How to Destroy the Rum Power
Henry George
[An article written in 1889 by Henry George as a
result of a meeting with B.O. Flower, editor of The Arena, and
The Twentieth Century magazine. Later published by The Joseph
Fels Fund of America, Cincinnati, Ohio,]
FOR years the liquor question has been largely and widely discussed
in the United States. But the discussion has turned on the kind and
degree of legal restriction that ought to be applied to the
manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink, and the political effects
of this restriction have been but little considered. The "rum
power" has been sufficiently recognized and bitterly denounced;
but without inquiry into its nature and causes, has been generally
treated as one of the evils that make restriction necessary.
Yet the political influence of the various interests connected with
the manufacture and sale of liquor is a matter of sufficient
importance to demand some consideration in itself, and apart from the
question of temperance. For the "rum power" is certainly a
fact of the first importance. It is an active, energetic, tireless
factor in our practical politics, a corrupt and debauching element,
standing in the way of all reform and progress, a potent agency by
which unscrupulous men may lift themselves to power, and an influence
which operates to lower public morality and official character.
Intemperance is a grave evil. But it is not the only evil. Political
corruption is also a grave evil. The most ardent advocate of
temperance would probably admit that there may be a point where the
one evil may be outweighed by the other, and would hesitate to accept
the total abstinence that prevails in Turkey if accompanied with
Turkish corruption of government. There is no instance in which
intemperance among a civilized people has stopped advance and turned
civilization back towards barbarism, but the history of the world
furnishes example after example in which this has occurred from the
corruption of government, ending finally in corruption of the masses.
While the lessening of intemperance may be the most important end
that under present conditions we can seek; while it may be that in our
liquor legislation we should disregard all other effects if we can
secure this, it is nevertheless wise that we should at least consider
what these effects may be. In the presence of the giant evils
springing from the existence of the "rum power" in our
politics, it is certainly worth while to inquire how the existence of
this power stands related to our restrictive liquor legislation.
A little consideration will show that they are indeed related, and
that this relation is that of cause and effect. Not as is generally
assumed, the rum power being the cause and the restrictive legislation
the effect of opposition aroused by it, but the restrictive
legislation being the cause, and the appearance of the "rum power"
in politics the effect of this restriction.
This we may see from general principles, and a wide experience. While
there is any possibility of changing them through political action,
legal restrictions on any branch of business must introduce into
politics a special element, which will exert power proportioned to the
pecuniary interests involved.
We restrict the importation of wool by putting a duty on wool and
immediately there arises in our politics a wool power to send
lobbyists to Washington, to secure the nomination and election of
members of Congress, to exert an influence upon party organization and
conventions and to contribute to polite ical corruption funds. We put
a duty on iron and at once there arises an iron power to log-roll and
bulldoze, to bribe and corrupt, to use our politics in every way for
the defense or promotion of its special interests, and uniting with
other special interests of the same kind to exert such influence on
the organs of public education and opinion as to make the great body
of the American people actually believe that the way to make a people
rich is to tax them. We interfere with the industry of making cigars
by imposing an internal revenue tax on cigars, and as a consequence we
have a league of cigar manufacturers ready to spend money and to
exert political influence to maintain the tax, which, by concentrating
business, gives them larger profits. The match industry is
comparatively very small; yet the tax on matches imposed during the
war begot a match power which though not large enough to cut any
figure in the politics of the country at large, was sufficient to be
perceptible at Washington when the question of reducing taxes came up.
Or, to take a case where the popular reason for the restriction is of
the same kind as that for restriction on the manufacture and sale of
liquor, we have put a high duty on opium. Hence the growth of a
combination or combinations on the Pacific Coast, making some millions
a year by smuggling opium. To make sure of the retention of the duty
and keep in place officials blind eyed to the operations of the
smugglers, the pecuniary interest thus created must take part in
politics - for under our system the power to get votes and to manage
conventions is the foundation of the power to make laws and secure
appointments.
If such be the effects of simple restrictions what must be the effect
of such restrictions as we impose on the manufacture and sale of
intoxicating liquors. What would they be on any other business? There
are people who believe the wearing of corsets a deleterious habit,
greatly injurious to American women. Others contend that wearing
corsets in moderation is harmless if not helpful, and that it is only
the excess of tight lacing that is injurious. But without concerning
ourselves with this we can readily imagine the effects of applying to
the corset business the restrictions now imposed on the liquor
business.
If the Federal Government were to put such a tax on the manufacture
of corsets as it does on whiskey, we would soon have a corset ring,
with large pecuniary interests in the retention of the tax, in the
rulings of the department, and in the appointment of internal revenue
officials.
If corset selling were restricted by licenses as is liquor selling,
the privilege would become valuable, and its holders have reason to "keep
solid" with the dominant party. Where it was prohibited, illicit
sales, it is risking nothing to predict, would still go on. These
illicit sellers would all the more need the favor and connivance of
officials owing their places to politics, and must therefore use their
influence and spend their money in politics.
Just what would thus follow from corset restrictions has followed
from liquor restrictions. The effect of the tax on the manufacture of
liquor is to concentrate the business in the hands of larger capitals
and stronger men, and to make evasions a source of great profit. It is
thus directly to concern large pecuniary interests in politics, in
order to maintain the tax and to influence or control the officials
concerned with its administration.
This is the genesis of the American whiskey ring, which sprung into
the most pernicious activity with the imposition of the two dollar per
gallon tax,- a tax which led to the most wide-spread political
debauchery and corruption. The reduction of this tax to fifty cents a
gallon - accomplished against the efforts of the ring - has greatly
reduced this corruption and lessened the political influence of the
whiskey ring.
But it still exists, as it will exist while the tax on liquor remains
a potent factor in national legislation, bringing its money and its
influence into all elections where its interests are even remotely
affected. Here is what Hon. Earnest H. Crosby, in an article in the
May Forum, entitled "The saloon as a political power,"
has to say of one branch of it:
"The brewers deserve special notice. Their immense
wealth gives them opportunities for wholesale bribery. They raise
enormous funds for use in all canvasses in which the temperance
issue is raised. But the brewers have a greater power than mere
riches. Each brewery has a large number of beer-shops under its
direct control. They select men-of-straw, provide the money to
establish them in business, and take back chattel mortgages on the
saloon fixtures. They thus gain absolute possession of the
mortgagor, body and soul, and he follows their directions in
politics implicitly. One firm of brewers in a leading city holds six
hundred chattel mortgages of this kind, aggregating $310,134 in
value. Another has two hundred and eight, valued at $442,063. We can
see in a moment the concentration of power which such a system
affords. The saloons in order to rule must combine, and here is a
plan of combination already provided. One example will show how this
power is used. Two years ago the brewers in a strong Democratic
district determined to send an attorney of theirs, Sir. A. P. Fitch,
to Congress. They secured the Republican nomination for him. The
-Democratic bar-rooms were ordered to support him, and he was
elected. While serving his term in Congress, the Mills Bill, leaning
toward free trade, came up for consideration. The brewers were in
favor of reducing the surplus in this way, as they desired the
internal revenue to remain untouched. Mr. Fitch left his party and
voted for the Mills Bill. The brewers turned to, obtained the
Democratic nomination for him, and elected him again in the same
district."
Not entirely the brewers. Men like myself voted for Mr. Fitch, as we
always will vote in favor of a Republican who inclines to free trade,
or indeed a Republican protectionist, as against a Democratic
protectionist. As to the political influence of the liquor power in
New York Mr. Crosby is right. It was thrown against me in solid mass
when I ran for mayor in 1886. A deputation came to me to ask what my
course if elected would be. My reply was that so far as it might
devolve on me, I would enforce the law without fear and without favor.
But I have no reason to think that this had any effect on the action
of the liquor men. They supported Mr. Hewitt because the Excise
Commissioners and the Police Department were in his favor.
It is high time that these brewers were brought to their senses. They
sustain the internal revenue system because it keeps others from
competing with their monopoly, and also because they buy their revenue
stamps at wholesale, at seven and one-half per cent, discount, and
charge them to their customers at par. One well-known firm is said to
make $28,000 a year by this arrangement. In their effort to preserve
the internal revenue, the brewers support tariff reduction, and even
free trade; but only in so far as it does not injure them.
In Great Britain the excise system has produced the same effects -
the concentration of the business, the accumulation of enormous
fortunes, the control of public houses by brewers and distillers and
the building up of a political power which is a bulwark of Tory
conservatism and an obstacle to all real reform and advance.
To tax liquor is inevitably to call a "rum power" into
politics. Where the liquor sellers do not throw their money and
influence into politics of their own volition they are forced to do
so. In New York, for instance, the influence and the contributions of
the liquor sellers are controlled by the party of factions that
control the excise commissioners and the police department, and the
liquor sellers are compelled to use their influence and give their
money at every election. Indictments are found for violations of
excise regulations and corded up in pigeon holes by the thousand,
never to be taken down unless the saloon keeper is recalcitrant, while
spasmodic raids and arrests enforce the necessity of keeping on the
good side of the powers that be.
And besides the work that is compelled and the "voluntary
contributions" that are exacted for party, there is special
service and ransom to individual officials and- politicians. This is
one of the reasons why such enormous amounts of money are spent in New
York even in trivial election contests and why officials grow rich on
small salaries. This enormous liquor influence, organized,
disciplined, and controlled through the very laws intended to lessen
the evils of intemperance, is one of the great agencies which have
made democratic government in the true sense of the term as
nonexistent in New York as in Constantinople.
As it is in New York so is it in degree at least in other cities.
Where licenses are limited in number they become but the more
valuable. When they are raised in price the number of unlicensed
liquor sellers who are even more under the control of corrupt
politicians than are the licensed ones, increase.
In Philadelphia the adoption of high license and the placing of the
power to grant licenses in the hands of judges of the courts has
produced remarkable results in diminishing intemperance and crimes
growing out of it. But "a new broom sweeps clean." And
whether the ultimate result in this respect be good or bad, it is
certain that in the long run the political power growing out of the
liquor business will not be diminished, and that the pecuniary
interests involved in the traffic will enter into the nomination and
election of judges.
Prohibition puts liquor selling under the ban of the law. Hence where
liquor selling continues, as it does in every prohibition State, it
must be by connivance of officials and by favor of politicians. Thus
the work and the money of the illegal liquor sellers build up a "rum
power" relatively stronger than where restriction has not been
carried to the length of prohibition. In Maine, where prohibition has
been longest tried, it is said to be the control of the illicit
sellers of liquor which keeps the State in the hands of the Republican
party - not because it is the Republican party, of course, but because
it is the party in power.
In Iowa, where ingenuity seems to have exhausted itself in framing
legal provisions to absolutely prevent either the manufacture or the
sale of liquor, the returns of the United States Commissioner of
Internal Revenue show that United States license taxes were paid
during the last fiscal year by 7 rectifiers, 25 wholesale liquor
dealers, 2,758 retail liquor dealers, 41 brewers, 50 wholesale dealers
in malt liquors and 223 retail dealers. These people did not pay
United States special taxes out of patriotism. If so many of them paid
these United States taxes, how much must they, and the far greater
number not thus returned (the proportion of 41 brewers and 50
wholesale dealers to 223 retail beer sellers is very significant),
have paid as hush money and political subscriptions.
The more carefully the subject is examined the more clear I think it
will appear that to eliminate the "rum power" as a
corrupting element in our politics by restrictive laws is hopeless. On
the contrary it is restriction that brings it into our politics. There
is only one way of eliminating it from politics, and that is by doing
away with all restrictions, from Federal tax to municipal license, and
permitting "free trade in rum."
To many people this will seem like saying that the only way of
getting rid of the trouble of keeping pigs out of a garden is to throw
down the fences and let them root at will. Others will see in the
increase of intemperance which they will associate with free trade in
liquor, greater evils than the corrupting political influence of the "rum
power." Yet even if this be so, it is at least worth while to see
that in attempting to cure one evil by restriction we are creating
another.
But is it so? To abolish all taxes on liquor would be to make liquor
cheap and easily obtained. But would this be to increase drunkenness?
Is there more intemperance in countries where liquor is relatively
cheap than in countries where it is very dear? Did the two dollar tax
on whiskey lessen drunkenness? Did the reduction to fifty cents
increase it? Is there more drunkenness among the rich whose power to
purchase all they want is not lessened by the artificial enhancement
in the cost of liquor than there is among the poor, on whose power to
purchase this enhancement must most seriously tell? Is it not
notorious that men too poor to get proper food, clothing, shelter for
themselves and their families do still manage to get drunk? And among
the temperate men or total abstainers who read this page, is there one
whose abstinence is due to the costliness of liquor?
All our restriction, even to the point of absolute legal prohibition,
does not, except perhaps in some places to strangers and in some small
communities, really prevent the man who wants liquor from getting it.
Where it even closes the open saloon it only substitutes for it the
drug store, the club room, the back door and the kitchen bar.
On one Sunday in New York I had to ride from the upper end of the
island to the Astor House to get a little liquor for medicinal
purposes, but it was only because one of the periodical raids against
Sunday selling was on, that I was a stranger, and perhaps that I
looked like a temperance man. People known to the saloon keepers or
druggists could get all they wanted. I have never lived in a
prohibition State, but I have never been in one where there seemed any
difficulty in getting liquor. In Burlington, Iowa, I saw saloons
openly doing business; in De Moines, I saw young men drunk in the hall
of the principal hotel at mid-day; in Lewiston, Maine, I was recently
told that there were some three hundred places where liquor was sold,
mostly kitchen bars; and in a Vermont town a prosecuting attorney,
even then prosecuting some offenses against the prohibitory law, took
me into his back room and producing a bottle and glasses from a closet
and setting them on the table remarked, "It is against the law to
sell or to give liquor as a beverage, but there is no law to prevent a
man from taking it if he sees it lying around."
But the artificial enhancement in the cost of liquor by taxation and
restriction does have the effect of promoting adulteration. With no
tax whatever upon spirits they would be too cheap to make adulteration
pay. But every artificial increase in cost is a premium on the
substitution of poisonous mixtures for the pure article. The abuse of
liquor is bad enough; but there can be no question that much of the
evil that is attributed to liquor is due to adulterations not really
entitled to the name. Dr. Willard H. Morse, in the North American
Review, says: "If two puppies are fed, the one on the whiskey
of the saloons, and the other on the purest product of distillation,
the autopsy of the former will show a diseased brain, while the brain
of the latter will be found to be normal." Drug store whiskey is
reputed worse than saloon whiskey, and the worst whiskey of all is
said to be prohibition whiskey.
And the effect of these poisonous adulterations which our
restrictions promote and encourage is, it must be remembered, not
merely to make the drinking habit more deadly, it is to produce a
quicker and stronger craving on the part of those who partake of the
stuff, and thus to make confirmed drinkers - to produce a diseased
condition of body and mind which urges the victim to satisfy the
insane craving at all risks and costs.
That the abolition of all taxes on the manufacture and sale of liquor
would increase the consumption of liquor is doubtless true. It would
increase its consumption in the arts and for domestic purposes; but
that it would increase its consumption as a beverage is not so clear.
For there are certain exceptions to the general rule that consumption
is inverse to cost. Where a depraved appetite is the cause of
consumption no increase of cost that we have found practicable, will
reduce consumption, and where ostentation prompts consumption,
decrease of cost is apt to lessen it. If invention were to reduce the
cost of diamonds to a cent or two a pound their consumption in the
arts would much increase, but their consumption for personal adornment
would cease. Where sturgeon are scarce and costly, their meat is
esteemed a delicacy and placed before guests; where they are very
plenty and cheap they are thrown out of the nets or fed to pigs.
The most ardent temperance men, whether favoring high license or
prohibition, will not contend that in the present conditions of
society it is possible by any amount of legal restriction to prevent
liquor drinking. But they will contend that restriction tends to
discourage the formation of the drinking habit, by lessening the
temptations to begin it.
Now the great agencies in the formation of the drinking habit are
social entertainment, the custom of treating, and the enticements of
the saloon.
Does restriction tend in the slightest degree to discourage the
setting of liquor before guests in private houses and at social
entertainments? There is probably less of this in the prohibition
States than in the non-prohibition States, and there is certainly less
of it now in all sections than there was in preceding generations when
the restrictions were less or did not exist. But this is not because
of prohibition or restriction, but because of the stronger moral
sentiment against liquor drinking, and of which the restriction or
prohibition is one of the manifestations. No man disposed to drink or
to set drink before others in private, refrains from doing so because
of any statute law. Legislatures may impose penalties, but they have
no power to make people think wrong what before they deemed right.
Prohibition may have some little effect on public and official
entertainments, and the increased cost of liquor may have some effect
in preventing it being set before guests. But on the other hand the
prohibition of what is not felt to be wrong in itself provokes a
certain disposition to it, and the greater costliness of a thing
prompts the offering of it to those we would compliment. The treating
habit which springs from a desire to compliment or to return a
compliment, is certainly strengthened by the costliness of liquor.
Millionaires do not ask each other to go out and take ten cents' worth
of whiskey or five cents' worth of beer when they want to be
complimentary or sociable. But men to whom five or ten cents is an
object do, and unless the treat is in discharge or recognition of some
obligation they feel themselves bound to return it in kind.
Now with liquor so cheap as it would be if there were no tax or
restriction on its manufacture and sale, the treating habit would
certainly be largely weakened. If whiskey were as cheap as water, it
would entirely die out. Who thinks of treating another to water, or
feels the refusal of another to empty a glass of water into his
stomach a slight; or imagines that because one man offers a glass of
water to each of a party that each one of the party must in his turn
offer a glass of water to all the others?
As for the saloon, the license system makes it more gorgeous and
enticing; while prohibition drives it into lower and viler forms. What
really would be the effect of absolute free trade in liquor? At first
blush it may seem as if it would be to enormously multiply saloons. On
second consideration it will seem more likely that it would utterly
destroy them. This is certain, that if anywhere that saloons exist a
proposition were made to do away with all tax, license, or
restriction, the saloon keepers would be its most bitter opponents.
And they would quickly assign the reason, "If everybody were free
to sell liquor we would have to go out of the business."
The liquor saloon as we know it is a specialization which can only
exist by the concentration of business which restriction causes. Were
liquor as cheap as it would be were all taxes on it removed, and were
everyone free to sell it, it might be sold in every hotel, in every
boarding or lodging house, in every restaurant, druggist's, bakery,
confectionery, grocery, dry-goods store, or peanut-stand, but places
specially devoted to its sale could not be paved with silver dollars,
or ornamented with costly paintings, or set fine free lunches, or
provide free concerts, even if indeed they could continue to exist.
And where liquor was sold in connection with food, entertainment, or
other things, and at the prices which free competition would compel,
it would not pay to let men drink themselves into intoxication or
semi-intoxication or in any way to provoke or encourage the drinking
habit.
In short, I believe that examination will show that the sweeping away
of all taxes and restrictions, would not only destroy the "rum
power" in our politics, but would much decrease intemperance.
And this view has the support of one of the keenest of observers.
