A Study of Local Option

THE idea that the sale of intoxicating liquors stands on the same footing as any other business is one not widely entertained in the United States, except among the persons who are directly interested in the liquor trade. Public sentiment, as crystallized into legislation in the several states, agrees in regarding the business as “extra-hazardous ” to the community, and in singling it out for exceptional treatment. Sometimes it squeezes it for revenue, sometimes it surrounds it with restrictions, sometimes it forbids it altogether.

Three of the New England states, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, wholly prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors for use as a beverage. The three others remit to the voters of the several cities and towns the responsibility of determining whether licenses for the sale of liquor shall be granted or withheld in their respective communities. This is “Local Option.” It may result in local prohibition, or in local license; but the principle in either case is the same, that, whatever method may be adopted, it shall have behind it the expressed will of a majority of the local voters. The laws of the three states are alike in this, that they allow frequent opportunities for a revision of judgment. The decision, when made, does not stand for any long period. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the question is brought each year before the voters automatically, at the town and municipal elections; in Rhode Island, it may be brought up any year in any town or city on petition of a certain percentage of the local electorate.

The Local Option law of Massachusetts, in particular, invites study as a method of dealing with the liquor problem that has endured the test of practical application for twenty years. It was ehacted after the state had experimented with statutory prohibition and with a general license law. Those systems, opposites in other respects, were alike in this, that they ignored local conditions and preferences, and applied precisely the same regulations to the small towns and the great cities. When the idea is once firmly grasped that what is good for Gosnold may not necessarily be the best thing for Boston, and vice versa, it is only a short step, logically, to the conclusion that Gosnold and Boston may wisely be left each to determine the question for itself. The Local Option law of Massachusetts sprang from a tardy recognition of the fact that each community is best fitted to decide for itself whether it does or does not want saloons; and that the conditions of law enforcement are simplified when the same body of voters which has decided upon one system or the other elects the officers who are charged with the duty of carrying out the decision. To those people who would rather extirpate the liquor traffic on paper, at the cost of whatever farces of non-enforcement, than restrict it and minimize its evil consequences by practical measures, the Local Option system must always be objectionable because it results in certain instances in giving to saloons the sanction of law. But to others the system presents itself as a wise extension of the general principle of self-government. It is significant that, while in each of the three New England states which have adopted prohibition there is increasing restiveness under the exactions of that system and the scandals which arise from it, there are no manifestations of discontent in the Local Option states. In Massachusetts, the alternative of constitutional prohibition was submitted to the people in April, 1889, and was rejected by a majority of nearly 46,000. On the other hand, persistent efforts to modify the law in favor of the liquor interests have failed in legislature after legislature.

The Massachusetts Local Option law, as has been already remarked, takes the town or city as the unit for the determination of the question. The only apparent exception is the proposal to introduce “ District Option ” in Boston, upon which a referendum is to be taken in that city next month. If the Act submitted by the legislature should be accepted by a majority of the voters, the vote on the license question in Boston, beginning with the municipal election of 1903, will be taken by districts, each of the eight districts into which the city is divided by the Act determining for itself whether saloons shall be licensed within its limits. But the exception instituted by this Act is apparent rather than real. The lines of the eight districts are not drawn arbitrarily, but represent approximately the lines of the municipalities which have been absorbed in Boston. The idea underlying this proposition is to restore to the communities which joined their fortunes with those of Boston the liberty of action on the saloon question that they would have had if they had retained their independent corporate existence.

The question annually submitted to the voters of Massachusetts cities and towns is beautifully concrete. It is put in these words: “ Shall licenses be granted for the sale of intoxicating liquors in this town? ” —or city, as the case may be. To this the voter answers “Yes ” or “No ” by marking a cross against the word which expresses his judgment. No question of general theories, or of personal habits, or of political predilections is involved. Moral considerations may or may not determine the voter’s action, but the question is first of all a local one. A man who might vote “No ” in Gosnold may vote “Yes” in Boston. Men of absolutely abstemious habits may vote “Yes ” because they think that the town or city needs the revenue which may be derived from license fees; while men who scarcely draw a sober breath may vote “No ” because they do not want their own property depreciated by the proximity of saloons.

