Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1908 — $547,200 Annually Spent For Beer in One Little City. [ARTICLE]

$547,200 Annually Spent For Beer in One Little City.

10,944,000 Glasses a Year Drunk at Clinton—Has Only 1,788 Voters,

W. H. Blodgett, staff correspondent of the News, writing from Clinton, Ind., says: This is the home of "personal liberty”—the kind of "personal liberty’’ the brewers and saloon men like to prate about. And when I tell this story of “personal liberty,” It Is not told for a knock against Clinton, because a majority of the people of Clinton believe in law and order, and It would be found they are against the liquor traffic if a test were m^de. Every township in Vermillion county is "dry” except the township of Clinton,' and so overbearing and so dictatorial have the liquor Interests become here that the good people of the city are arranging to start a fight that will be the ending of the saloon traffic In Clinton. The city has a population of a little more than 6,200 and a voting population of 1,788. There is a large foreign element made up mostly of Italians, Slavs. Russians and a few other nationalities. This foreign element lives In a part of the city known as "Little Italy."™; Forty-One Saloons, 2,000 Foreigners. There are fourteen coal mines in and about Clinton, and the majority of the foreign element works In these mines. There are forty-one saloons In Clinton, and most of the money earned by these foreigners goes over the bars of these saloons. There are a few more than 2,000 foreigners. The figures I am about to give will astonish the people of Clinton themselves. lliey are well aware that there is considerable drinking here, but they have no idea of its extent. And, further, there never has been any attempt to make the saloon obey the laws until now, and the saloon men are responsible for the present effort on the part of the city authorities. In addition to the forty-one saloons there are seven brewery agents. They represent the seven largest brewing associations of the country, but the two concerns that do the heavy business are the Terre Haute Brewing company and the Schlitz Brewing company, of Milwaukee. These brewery agents recently hit on the scheme of furnishing beer directly to these foreigners. They sold It in bulk to the boarding-house keepers, who retailed It to their patrons; in fact, about half of “Little Italy” was running ‘'blind tigers.” Saloons Agree to Close on Sundays. The saloon men, of course, lost business by this deal, so they applied to the city authorities for aid in stopping the “blind tiger" business. They also agreed that of the authorities stopped the brewery agents the saloons would close during prohibited hours. The brewery agents stopped. The saloon men made an agreement to obey the law, and last Sunday, for the first time since Clinton has been a city, they had their places closed up tight. And they say they will continue doing so—on Snnday. The figures on the extent of the drink question in Clinton are furnished by the agent of one of the brewers, a man who does a very large business and who knows what the other agents are doing. The figures are approximately correct, he says. Clinton’s Drink Bill. For ten months In the year there is shipped into Clinton an average of sixty barrels of beer a day. In the months of July and August the average is 80 barrels dally. The total shipments, this agent says, and he figured it out, is about 22,800 barrels a year. Each barrel contains thirty-two gallons, and, therefore, 729,600 gallons come to town in the course of a year. There is, the way it is measured out here, about fifteen glasses of beer in a gallon, and that means that yearly there is sold jvur the bars of Clinton flasses of beer, which retail for 6 tents each, or a total of $547,200. That is the sum of money, according to the agent of the brewry, that Is spent in Clinton every year for beer slone The saloons sell other Intoxicants that will bring Clinton’s drink bill up to qearly $600,000 a year. Money Lost by Miners. But this 1b not all that it costs. Fhere are two pay-days a month and pay-day means a drunken orgy In the saloons; the money Is poured over the bars and there Is a shocking amount of drunkenness. It is estimated that

as the result of the drunkenness on pay-days, the iplners lose at least 100 days’ work because they are sick from the debauch and unable to work. At the lowest estimate placed on these soberlng-up days, the workmen lose fully $5,000 they would have been able to earn but for the pay-day spree. And there is gambling going on here. Lounging around town are ten or who never work, and who have plenty of money, and the fruit of the wage-earners go to these birds of prey also. More Than One-Third Spent for Beer. The pay-rolls of the mines amount to about $1,500,000 a year. When the mines are running full time the pay for wages Is much more. Other kinds of labor in Clinton, at/a very low estimate, is about SIOO,OOO a year In wages, making a total of $1,60u,000, of which $547,000 is spent for beer alone. That is what the saloons get out of it. According to this agent, the brewers sell in the city of Clinton about $268,720 worth of beer annually. That is what the brewer gets out of it. Now what does the city of Clinton get out of it? 41 saloons, license $250 each.. .$10,250 7 brewery agents’ licenses, at $250 each 1,750 82 bartenders at S6O a month... 4,920 82 bartenders at $25 a month... 2,050 Total $18,970 Expenses and Profits of Saloons. The money received for saloon and brewery licenses goes direct to the city treasury. The wages of the employes of the saloons, It is taken for granted, Is spent in Clinton. The saloon keepers of Clinton are at an expense of about sls a day, without counting the cost of their stocks. They pay about 25 cents a gallon for the beer they retail by the glass at 75 cents a gallon, but their expenses are deducted from the 50 cents raw profit, and so while the business on paper looks large, the profits are not so enormous as many suppose. But still when "labor is busy and trade is active” in Clinton the saloon keeper does very well, considering the amount of capital he has invested. The majority of the saloons, in fact nearly all of them, are controlled by the different brewing companies in the usual way, so the saloon keeper does not have much of his own money In = —-—- Costs $7,000 to Run City. The cost of the city administration in Clinton, Including the salary of the city officers, is about $7,000 a year, and included in this sum the pay of the police force of six men, a force' that could easily be reduced to two men but for the saloons. The city is very heavily in debt and the tax rate is $3 12, a high rate for a city the size of Clinton. w I asked the managing officer of the largest building and loan associations in the city if he believed the city would be better off without the saloons- than with them. .. He repjiled: “There Is no question about that. We can see it right here. The drinking part of our population does little or no business with the building and loan associations —their money goes eslewhere. There is no savings institution In Clinton and those who put away a little every month oome to us, but those who save are not the drinkers. We have a large number of thrifty working men who save their money and buy themselves homes, but they are not of the class that strike for the saloons as soon as they draw their wages. i "Clinton has, as everyone knows, a very large foreign population that keeps up these saloons. There is no doubt that if these men could not buy their drinks at all hours and on all days, many of them would go away from here. But their places would be filled by othqfs, because the work 1b here and men who wish to work will come into this field. There is no doubt in the minds of our people that we could get along better without the saloons than with them.” I was told the drinking class did no business with the banks, and several merobants said that were it not for the saloons they felt satisfied their trade would be greater and that there no (jiiesUon their collections would be easier. One way to keep the hands soft and clean is to let mother do all the work.