PRACTICAL PROBLEMS 341 



ample evidence to justify them. I cannot do more than 

 glance at it here, and must limit myself chiefly to English- 

 speaking peoples. Total prohibition is now the law in five 

 States of the American Union. 1 It has been tried and 

 abandoned in ten. 2 When the prohibitory laws were passed, 

 the number of persons per square mile averaged eighteen in 

 those States which have continued prohibition, and forty-one 

 in those which have abandoned it. In 1890 the numbers had 

 increased to twenty-three and ninety- eight respectively. 3 In 

 that year, in the five prohibition States, not a single town 

 contained 50,000 inhabitants, and only five per cent, of the 

 people lived in towns of more 30,000 inhabitants. 4 New 

 York has a population of 3,500,000 ; Chicago, 1,850,000 ; 

 Boston, 582,463; Portland, the classic prohibition city, 

 41,508. In 1888, the latest year for which statistics are 

 available, there were forty-two convictions for drunkenness 

 per 1,000 of the inhabitants in Portland ; in New York 

 thirteen per 1,000 ; in Chicago, twenty-three per 1,000 ; in 

 Boston forty-five per 1,000. 5 The sale of drink is permitted 

 in Boston, but not in the surrounding areas. Forty-four per 

 cent, of those convicted in Boston were absentees people 

 who had come in from the surrounding prohibition areas to 

 procure drink. 6 Cambridge, one of its suburbs, is the largest 

 prohibition city in the States. Since it adopted " no licence/' 

 the proportion of arrests for drunkenness per head of 

 population has been more than doubled. 7 The following is 

 the condition of Portland, as depicted by General Neal Dow, 

 the great apostle of prohibition : " A few weeks ago the 

 police arrested eighty persons, sixty of them for drunkenness. 

 That is a larger number by far than was ever before arrested 

 in Portland for that offence. It would be interesting, perhaps 

 startling even, to compare that harvest with those of Boston, 

 New York, or Chicago, as to the proportion of drunkenness 

 to the population." 8 



529. Throughout the prohibition States of America the 

 condition of the towns is everywhere similar to Portland. 

 " The position of things in Maine and other States is not 

 that prohibition is imperfectly enforced, but that, after a 

 long period of experiment, the authorities have deliberately 

 suspended prohibition by a definite (albeit irregular) system 



1 The Temperance Problem and Social Reform, p. 119. 



2 Op. cit., p. 120. 3 Op. cit., p. 120. 



4 Op. cit., p. 124. 6 Op. cit., p. 158. 



6 Op. cit., p. 321. 7 Op. cit., p. 321. 



8 Op. cit., p. 158, 