Adam Smith, who treats this matter at some length in Chap. 3, Book IV,
of the Wealth of Nations, says:
"If we consult experience, the cheapness of wine
seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The
inhabitants of the wine countries are in general the soberest people
in Europe. "People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their
daily fare. Nobody affects the character of liberality and good
fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is cheap as small
beer. "When a French regiment comes from some of the northern
provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in
the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have
frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched by the
cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months'
residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of
the inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises
upon malt, beer, and ale to be taken away all at once, it might, in
the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and
temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of
people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and
almost universal sobriety."
"Almost universal sobriety," wrote Adam Smith in Kirkaldy,
somewhere in the early seventies of the eighteenth century. Writing as
the wonderful nineteenth century nears its final decade and in the
great metropolis of a mighty nation then unborn, I can say no more, if
as much. The temperance question does not stand alone. It is related -
nay, it is but a phase, of the great social question. By abolishing
liquor taxes and licenses we may drive the "rum power" out
of politics, and somewhat, I think, lessen intemperance. Thus we may
get rid of an obstacle to the improvement of social conditions and
increase the effective force that demands improvement. But without the
improvement of social conditions we cannot hope to abolish
intemperance. Intemperance today springs mainly from that unjust
distribution of wealth which gives to some less and to others more
than they have fairly earned. Among the masses it is fed by hard and
monotonous toil, or the still more straining and demoralizing search
for leave to toil; by overtasked muscles and overstrained nerves, and
under-nurtured bodies; by the poverty which makes men afraid to marry
and sets little children at work, and crowds families into the rooms
of tenement houses; which stints the nobler and brings out the baser
qualities; and in full tide of the highest civilization the world has
yet seen, robs life of poetry and glory of beauty and joy. Among the
classes it finds its victims in those from whom the obligation to
exertion has been artificially lifted; who are born to enjoy the
results of labor without doing any labor, and in whom the lack of
stimulus to healthy exertion causes moral obesity, and consumption
without the need of productive work breeds satiety. Intemperance is
abnormal. It is the vice of those who are starved and those who are
gorged.
Free trade in liquor would tend to reduce it, but could not abolish
it. But free trade in everything would. I do not mean a sneaking,
half-hearted, and half-witted "tariff reform," but that
absolute, thorough free trade, which would not only abolish the custom
house and the excise, but would do away with every tax on the products
of labor and every restriction on the exertion of labor, and would
leave everyone free to do whatever did not infringe the ten
commandments.
A year before the "Wealth of Nations" was published, Thomas
Spence, of Newcastle, in a lecture before the philosophical society of
that place, thus pictured such a state of things:
"Then you may behold the rent which the people have
paid into the parish treasuries, employed by each parish in paying
the government its share of the sum which the parliament or national
congress at any time grants; in maintaining and relieving its own
poor and people out of work; in paying the necessary officers their
salaries; in building, repairing, and adorning its houses, bridges,
and other structures; in making and maintaining convenient and
delightful streets, highways, and passages, both for foot and
carriages; in making and maintaining canals, and other conveniences
for trade and navigation; in planting and taking in waste grounds;
in providing and keeping up a magazine of ammunition, and all sorts
of arms sufficient for all its inhabitants in case of danger from
enemies; in premiums for the encouragement of agriculture, or
anything else, thought worthy of encouragement; and, in a word, in
doing whatever the people think proper; and not, as formerly, to
support and spread luxury, pride, and all manner of vice. "There
are no 'tools or taxes of any kind paid among them by native or
foreigner but the aforesaid rent, which every person pays to parish,
according to the quantity, quality, and conveniences of the land,
housing, etc., which he occupies in it. The government, poor roads,
etc., as said before, are all maintained by the parishes with the
rent, on which account all wares, manufacturers, allowable trade
employments or actions are entirely duty free. Freedom to do
anything whatever cannot there be bought; a thing is either entirely
prohibited, as theft or murder, or entirely free to everyone without
tax or price."
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