The Massachusetts Local Option law must be viewed in connection with a considerable quantity of restrictive legislation, which from time to time has been added to it. The path of the intending saloon keeper, in communities that have voted for license, is by no means unobstructed. To begin with, he encounters eager competition from his fellows. The number of places which may be licensed is limited by law to one for each 500 of the population in Boston, and one for each 1000 of the population in places outside of Boston. The supply of licenses is naturally never equal to the demand. Again, the law fixes a minimum fee of $1000 for a license which carries saloon privileges. The actual price charged soars upward from that figure, as local exigencies may require, but there is no maximum limit, and an attempt in this year’s legislature to fix one at $2400 failed. Moreover, the theory of the law is that liquor should be consumed only in connection with food, and the would be saloon keeper must have, as a peg on which to hang his liquor license, a license as a common victualer, and must furnish his premises with the appliances necessary for cooking and serving food. Finally, if the saloon keeper is prepared to meet these requirements, another obstacle presents itself. His application for a license must be advertised, and when that is done, any owner of real estate situated within twenty-five feet of the premises described may file an objection to the granting of the license. This objection is final, unless voluntarily withdrawn. No tribunal exists, from the licensing board up to the Supreme Court, that can overrule it. Moreover, in no case may a saloon be established within four hundred feet of a public school.

After the saloon keeper has surmounted all these obstacles and is ready for business, other restrictions embarrass his operations and diminish his profits. He must not sell after eleven o’clock at night or before six o’clock in the morning, or at any time on Sunday; he must not sell to an habitual drunkard, or to a person who is at the time intoxicated, or to one who has been wholly or partly supported by charity, or to a minor; nor must he allow a minor to loiter about his premises. He must not sell adulterated liquors. He must not maintain screens or other obstructions that interfere with a clear view of the licensed premises from without. He must not sell on election days or on legal holidays; he must not employ in his business persons who are under eighteen years of age ; and he must not sell to persons who use intoxicating liquors to excess, after he has received a written notice from the husband, wife, parent, child, guardian, or employer of such persons, requesting him not to sell to them. This list of prohibitions is not exhaustive, but it will suffice to show that the lot of a licensed saloon keeper in Massachusetts is not free from anxieties. If he is convicted of violating the law in any particular he is liable to a fine and imprisonment, and his conviction of itself makes his license void, which is often the heaviest part of the penalty.

In communities which vote no-license, all sales of liquor for use as a beverage are illegal. This prohibition applies to distilled spirits, ale, porter, strong beer, lager beer, cider, wines, and any beverage containing more than one per cent of alcohol. The law relents a little toward farmers by permitting them to sell cider that they make from their own apples, provided the cider itself is not drunk on the premises. A similar exception is made of native wines ; these also can be sold by those who make them, on the premises where they are made, but not to be drunk on the premises. Druggists are allowed to sell pure alcohol for medicinal, mechanical, or chemical purposes. They may be, and usually are, granted what is known as a sixth-class license, for a nominal fee of one dollar, under which they may sell liquors for either of the foregoing purposes; but the purchaser is required to sign a declaration of the use for which the liquor is designed, and the druggist must always be ready to produce his record of sales with the signatures of purchasers. These provisions are designed to meet the actual needs of a community for liquors as a medicine. The privilege, as might be expected, is often abused. No climatic or hygienic conditions can explain the multiplication of drug stores in no-license communities. But the fact that in one year recently three druggists from a single city served terms in the county jail for illegal liquor selling shows that Nemesis sometimes gets upon the track of offenders of this class.

The law is undeniably so framed as to dip the scale toward no-license rather than license. Thus, a tie vote is equivalent to a negative vote. Again, the law provides that, where the vote is for license, the local authorities “may ” not “ shall ” grant licenses. Almost every year there are towns that vote for license, the selectmen of which use the discretion that the law allows them by refusing to grant licenses. Two years ago there were five towns which were thus kept “dry ” in spite of their vote for license. Sometimes selectmen avail themselves of the latitude allowed as to license fees, by fixing the fee deliberately at a sum which they are sure no one can afford to pay.

