Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1911 — DUG DEEPLY TO UNCOVER THE PROCTOR SALOON BILL. [ARTICLE]

DUG DEEPLY TO UNCOVER THE PROCTOR SALOON BILL.

Some Measures Took Their Order, But Things Effecting Saloons Were Boosted Right Along. The Proctor so-called “regulative and restrictive” saloon measure was dug out from beneath one hundred and fifty other bills last Saturday and signed by Governor Marshall. It had an emergency clause and the governor wanted to get it to working. It provided that at the first meeting of the commissioners after the law went into effect the commissioners sould decide upon the basis of saloons in each county. The commissioners could place it as one saloon for each 500 or one for pach 1,000 or any place between thM number. But they had to act at the first meeting after the law Went into effect and it was in effect the moment the governor signed it. He could have waited until Monday to sign it and thus have given commissioners and county attorneys a chance to have read the bill and discussed it, but the governor dug down deeply and signed this bill. This caused the state of Indiana to pay for a hundred telegrams which the governor sent out Monday notifying county auditors officially that he had made the Proctor bill a law. Governor Marshall don’t seem to give any thought to any measure himself and consequently don’t want any other officials to give any. The text of the law had not been officially printed and sent out or had not Monday, and yet the governor sent out telegrams telling county commissioners that he had signed a bill, making it a law and asking them to base their action on it, when the law had never been officially sent to any of them. Why could not the governor have waited until Monday to sign this bill? Most counties are placing the basis of saloons at one for every 1,000 and this is the action taken by the pommissioners of Jasper county. It will reduce the number of saloons, but will create a monopoly that will be of great value and will make about the best “boodling” scheme ever created by law in Indiana. Governor Marshall could see this if his sight was as keen as he thought it was two years ago. A saloon license in a restricted community can hot cost more than S7OO a year. It will be worth SIO,OOO in some places, and it can be bought and sold and run by an administrator and sold to h corporation and moved from one building to another. This is the sort of “restriction and regulation” that Proctor and the legislature gave and that the governor dug out from under a pile of other bills to sign. Poor Tom Marshall! Two years ago you really seemed to some people to be a temperance man. How you have fallen!