Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 39, Number 112, 21 March 1914 — Page 2

RICHMOND PALLADIUM AND SUN-TELEGRAM. SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1914

IE THGE1 BW-A-BOO? On another page we review the other issues of this campaign. On this page we wish to review the most important issue the isue of whether voting Richmond "dry" would increase or decrease the menace of the liquor traffic. When this campaign began and the issue of blind tigers was raised the "dry" forces pooh-poohed the menace of blind tigers. Since then they have been forced to admit that blind tigers would exist and they have announced that they will raise a fund of money to put blind tigers out of business, after they close the saloons. They have argued that any community which has enough strength to close saloons has enough strength to abolish blind tigers. They seem to overlook the fact that closing the licensed saloon is only a matter of going to the polls and voting, while closing the blind tiger is a matter of collecting a vast amount of evidence that proves not only sale of liquor but its illegal sale. They overlook the fact that after they have the evidence they must also have public sentiment unusually aroused, they must have all the officers of law and all the court machinery and all the juries; this requires constant expenditure of time, money and trained work. If it is so easy to drive out blind tigers why is it that not a jury in Wayne county has even convicted a blind tiger proprietor who fought his conviction? The only convictions in this county and city have been those of petty bootleggers who pleaded guilty and didn't fight. If it is easy to drive out blind tigers why do they exist in increasing numbers each year in Bloomington, Kokomo, Columbus, Winchester and Marion, all "dry" for years and with as good citizens and courts as we have here?

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5 Whiskey Joints off Marion 1

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Tn answer to fhe startling information from the records of the Internal Revenue Office that 105 "retail liquor dealers" are paying Uncle Sam a government tax the "Citizens' Committee" announced last night that the new Mayor of Marion had driven these out In the past three months and he will be here Sunday to explain it. This is a confession, then, that "dry" Marion, the model city, has been a hell-hole of whisky joints for years. Then why all the literature telling how being "dry" has boomed Marion? And what excuse is offered for "dry" Marion being ruled by blind tigers and whisky joints for five years, up to January this year?

Moreover this new mayor hasn't cleaned up the city. If he comes here Sunday and says he has we will on Monday compare his statements with the court records of Marion and he will be called upon to explain which lies he or the records. If he comes Sunday and doesn't claim to have cleaned the city he would better stay away for the poor drys have enough mistakes to explain now. And he might also explain why nothing was done until he was elected mayor. Is he the only decent citizen in Marion? What will the city do if he should die? Where has the prosecutor been all these five years? Where have the grand juries been for five years

Above all, where were the people who have been writing letters telling how Marion was the driest town in the United States? Where were the people who voted out the saloons? Where was the Marion Chronicle with the implacable foe of liquor as editor? Why did not the public sentiment that is going to operate here, operate in Marion? Why did not the people who must have known of the hotels and pool rooms and houses of prostitution go before the grand jury? Why did they wait five years for a Mr. Batchelor? Where was Marion's police force? v Must Richmond put through iive such years, if the saloons close? -

Oh by no means! Because there is the "Citizens' Committee." There are Prof. Russell and Mr. Pettijohn and Prof. Ramsay. They will see to it that Richmond boys arc in no danger of blind tigers. Well, let's look the matter in the face, for the sake of President Kelly's boy and your boy. These men have claimed for weeks the open, licensed saloons here have been

selling to minors. They publicly announced they had affidavits to prove it. When called upon to submit them, they couldn't do it. They said it was because the boys didn't want their names known. These boys, to quote from their own ad of yesterday, "named two saloons the only places for a decent fellow to go," yet they wouldn't make any affidavits because they feared the shame of publicity.

Granting that this is so, which it is not, what woild happen if, instead of being two saloons, "the only places for a decent fellow to go," it had been two blind tigers, two whiskey dumps, two bawdy houses like the Marion district? How many affidavits would these men have secured? How many boys once caught in the hell holes of a blind tiger along with the male degenerate and the common prostitute are going to make public their disgrace?

If Prof. Russell and the "Citizens' Committee" after working for weeks to get affidavits from boys which they claim are buying liquor in respectable saloons succeed in getting only one affidavit and that from a blind boy who claims he saw women in a saloon owned by a man who had been dead for months, with what success will they meet when they go up against the craftiness and the degeneracy of the whisky joint, where it is next to impossible for expert officers to get evidence? If public opinion in "dry" Marion let the boys and girls of Marion go to hell for five years, via the blind tiger route, without becoming sufficiently aroused or interested to go

before a grand jury and tell the truth, how long will public opinion lay dormant in Richmond? If the compact, well-financed "dry" organization in this city, during the heat of a local option campaign, following a five weeks' revival that stirred the city, cannot get a single affidavit to prove even one of the hundreds of cases of illegal selling which they CLAIM exist, what reason have you to believe that after they have disbanded, after the heat of the fight is over, after sentiment has cooled off, it will be easy or even possible for one of them to go out single handed and drive out the blind tigers which they now admit will surely come?

Do You Want to Expose Your Boy to this ED&ogeir? Are the Blind Tigers a, Bugst3oo? Wouldn't You Prefer the Regulated Saloonc that Must Do Their Business in the Open in the Pitiless Light of Publicity?

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