THE TEMPERANCE FAILURE 149 



are in England. Nevertheless, not only drinking, 

 but drink-selling is openly practised in every town 

 of the Prohibition States.^ The only effect of the 

 law has been to create a contempt for the law, 

 which must most harmfully react on the respect 

 paid to law in general. The public, and in 

 particular the police, have been debauched. 



New York, Chicago, and Boston are each 

 many times larger than Portland, the capital of 

 Maine, the classic Prohibition State. Portland 

 has 41,508 inhabitants; New York, 3,500,000; 

 Chicago, 1,850,000; Boston, 582,463. In 1888, 

 the latest year for which statistics are available, 

 there were forty-two convictions for drunkenness 



' " The sale of liquor in the city — as one of the present writers 

 quickly found — is both widespread and undisguised. The proof is 

 clear. On the day following our arrival in Portland {i.e. August 12th, 

 1899) we accompanied the British Vice-Consul in a short walk through 

 the central part of the town. A careful study of the most recent 

 official information on the subject {i.e. 1892-3) had led us to expect 

 a certain amount of evasion of the prohibitory law, more or less open 

 and undisguised, but we were certainly unprepared for the actual state 

 of things which the walk disclosed. Many of the streets {e.g. Centre, 

 India, Fore, and Commercial Streets) seemed literally honeycombed 

 with saloons, scores of which were passed, and several entered by one 

 of the present writers. Except for the fact that there were no liquor 

 advertisements outside or in the windows, there was no attempt at 

 disgnise about them. They opened through swing doors straight 

 upon the street, and the word 'push' was in many cases printed 

 prominently upon the door. Those entered had fully-equipped bars, 

 and men were drinking in nearly all of them. The men did not get 

 their drink and leave, but loitered as men are accustomed to do in an 

 Enghsh Public-House." — "The Temperance Problem and Social 

 Reform," p. 138. 



