Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1913 — DEMOTTE SALOON WILL HAVE TO CLOSE [ARTICLE]

DEMOTTE SALOON WILL HAVE TO CLOSE

Supreme Court Decision Will Close Saloons at DeMotte and Thayer —Wheatfield Remains Wet

A supreme court decision rendered Thursday will close the saloon which was recently opened at DeMotte by A. Konovsky, and Ben Fogli’s saloon at Thayer will also have to close. It will be remembered the commissioners of both Jasper and Newton counties fixed the unit at 1,000 of population before a license could be issued in any township. The law determines the population on the basis of 5 for each vote cast at the last election for any candidate. Fogli’s application was denied by the commissioners on the ground that his township did not have sufficient population. He appealed the ease to the Newton circuit court and Judge Hanley decided in his favor on the grounds that the law entitled a township to one saloon unless it voted “dry,” regardless of population. A short time after that the commissioners of Jasper county decided against Tilton, of Wheatfield, on the same grounds as the Newton county commissioners did against Fogli. An appeal was taken to the circuit court. Judge Hanley refused to try the case and the Knox circuit court decided in favor of Tilton and he was given a license.

Wheatfield township at the last general election cast 228 votes for governor and this multiplied by 5 will give a population of 1,140, which will entitle the township to one saloon. Keener township cast but 148 votes, which would make the population only 740, which will bar saloons in that township,’ Konovsky was granted a license for DeMotte at the last term of the commissioners’ court and only recently opened his saloon. Under the recent ruling of the state board of accounts that saloon license money cannot be returned after it is turned into the school fund, Konovsky may experience some difficulty in getting his license money back.

The supreme court decision holds that when the board of county commissioners fixed the number of inhabitants to a saloon at one thousand, no saloon license can be granted unless there are fully one thousand inhabitants in the unit of division more than those for the saloons already established. , The decision is made in holding that Jacob Ferguson could not compel the board of commissioners of Morgan county to grant him a license to sell liquor at Martinsville on a showing that he had filed his proper application, was a fit person to conduct a saloon and that the city of Martinsville had 6,375 inhabitants and only six saloons, the board of commissioners previously, by proper resolution, having adopted the one thousand popula-' tion unit for each saloon.

The court, in discussing the ease, says: “If relator’s (Ferguson’s) theory be correct, then if a municipal area embraces only one inhabitant, a license must, upon proper qualified application, issue, or if it contains 501 or 1,001 inhabitants, in case the limitation is imposed by boards of commissioners, two licenses may be issued.* Relator’s theory ignores the unit—the limitation as we understand it is one license for each one thousand inhabitants; that is, that the unit to entitle to a license must <be a full unit, and not a fraction, and that fractions of a unit are to be ignored. Any other construction would nullify the provisions of a statute which seems plain in intent, and in terms. If it had been intended to permit licenses for any fraction of a unit in population, it would have been easy by apt words to have so provided, and the fact that a unit of population 4s fixed, excludes a fraction in the absence of provisions therefore, for it is necessarily a declaration in itself that licenses shall be governed by the unit and not by fractions.”