As the law now stands, it not only permits liquor selling on Sunday by legitimate hotels; but has brought into being to share that permission the "Raines Law Hotel," the proprietor of which is fined $500 to $1,500 per year unless he panders to lust as well as thirst, and the popular name of which as just quoted, connoting as it does the worst possible combine of the most degrading vices, has become an epithet that carries with it more of foul implication than any other term by which the hold-door trade has ever been branded.

The issue of State-Blackmailed Vice is as plainly "up to" Mr. Platt as was lately City-Blackmailed Vice "up to" Mr. Croker. He is neither so stupid as not to know the situation, nor so palsied that he cannot handle it. And just as, without caring whether or not Mr. Croker personally liked the unspeakable conditions prevailing in his Sullivan satrapy, he was loaded with the infamy he permitted until his political back was broken; so, whether or not Mr. Platt would incite law breaking, drunkenness and prostitution except as means to other ends; yet so long as he thus permits and uses them, he must stand as the champion alike of political corruption and social vice, and suffer the consequences as fast as his own party shall realize it. As to the Governor: It will be time enough to hail him as a deliverer when he shall have permitted himself to be billed in that role.

ENFORCE THE LAW.

By M. N. CLEMENT.

NOTE.-It should be understood that the suggestions I make upon the excise problem represent my individual views as a citizen, and that I do not assume to speak on this occasion for the State Commissioner of Excise.

It is the settled policy of the Department of Excise not to exploit or oppose excise legislation. We recognize that our functions are not to enact law, but to administer it as we find it.

The Raines Law-Its Provisions.

The liquor law is not well understood. The number of provisions that have been discussed and criticised, which are not in the law at all, is both astounding and amusing. It has been most condemned for what it does not contain; for changes in the excise system of the state that have not been made, and for evils and abuses which exist, not because of the law, but in spite of it, because of its non-enforcement.

The excise question is not a new problem. Excise legislation and excise abuses have vexed New York state and city since the settlement of the commonwealth. From the enactment of 1857 to the so-called Tammany Act of 1892, more than one hundred excise laws were passed and amended. As to conditions existing under the law of 1892 and previous statutes, I beg to quote from the report in 1898 of the sub-committee of the Committee of Fifty, composed of Mayor Low and other distinguished citizens, formed to investigate the liquor problem: "The points to be emphasized are that liquor laws were held in contempt and not enforced." We should bear in mind, therefore, that the excise problem is of long standing, and the more serious abuses which pertain to it are of a decidedly chronic character.

It is said, however, that the liquor tax law is the cause of a most serious condition which exists to-day in a particularly aggravated form in this city-the disorderly house nuisance in connection with the hotel business. The present law defines a hotel, if in a city, to be

a house having at least ten rooms for guests. This provision has been loaded with opprobrium as being the direct cause of all the disorderly hotel nuisances that have existed in the State of New York during the last five years. Yet the excise law of 1892 contained practically the same provisions. The change in details under the new law, as to size of rooms, furnishings, partitions, windows, light and air rendered the existence of sham hotels even more difficult than under the old law.

The evidence is overwhelming, and, so far as I know, undisputed, that, under the Act of 1892, the places trafficking in liquors to be drunk upon the premises where sold, numbering 7,841, in the old city of New York, now the Boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, did business on Sunday, almost without exception, many of them openly, others through the side or back entrance. Why should there have been so marked an increase in the ratio of hotels and a corresponding decrease in that of saloons under the new law? Simply because the Raines Law contained a provision requiring the removal of all screens and curtains from the windows of barrooms during Sunday and prohibited hours, which rendered the continuance of Sunday traffic in saloons impracticable, if not impossible. This, and the fear that the provisions more clearly defining the duty of police and prosecuting officials and providing severe penalties for the neglect of duty, might stimulate greater official activity induced saloonkeepers to get farther under cover, not to attempt to secure new privileges, but the better to insure the continuance of Sunday business, which they had conducted without let or hindrance under the Act of 1892. The Raines law also made it unlawful to maintain any stall or booth in any saloon or place where liquors were sold, thus destroying the places provided in saloons for disorderly practices.

