Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1889. In a parched voice, Journal editors call for Prohibition repeal

"MEN OF RHODE ISLAND, which shall be stronger, the State or the Saloon? It rests with you to decide."

That rhetoric from a front-page political advertisement in June 1889 implored voters to retain the state's 1886 constitutional amendment that had outlawed alcoholic beverages in Rhode Island -- a generation before the full United States experimented with prohibition.

Opponents had complained that the state's prohibition wasn't working, and a vote to repeal the amendment had been scheduled for June 20, 1889.

The temperance lobby advertised hard in The Journal to give prohibition more time. One of its ads ran at the top of Page One three days before the repeal vote. The ad was addressed: "To the voters of Rhode Island."

"Three years ago, you decided by 6000 majority, to annihilate that standing menace to happiness, sobriety and social order -- the liquor saloon. Has your will, as expressed so emphatically at the polls, been carried out? Does any man among you consider that an honest and vigorous attempt has been made to enforce the mandate of the people?"

The temperance ad accused the liquor industry of working to thwart the will of the voters. The ad offered statistics from the Providence police to make the case for a dry Rhode Island: In the 2 1/2 years before the 1886 prohibition, the police recorded 11,035 arrests from drunkenness. In the 2 1/2 years afterward, drunkenness arrests had fallen to 9,054.

The next day, opponents of prohibition fought back with their own front-page advertisement:

"Official facts and figures speak more plainly than any argument as to the failure of the prohibitory amendment. The advocates of that amendment predicted and promised that its adoption would effect a marked decrease of taxation, of crime and of poverty. The official figures show that on the contrary, the result has been a marked increase . . ."

The Providence Journal had opposed prohibition in 1886, predicting it could not be enforced. Later the paper complained that prohibition merely forced saloons underground, where they were just as numerous but no longer under license, and the paper noted that residents had often voted out of office those officials who had tried hard to enforce the law.

On the day of the repeal vote, a Journal editorial allowed that prohibition might be enforceable under martial law or a "despotic" government. "But it cannot be done in a free country with representative institutions," the paper insisted. "Under such a Government as ours it is the will of the people which is at the bottom of all law, and which is itself the only supreme law."

The Journal the next day published a front-page chart reporting the referendum results from each community. Prohibition had been eliminated by a vote of 28,449 to 9,853.