Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/242

228 Arcadian in its innocence respecting the use of spirits is remarkable. The laws concerning spirits, local option, license, and prohibition, and the penalties for common drunkards, selling to minors, soldiers, Indians, and drinking on Sunday, and where and when liquors should be sold, passed in 1821-'24 and 1829, give no indications of Arcadian innocence in Maine at that time.

In 1829 the first local option and literal prohibition law was passed in Maine; this was changed from time to time, and finally became the famous Maine law of 1816 and 1851, which exists to-day. In a little volume by Dr. Jewett, published in 1853, appear some harrowing accounts of the crimes and pauperism in Maine springing directly from drunkenness, long before the famous prohibitory law was enacted. Thus there is no doubt that the early settlers of Maine were as much addicted to, the so-called vices of drink as any other people.

The author declares that all prohibitory liquor laws are dangerous to the physical, moral, and political health of the community; that (1) "they increase the demand for, while deteriorating the quality of, the supply of liquors." The censuses of 1880 and 1890, and internal revenue reports, indicate a decrease in the sale of spirits in all the States where prohibition exists. The demand and consumption of spirits and beer in adjoining States and cities, not under these laws, give no indications of increased sales of spirits which are or may be consumed in these prohibition sections. Individual opinions to the effect that the demand for spirits has increased are not sustained by statistics from reliable sources. The deterioration in the quality of the liquors is found, from numerous analyses by chemists of the various State Boards of Health, to be principally from water. The drugs used for color and flavor are generally innocuous in both effect and quantity. The quality of the liquor depends on the kind of alcohol, which is far more likely to be dangerous in the so-called pure liquors than the cheap combinations of the saloon keeper.

This fact has been studied by the leading chemists of France, in several elaborate reports, in which it appears that the poisons of liquors are due to the formation and combinations of different alcohols, that are due to natural changes, and can only be known to the analytical chemist and inferred by the clinician from a study of the observed effects on the consumer. It has been repeatedly stated by authorities that a large part of the cheap liquors sold are new spirits adulterated with water, and made pleasant by flavoring substances. Hence cheap liquors from low places may be far safer as beverages than old, expensive spirits from the cellars and vaults of the most reliable dealers.

(2) The assertion that the law against the use of liquors stimulates to greater violation of the law, and produces an