03.07. Local Option

Local Option

WE are told of the great need of the education of the people before undertaking to enact or en­force a prohibitory law; and it has been thought that a local option law would favor this work of public instruction, as it would cause the ground to be canvassed anew once every year. The power of a right education can scarcely be overestimated; and by no man who loves the cause of temperance can it be overlooked. In a community that favors the rum-trade no law pro­hibiting such traffic is likely to be regarded. You may file your complaint, bring your witnesses, prove your charges, but that jury will have one man that will hang the case with the "not guilty." The police judge and the marshal have been elected by the rum vote, and wish to be elected again; hence the empaneling of the jury, and the instructions are all in favor of the violator of law going free. If the enforcement of law is left to the community, the officers will do about as the party that elected them wishes them to do; or, rather, they will be obedient to the ring-masters.

If these men have the rum politics of the place where they live, and they are generally below the level on this question, they will present men of their own kind for office; and hence the law will not be well executed. In reason, then, we must say that an education is a necessity, in order to enforce the law.

Some have seen these things plainly, and be­cause there are difficulties in the way of prohibi­tion, they have thought that a license law would do better. But will a license law be any better observed than a prohibitory law? As we have already seen, in so far as it is merely a license law, it makes no difference whether it is obeyed or not, seeing that it simply extends to men the privilege of doing as they wish. Can it be, then, that the prohibitory measures of a license law will be re­garded, by having a place in a legal system, which, in principle, stands against them?

Because there are difficulties in the way of one system of law is not proof that some other would work better. When any one wishes to argue in favor of a license law, let him not suppose that he has gained his point when he has found some hin­drances to a prohibitory law. If he be a man of honor, and really given to logic, he will endeavor to show you wherein a license law may be enforced in a way that will protect the people from the evils of intemperance, in which a prohibitory law cannot. Up to this time I have seen no such an attempt. Hence, so far as I am competent to judge, those who talk of a "judicious license system," wholly fail to argue the real question. If we ask any one of them, or all of them, to tell us of a single power, belonging to a license law, to hinder drunkenness that does not attach to a prohibitory law, we will have our work for nothing. They seem to think that they have done enough when they have re­ferred to some difficulties lying in the way of pro­hibition.

I do not understand local optionists to oppose prohibition, but to favor it, but think that this is the best way to obtain and enforce a prohibitory law. In justice, however, we ought to know just what is meant by local OPTION. What things have we to choose from? Is free whisky to prevail where the county or city does not vote for prohibition? or does the nuisance stand prohibited until the community shall demand that saloons be licensed? or is some form of license to exist unless the people shall demand a severer treatment of the evil? A local option that puts the temperance cause on the offensive gives the advantage to the whisky party. If prohibition is to be the law till repealed by a majority vote in favor of whisky, the condition of things is vastly changed.

I do not believe, however, that a local option is what we want. I will state my reasons numerically:

In the State of Iowa we have prohibition of all intoxicating liquors except ale, beer, and wine, manufactured in the State. Even these may be prohibited in towns that are incorporated. Yet when we drive them from our city limits, they can go two miles away and start up. Some have thought that an option so local cannot be of any benefit. But this is not true. We can greatly discourage the drunkard-making business in this way. And by actual experiment we know that the young men who would otherwise be induced to frequent saloons for company and mirth, and thus be led step by step into drinking habits, will not go off two or three miles to hunt them up. Also the fact that the people of the town have voted the traffic a nuisance, serves to elevate the sentiment of young men on the subject.

I am not ready to denounce local option as wholly worthless. It is better than no option. But its failure to remove the evil far enough prevents its success; hence it is faulty. It is not the law that we want, unless it shall first be apparent that it is the only one we can get.

The power of education supposed to be in the law is, with most of its friends, its principal charm. It is thought that the frequency of voting on this question will insure such full and oft-repeated con­siderations of the subject that the education of the people will, in that way, be secured. I am sure, however, that philosophy and the facts contradict this position. When we say that the rum-trade should be licensed in communities where it is de­sired, we present the whole matter before the world as a question of policy, and, so far as the educational influence of the law is concerned, the truth is not taught the people. The facts in connection with local option are far from satisfactory to those who have been long in the temperance work. Where local option pre­vails it is voted on, in nearly all cases, in connec­tion with the men who are to hold the offices for the ensuing year. These are nominated by party leaders and political tricksters, so that the masses have but little opportunity to vote on the ques­tion, and, in the canvass, temperance men are usually whipped into the harness and made to vote with the favorite party, while the rum-men break ranks from moneyed interests and depraved lives. The result is that whisky prevails in the contest, though the majority of the people do not favor it. Hence the education afforded by local option amounts to little or nothing that can be of any service to the cause of temperance.

This statement is in direct antagonism to all that the friends of the law have been wont to say of it. The usual argument in its favor is that it is the only law that can be enforced. Somebody must be mistaken.

