocrisy that it has
engendered has been too much con-
cerned in hiding the faults of the sys-
tenn; zealots have made us ridiculous
by their extravagant claims as TO what
prohibition has done for Maine"
Giving a history of the prohibition
movement in Maine. Mr.. Day says:
When still a young man Neal Dow
became the head of the movement and
lectured on the subject from end to
end of the state during many years
Maine was flooded with literature de-
signed to educate the people along
lines of temperance. All this evangel-
istic work bore fruit when the Wash
ingtonian temperance movement swept
the country. Maine organized quickly
The seeds of reform had been sown in
every community.
After several attempts had been
made by Neal Dow to have the Maine
legislature pass a prohibitory law, he
appeared before a Joint special iegis
iative committee May &c. 1851. with the
draft of such a law, and no one ap-
peared in opposition. On May % the
bill passed the Maine house by a vote
of 81 to 40. 1t passed the senate next
day by vote of Is to 10. On Monday
June 2, Governor Hubbard signed II,
though many members of the legis-
lature who had voted for its passage
went to the governor privately and
to him that they had been obliged to
vote for it by the politicians first law
of self-preseTvation. for the vote mar
gin in Their districts was so small be-
tween Wings and Democrats that the
radical temperance men held the bal
ance Of power
Therefore, Il is apparent that the
political hypocrisy that has always
been associated with the Maine law
was born with the law in 1851. That
same hypocrisy in regard to honest en-
forcement has never failed to charac-
terize it ever since"
The Bangor plan" after a while.
went into operation, of which Mr.. Day
says:
Prohibition spasms may come AMI
go, but ii has never been possible to
make Bangor dry. Bangor simply
won't dry up. that's all. A Bangor
daily paper is the only one in the state
that defles the law and runs a liquor
advertisement regularly. The prOprie-
tor. a wealthy man, has been indicted
for the offense on complaint of the
Civic league agitators. but he keeps on
running the advertisement, not so
much for the money there is in It as for
the purpose of displaying the true Ban
cor 'red-rag' sentiment on the rum
question"
He adds: 1T is almost a waste of
time 20 go about asking Maine men
what they think of the law as a good
thing for Maine. To be perfectly hon
est, we folks in Maine haven't made up