In England in the late 19th and (esp.) in the early 20th cent. reduction in numbers appears to have been decidedly more popular than local option prohibition as a strategy for temperance reform. Most of the proposals for reduction in numbers in proportion to population provided some kind of financial compensation for the license holders who lost their (nominally annual) licenses for no fault of their own. I don't recall that such financial compensation was offered in the USA. "High license" has some similiarity to what in England was called exaction of "monopoly value," so that licensed premises would have no more value than the same premises unlicensed.