There is a tendency toward a stable equilibrium in the voting. If the record of particular cities and towns, chosen at random, is traced back for a series of years, it will usually be found that after a period of oscillation, one method or the other has commended itself to the voters as on the whole best for that community, and has been adhered to with considerable steadiness. There are license cities — Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell, and Fall River, for example — which have made one or two experiments with no-license, prompted perhaps by some passing caprice, only to return to license at the next election. There are no-license cities, such as Brockton, which have reverted to license for a single year, only to give a larger vote than ever against the saloons after a year’s experience with them. But in general the proportion of changes in each year’s voting is small. Last year, out of 353 towns and cities in the state, there were only thirty-seven which changed their position on this question. Of these, nineteen changed from nolicense to license, and eighteen changed from license to no-license, the first group almost exactly balancing the other numerically. In the year preceding, there were fifteen changes to license and twenty changes to no-license. A comparison of these changes, in detail, shows that, in a considerable number of instances, the same communities figure in them. Of the nineteen no-license communities which in 1901 changed to license, nine had shifted the preceding year from license to no-license; and of the eighteen license towns and cities which in 1901 changed to no-license, six the preceding year had shifted from nolicense to license. It is fortunate that the number of these pendulum communities which swing back and forth between the two systems is so small, for they do not secure the best results of either system. The saloons which get a footing in license years in these communities are not likely to be so well conducted as if their tenure were more secure. The men who keep them know that the chances are that they will be turned out at the next election, and they do a reckless business with the idea of making the most of it while it lasts. On the other hand, in the no-license years, there will not be, and in the nature of things there cannot be expected to be, the rigorous enforcement of the laws against saloons which may be looked for where the no-license policy represents the deliberate and continuous judgment of the voters.

The annual no-license campaigns infuse an interesting element into elections in Massachusetts cities and towns. Sometimes they are carried on only with the machinery of moral agitation. Churches and temperance organizations, separately or together, appeal to the moral sentiment of the community with the familiar temperance arguments ; and stirring rallies, in the weeks immediately preceding the election, arouse voters who are hostile to the saloons to active exertions against them. But in the cities and larger towns, the moral agitation usually is supplemented and made more effective by the work of citizens’ committees. These are organized without reference to distinctions of race, creed, political affiliation, or social position. Catholics and Protestants, Republicans, Democrats, Prohibitionists, and all shades of independents fraternize in them. The campaigns are political, yet not political. They are political, in that the committees follow the usual methods of political committees. They make a personal canvass of voters. They attend to all details of registration and naturalization. They publish campaign papers addressed to the local issue, under such catching titles as The Frozen Truth, The Eye-Opener, Hot Shot, etc. They send out circulars and appeals to different classes of voters. They give special attention to new residents and to young men just becoming voters. On election day, they supply the voting places with “checkers,” workers and carriages, and “ round up ” tardy or forgetful voters with an energy and thoroughness that rival the best work of party campaign committees. Yet the no-license campaigns are nonpolitical in that they are kept wholly apart from personal or partisan contests. It is a point of honor with the committees that no candidate or party shall benefit by their activities at the expense of any other. It can hardly be doubted that such campaigns, unselfish, democratic, and educational, are of great value to the communities concerned, even aside from the main question at issue. They break down religious and other barriers, divert attention from petty strifes, and afford opportunity for high civic effort, free from any taint of selfseeking.

The real test of the efficiency of the Local Option system is its application in the larger towns and cities. In the small towns, especially those of comparatively homogeneous population of the New England stock, the law-abiding instincts of the people might be trusted to secure the enforcement of prohibition, whether local or general. But in the cities it is a different matter. Local Option has not been put to this test in Rhode Island or Connecticut. In Rhode Island, the reluctant legislature that enacted the law loaded it with the provision to which reference has already been made, which requires the presentation of a petition signed by a certain percentage of voters before the question is submitted. To circulate and sign such a petition involves a certain measure of odium and calls for moral courage. It is partly perhaps in consequence of this obstacle that none of the larger places in Rhode Island have voted for no-license, although there have been several spirited campaigns in Providence. In Connecticut, there is no such obstacle. The question comes up automatically, as in Massachusetts. Yet the larger towns shrink from the experiment. This year, out of ninety-four Connecticut towns which voted for no-license, the largest was Stonington, with a population of 8540. But in Massachusetts there is a chance to study the workings of nolicense under the Local Option system, in cities of considerable size. This year, out of thirty-three cities, thirteen are under no-license, and in some years the number has been larger. Nor is it only the smaller cities which are included in the list. Of the thirteen, six have a population of more than 25,000 each. Brockton, which, with a single break, has voted for no-license since 1886, has a population of 40,063; Somerville, which has never voted for license, has 61,643; and Cambridge, which has voted against saloons for sixteen consecutive years, has a population of 91,886.

