Sober by act of Parliament / by Fred A. McKenzie.

  • McKenzie, Fred A.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sober by act of Parliament / by Fred A. McKenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “The absolute boss of the State, Governor Tillman,” sneered one, “ expects to turn the great commonwealth into one great drinking saloon, such as might carry a sign- board, reaching from sea to the mountains, announcing ‘Benjamin Ryan Tillman, monopolist of grog’.” In his annual message to the Legislature, in November, 1893, the Governor gave a long and detailed account of the working of the law. According to this statement, there were then fifty dispensaries open, and the total sales in the four months had amounted to 166,043 dollars, 56 c., yielding a profit to the State of 32,198 dollars, 16 c. This was considerably less than had been anticipated; and the smallness of the profit is no doubt due to the facts that so many people had got in their supplies of drink before the Act came in force, and that in many parts the law was very imperfectly enforced. Since the Governor issued his re- port there was a very considerable proportionate increase in the gains. In order to ascertain the results of the law on intem- perance a circular was sent out to seventy-five cities and towns, asking them to state the number of arrests for drunk- enness and disorder arising from liquor drinking for a like period before and since the passing of the Act. Only thirty- three places replied; and in the whole of these the arrests from 1 st July to 30th Sept., 1892, under the old licence laws, were 577; during the same period in 1893, under the Dispensaries Act, the arrests were only 287. In Sep- tember, 1892, 231 arrests were made; in September, 1893, the arrests were 131.
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