High license is another Missouri Compromise. If you have the drink
you'll have the drunkenness. If you have the cause you will have the
effect. If you have the positive you will have the superlative:
Positive drink, comparative drinking, superlative drunkenness. You may
try high-tax and low-tax but all the time you will have sin-tax and
more sin than tax.
You do not change the nature of the drink by the price of a license,
the kind of a place in which it is sold or the character of the man
who sells it. Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet
affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till
he's grown and he'll be a hog. You don't change the nature of the pig
by the elegant surroundings; you may change the condition of the
parlor.
There is but one solution of the liquor problem and that is a
nation-wide prohibitory law and behind the law a political power in
sympathy with the law and pledged to its enforcement.
Many admit the principle is correct but insist we should wait until
public sentiment is powerful enough to enforce the law. If grand ideas
had waited for public sentiment Moses would never have given the
commandments to the world. If grand ideas had waited for public
sentiment, we would still be back in the realm of the dark ages,
instead of in the light of our present civilization; back in the dim
twilight of the tallow-dip instead of the brightness of the electric
light; back with the ox team instead of the speed of the steam engine,
automobile and aeroplane; and on the temperance question back to where
a liquor dealer could advertise his business on gravestones.
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