Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1918 — NO EFFORTS MADE BY OFFICIALS [ARTICLE]

NO EFFORTS MADE BY OFFICIALS

To Stop Operations of Fortune Teller Here. While The Democrat’s calling attention to the statute prohibiting the operations of fortune tellers, palmists and other like fakes in Indiana, resulted in the Republican dropping “Mlle. Zara’s” advertising, it is understood that she is still plying her vocation in Rensselaer and that Sunday a steady stream of young girls were seen going to her room to cross her palm with silver and have the hidden mysteries of the future revealed to them. No effort has been made by the mayor or the deputy prosecuting attorney, so far as The Democrat is informed, to put a stop to her operations -or to prosecute for the offenses already committed. In fact, she is said to have stated that she had a “permit” from the city to operate here; that she knew it was against the law and she only went to places where she could get a permit. < Of course the city nor none of its officials could grant any such permit legally. T’ cy could just as well grant permits far saloons, gambling houses and houses- of prostitution —all of which are against the laws of bur State. But it could give quassi consent by making no effort to stop them and letting them operate until some citizen raised up and filed an affidavit in court against their operation. This is apparently what has been done, and while the damage done to the gullible youth of our city and surrounding country may be almost beyond compute, to say nothing of the hundreds of dollars being taken out of the community through illegal means, those upon whom the duty of seeing that such infractions of the law are not permittct, sit back and say to the public: “If you want.it Stopped, file an affidavit.”