Storied & Scandalous Portland, Oregon by Joe Streckert
Author:Joe Streckert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2019-12-20T16:00:00+00:00
PROHIBITION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
Prohibition in the United States did not come all at once. Before the nationwide ban on alcohol in 1919, cities, states, and counties took the initiative to ban the sale and manufacture of alcohol within their borders. This practice was known as the local option, and regional bans on alcohol mushroomed across the United States prior to the Eighteenth Amendment.
The debate wasn’t just a moral or ideological one. Prohibition opponents worried that banning alcohol would deprive governments of much-needed tax revenue, hamper local economies by eliminating the lucrative alcohol center, and hurt associated businesses such as coopers. Pharmacies also worried about new competition if saloons couldn’t sell alcohol, and feared ersatz dispensaries solely created to sell “medicinal” alcohol mushrooming up over the state.
One supporter of the local option was the Reverend F. W. Jones, a preacher from Philomath, Oregon. Jones, like many other prohibitionists, swept aside concerns about prohibition wrecking the local economy, and said that Oregon would be more, not less prosperous if it banned alcohol. His rhetoric binds moral and economic arguments together, and he characterizes total prohibition as an unambiguous good:
I will cite you instances right here in Oregon where town and counties have been benefitted by prohibition.
Take Corvallis, for instance. When the local option was submitted there, the usual cry went up that prohibition would kill the town and community. The untrue appeal was in vain and Corvallis and the county went dry. The next spring, $175,000 was invested in residences and other improvements . . . the investors being people who wanted to move to a city to educate their children, but who were determined not to move to a place where their children would be endangered by the demon rum. . . .The city is being improved, large sums are being spent on the roads, and taxes are lower than when they had to defray the expenses of criminal cases arising from liquor. . . .
All are prospering under prohibition to a greater extent than under the liquor regime. . . .
Don’t compromise in this great fight. The regulated saloon that the liquor men plead for when they recognize that they are being defeated by the mighty hosts of righteousness is a farce. The thing to do is to separate liquor from man entirely. . . . The only way to do this is by absolute prohibition. The other day, the Mayor of Myrtle Point came around to me and outlined what he thought would be the right kind of saloon, saying that if there aren’t saloons, there will be blind pigs. His plea was wrong, and I am right here to say the blind pigs can be driven out if the people and the officials are alert and ready to do their work.3
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