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Episode 21 - Concerning Excise · Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

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  Chapter twenty one concerning excise all the woman ought a drinking man myself, I'm
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  worn with the poor liquor dealers of New York City who are taxed and oppressed
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  for the benefit of the farmers up the state. The Rain's Liquor Law is
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  infamous. It takes away nearly all the profits of the saloon keepers and then
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  turns in a large part of the money to the state treasury to relieve the
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  hay seeds from taxes. Who knows how many honest, hard work and saloon
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  keepers have been driven to untimely graves by this law. I know personally of
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  a half dozen who committed suicide because they couldn't pay the enormous license fee,
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  and I've heard of many others. Every time there is an increase of the
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  fee, there is an increase in the suicide record of the city. Now,
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  some of these Republican hay seeds are talking about making the liquor tax fifteen
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  hundred dollars or even two thousand dollars a year. That would mean the suicide
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  of half of the liquor dealers in the city. Just see how these poor
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  fellows were oppressed all around. First, liquor is taxed in the hands of
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  the manufacturer by the United States government. Second, the wholesale dealer pays a
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  special tax to the government. Third, the retail dealer is specially taxed by
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  the United States government. Fourth, the retail dealer has to pay a big
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  tax to the state government. Now, liquor dealing is criminal or an ain't.
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  If it's criminal, the man engaged in it ought to be sent to
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  prison. If it ain't criminal, they ought to be protected and encouraged to
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  make all the profit they honestly can. If it's right to tax a saloon
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  keeper one thousand dollars, it's right to put a heavy tax on dealers and
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  other beverages in milk, for instance, and make the dairyman pay up.
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  But what a howl would be raised if a bill was introduced in Albany to
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  compel the farmers to help support the state government. What would be said of
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  a law that put a tax of say, sixty dollars on a grocer,
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  one hundred and fifty on a dry goods man, and five hundred more if
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  he includes the other goods that are kept in a country store. If the
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  rains law gave the money extorted from the saloon keepers to the city. There
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  might be some excuse for the tax. We would get some benefit from it,
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  but it gives a big part of the tax to local option localities where
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  the people are always shoutin that liquor dealon is immoral ought these good people be
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  subjected to the immoral influence of money taken from the saloon, tainted money.
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  Out of respect for the tender consciences of these pious people, the rains law
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  ought to exempt them from all contamination from the plunder that comes from the saloon
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  traffic. Say mark that sarcastic. Some people who ain't used to find sarcasm
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  might think I'm in it. The range people make a pretense that the high
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  license fee promotes temperance. It's just the other way around. It makes more
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  in temperance, and what is bad, it makes the monopoly in dram shops.
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  Soon the saloons will be in the hands of a vast trust and any
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  stuff can be sold for whisky or beer. It's getting that way already.
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  Some of the poor liquor dealers in my district have been forced to sell wood
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  alcohol for whisky, and many deaths have followed. A half dozen men died
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  in a couple of days from this kind of whisky which was forced down their
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  throats by the high liquor tax. If they raise the tax higher, wood
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  alcohol will be too costly, and I guess some dealers will have to get
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  down to kerosene oil and add to the Rockefeller millions. The way the Rains
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  law divides the different classes of licenses is also an outrage. The sumptuous hotel
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  saloons with ten thousand dollars paintings and bricky brack and oriental splendors gets off easier
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  than a shanty on the rocks by the water's edge in my district, where
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  boatmen drink their grog and the only ornaments is a three cornered mere nailed to
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  the wall and a chromo of the fight between Tom Hire and Yankee Sullivan.
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  Besides, a premium is put on places that sell liquor, not to be
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  drunk on the premises, but to be taken home. Now, I want
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  to declare that from my experience in New York City, I would rather see
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  rum sold in the dram shops unlicensed provided to rum is swallowed on the spot,
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  than to encourage by a low tax bucket shops from which the stuff is
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  carried into the tenements at all hours of the day and night, and make
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  drunkenness and debauchery among the women and children. A bucket shop in the tenements
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  district means a cheap so called distillery, where raw spirits, pois in this
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  color and matter and water are sold for brandy and whiskey at ten cents a
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  quart, and carried away in buckets and pitchers. I have always noticed that
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  there are many undertakers wherever the bucket shop flourishes, and they have no dull
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  seasons. I want to understood that I am not an advocate of the liquor
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  dealers or of drinking. I think every man would be better off if he
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  didn't take any intoxication drink at all. But as men will drink, they
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  ought to have good stuff without impoverishing themselves by going to fancy places, and
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  without risking death by going to poor places. The state should look after their
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  interests, as well as the interest of those who drink nothing stronger than milk.
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  Now, as to the liquor dealers themselves, they ain't criminals that cant
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  and himpcurts say they are. I know lots of them, and I know
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  that as a rule they're good, honest citizens who conduct their business in a
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  strait, honorable way. At a convention of the liquor dealers a few years
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  ago, a big city official welcomed then on behalf of this city, and
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  said, go on, elevating your standard higher and higher, go on with
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  your good work. Heaven will bless you. That was putting it just a
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  little strong, But this sentiment was all right. And I guess the speaker
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  would a bit further than he intended in his enthusiasm over meeting such a fine
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  set of men, perhaps dining with them. End of chapter twenty one.