TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume XLIV, Issue 44, 20 August 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

PKOHIBITION IN AMERICA. The Voice has been interviewing the Dakota Senators as to the working of the prohibitory law which was adopted in the State two years ago. Senator Almen, says : — " Prohibition is giving general satisfaction among all people. The law is well enforced here in Walsh County." Senator Arnold says :—": — " Under this law there is much less drunkenness, much less loafing." Senator Johnson says : — " No liquor to speak of is sold ; it is certainly a benefit, and I don't Bee that it is a detriment to anybody." A senator from the 15th District says :—"I: — "I don't think there is onetwentieth part of the liquor consumed as previous to the enforcement of the law ; drunKenness is almoßt unknown. Families feel the effects to a great extent ; children and mothers are better clothed and fed." These are specimens of the answers from senators interviewed. Of seventeen, only three were of opinion that the law had failed. The Temperance party in the State are looking forward to the election of 1892, and hoping to secure the return of men pledged to a rigid enforcement of the law. The Lower House of the Legislature of South Carolina has passed a strong Prohibition law by a large majority. There is little prospect of the bill being carried through this year, but the fact of its passing by so strong a vote shows that prohibitory sentiments are growing steadily. The New York Times, a non-Pro-hibition paper, speaking of the prohibitory State of Kansas, says : — "There are in the cities and towns thousands of boys sixteen years of age who never saw a saloon, and only know from hearsay what they are like. It is a fact that public sentiment at large endorses the Prohibition laws, while only in a few localities does public sentiment endorse the saloon. In the latter there is a revenue. The sale of liquor, as a rule, is as clandestine as is thievery, with as much fear for the consequence if discovery follows." The decision of the Kansas Supreme Court that the men who violated the prohibitory laws of that State a couple of years ago, during what is called the ' original package ' era, must be puniehed, means imprisonment for a considerable number number of liquor sellers, who thus tried to evade the provisions of the Act. The first man tried since the decision has been fined 350 dollars, with the costs of the prosecution, and sent to prison for sixty days. THE HOUSE OF LOEDS' COMMIT fEE ON LOCAL OPTION. " When great communities, deeply sensible of the miseries caused by Intemperance ; witnesses of the crime and pauperism which directly spring from it ; conscious of the contamination to which their younger citizens are exposed ; watching with grave anxiety the growth of female lutemperance on a scale so vast, and at a rate of progression so rapid, as to constitute a new reproach and now danger ; believing that not only the morality of their citizens, but their commercial prosperity is dependent upon the diminution of these evils ; seeing also that all that general legislation has been able to effect has been some improvement in public order, while it has been powerless to produce any perceptible decrease of intemperance, it would seem somewhat hard when such communities are willing at their own cost and hnzurd to grapple with the difficulty, and undertake their own purification, that the Legislature should refuse to create for them the ueceesary machinery, or to entrust them with the requisite powers." COMPENSATION US PENNSYLVANIA. There is a statute in Pennsylvania (as in some othor of the United States) which provides that saloonkeepers shall be held responsible in damages for injuries resulting from their sale of liquors to intoxicated persons. The Supreme Court . of the State has lately made a decision which sustains the law as constitutional and equitable. A poor widow sued a liquor seller because he sold liquor to her husband until he was unable to guide his steps homeward, fell into a 1 gutter, contracted pneumonia, and died. A jury gave the widow substantial damages, and upon appeal the Supreme Court sustained the verdict and the law. It brushed away without much ceremony the pleas made for the saloonkeeper that pneumonia, and not liquor, was the i immediate cause of death, and that the man took the liquor voluntarily. The Court thus replied to the last plea: "Every drunkard not only takes liquor voluntarily, but whenever he can get it, and because of his weakness the law makes the saloonkeeper responsible for selling to such persons. He has not the will power to resist temptation, and for this reason the sale to him is forbidden." FEOM MAX O'RELL. "One half the murders one hoars of are committed under the influence of drink. It is not so very long since a gentleman was not ashamed to be found tipsy in the street. At the beginning of the century they went to Parliament in this state. It was rather good form." "The most flourishing businesses in liondon, and those that are really substantial, are those of beer and old clothes. The publican and pawnbroker are the princes of English trade. The one is the consequence of the other.