222 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a first lien on the premises occupied. The dealer is civilly liable 

 for loss and damage resulting from the intoxication of any person 

 to whom he may have sold or given any intoxicating liquor, and this 

 liability extends to the owner of the premises. The guardian or 

 any near relative may enjoin the sale of liquor to any individual. 

 The law provides also for local option as to prohibition. 



Statistics indicate some decrease of drunkenness in public since 

 the law has been in effect. The law has not taken the saloon out 

 of municipal politics, although there has been in ten years only one 

 election of State officers in which the liquor question is thought to 

 have affected the result. The dealers are impatient of any restric- 

 tions, and are constantly working against a strict enforcement of 

 them. That against selling on Sunday is especially irksome to them. 

 In Cincinnati the police declare it to be impossible to close the 

 saloons on that day. The dealers are arrested, but juries can not 

 be got to render verdicts of guilty. Public opinion is not behind 

 the Sunday-closing law. 



No recent attempt of any State to solve the liquor problem has 

 attracted so much attention from the rest of the country as the dis- 

 pensary system of South Carolina. It has become conspicuous from 

 the vigor with which it has been enforced by Governor Tillman, who 

 suggested it, and the resistance that has been offered to this enforce- 

 ment rather than from novelty in the plan itself, for its chief feature 

 is simply the town and city liquor agency of Maine adopted from 

 Athens, Ga., where it had been tried with success. The dispensary 

 law provides for one dispenser at the county seat of each county, and 

 permits county boards of control to establish dispensaries in other 

 towns. There is a State commissioner who buys the liquors, and is 

 required to give a preference to distillers and brewers in the State. 

 Every package of liquor must be sealed and bear a certificate that 

 it was bought by the commissioner; a package shall not contain 

 less than a half pint nor more than five gallons. The local dis- 

 penser shall not break the seal of any package; he must sell by the 

 package only, and the purchaser shall not open a package on the 

 premises. 



The law effected a general closing of saloons throughout the 

 State, but many unlicensed dramshops, called " blind tigers," took 

 their place. At the time of the committee's investigation there 

 were eighty-one dispensaries in operation. Buying the dispensary 

 liquors from South Carolina distillers has led to the purchase of 

 much liquor that was not sufficiently aged, and hence highly in- 

 toxicating. Many ardent prohibitionists denounce the participation 

 of the State in the " unholy traffic." Well-digested statistics show 

 an unmistakable decrease of drunkenness and disorder in the cities, 