One of the most important questions relating to the practical workings of nolicense under the Local Option system is its effect upon drunkenness. Does the closing of the saloons affect appreciably the amount of drunkenness in the community ? Comparisons of any given city or town under no-license with another city or town of equal population under license might be misleading; since the arrests for drunkenness, which afford the only test, are influenced by local conditions or the temper of the authorities, or other causes which make comparisons futile. But a comparison of the same town or city in successive years — one year under one system, and the next year under the other — furnishes a basis for accurate judgment. Evidence of this sort is all one way, and it seems to he conclusive.

To begin with, the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, in 1895, under special instructions from the legislature, made an investigation of the relation of the liquor traffic to pauperism, crime, and insanity. In connection with this investigation, it collected statistics which showed 36.24 arrests for drunkenness to every 1000 of the population in license cities and towns; and only 9.94 such arrests to every 1000 of the population in no-license communities. The striking difference between the license and no-license groups of communities, although the total population in each group was about the same, was exaggerated by the fact that Boston was included in the license group, while a large part of the other group was composed of rural communities. There were, however, in that year, five cities which at the preceding December election had changed their saloon policy; and as the license year begins on the first of May, these cities were for a part of the year under license, and for a part of the year under no-license. The tables prepared by the Bureau of Statistics show that in Haverhill the average number of arrests for drunkenness per month under license was 81.63, under no-license, 26.50; in Lynn, under license, 315, under no-license, 117.63; in Medford, under license, 20.12, under no-license, 13.25; in Pittsfield, under license, 93.25, under no-license, 36.75 ; and in Salem, under license, 140.50; under no-license, 29.63.

In this connection, the experience of Brockton is interesting. That city, in December, 1897, after voting against saloons for eleven years consecutively, voted by a majority of thirteen for license. During the no-license year beginning May 1, 1897, the arrests for drunkenness in Brockton numbered 435, and for assaults forty-four. During the license year beginning May 1, 1898, the arrests for drunkenness mounted up to 1627, and for assaults to ninety-nine. One year of this was enough for Brockton. The next December, the city voted by 2132 majority to return to no-license, and immediately the arrests for drunkenness, for the year beginning May 1, 1899, dropped to 455, and those for assaults to sixty-six.

Here also are some recent figures, from the reports of the city marshals of Salem and Waltham, showing the arrests for drunkenness, month by month, in license and no-license years, 1900 and 1901:—

Such comparisons might be multiplied, but it is unnecessary. There is no escaping the conclusion that the closing of the saloons, under the Local Option system, which brings the support of local sentiment to the enforcement of the law, does sensibly diminish the volume of drunkenness. And it follows that the associated moral questions are answered by the same comparisons. The report of the Massachusetts Bureau established the fact that more than two fifths of the pauperism in the state is directly attributable to drunkenness; that at least one fourth of the cases of insanity originate from the same cause; and that, disregarding convictions directly for drunkenness, intemperance is responsible for one half of the remaining cases of crime. If the closing of the saloons under no-license, in the communities referred to above, reduced the amount of open drunkenness by three fourths, it is impossible that it should not have had a somewhat proportionate effect, even though more remote and less tangible, in diminishing the burdens of the community from pauperism, insanity, and crime.

Corroborative evidence in support of this inference is found in the experience of Quincy. In 1881, the last year of license in that city, the sum paid in the relief of pauperism was $15,415.07. In 1901, the amount was $13,455.86. In the interval, the population had increased 120 per cent, or from 10,885 to 23,899; but the amount expended for the poor department, instead of increasing with the population, decreased twelve per cent. While the cost of poor support in Quincy, in 1901, was $0.56 per capita, in the license cities of Chicopee, Marlboro, and Newburyport, all of them smaller than Quincy, it was $1.22, $1.30, and $1.77 respectively.

