Vineland, New Jersey, has a population of ten thousand. Absolute prohibition is the law of that community. One constable, who is also overseer of the poor, is sufficient to maintain public order. In 1875, his annual report says: "We have practically no debt. * * * The police expenses of Vineland amount to seventy-five dollars a year, the sum paid to me, and our poor expenses are a mere trifle."
In Potter County, Pennsylvania, there has been a prohibitory law for many years. Hon. John S. Mann says: "Its effect, as regards crime, is marked and conspicuous. Our jail is without inmates, except the sheriff, for more than half the time."
Other instances of local prohibition in this country could be given, but these are sufficient.
Bessbrook, a town in Ireland of four thousand inhabitants, has no liquor-shop, and whisky and strong drink are strictly prohibited. There is no poor-house, pawn-shop or police-station. The town is entirely free from strife, discord or disturbance.
In the county of Tyrone, Ireland, no drinking house is allowed. In 1870, Right Hon. Claude Hamilton said: "At present there is not a single policeman in that district. The poor-rates are half what they were before, and the magistrates testify to the great absence of crime."
In many parts of England and Scotland there is local prohibition, and the uniform testimony as to the absence of pauperism and crime is as unequivocal as that given above.
THE MAINE LAW—ITS COMPLETE VINDICATION.
But it is to the State of Maine, where a prohibitory law has existed for over a quarter of a century, and where prohibition has been put to the severest tests, that we must look for the more decisive proofs of success or failure.
On the evidence which Maine furnishes, the advocates of legal suppression are content to rest their case. In order to get a brief, but thoroughly accurate and reliable history of the Maine law, we addressed a letter to Hon. Neal Dow, of Portland, Maine, asking him to furnish us, for this volume, with the facts and evidence by which our readers could for themselves judge whether the law were a dead letter, as some asserted, or effective and salutory. In reply, Mr. Dow has kindly furnished us with the following deeply interesting and important communication: