612 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as it now remembers the days of the stagecoach or the tallow-dip, 

 a time when a man desiring a dram of liquor was obliged to drink 

 whatever the dram-seller found it profitable to sell him. 



We have tried about everything else. Why not try this? We 

 have conceded to our legislators the right and the jurisdiction. Since 

 we can not adopt Mr. Reed's proposition to feed everybody, why 

 not enter the wedge right here and do the next best or a next best 

 thing see that the people not only eat proper meats and fruits, but 

 that they drink, if drink they will, pure liquors? And it need be 

 added (however it may appear to be a sop to Cerberus) that it would 

 not antagonize that most powerful class, whose organized and capi- 

 talized opposition every other liquor-regulating law which has ever 

 been suggested has at once antagonized, and been obliged in the end 

 to if not conciliate, at least to recognize in the adjustment of equities. 

 Fortunately, we have not to begin our experiments out of whole 

 cloth. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, and 

 Washington have led the way, and made the adulteration of liquor 

 a misdemeanor. (New York, however, has probably negatived the 

 best results of the prohibition by adding that the prohibited adultera- 

 tion must only 'be " with any deleterious drug, substance, or liquor 

 which is poisonous or injurious to the health," which is shutting one 

 door and opening another, and relegating to the lawyers and their 

 experts a tedious inquisition as to what the word " poisonous " or 

 the term " injurious to health " may mean, in the course of which 

 the offender would walk free.) The question as to whether it would 

 conserve the public peace as well as the public safety by decreasing 

 drunkenness can only be favorably conjectured. Experience of such 

 a law only can show. To begin with, it would increase the cost of 

 a dram. A glass of true whisky, for example, might be twenty 

 cents instead of ten, and (the law forbidding adulteration) this would 

 probably in itself lessen dram-drinking. In England, many years 

 ago, a similar law was found to eventuate in compelling that only the 

 highest grades of ale should be sold at a certain price. This led to 

 the offering of a second, and then of a third grade, and finally of what 

 was claimed to be a blending of all three grades or an " entire " 

 (which was the origin of the term ENTIRE, that later began to be 

 the name of an alehouse a legend still seen on English alehouse 

 signs). But the law we now suggest, by preventing the blending of 

 three grades of spirits, might, while lessening the sales, increase the 

 excise revenues, and perhaps accomplish whatever may be left to 

 be accomplished in conserving at once the health, the peace, and the 

 income of the State. 



That a system by which only pure liquors can be exposed for 

 sale as beverages is feasible, seems already assured, the States of 



