Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/795

Rh sale, give away, exchange, barter, or dispense any intoxicating liquor for any purpose whatever, otherwise than as provided in this act. Persons holding permits as herein provided shall be authorized to sell and dispense intoxicating liquors for pharmaceutical and medicinal purposes, and wine for sacramental purposes, but for no other purposes whatever."

I hope the terms of this statute make it sufficiently evident that the men who made and passed it were absolutely in downright earnest to suppress the wretched traffic in drunkard-making beverages, and I have not a word of apology to offer for them. This measure, to use Cromwellian phraseology, is one of "root-and-branch" extermination of a sore and fearful evil. But along with it should go the statement that this is but half of their legislation on the subject, the other half—known as the "Pharmacy Act"—being permissive of the sale of the same intoxicants, for the lawful purposes above named, by pharmacists, under restrictions. Some of these were by the last General Assembly relaxed, with no effect, however, upon the other half of the law, prohibiting sales of beverages by other persons. Step by step that has been allowed by law and that forbidden which long and disastrous experience showed might or must be. I am authorized to declare that neither this nor any other statute of Iowa is "sumptuary" in character or intent. I do not claim that all of them are perfect for their ends, but only that—a simple fact—this is in no instance among their ends. The giving away of means of intoxication included in the last recited statute (22 Gen. Assembly, chap. 71, § 1) is forbidden simply and solely to prevent evasions. Doubtless it will be condemned by those who are willing the risk of promoting drunkenness should be incurred by a liquor traffic more or less free; but, after this patient exhibition of authoritative facts, it should be forever impossible for any intelligent and candid man to stigmatize it as "sumptuary."

After this refutation of its main contention, minor points, made in the same spirit in the article here criticised, hardly require notice. That "no one is safe under such a law" as that of Minnesota from arrest and penalty on the charge of his being drunk, will call out a smile among the sober people of that good State. That every law of this tenor is quite or "almost a dead letter" is—within the ordinary and daily observation of citizens in States where they are in force—absolutely contrary to fact. At the time of this writing the retail of drinks manufactured in other States is suddenly and notoriously increasing under the "original packages" decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. This