The question of State rights has not yet been forgotten. It was argued by the ablest minds in this country that if a State might withdraw from the Union a county might withdraw from the State, a town from the county, a colony from a town, and an individual from the colony; hence, that the State rights plea meant simply the abandonment of government. But this is the very position on the whisky question taken by local optionists. They will turn our counties and towns loose to do as seems to them good in this matter. While this strikes a blow at the existence and power of law, it also tends toward those differences of sentiment and feeling that will eventually section­alize and localize the country in its friendships and trade.

We have found by a very sad experience in this country that local option on the subject of slavery, or even an attempt, by the General Government, to limit it to a portion of the country, was a poor governmental policy. In the nature of things, we would have to practice slavery throughout the Government or dismiss it altogether. And yet, whatever there were of wrong, and corruption, and power in slavery, it was a white infant com­pared to the question that we are now consider­ing. I am not an alarmist. I do not mean to say that disunion will certainly come of it. We may avert the danger. But the tendency of the system is clearly what I have declared it to be.

Local option was born of political and legislative cowardice. Politicians found their constituency hopelessly divided on the question. Afraid to do what was right in the premises, and supposing, on the other hand, that it would not do to favor license out and out, they have adopted this plan, so that they might conciliate the people in different localities. Like the boy, when he went to shoot at the deer, not being sure if it were not a calf, he took such aim, or tried to, that if it should be a deer, he would hit, or if a calf, he would miss. Such has been the twilight uncertainty and legislative charlatanry with which this cause has been managed. I don’t wonder at office-seekers for this dodge of the issue; but it taxes my patience, and charity too, to think that good Christian men can be hoodwinked into pleading for the system. I will accept local option when I can’t do any better. Though I know it is not what we want, still it is better than no option at all.

I am indebted to the Chicago Journal, of Decem­ber 5, 1878, for the following official statement, which shows both the worth and the weakness of local option:

"The Clerk of the Circuit Court in Edwards County, in this State, submits the following interesting facts:

"There has not been a licensed saloon in this county for over twenty-five years. During that time our jail has not averaged an occupant. This county never sent but one person to the penitentiary, and that man was sent up for killing his wife, while drunk, on whisky obtained from a licensed saloon in an adjoining county. We have but very few paupers in our poor-house, sometimes only three or four. Our taxes are 32 percent lower than they are in adjoining counties, where saloons are licensed. Our people are prosperous, peace­able and sober; there being very little drinking, except Pear Grayville, a licensed town of White County, near our border. The different terms of our Circuit Court occupy three or four days each year, and then the dockets are cleared. Our people are so well satisfied with the present state Of things that a very large majority of them would bitterly oppose any effort made in favor of license, under any circumstances.

"The temperance people and organizations of Macon County are sending circulars over the State, asking for signatures to a petition to be submitted to the coming Legislature for an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks within the jurisdiction of the State."

ONLY A COMPLETE LAW CAN EVER BE FULLY ENFORCED.

Sometimes I hear men say we have more law now than is observed, and if we cannot enforce the law we now have, a severe law would be null. This reminds me of the story someone tells on Paddy. He had never slept on feathers, but had often heard that they made a very pleasant bed. One night being compelled to sleep out-doors, he found a feather, put it on a rock, and took it for his pillow. His opinion was not favorable to the use of feathers, since he was not able to sleep on one with any comfort. Most people think that if Paddy had had feathers enough he would have enjoyed the pillow very much better. The trouble is, just where we need law we have none. A license law makes no provision for the enforcement of prohibitory measures, and, in itself, proposes nothing by which the evil can be removed. If we now had such a law respecting murder we would find ourselves unable to make the law respectable or cause it to be obeyed, and could as reasonably argue that we should not legislate against that crime until we had morally persuaded the people up to the enforcement of the law already in existence.

Some think we must bring men up to the level of prohibition by degrees, and that the German element, at least, in this country, while they may be reached by moral persuasion, would be thrown off entirely, if we should announce to them the real facts in the case, that we intend eventually to soft-soap them into a willingness to approve of prohibition. This, however, is contrary to all I know of Germans in this country. It is true that they are largely represented in our Western States, but they are only a respectable minority. And we are no more to provide for the privilege of Germans, to practice in this country as they have been accustomed to in the Fatherland, than we are to provide for the Chinese. We ought to say to our German neighbors, You are welcome here if you can live under such laws as are thought best for our people. And we may say the same to other lands, as well as to Germany, but you are not at liberty to institute arrangements here by which our sons are to be decoyed into evil.

