Grappling with the Monster Part 21

Now, as the result of the Maine Law, in Maine, the wealth and prosperity of the people have greatly increased. This can be seen in every part of the State, and is obvious to the most casual observer who knew what Maine was before the law of prohibition and knows what it has been since and down to the present time.

Evidences of industry, enterprise and thrift everywhere, instead of the general poverty, unthrift and shabbiness of the old rum-time.

The share of Maine of the National drink-bill would be about thirteen millions of dollars, and but for the Maine Law, we should be consuming our full proportion; but now I feel myself fully warranted in saying that we do not expend in that way one-tenth of that sum. A mayor of the city of Portland, in a message to the City Council, said: "The quant.i.ty of liquor now sold is not one-fiftieth part as much as it was before the enactment of the law." The difference, whatever it may be, between the sum we should waste in strong drink, but for the law, and that which we actually squander in that way, we have in our pockets, in our savings banks and in our business, so that Maine has suffered far less, financially, during this crisis than any other part of the country.

I have said the drink-bill of Maine, but for prohibition, would be about thirteen millions of dollars annually, in proportion to that of the whole country. Now, this sum, with annual compound interest at six per cent., in ten years will amount to one hundred and seventy millions three hundred and nineteen thousand five hundred and twenty-eight dollars, and in twenty years to four hundred and sixty-three millions eight hundred and fifty-four thousand four hundred and twenty dollars--more than twice the entire valuation of the State by the estimate made in 1870, which was two hundred and twenty-four millions eight hundred and twenty-two thousand nine hundred and thirteen dollars. There was a reason then for the fact, that in the old rum-time the people of Maine were poor and unthrifty in every way--and for that other fact, that now they are prosperous and flourishing, with a better business than that of any other State, proportionately.

Notwithstanding the fact that in Portland a great conflagration destroyed ten millions of dollars in 1866, burned down half the town, and turned ten thousand people out of doors, the prosperity of the city has been steadily on the increase. Its valuation, in 1860, was twenty-one millions eight hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and in 1870, twenty-nine millions four hundred and thirty-nine thousand two hundred and fifty-seven dollars. In the last year the increase in valuation, in spite of the hard times, was four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, while Boston, with free rum, has lost more than eight millions, and New York and Brooklyn has experienced an immense depreciation.

I think I have said enough to satisfy every intelligent, unprejudiced man that the absolute prohibition and suppression of the liquor traffic has been in the highest interest of our State and people.

I am very truly, yours,

NEAL DOW.

And here we close our discussion of the most important of all the social questions that are to-day before the people; and, in doing so, declare it as our solemn conviction, that until the liquor traffic is abolished, and the evils with which it curses the people removed, all efforts at moral reforms must languish, and the Church find impediments in her way which cannot be removed. The CURSE is upon us, and there is but one CURE: _Total Abstinence_, by the help of G.o.d, for the individual, and _Prohibition_ for the State.