OUR LIQUOR LAWS 221 



factors. Pittsburg, with its large element of mill workers in its 

 population, and most of its more intelligent citizens absorbed in 

 money-getting, has only a lax enforcement of the liquor law, while 

 in the large towns of the mining districts conditions are still worse. 

 In Berks County, an agricultural region, are many inhabitants of 

 German descent who insist on having plenty of hotels where they 

 can get their beer. 



Prohibition has been thoroughly tried in the "West, in the State 

 of Iowa. When the Clark act, which materially strengthened the 

 prohibitory law already existing, was passed in 1886, it closed saloons 

 by wholesale. At the same time it greatly stimulated the trade of 

 drug stores in alcoholic liquors, and led to many sham drug dispen- 

 saries being opened. 



" But the drug store was by no means the only source of supply," 

 says Dr. Wines, who reports on this State. " Secret and illicit sales 

 were common. The amount of supervision and espionage necessary 

 to prevent them was beyond the reach of municipalities, even where 

 there was a disposition to suppress illicit traffic. The schemes 

 adopted in order to avoid detection were varied and ingenious. The 

 man who went around with a concealed bottle upon his person, and 

 dispensed drinks of the vilest composition in back alleys, was known 

 as a ' boot-legger.' Few dealers sold openly. They had a store of 

 liquor in one place, from which hidden pipes conveyed it to another, 

 where it was dispensed; the faucets through which it was drawn 

 were cunningly placed, out of sight, in the most extraordinary places. 

 Or the liquor was in a cellar or subcellar beneath a secret trapdoor, 

 and was sent up, on receipt of the price, by means of a concealed 

 hoist or dumb waiter; or a step in a stairway was so constructed as 

 to lift up, on hinges, and reveal a well-filled glass; or the glass was 

 sent in through a partition wall by means of a revolving closet. 

 There was no end to these devices, in most of which the customer did 

 not see the man who supplied the liquor, nor the dealer the man 

 who drank it." In rural and temperate communities these evils 

 did not exist. On the other hand, there were counties in which 

 the law was evaded with the collusion of officials, or was openly 

 defied. 



Prohibition had been inaugurated as a political move, and for 

 some years served its purpose well. But the party that had taken it 

 up found it growing unpopular, and in 1894 an end was made of 

 prohibition in Iowa by the passage of a mulct law. 



The idea of the mulct law was borrowed from Ohio. By the 

 Dow law of that State the traffic is neither prohibited nor licensed; 

 it is simply taxed, and many of the usual restrictions are thrown 

 around it. The tax is two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and is 