I know that politicians court the German vote, and permit 40,000 Germans to rule 200,000 of our American born citizens. I like the Germans for their industry and frugality, but rather than that our nights are to be made hideous with drunken revelry, and our streets disgraced with midnight orgies, I would have them all return in peace. And, so far as any German having to be won by moral persuasion, and little by little, to the ground of prohibition, there is nothing in it. Our moral persuasion is having no effect on him whatever. The sober German is one of our most intelligent and useful citizens, and is as approachable by logic and financial calculations as any man in the nation, and I would sooner undertake to direct his vote on this question than the average American born citizen, for he is a little more likely to be true to his principles. He is not the soft kind of creature that some of our men have taken him to be. And, so far as the drinking German is concerned, if he can be reached at all, it is by the logic of facts. He can be much more easily approached by facts and figures, and be gotten to vote and act with his financial interests, than he can be won from his company and beer-garden frolic by moral persuasion. BUT THERE ARE SOME LOCALITIES THAT WOULD NOT
SUBMIT TO PROHIBITION.

If that were true, still it would not justify an unrighteous law on the subject. When God was thundering from the smoking summit of the quak­ing Sinai, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," just down in the valley Aaron was fixing up a calf for the people to worship, and that, too, by their request. If God had reasoned as men do now on this temperance question he would have licensed the calf, and Aaron as its keeper, and then given them a little moral persuasion. If the same line of policy had been observed by Jehovah, that men now contend for on the whisky question, we would have had no Decalogue yet. Law is a teacher, and must be in advance of the moral sen­timent of those it is intended to govern. Hence, if we could know that there are cities in which a prohibitory law would be disregarded, it would be no argument against the law itself.

Let me ask how the people have gotten so low in some of these cities that they will not observe a righteous law on the subject? For fifty years, in these same cities, we have licensed the rum-seller to sell his stuff and then we have "morally­ persuaded" the people not to buy. And now, at the end of half a century, the people are so debased that they won’t bear a prohibitory law! Let me say, neighbor, if fifty years of license and moral persuasion have so utterly failed as that, in the name of common sense we have had enough of such pitiable performances!

I find no fault with moral persuasion. It is all right. But the license undoes all that can, in that way, be accomplished. But there are no communities that cannot be conquered, in two years’ time, under a prohib­itory law, with proper provisions for its enforce­ment. By the appointment of State officers over their work, in two years’ time, the State constables of Massachusetts were enabled to report that there was not left a single open bar to tell the story. In this way the power of the whole people may be brought to bear on this question, and the cities that have not the stamina in them for the enforce­ment of the law would be helped to its observance by the State at large.

There is no philosophic reason why men may not be restrained from selling and drinking whisky as well as prevented from any other crime against themselves or the community in which they live. Our law does not propose to license or permit infamy. It is based upon the presumption that, though the law may not be perfectly regarded, yet it can be, to some extent, at least, executed. And yet there are many reasons why a law prohibiting that nameless crime can never be perfectly enforced that do not exist as obstacles in the way of the enforcement of a prohibitory liquor law. The appetite for intoxicants is not natural, and the disposition to sell it comes only from the love of money, without the necessary conscience to determine the right course by which the end shall be reached. And there can be found no reason, in the nature of things, why that crime may not be restrained as well as others. But if the law, by prohibiting the crime of which we speak, could not be any better enforced than the law against adultery, still it would be a shame against our common humanity not to prohibit it. It ought, at least, to free itself from the charge of conniving at the crime. The law can, at least, make it disreputable to engage in the business. But just what makes it necessary for us to reach prohibition by local option or license no man can tell. Why not approach the suppression of every other crime in the same way as well as that of intemperance? Suppose that our Legislature, in undertaking to prevent the lottery stealing arrangements of the sons of Belial, should give us local option on that subject? And what would we think of, the head and heart of the man who would claim that such a law cannot be executed in all commu­nities, and, therefore, should only exist in those places where the people have been sufficiently educated on the subject? We might suppose that he had some kind of interest in the business him­self, or that he felt himself in need of the patron­age of those who had! If a man should argue that a law against murder will be violated and dis­respected in some localities, and, therefore, that that crime should be dealt with by license and local option, you would not regard him a fit per­son for the, next Legislature.

If I were a wholesale dealer in liquors and wished to monopolize the business, and were sit­uated^. in a city of the first or second class, and felt sure that license would carry in that place, then I would favor local option, since it would give me the trade that might otherwise be divided among a great many small dealers in rum.

If I were a politician of the first or second class—a mere politician, and felt that I must have office; that I could not live without office; and that, in order to get it, I must do something that would quiet the "temperance fanatics," and yet not to any particular extent injure the business of my whisky friends, to whom I would have to look for the money to conduct the campaigns, then I might favor it; seeing that in that way I could "become all things to all men, that at least, by all means, I might gain some" votes. But why any man, with common sense, untrammeled with business or political aspirations, should favor a "local option" law to a full and complete pro­hibition, I cannot understand. Of what we have said, then, this is the sum: