It is admitted on all sides that the prohibition law has not succeeded in entirely extirpating drinking, and liquor can still be obtained in most of the larger cities by those who seek for it. But the open bar has been almost everywhere swept away; and those who wish for liquor have either to order their supplies from other States or else go to work secretly to obtain them. The prohibitionists claim rightly that they have put the traffic outside the sanction of the law, and have made it “a sneaking fugitive, like counterfeiting—not dead, but disgraced, and so shorn of power”. The returns of the Department of Internal Revenue show that there are still a considerable number of drink sellers in Maine. In 1890 there were 868 retail dealers in liquors of all kinds, and 73 retail dealers in malt liquors. During the fiscal year ending 30th June, 1892, there were 808 retail and 7 wholesale liquor dealers, and 214 retail and 5 wholesale dealers in malt liquors. There were no brewers or rectifiers. It must be remembered that every person licensed under the Maine law to sell drink for “medicinal, manufacturing, or mechanical purposes” is reckoned in the Government returns as a liquor dealer; and that the individual who at any time sells a single glass of rum is at once made to pay the tax by the revenue officials, and tabulated by them as a licensed liquor dealer for that year. So although there are nominally 808 retail dealers, it would be a mistake to suppose that there are 808 saloons doing business in Maine. Considerably over half the total criminal convictions are connected with breaches of Prohibition Acts. The number of committals for liquor selling and drunkenness in 1890 was 2300; in 1891, 1468; and in 1892, 1714.[2] The divorce statistics also show that drunkenness has not been entirely suppressed; for in the twenty years ending in 1886, 432 divorces were granted for habitual intoxication, either alone or coupled with neglect to provide.
Yet, there has undoubtedly been an immense reduction in the consumption of drink. One who should be a most excellent authority on the question, the Revenue Superintendent of a portion of the North Atlantic States, said early in 1872: “I have become thoroughly acquainted with the state and the extent of liquor traffic in Maine, and I have no hesitation in saying that the beer trade is not more than one per cent. of what I remember it to have been, and the trade in distilled liquors is not more than ten per cent. of what it was formerly”. The latest available revenue returns show that the drink trade has been further reduced to about one-eighth of what it was at the time this was said. The same revenue returns give the most conclusive proof possible of the great reductions in the traffic. In 1866, when prohibition was only very partly enforced, Maine paid 2,822,000 dollars in internal revenue, chiefly on drink and tobacco; in 1887 the amount paid was only 50,000 dollars, or less than two per cent. of its former amount.[3]
The drinking that now goes on may be divided into three classes,—(1) open violations of the law, (2) secret drinking, and (3) obtaining liquor from the authorised city agencies. The open violations prevail now to a very slight extent; but for a long time three or four cities, especially Portland, Lewiston and Bangor, practically set the law at defiance. The authorities let it be understood that they would not take action, and juries refused to convict even on the clearest evidence. This was partly due to personal feeling, partly to political considerations, and chiefly to the fact that the rum sellers were strong enough to turn out of office either Republicans or Democrats, did they attempt to proceed against them.
Most of the drinking that goes on is done either secretly or through the licensed vendors. Of the secret drinking it is not necessary to say much; for it no more proves the uselessness of prohibition than the existence of illicit stills in Scotland and Ireland proves the impracticableness of our licensing system.
The selling by the city agencies is a far more serious matter. These places are supposed only to sell drink for the purposes allowed by law; but, as a matter of fact, they are often little better than saloons licensed to supply spirits to be consumed off the premises. People who are well known to require liquor solely as a beverage can obtain it with ease on simply stating that they want it as medicine or for trade purposes. Judging from the amount of whisky sold as medicine in Portland, a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of that place must be chronic invalids.
Yet in spite of its failings, the people of Maine regard their law as a success, and mean to maintain it. As a correspondent, himself a State official, and in a good position to gauge public opinion on the question, recently wrote to me: “In the discharge of my official duties I frequently visit all the cities of Maine, and in no parts of the country do I see fewer cases of intoxication than in Maine cities and towns. In our country towns a rum shop or a drunken man can rarely be found, where formerly liquors were sold at every store. Our people are prosperous, and an overwhelming majority of them are perfectly satisfied with our Maine liquor laws.”