| Year. | No. of licences. | No. of arrests. |
| 1892 June to September | 1928 | 7056 |
| 1893 " " | 2181 | 7375 |
—an increase of 319 over the previous year.”
In some cities, the Brooks law has, for a time at least, apparently led to an increase of the very evils it was framed to check. Thus, in Pittsburg the number of saloons was cut down from 1500 to 244, and finally to less than 100, yet the arrests for intoxication went up by 10 per cent.
But further investigation shows that this result has been brought about by the open, unchecked setting the Act at defiance. “Speak-easies” (that is, unlicensed saloons) have been allowed to spring up in such numbers that five years ago there were probably seven to each licensed house. These places were permitted to exist because of the political power of their owners, and the police did not dare proceed against them. The agent of the local Law and Order League opened prosecutions against about 150 such houses in a couple of years; but in nearly every instance the juries refused to convict. It has been openly stated time after time that both the police and juries are under the control of the liquor ring, though just now there is admittedly a great improvement in this respect. At ordinary times the “speak-easies” are conducted with at least a show of secrecy, getting their liquor in at night, and thinly disguising themselves as cigar shops, drug stores, or eating houses; but during elections they sometimes throw off even the appearance of concealment, knowing that no one will venture to attack them. At the election of January, 1890, the local Commercial Gazette reported: “On Sunday not a few of the select seven hundred were running wide open. They were not ‘speak-easies,’ but ‘yell-louds,’ as they disturbed their neighbourhoods with their hideous conduct. What inducements have regularly-licensed saloons to observe the law and renew their licences in the spring if saloons that pay no licence are permitted to sell not only throughout the week but on Sundays, when of all days they should be kept shut? The ‘speak-easies’ have, or imagine they have, a ‘pull’ on the political parties, that they thus dare to impudently disregard the law.” A partial failure of the Act has been caused in other places besides Pittsburg by the presence of such houses; and even where the police do their utmost it is no easy matter to exterminate them. The Chief of Police in Lancaster county reported in 1889 that there was a considerable amount of drunkenness among women and young people; and that the drink was obtained, not in licensed houses, “but in hell-holes known as beer-clubs, or in houses where beer is delivered in quantities”. From other parts come similar reports.
Unquestionably, high licence, when properly enforced, is a check to intemperance; with an unbiassed executive, an uncorrupted police and a law-abiding community, it does much to rob the liquor traffic of many of its evils. But, unfortunately, these conditions are not to be found in many American cities. All who have studied the working of the law admit that the mere fact that a licence fee is high is not enough in itself; this must go along, as it does in most places, with a large measure of local control and with wise restrictive legislation. The great fault of the high-licence plan is that it leaves the saloon almost as great a power in politics as ever. But how this is to be prevented, short of sweeping the drink-sellers away altogether, does not appear.