Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1893 — The State Sells Liquor. [ARTICLE]

The State Sells Liquor.

Sunday Worldjei Fair opening, such as it is, has proved a failure. The Sunday attendance does not average half the week day attendance, and grows less with each succeeding Sunday, and every Sunday a larger and still larger proportion of the exhibits are closed or covered up. The workingmen, in whose interest Sunday opening was chiefly advocated, do not attend, to any considerable extent. Various reasons are assigned for this failure of the workingmen to attend the Fair Sundays. .The best of these is probably to be found in the fact that, from the first, a very large proportion of the fair has been closed Sundays, and especially the machinery exhibit, which, to a large proportion of workingmen is the most interesting part of the exposition. Another valid reason is that the workingmen find that after a Sunday spent at the fair, they are tired out and not fitted for work the next day. The Chicago workingmenarenow making a concerted effort to have Saturday afternoon made a half holiday until the end of the exposition, the idea being that they can visit the fair Saturday afternoons and rest and recuperate the next day. In the meantime it now looks very much as though the directory would soon order the fair closed on Sundays, and that that was the best course they could pursue.

The new law in regard to liquor refreshments went into effect in South Carolina, July 1, and hereafter state dispensaries will take the place of saloons, and the profits will be turned into the state treasury. Under this law the state directly controls the liquor traffic. It will of course, be an experiment, and will have to be given a good trial before attempting a decision. It is such a radical change that it will take time to get it into proper shape. During the past two months the governor, accompanied by State Commissioner D. B. Traxler, has visited Louisville, Pittsburg, and other cities, and examined into the cost of the manufacture and sale of liquor in bottles. It is intended that the state shall retail only firstclass goods, without adulteration, and at a figure that shall net to the state treasury about the average profit of a first-class case. The new law provides that liquor can only be had at state dispensaries in charge of state officers, and in sealed packages of from half a pint to five gallons, which must not be opened on the premises where sold. The dispenser must be a total abstainer. Every ounce of alcoholic liquor sold within the state is to be purchased by the state Commissioners and the purity passed upon by the chemist of the South Carolina college. Drug stores are prohibited from selling intoxicating liquors of any description. . Dispensaries can only be located in a town upon a petition for their establishment, ssgm-d by a majority of the freehold voters. Of the profits one-half go to the county treasury and one-half to the municipal corporation where the dispensary is located. The saloon-keepers say that the law is Tillmanism of the most odious type, although for forty years it has been in successful operation in Norway. There are six prohibition counties in the state, where there will be no dispensaries. The practical workings of the law will be watched throughout

the entire country with a great deal of interest, and by all temperance people except political Prohibitionists, with great hopes for its success. - The political Prohibitionists as a class, don’t want any temperance reform except it comes in their own particular manner. One good result this system will undoubtedly accomplish if it is persevered in, and that is the practical abolishment of the pernicious habit of “treating.”