The Liquor Question in Politics

BY GEORGE ILES

NEW YORK

THE SOCIETY FOR POLITICAL EDUCATION

330 PEARL STREET

1889

The Liquor Question in Politics.

THE term liquor being for convenience' sake used to include not only distilled alcoholic stimulants, but also wine, ale, and beer, the liquor question fills two places in politics. First, in so far as the liquor business is organized or represented as a political interest to protect or promote itself. Second, in so far as this business is the subject of legislation for its special taxation, restriction, or suppression. As the extremely variable element of retail profit enters into estimates, it is impossible to say exactly how much the nation's annual outlay for liquor is. It is certainly not less than a thousand million dollars, and may be even a fifth more. The vast business which this outlay represents is highly organized the "trust" system which has consolidated so many other branches of manufacture has been extended to whiskey; agreements as to wages and prices have drawn together for concerted action the majority of brewers in the United States. There are throughout the Union numerous associations not only of distillers and brewers, but also of wineproducers, liquor-dealers, and saloon-keepers, supporting trade journals of large circulation, maintaining a literary bureau, and employing special counsel to watch State and national lawmaking in their behalf.

New York City as the nation's metropolis presents the developments of the liquor trade in their highest form. On December 31, 1888, there were 7809 places in the city licensed to sell liquor to be drank on the premises. In addition there were 971 stores licensed to sell liquor not to be drank on the premises. Assuming the city's population to be 1,500,000, there was one

license to every 171 inhabitants. The receipts for licenses during 1888 were $1,430,420, an average of $162. Within recent years in New York, as elsewhere in the United States, a form of enterprise common among European brewers has been adopted with the effect of consolidating an important branch of the liquor interest. This enterprise is the establishment of saloonkeepers in business by wealthy brewers, who fit up premises attractively and take chattel mortgages to secure their investment. This ensures the brewers an enlarged circle of custom without the ordinary expense of solicitation, and binds the political interest of thousands of saloon-keepers by the strong cord of debt. Mr. Robert Graham has ascertained that during the year ending October 1888, 4710 chattel mortgages on saloon fixtures were recorded, of a total value of $4,959,578, the greater proportion of them being in favor of brewers and wholesale wine and liquor firms. A partial list of these mortgages, published by Mr. Graham, shows twenty brewing firms to have filed 1908 liens, aggregating $1,702,136 in amount. How important a part saloons play as rallying centres of political activity has also been shown by the same writer in one of the Church Temperance Society's pamphlets. Out of 1002 primary and other political meetings which preceded the elections of November, 1884, 719 were held in saloons or next door to them. In most of the Assembly Districts it is difficult to find a small hall not connected with a saloon, for the profit arising from such connection forbids the competition of a hall free from saloon control. Conservative men familiar with the politics of New York City estimate the liquor vote at 40,000, or one-seventh of the whole, a vote quite sufficient to turn the scale in ordinary contests, especially as the liquor interest usually allies itself with one of the two great national parties, secure of its own ordinary and regular party following. That 40,000 is a moderate estimate of the liquor vote is evident when we remember that of the 7391 saloons in the city many are the headquarters of clubs, numer

ous in membership, and that many more are practically clubs whose frequenters are on terms of friendship and good-will with the proprietors. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt in the Century, and Mr. Ernest H. Crosby in the Forum, have drawn attention to the enormous and growing political influence of liquor-dealers in New York City. Several of their number sit in the Legisla

ture at Albany.

What is true of New York City is substantially true of the country at large. Liquor is an organization pervasive and thorough, formed to exert all the political power it can for its own good, and as such is one of the strongest elements in American politics, if indeed it be not the very strongest. The liquor trade has one important advantage over most others active in the political sphere—as a lucrative trade it has command of liberal subscriptions, and many of the men engaged in it have leisure wherein to advance political aims. That the liquor vote has already decided a presidential election is claimed by Mr. Gallus Thomann, head of the Literary Bureau of the United States Brewers' Association. He asserts that Mr. Blaine's defeat in 1884 is chargeable to his ambiguous attitude toward Prohibition in Maine.

So much then for the phase of organization for political influence which this immense business interest presents. We now pass to some consideration of the place it occupies as the subject in legislation of special taxation, restriction, or suppression. And here it may be asked, Are not the men engaged in the liquor trade prosecuting a legitimate business? Do they not cater to an almost universal demand for what its users deem a luxury or a necessity? Do they employ force or fraud to oblige any one to buy from them? Why then should laws be enacted to restrict or suppress this business rather than any other? What though the liquor trades be organized for the defence or furtherance of their interests, is not the like the case with scores of other trades, and pre-eminently so with workingmen? And if organ