Year: 1878

to be sufficient to suppress the traffic


promptly and thoroughly.


In this expectation the people of


Maine were disappointed and for that


reason (since 1851 there have been en-


acted six other and supplementary mea-


sures, each of greater stringency than


any one which preceded it. Each sue


ceeding act has had the effect to restrict


and narrow still further the circle in


which the traffic is carried on. At pres


ent the penalties are one hundred dol


lars and costs and three months in Jail


for each offense. Liquor-selling is


crime by statute, and punished as such.


And by public opinion the liquor-seller


in Maine ranks in the community with


keepers of gambling houses and brothels,


the venders of obscene books and pic


lures, and with any other men who live


by fraud or violence against society.


This process of increase to the penal


ties of the law will go steadily on in


Maine, until we reach the point where


the rascals who defy the law as it now


stands will not venture further; so that
in the very near future we shall have
state without grogshop as well as with


no bishop and no king. The public
opinion of Maine is fully up to this point,
as may be justly inferred by the declara-


ton made by an honored son of Maine,


upon the floor of the United States SEN
ate: THE liquor traffic is the gigantic
crime of crimes"


A disinterested and most conclusive
testimony to the actual operation of the
law and to the present position of the
liquor traffic in Maine has been given by
Count Grifenberg, commander of the


Russian ship-ofwar, the "Cimbria,"
which has been lying for some weeks in
| nF hn Rs Of ho Eoka T..


versation with Attorney, General Emery,
who made formal call upon the Count,
on board his ship, he said 1--WE are very
much pleased, indeed with the workings
of your Maine Law. We never saw or
heard of anything so wonderful Why,
we send our men on the shore with the
utmost freedom, and they are orderly
and well-behaved. They make friends
with the natives and come back to us at
night all right. We are glad to have
them go on shore, for the exercise and
recreation they obtain there are very
much to their advantage. Now, if liquor
were sold, we should be obliged to keep
them on board all the time, otherwise
| they would become intoxicated, get into
trouble among themselves and with the
inhabitants destroy property, insult
your people and make them all their
enemies. Oh l assure you we are very
much pleased with your Maine Law"


Before the Maine Law our people
drank their full share of strong liquors
and more. They were produced in the
state in great quantities and were i'm
ported from abroad by the cargo-many
cargoes; but now there is not distil-
lery or brewery in the state, and not a
puncheon of liquor is imported into the
state and has not been for many years.
The proportion for Maine of the national
drink bill would be about $4,000 900;
but now half million, I think, will
cover the cost of all that is smuggled into
the state and sold in violation of law.
Governor Dingley says one million of
dollars is the outside figure and l am
quite content to take that as the limit;
though my statement that the cost is
within half that sum has never been de-
MED or doubted. SO far as know, by any
enemy of prohibition. This sum ($l3,-
000O00) is only the wholesale cost of the
liquor; but the actual cost to the con-
sumers is vastly greater.


From the earliest days of the temper
ance reform it has been said that the in
direct cost and loss from the liquor traffic
is fully as great as the cost direct. No
enemy of temperance has ever denied
that, so far as l know. We have, then,
in the old time in Maine, a loss and
waste annually, through the liquor traf-
fc, of more than $26,00O,000; while at
the outside limit it cannot be now more
than $2,000,000. The result of this vast
saving to the people Of the fruit of their
industry is manifest to the most casual |
observer in every part of the state-in |
better farms, houses, barns, stocks of |
every kind; in multiplied industries; in
tor mil hot &C -,
The financial distress which has been
brooding over this and other nations for
the last five years has been and
is now far less felt in Maine than
in any other part of the country.
Portland, the largest city in the state,
suffered from a vast conhagration in
1866. Ten millions of dollars went up
in smoke; ten thousand people were
turned out of doors in day but in
spite of that, the valuation of the town
has been constantly increasing. and is
now larger than ever before, having gain
ed $48O,000 the last year, while Boston
lost $70,000,000 in that time, and New
York and Brooklyn in proportion-all of
ton, New York, Brooklyn. with free rum;
but Portland with prohibition stringent
ly enforced. 1t must be with a commu
nifty as with an individual; the products
of industry squandered in strong drink
leads inevitably to poverty and want.


/ do not think it toe much to say that
before the Maine Law the people of the
state consumed in strong drink the en-
tire Valre of its property, real estate and
personal estate of every kind, in every
period of twenty years. This statement
may be the more startling when l add
that the nation is doing very nearly the
same thing now and has been doing it
in all these many years. The national
drink bill is stated on official authority,
to be $700,O00,000 annually, without in.
Guiding smuggled liquors and crooked"
beer and whisky-a very large amount.
These figures represent only the firstcost
price at wholesale of liquors passing
through the public offices Taking no
account of the indirect loss arising from
the consumption of this vast amount of
liquor, the sum, at annual compound in
terest at six per cent, will amount in
twenty years to more than twenty-five
thousand million dollars while the total
valuation of the United States-all their
of whatever kind, in 1870, was
only $3O,06S. SIS, SOFA little more than
thirty thousand million dollars. So we
have the CHASTITY fact that now the peo.
pie of this country are actually consum.
ing in strong drink the entire value of all
its property in every period of little
more than twenty years. God had gra-
ciously so ordered it that, with prudence
and industry there should be food and
comfort enough for all but man, through
his appetites, passions, and greed, has
brought poverty, want, and misery to
multitudes of people.


In Maine we have dangerous classes