LEGISLATION AGAINST THE DRINK EVIL. 619 



XI and XII. HIGH LICENSE AND LOCAL OPTION. Certainly the 

 examination of these statutes and reports of their results in forty- 

 nine States and Territories leaves it beyond question that so far the 

 very best results have accompanied the combination of these two pro- 

 visions. Perhaps the best example is in the largest of the communi- 

 ties to be affected viz., in the State and city of New York. Here, 

 by separating the plebiscitum or referendum into four local options 

 viz., (1) selling liquor to be drunk upon the premises where sold, (2) 

 selling liquor not to be drunk upon the premises where sold, (3) sell- 

 ing liquor by apothecaries only on physician's prescription, (4) selling 

 liquor by license granted to u hotel keepers " only the result ob- 

 tained has been, I think, precisely what I contended for in the paper 

 of five years age, namely, the value of liquor has been recognized, 

 and its sale provided for without denying its dangers as a tempta- 

 tion, or the disastrous effects of drunkenness. To use the exact words 

 of the commissioner's report : " The tendency is to recognize the 

 propriety of the sale of liquors by hotels and pharmacists in many 

 communities where they will not, by their votes, approve the sale by 

 saloons and groceries ; and while there are now twenty less absolutely 

 ' no-license ' towns than when the law took effect, there are very 

 many less saloons and groceries where liquors are dispensed." And 

 this while not in any way compromising or dallying with the proposi- 

 tion which the prohibitionists and temperance societies insist upon 

 (and which is all they have as a basis for their claims), viz., the 

 consequences of intoxication and the public policy of its prevention. 

 To show that, as a fact, an equivalent result has been reached in 

 every State in the Union where high license and local option are 

 united, would unduly tax these pages. But one or two prominent 

 examples are of the paradoxical results as gratifying as they are 

 paradoxical that the fewer the places where liquor is sold the larger 

 the revenue to the State, and the less the drunkenness, may be cited. 

 In the State of New York in two years of high license the reduction 

 in selling places was 5,484; the increase of revenue to the State was 

 $9,094,646.01 ; the decrease in the number of arrests was 22,689. In 

 the city of New York alone the reduction in places was 1,204; the 

 increase of revenue was $3,549,851.90; the decrease in the arrests 

 for drunkenness was 3,044. Similar results are reported invariably 

 as the fruit of high license elsewhere in the United States. In the 

 city of Chicago, under an exceedingly high license, the reduction in 

 one year was 200 in the number of saloons, while the increase of 

 revenue was $1,250,000; and yet the decrease in the number of 

 arrests was 1,217. Contrast this result with the condition of affairs 

 in the triple-steel-barred prohibition State of Maine! Says an ex- 

 Mayor of Portland : " I went into office perfectly free ; I think I 



