Part 19 (1/2)
WORSE AND WORSE.
How successful the good people of Ma.s.sachusetts were in holding in check and regulating the evil which they had clothed with power by license, appears in the preamble to a new Act pa.s.sed in 1711, ”For reclaiming the over great number of licensed houses, many of which are chiefly used for revelling and tippling, and become _nurseries of intemperance and debauchery_, indulged by the masters and keepers of the same for the sake of gain.”
So it went on, from bad to worse, under the Colonial Government, until 1787, when the State const.i.tution was adopted. To what a frightful magnitude the evil of drunkenness, provided for and fostered by license, had grown, appears from an entry in the diary of John Adams, under date of February 29th, 1760, in which he says that few things were ”so fruitful of destructive evils” as ”licensed houses.” They had become, he declares, ”the eternal haunts of loose, disorderly people of the town, which renders them offensive and unfit for the entertainment of any traveler of the least delicacy.” * * * ”Young people are tempted to waste their time and money, and to acquire habits of intemperance and idleness, that we often see reduce many to beggary and vice, and lead some of them, at least, to prison and the gallows.”
In entering upon her career as a State, Ma.s.sachusetts continued the license system, laying upon it many prudent restrictions, all of which were of no avail, for the testimony is complete as to the steady increase of drunkenness, crime and debauchery.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN ADAMS.
Writing to Mr. Rush, in 1811, John Adams says: ”Fifty-three years ago I was fired with a zeal, amounting to enthusiasm, against ardent spirits, the multiplication of taverns, retailers, dram-shops and tippling-houses. Grieved to the heart to see the number of idlers, thieves, sots and consumptive patients made for the physicians in these infamous seminaries, I applied to the Court of Sessions, procured a Committee of Inspection and Inquiry, reduced the number of licensed houses, etc., _but I only acquired the reputation of a hypocrite and an ambitious demagogue by it_. The number of licensed houses was soon reinstated; drams, grog and sotting were not diminished, _and remain to this day as deplorable as ever_.”
OPENING A WIDER DOOR.
In 1816, so demoralized had the sentiment of the people become, and so strong the liquor interest of the State, that the saving provision in the license laws, which limited the sale of liquor to inns and taverns, was repealed, and licenses were granted to common victualers, ”who shall not be required to furnish accommodations” for travelers; and also to confectioners on the same terms as to inn-keepers; that is, to sell and to be drunk on the premises. This change in the license laws of Ma.s.sachusetts was declared, by Judge Aldrich, in 1867, to be ”one of the most fruitful sources of crime and vice that ever existed in this Commonwealth.”
Up to as late as 1832, attempts were continued to patch up and amend the license laws of the State; after that they were left, for a time, to do their evil work, all efforts to make them anything but promoters of drunkenness, crime and poverty being regarded as fruitless.
”Miserable in principle,” says Judge Pitman, ”license laws were found no less inefficient in practice.” Meantime, the battle against the liquor traffic had been going on in various parts of the State. In 1835, a law was secured by which the office of county commissioner (the licensing authority) was made an elective office; heretofore it had been held by appointment. This gave the people of each county a local control over the liquor question, and in the very first year the counties of Plymouth and Bristol elected boards committed to the policy of no license. Other counties followed this good example; and to bar all questions of the right to refuse every license by a county, the power was expressly conferred by a law pa.s.sed in 1837.
A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.
The good results were immediately apparent in all places where license to sell intoxicating drinks was refused. After a thorough investigation of the matter, the Judiciary Committee of the Legislature reported the evidence to be ”perfectly incontrovertable, that the good order and the physical and moral welfare of the community had been promoted by refusing to license the sale of ardent spirits; and that although the laws have been and are violated to some extent in different places, the practice soon becomes disreputable and hides itself from the public eye by shrinking into obscure and dark places; that noisy and tumultuous a.s.semblies in the streets and public quarrels cease where license is refused; _and that pauperism has very rapidly diminished from the same cause_.”
An attempt to prohibit entirely the retail liquor traffic was made in 1838, by the pa.s.sage of what was known as the ”Fifteen-Gallon Law,”
which forbade the sale of spirituous liquors in a less quant.i.ty than fifteen gallons, which had to be ”carried away all at one time;” except by apothecaries and practicing physicians, who might sell for use in the arts and for medicinal purposes.
But this law remained in operation only a year and a half; when, in concession to the liquor interest of the State, which had been strong enough to precipitate a political revolution and get its own men in the legislature, it was repealed.
”But the State,” says Judge Pitman, ”while the memory of license was fresh, was not to fall again under its sway. The struggle for local prohibition was at once renewed, and in a few years license had ceased throughout the Commonwealth. The statement may surprise many; but I have the authority of the city clerk of Boston for saying, that 'no licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors were granted in Boston between 1841 and 1852.' * * * And so the chapter of license was apparently closed. It had not only had its 'day,' but its centuries in court; and the well-nigh unanimous verdict was: '_disgrace_--_failure_'”
So strong was this conviction in the minds of the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, that Governor Bullock, in 1861, while acting as chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House, gave it expression in these notable words: ”It may be taken as the solemnly declared, judgment of the people of the Commonwealth, that the principle of licensing the traffic in intoxicating drinks as a beverage, _and thus giving legal sanction to that which is regarded in itself as an evil, is no longer admissible in morals or in legislation_”
THE LIQUOR POWER IN THE ASCENDANT AGAIN.
But in 1868, adverse influences prevailed, and after all her sad and disgraceful experience, Ma.s.sachusetts abandoned her prohibition of the traffic and went back to license again; but the evil consequences began to show themselves so quickly that the law was repealed in less than a year.
Governor Claflin, in his message to the legislature in January, 1869, thus speaks of the effect of the new license law: ”The increase of drunkenness and crime during the last six months, as compared with the same period of 1867, is very marked and decisive as to the operation of the law. _The State prisons, jails and houses of correction are being rapidly filled_, and will soon require enlarged accommodation if the commitments continue to increase as they have since the present law went in force.”
While the chaplain of the State prison in his annual report for 1868, says: ”The prison never was so full as at the present time. If the rapidly increasing tide of intemperance, so greatly swollen by the present wretched license law, is suffered to rush on unchecked, there will be a fearful increase of crime, and the State must soon extend the limits of the prison, or create another.”
This law was repealed, as we have seen. A year of its bitter fruit was enough for the people.
SUBMITTING AGAIN TO THE YOKE.
But, strange to say, after all she has suffered from license laws, the old Bay State has again submitted to the yoke, and is once more in the hands of the great liquor interest. In 1874, she drifted out from the safe harbor of prohibition, and we find her, to-day, on the stormy and storm-wrecked sea of license. A miserable attempt has been made by the friends of this law to show that its action has been salutory in Boston, the headquarters of the liquor power, in the diminution of dram-shops and arrests for drunkenness. Water may run up hill in Boston; but it obeys the law of gravitation in other places. We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions from this extract from the report of the License Commissioners of that city, made February 1st, 1877: ”It must be admitted that the business of liquor-selling in this city is, to a very large extent, in the hands of _irresponsible men and women_, whose idea of a license law ends with the simple matter of paying a certain sum, the amount making but little difference to them, _provided they are left to do as they please after payment_. Besides the saloons and bar-rooms, which are open publicly, the traffic in small grocery stores, in cellars and in dwelling-houses, in some parts of the city, _is almost astounding. The Sunday trade is enormous, and it seems as if there were not hours enough in the whole round of twenty-four, or days enough in the entire week to satisfy the dealers_.”