THE O’ER-TRUE TALE.
One stormy evening about thirty-five years ago a gentleman of lithe figure and alert face answered the door-bell of his spacious home in Portland, Maine. A lady stood before him closely veiled, who, on entering the cheery sitting-room where the gentleman and his wife had been cozily seated around the evening lamp, proved to be the latter’s girlhood friend. She had come on the saddest errand that woman’s misery ever compels. What she divulged was none the less a secret to her loyal heart because an open secret to her neighbors. It was the old, old story of an inebriate husband who had not come home for days, and whose business situation was forfeited, and children on the threshold of want. She closed by giving the location of the saloon where she had reason to believe him concealed, and pitifully murmured, turning to Neal Dow (for it was he), “Can’t you find my husband, and won’t you bring him home?”
In his own decisive fashion Mr. Dow sought the saloon, found the two-fold victim of inherent appetite and outward temptation, and asked the saloon keeper’s aid in conveying the half-unconscious man to the carriage. To his astonishment this was refused in tones of anger, and the declaration made that he had better attend to his own business, no man liked this impertinent interference, and the saloon keeper certainly did not propose to get the ill will of his best patron. He also pointed to his license hanging on the wall; said he paid a good sum for the privilege of selling, and meant to get his money back with interest. This was Neal Dow’s first interview with a saloon keeper, and it aroused all the indignation of his upright nature and all the energies of his undaunted will. Turning to go he fired this Parthian arrow at the vender: “So you mean to tell me that you’ll go right on selling to this man?” and receiving an explosively affirmative reply, he added: “The people of the State of Maine will see if you will keep on selling.” From that time the grand old “Father of Prohibitory Law” took for his motto, “This one thing I do.” He associated good men with him; traveled over the state in his own carriage; spoke in school houses and wherever he could get admission; in his own phrase he “sowed the State of Maine knee-deep with temperance literature;” the common people heard him gladly; the caucus decided to send men to the legislature who would represent the people’s will in this supreme decision, and on the 26th of May, 1851, prohibition became the legal method of the Pine Tree State in reference to the liquor traffic.
During the great discussion that preceded this action three legislators were whittling, whistling and discussing “how it was best to vote.” Two of them said they should be struck with political lightning if they voted for the new law, but the third—“Farmer Skillig” was his name, I think—declared, in the honest, downright tones of the average “legislator with hay-seed in his hair,” that this was the right sort of a law, and he’d vote for it and take his chances. Sequel: The time servers were never heard of more, after they had served their time, but Farmer Skillig flourished on and on in the legislature like the green bay tree.
Last summer I met on the shore of Puget’s Sound, where he is a leading citizen of Olympia, capital of Washington Territory, Captain Hall, who told me a suggestive incident about the famous “Maine law.” It seems the bill was passed on Saturday, and the (Democratic) Governor Hubbard being absent from the capital over Sunday, it was feared the saloon interest would search out and destroy the legal copy, and as the date of adjournment was close at hand, the subject might be laid over for a year. True to their instincts, the liquor men did their best to find the “only true copy,” forcing their way into the State House on the Sabbath, breaking open desks, etc., but Captain Hale, who was a member of the House, had taken the precious “bill” under his care and carried it in his breast pocket until the Governor’s return, when his signature was promptly affixed and the law was safe. Four years later, by one of those “reactions” of which history is full, a license law was substituted, which, after two years of trial was overthrown, and by overwhelming majorities prohibition came again and took up its peaceful and permanent abode in Maine.
Like every other law it has been constantly strengthened by the introduction of better machinery for enforcement. The “search and seizure clauses” have greatly energized the executive arm; the outlawing of “clubs,” the including of cider, the provision for a constabulary force to be appointed by the Governor on application from a county—all these “cogs in the wheel” are a terror to evil doers, but a praise to them that do well. And now what has this law wrought out for Maine? It has driven every distillery and brewery out of the state. It has so decreased crime that Maine has less of it in proportion than any other state in the Union. Its state’s prison, by recent showing, had but 400 inmates, or only one in every sixteen hundred (1,600) inhabitants. In the same year Massachusetts had one to every four hundred and sixty of her population. It has decreased internal revenue receipts from the manufacture and sale of alcoholics to an average of seven cents to each person, while in the United States at large the average is one dollar and seventy-one cents per capita.
Many newspapers edited in the interest of license have circulated the report that Maine leads off in the number of persons arrested, according to its population, but artfully concealed the fact that so large a number of these arrests are not for what a license state calls “crime,” but are for selling intoxicating liquors at all!
In 1882 the United States revenue report shows that while $1.71 per inhabitant were collected in the whole Union, only 4 cents per inhabitant were collected in Maine. Prohibitory Maine has about the same population as license New Jersey; yet the liquor tax in the former state is only 3 cents per inhabitant, while in the latter state it is $2.40, and in the country at large $1.83. In reply to the assertion that tobacco and opium eating are taking the place of liquor drinking in Maine, I may mention that the tobacco tax paid by Maine is only 17 cents per inhabitant, while the average for the country is $1.00 per inhabitant; and that opium eating is far less prevalent here than in other eastern states.
This analysis might be carried on indefinitely with equally satisfactory results in answering the question: What has prohibition done for Maine?
In 1876 Hon. Henry W. Blair, of New Hampshire, introduced to the people of the United States the idea of constitutional prohibition, and offered in Congress an amendment to the National Constitution prohibiting the traffic in strong drink. Coming from a source so prominent, and following so soon upon the woman’s crusade, this idea was like the spark to tinder, being caught up with zeal in all parts of the nation, and petitions have since been addressed to almost every state legislature, as well as annually presented to the National Congress. In 1880 the people of Kansas voted upon this question, giving eight thousand majority for prohibition; in 1882 Iowa gave thirty thousand, and in 1883 Ohio cast three hundred and thirty thousand votes for, and only ninety thousand against constitutional prohibition, but was “counted out” by party manipulation, as the temperance people publicly declare. Practically, then, the jury of the people has passed sentence against the liquor traffic every time that the great chancery suit of “Home versus Saloon” has been submitted to them. Meanwhile, “the mother of us all” in prohibition work was Maine, and the whole temperance host, both within and beyond that noble old pioneer state, felt that she should not be outdone by her daughters of the newer New England in the West. And so petitions poured in on the legislature of Maine asking for the submission of an amendment to the constitution which should ground the prohibitory principle in the state’s organic law. This request was at first declined, not from antagonism to prohibition itself, for neither party dare attack that by any open declaration, but on the ground that since the fathers fell asleep all things might well continue as they were; new fangled ideas were well enough for new regions, but said the average politician,