Many people told me, just as they would in England, that “You can’t make a man sober by Act of Parliament.” They enlarged on the evils of the “blind tiger,” or illicit saloon. They sang to me the refrain:
“Hush, little grog-shop, don’t you cry:
You’ll be a drug-store by-and-by!“
They told me of the “clubs” where each member can keep his private locker full of alcohol, and get drunk at his leisure. As for drink and the negro (they said), what is the use of keeping whisky out of his way, when in ten cents’ worth of a “patent medicine” he can find enough cocaine to make him more dangerous than could a gallon of whisky?
On the other hand, I was told of a State in which the gaol-keepers, who (strange to say) made their living out of catering for the prisoners under their charge, applied for a special “grant-in-aid” on the ground that prohibition had so depopulated their preserves that they could no longer keep body and soul together.
This, though I believe it to be true, sounded a little like a fairy-tale; so I thought I would go to headquarters for exact information. Atlanta was the only city I visited where prohibition was actually in force; so I betook me to Decatur Street Police-court, in the middle of its lowest quarters. I arrived at a fortunate moment: it happened to be the first of May, and Mr. Preston, the Clerk of the Court, was just making up his statistics for April. He took the trouble of looking up the records of the previous year for me, and gave me the following figures:
Number of cases tried in the first four months of 1907 (before prohibition), 6056.
Number of cases tried in the first four months of 1908 (after prohibition), 3139.
Convictions for drunkenness before prohibition, 1955.
Convictions for drunkenness after prohibition, 471.