It was the earnest, ingenuous appeal of one crying out of the wilderness of human uncertainty—of one who saw the evils in those attempts of men to curb greed and appetite—of one earnestly seeking a remedy, but not clearly understanding that so long as the world shall endure, with men and women weak and human, some problems must remain unsettled.
"I'll suggest a place for that convention," muttered Thelismer Thornton to those who stood about him. "Hold it in Purity Park in Paradise! Settle the rum question!" he sneered. "Noah hadn't been stamping around on dry ground long enough to get his quilts aired out before he was drunk on Noah's Three Star! And Japheth probably got mad and passed a prohibitory law and thought he had the trouble fixed forever."
When the legislature finally adjourned the protestations that had been wrung out of it promised much in the way of honest reorganization.
Harlan Thornton remained with Governor Waymouth for a time. His
Excellency found him indispensable.
The commissions were at work.
Office-holders whined, taxpayers squirmed. Honesty was greeted everywhere by wry faces.
But the "Thornton law," its deputies superseding county and city authority, was the bitterest political pill of all. The results discouraged the righteous—Governor Waymouth predicted them accurately with the old-age cynicism of one who understood human nature. The flagrantly open places were closed. But innumerable dives thereby secured the business which had gone to the open places in the days of toleration. An army could not have closed the dives—the proprietors of which, in most cases, carried their villanous concoctions on their persons. Express companies were organized for the sole purpose of dealing in liquors by the parcel system, and the State's liquor agencies, established under the protection of the prohibitory law itself, were besieged by patrons who stood in queues of humanity like buyers at a theatre ticket-window.
Reformation of human nature by mere statute was a failure!
But mere political disaster did not daunt the stern old man who held his commissioners to their task. The people themselves began to complain of the cost of the new system of enforcement—the money paid to make them obey their own laws. When their complaints were loudest the Governor allowed himself the luxury of a smile.
Reform for the mass. Admirable!