The disorderly nuisance in connection with Sunday traffic in liquors has changed its form, I grant you, but I insist it has not increased its substance; on the contrary, it has decreased in number in practically the same ratio as drinking places have decreased under the Raines Law. Before the present law was enacted the Sunday saloon-and all were then Sunday saloons-had stalls and boxes, having doors with inside bolts and no outside knob, accessible by the family or side entrance. That was the predecessor of the Raines. law hotel. The disorderly Sunday nuisances existed in this guise

under the old law, and have been continued as so-called "Raines law hotels," not because of the law, but because of corruption, indifference and incompetency on the part of police and prosecuting officers. Such conditions cannot continue to exist anywhere in the state under the present law in an honest official atmosphere.

Can the Law be Enforced?

From personal experience during six years as district attorney under the former law, I unhesitatingly say, yes. From the success of the department of excise in compelling the 28,000 liquor dealers of the state to comply with the law by payment of the enormous tax of over twelve millions annually, and from our successful prosecution of hundreds of civil actions and proceedings under the law, before courts and juries alike, I say most emphatically that the law can be enforced. Not long since, a certain police official of this city, who took his oath of office seriously, demonstrated that the excise law could be enforced, and it did not injure him or his party, notwithstanding the dire prophecy of weak-kneed advisers, who would serve expediency rather than duty. If there is any doubt about this, a letter of inquiry addressed to the President of the United States would without doubt bring a prompt and convincing response, which might properly be entitled, "Wild political prophets I have known."

Who Demand Sunday Opening?

Whence this demand for unrestricted traffic in liquors during a part of Sunday? I am aware that it is made in the name of labor, but when or where has organized labor expressed any desire in this direction? The demand of labor for the privilege of patronizing the Sunday saloon is conspicuous by its absence. The man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow and has a wife and children depending on him is not clamoring for greater opportunity to spend more of his meager earnings for drink, and less for family supplies than the six days of open trade now furnish. He is already prohibited by law from the purchase of any of the necessaries of life for himself and family, and he does not seem to clamor for a chance to spend more of his earnings for liquor, and less for the dependent ones at home, for whom he is responsible. I speak for the manly, industrious laborer, who wants and readily finds plenty of work, for the toiler in humble life who has the decent instincts of the hus band and father, and not for the hanger-on of saloons who has no

work and wants none. Is he calling for more beer and less meat, less coal and less clothing?

What then is the source of this so-called demand for enlarged privileges for a traffic which the courts of this state, from the highest to the lowest, have, from time immemorial, branded as a business dangerous to public morals and involving public burdens? It recalls the old story: "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are hands of Esau." The demand is urged in the name of labor, but the hands are the hands of the manufacturers, the brewers, who are anxious to have a monopoly of the trade of the wageearner, while the doors of the grocery, the market and the store, which his family needs, are closed by law.

A Moral Question at Issue.

We might as well face the question squarely. The trade that produces the greater proportion of pauperism and crime in our midst wants unlimited license. They pay to the state now over twelve million dollars annually for the privilege of putting their products on the market six days in the week, and of selling to the actual guests in bona-fide hotels and in clubs organized prior to March 23, 1896, on Sunday. And they now want more of the day which has been set apart for rest and worship, and are undoubtedly willing, as they are unquestionably able, to pay for it. Is God's holy day in the market, and what shall the price be? How much added tax should be imposed to offset the damage that will accrue to society? Many good men have been shocked at the mere charge of commercialism in politics, even without proof, but this goes much further. This is clearly a question of commercialism in morals. What will the right-thinking men and women of the Empire State, and of this imperial city say? What will the wives and children of labor, to whom it means less comiort and more misery, say?

If this is to be the result of the recent overwhelming victory in the name of reform in this great city, may we not learn in the end that it was obtained at too great a cost? It means turning the hands on the dial of progress toward better government backward, else our traditions, law and policy of government have been wrong for more than two hundred years. It has been said that if this concession be not made, then in two years the reform administration will be swept from power. Will there be those in the State of New York,