Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/48

38 laws that exist, it is just as easy for a person to get any kind of liquor he wants as it is in the city of New York.

Upon one occasion, at a prominent hotel in the State of Rhode Island, while at the dinner-table, I asked the waiter to bring me a bottle of champagne. He departed, but returned in a few minutes with the information that I could not have it without a medical prescription. I took his wine-card and writing the mystic symbol "," followed it with the words "vini campaniæ, ℥ xxxij–Sig.: To be taken p.r.m."–signing my name to it. In a few minutes he returned with the bottle, and I could have had as many more as I wanted on the same terms.

Several of the States, as we know, have recently receded from their advanced position on prohibition, and the State of Rhode Island has by its Legislature recently resubmitted the question to the people.

In the State of Iowa, not only is there a stringent prohibitory law, but it is made a penal offense for one person to ask another to take a drink. Of course, as I learn from reliable information, the law is almost a dead letter. It can be evaded in a hundred different ways. For instance, one man invites another into his house, takes him to the sideboard, and, perhaps in the presence of a dozen witnesses, pours out two glasses of whisky, drinks one himself, looks away for a moment, and his friend drinks the other. He has not disregarded the letter of the law. Are not such laws as this the height of human folly?

The State of Minnesota has quite recently struck out still further in the same direction, and has to a still greater extent interfered with the personal liberty of the individual. A law framed, as we are told, by Senator Schaeffer, has recently gone into effect in that State, and which is designed to punish drunkenness. It provides for a fine of from ten to forty dollars for the first offense, from forty to sixty dollars for the second offense, and ninety days in the workhouse for the third. When asked what effect the law would have on the Minneapolis municipal court, Judge Maloney said:

"It will not materially change the order of things with us. Our custom in treating drunkenness is much the same as provided in the new law. There is, however, one feature of the law that differs from the ordinance under which we formerly worked. According to the ordinance, the offense was not punishable unless committed in some public place, while the statute covers drunkenness in secret as well as in the public street. I am glad this bill passed the Legislature. It makes it a crime now in our State to drink to excess, and it is an expression of the public condemnation of drunkenness. I think it will result in doing a great deal of good. For the reasons I have cited, the new law has created