THE REGULATION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. The endeavors to counteract or prevent the dangers incident to the traffic in intoxicants have found expression in a mass of legislation which in its main features may be reduced to three general types expressed in the words restriction, prohibition, and monopoly. I. RESTRICTIVE LEGISLATION. Since colonial days the selling of liquor, especially by the drink, has been regarded in the United States as a business which for the public good should be subject to restrictions and extraordinary taxation. The regulative measures adopted in the early days were chiefly designed to curb disorder arising from public intoxication and to provide a convenient source of revenue; but they contained in principle the germ of legislation out of which have grown the present-day elaborate license systems that set the liquor traffic apart from all other business and subject it to particular authority, specific limitations and restrictions, as well as to heavy taxation. The modern development of license laws followed upon the abandonment of the early experiments with prohibition. The consciousness of the drink evil, which had been awakened during the first general temperance movement and the subsequent agitation for prohibition, made it impossible to return to the former loose ways of private liquor selling. In Massachusetts this development occurred after two experiments with prohibition (1852-1868; 1869-1875). Since that time the laws of this Commonwealth as well as of other States have continuously been modified or expanded but with few additions of vital principles. The liquor legislation of Massachusetts, as well as that of some other States, has centered about these particular questions: (1) Taxation; (2) The limiting and classifying of li censes; (3) Licensing authorities; (4) General restrictions upon selling; (5) Local option, or permitting the local community to choose between license and prohibition. 1. Taxation. Although the taxation of licenses to sell liquor had long been recognized as an important source of revenue, the theory gained ground in the early eighties that the imposition of as high fees as the traffic can bear would prove a means of stopping excesses and promote order, on the assumption that the higher the fee the greater would be the likelihood of weeding out sellers of little financial responsibility and inferior standing and of placing a natural limitation on licensed places. The high license system, so called, was adopted as such by Massachusetts in 1888, and is in force to-day under various forms in most of the States that legalize liquor selling. 2. The Limiting and Classification of Licenses. Coupled with the question of high fees has always been that of classifying licenses primarily for fiscal purposes, but also with a view to a proper differentiation of the various kinds of traffic in liquor in the interests of public morality. Among measures intended to safeguard the public may be mentioned those adopted to prevent others than the legalized retailers from dispensing liquor as a beverage, to divorce the bottle and 'growler" trade from the sale of intoxicants by the drink, to permit the sale of fermented liquors alone at a reduced fee, etc. The Massachusetts high license act of 1888 contained a clause limiting the number of licenses to be issued to retailers in proportion to population (1 to 500 inhabitants in Boston, and 1 to 1,000 inhabitants elsewhere in the State). This statutory limitation of selling privileges has come into wide use in license States and in some places is accomplished through the adoption of local regulations. 3. Licensing Authorities. The choice of licensing authorities has invariably been one of the most controverted points in liquor legislation. On the one side has been demanded the selection of men as such author |