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> North Shore Bie 
MASALA SRE SE 
Published every Friday afternoon by 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE CO. 
Knight Building - Manchester, Mass. 
Boston Office: 
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J. ALEX. LODGE, Editor 
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No. 23 
ee es 
Vol. X June 7, 1912 
Progress. 
Reformation is a work of genera- 
tions perhaps centuries for before 
effective reformatory laws can be 
efficatious and valuable to a com- 
unity they must have the support of 
the people, who are ruled by law, 
and express the sincere will of the 
governing majority of the people. 
Within this truth lays the not un- 
commen belief that the hour of 
legislative success means a practical 
moral victory in a community. No 
one ean or will gainsay the unti- 
mate value of good legislation, but 
no one can escape the conclusion 
that legislation, however ideal 
and valuable as progress in govern-, 
such legislation may be the real 
problem still rests in educating the 
people to the standard of the re- 
formatory law. It is true that you 
cannot legislate people good, for 
goodness is a pers°nal problem. 
The action of any legislature may 
be for the publie weal, but it is also 
true that such legislation may re- 
flect the ideal of the best people 
and not express the real will of the 
en nn SS SSS SSS SS Le 
WILLMONTON’S AGENCY 
REAL ESTATE AND INSURANCE OF ALL KINDS 
SCHOOL AND ONION ST’S, MANCHESTER 
G. E. WILLMONTON 
ATTORNEY AND 
COUNSELOR AT LAW 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
masses. So there faces us in practi- 
eal government the double problem 
of making progress in legislation 
for good, but not so fast as to de- 
feat the very ends of good and ef- 
fective government for enforceable 
laws which represent the will of the 
people. So after all the problem 
results in placing large responsibili- 
ties up°n the leaders of the people 
not only to present good legislation 
as law but to create great centres 
of influence which will develop an 
increasingly wholesome sentiment in 
the community that will support 
and demand the execution of the 
good laws as they are made by 
legislatures. But in such a line of 
reasoning one error must not be 
overlooked, that good legislation 
can and may become a powerful 
means in public instruction. It is 
true that the ‘‘thou shalt not’’ of 
law is not so high a virtue as the 
genuine love of law and restrained 
liberty, yet it is nevertheless true 
that there are and always will be 
in every community individuals 
wh°® are incapable of receiving in- 
struction in law and goodness ex- 
cept in the terms of legislative laws 
and the threatened punishment for 
the transgression of the law. So 
legislation can and must be ideal. 
Only that ideal must be practical 
and not unreal. It may be ideal in 
that it may lead the community to 
a higher level of good laws but it 
must be practical and real in that 
it expresses the will of the pe°ple. 
An Effective Measure. 
There is no line of legislation 
that involves more careful thinking 
and vigorous fighting than the for- 
mulation of sane and_ effective 
liquor laws. It is universally con- 
ceded as a moral and_ practical. 
necéssity that unrestrained traffic 
in intoxicating liquors is dem°raliz- 
ing and unquesionably suicidal to 
the government. The methods of 
approach to the problem vary from 
the prohibitionists of the old-old 
school wh°® know but one issue and 
that issue the abolition of the traffic, 
to the laissez faire policy of many- 
who do not give the problem a 
thought but are willing to permit 
things to go as they may. As long 
as history has been written an age 
is unknown that did not have the 
problem to meet. Massachusetts is 
GLB SOUTH BLDG, BOSTON 
committed to the policy of local op- 
tion rather than state prohibition. 
According to this policy each city 
or town is permitted to express its 
will upon the questi°n of whether 
liquor shall or shall not be sold and 
that will is law. Consequently the 
community has its own say upon 
this problem and may govern itself 
according to its own will. The in- 
auguration of this policy was a tri- 
umph of pr°gress in liquor legisla- 
tion and appears to be practical in 
many ways although like many 
other problems in government there 
are some objectionable features. In 
addition to this restrictive measure 
the greatest gains for good govern- 
ment were made in the enactment 
of the law pr®ehibiting one retailer 
to dispense liquor over the bar to 
expose the goods for sale in bottles. 
The two classes of licences were — 
separated by the legislature of 
Massachusetts in 1910-11 to protect 
the weaker members of society and 
to prevent the not infrequent 
abuses, arising from the practice of 
selling liquors in bottles to partially 
or wholly intoxicated individuals, 
to continue the debauch elsewhere. 
The bill was advoeated by the. 
forces for righteousness in Massa- 
chusetts but was oppressed by the 
retail liqu°r dealers and the more 
radical temperance societies and 
the prohibitionists. No law is ideal 
but the results of the law have been 
satisfactory and have achieved 
many of the ends for which it was 
passed. A comparison of the tables 
of arrests for drunkenness in the 
state for the corresponding m°&nths 
reveals a decrease of eight per cent. 
In Boston the wholesale licences 
have decreased from 915 to 282 a 
decrease of 633. The number of 
saloons in that city have decreased 
87, from 766 to 679. In all of Massa- 
chusetts there are more than Twelve 
‘ hundred less wholesale licenses, a 
decrease of nearly seventy per cent. 
The open saloon has also felt’ the 
law and there are two hundred and 
fifty less saloons in Massachusetts 
than existed before the passage of 
the bill. One apt writer says: “‘ More 
saloons have been permanently elim- 
inated than now exists in Berk- 
shire, Franklin, Hampshire and 
Hampden Counties, ineluding the 
cities of Springfield, Helyoke, Chi- 
copee, Northampton, North Adams 
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