"
When the legislature finally adjourned the protestations that had been
wrung out of it promised much in the way of honest reorganization.
Harlan Thornton remained with Governor Waymouth for a time. His
Excellency found him indispensable.
The commissions were at work.
Office-holders whined, taxpayers squirmed. Honesty was greeted
everywhere by wry faces.
But the "Thornton law," its deputies superseding county and city
authority, was the bitterest political pill of all. The results
discouraged the righteous--Governor Waymouth predicted them accurately
with the old-age cynicism of one who understood human nature. The
flagrantly open places were closed. But innumerable dives thereby
secured the business which had gone to the open places in the days of
toleration. An army could not have closed the dives--the proprietors of
which, in most cases, carried their villanous concoctions on their
persons. Express companies were organized for the sole purpose of
dealing in liquors by the parcel system, and the State's liquor
agencies, established under the protection of the prohibitory law
itself, were besieged by patrons who stood in queues of humanity like
buyers at a theatre ticket-window.
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