Such figures as these go far to explain why it is that, in communities which have given no-license a trial for a sufficient period to test its results, the ranks of those who begin the agitation against the saloons from moral motives are steadily reinforced by conservative citizens who are convinced that, merely for financial and economic reasons, it is better to close the saloons than to license them. It is true that the revenue that may be derived from license fees offers a considerable inducement to the adoption of the license policy. Although the number of places that may be licensed is limited, the price which may be exacted for each license is limited only to “what the traffic will bear,” and three fourths of the sum, in each case, goes into the city or town treasury, the remainder being taken by the state. But if, aside from all moral considerations, the open saloons cost the community more, in the depreciation of property and in burdens imposed upon the public in the police and poor departments and elsewhere, than the revenue represented by the license fees, it is manifestly no economy to license them.

There is perhaps no city where data bearing upon these aspects of the question have been more carefully prepared or more effectively presented than in Cambridge. Last year, the no-license campaign organ of Cambridge, The Frozen Truth, invited attention to a comparison of conditions during the ten years of license from 1875 to 1885 with those of the following fifteen years under no-license. Briefly summarized, the comparison shows that the growth of the population and the increase in the number of new houses annually erected were nearly twice as great in the no-license as in the license years; that the valuation of the city, which during the license period actually diminished $3,000,000, increased more than $36,000,000 during the fifteen years of nolicense ; and that the average annual gain in the savings-banks deposits was nearly three times as great in the no-license as in the license years. It may be that these comparisons are not wholly scientific, and that not all of the changes recorded may fairly be assumed to be fruits of no-license ; but, taken together, they point strongly in one direction. Their effect upon public sentiment in Cambridge may be read in the fact that, while the no-license majorities in the first five years of the experiment averaged 571, in the last five years they have averaged 1793, or more than three times the earlier figure.

It is not necessary to enter into further details. The experience of Cambridge, Quincy, and other cities where no-license has been voted and enforced for a period of years fully attests the efficiency of that system. The present year finds thirteen of the thirty-three cities of Massachusetts and 238 of its 320 towns voluntarily under local prohibition through the expressed will of their voters ; and in these communities, as a consequence of the expressed will of the voters, there is an average of effective and impartial law enforcement far above anything that could be looked for under statutory or constitutional prohibition.

The question suggests itself whether the license cities and towns are not in a worse condition than they would be under a general license law, inasmuch as, in addition to the normal local burden of drunkenness and the evils attendant upon it, they have to bear a part of the burden of places which close the saloons within their own limits, but whose thirsty citizens seek the saloons and later bring up in the courts of neighboring cities. Boston, for example, is surrounded by a nearly complete cordon of no-license territory ; and the cynical witticism which described “the Cambridge idea” as “no-license for Cambridge and rapid transit to Boston ” has enough truth in it to give it a sting. In other license cities and towns, similar conditions exist, though in a less degree. But it may be said of these places that the general regulations and prohibitions of the Massachusetts law applicable to license communities make up a body of restrictive legislation, state-imposed, far in excess of anything that the towns or cities affected would voluntarily frame for themselves, and probably all that can be enforced in them. It may be said, further, that the remedy is in their own hands, and that, whenever they weary of serving the uses of moral sewerage for adjoining communities, they can close their saloons by their own votes. The remedy for them, if remedy there is, lies in the infusion of a sterner purpose into their own citizens rather than in the application of further pressure from without. The principle that a stream rises no higher than its source applies in politics and government as well as elsewhere. Under American institutions the source of government is the people; and a law which very far outruns the wishes of the people is likely to become at the best a dead letter and at the worst a public scandal.

The Massachusetts Local Option system may not be perfect; but it is doubtful whether there has yet been devised a plan of dealing with the liquor traffic which, on the whole, works better, is more in accord with American ideals of self-government, or is more stimulating in its continually recurring presentation of moral standards to the individual judgment and conscience.

Frank Foxcroft.