7 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 



By Rev. GEOKGE F. MAGOUN, D. D., 



EX-PKESIDENT OF IOWA COLLEGE. 



THE recent article * of William A. Hammond, M. D., on Sump- 

 tuary Laws and their Social Influence consists of two parts — 



(1) an attempt to confound laws prohibiting the common sale of 

 alcoholic beverages with obsolete " sumptuary " legislation, and 



(2) certain criticisms in the same strain upon such laws in Iowa 

 and Minnesota, and upon the New York and Michigan laws 

 against the selling of cigarettes to minors. As no pretense is 

 made of showing that the latter are " sumptuary," or that it is a 

 tendency to luxury and expense which makes them a dead letter 

 in the city of New York and elsewhere, they may be at once dis- 

 missed from consideration. f A long-time resident of Iowa has 

 something to say in defense of the stigmatized statutes of his 

 adopted State. 



The sweeping assertion of Dr. Hammond is in the following 

 terms : 



" The laws which several States have enacted relative to the 

 manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors are true sumptuary laws, 

 notwithstanding the fact that it is claimed by their adherents that 

 they are measures which every independent State having a regard 

 for the welfare of society is in duty bound to enforce." The first 

 example given to sustain this is a law of Iowa, referred to (after 

 descriptions of the sumptuary laws proper of Sparta, Rome, and 

 England) thus : 



" In our own country the experiment has been tried with as 

 much thoroughness and with practically as little result as has 

 attended the attempt by other nations " [i. e., to forbid the people 



* Popular Science Monthly for May, pp. 33-40. 



t The following is credited in the public journals to Science : " In an experimental 

 observation of thirty-eight boys, of all classes of society and of average health, who had 

 been using tobacco for a period ranging from two months to two years, twenty seven 

 showed severe injury to the constitution and insufficient growth ; thirty-two showed the 

 existence of irregularity of the heart's action, disordered stomachs, coughs, and a craving 

 for alcohol ; thirteen had intermittency of the pulse, and one had consumption. After 

 they had abandoned the use of tobacco, within six months' time one half were free from all 

 their former symptoms, and the remainder had recovered by the end of the year." 



It is certainly supposable that intelligent law-makers could enact a statute to prevent 

 the sale of tobacco to boys from a humane and public-spirited motive without thinking of 

 the pennies saved to the boys ; and if the enforcement of the law saved their pennies, so 

 much the better for the boys and no worse for the law. Any good citizen is therefore at 

 liberty to hope for such a law and such enforcement as prevents the sale. As to these and 

 a more recent law in New York, it might be instructive to know from the legislators whether 

 they really enacted them from " sumptuary " considerations. 



