The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-12-12
.iPURITAEIC LAWS"


saloons on Sunday and to prevent the retail
liquor dealers from selling drains to midnight
guzzlers after IL o'clock at night, the whisky
organs of all degrees at once begin to talk of
''puritanic laws aud draw pictures of acity
prosperous and enterprising under "wide-
open" policy, as it is called, contrasted with
city whose streets are grass-grown and whose
business houses are cobwebbed from disuse
under the reign Of "puritanism" The inn
pudence of this sort Of talk is only equaled
by the arrogance and attempted domination OF
all law and legislation by the saloon law
breakers in whose interest it is uttered.
in the first place, If the business
prosperity of this city or of any other is de-
pendent upon liquor saloons being permitted
to conduct their traffic openly and defantly for
seven days in the week and for twenty-four
hour day; if the business prosperity of
city is predicated upon retail dram-drinking by
the sots and bummers who crowd into the
back rooms of gin-mills after IL o'clock at
night and on Sundays, then God help the
business of such a city. The sooner city of
that kind goes out of Cuisines" the better
for it, and the better for the country.
In the second place, this cry of puritan
ism" comes with very poor grace from the
throats which utter it as protest against the
closing of liquor saloons on Sundays and after
IL O'Clock at night. Is the law providing that
sales of liquor shall not be made on certain
days and after IL o'clock at night puritan
icalg" If it is, who are the "Puritans" The
existing law, which is sought to be enforced,
was framed by and for the Liquor League. 1t
was drafted by Phil Rappaport and
the late H. w. Harrington, as the
attorneys for the liquor men. 1t
was their own law. They procured its prep
6ration and it's passage through the Legisla-
ture; and yet on the very first Sunday it went
into operation there were thirty three white
aproned Iaw-breakers arrested behind their
bars, openly and fiagrantly defying the pro-
visions of their own statute. If there
is any ''puritanism" in the present
liquor law it is ''puritanism' put there by the
liquor men themselves, and we have never
heard them charged with being ''Puritans, or,
in the choice epithet Of the saloon organs,
is in the pending effort to enforce the liquor
law grows out of the attempt of the liquor
men themselves to dishonesty enforce the
strict letter of general statute. 1t is not
the honest enforcement Of the special law
regulating the liquor saloons, but it is the eff
fort to Practically enforce the letter of gen.
eral statute against the necessary business in
terests of city that threatens to put Indian
apolis into village swaddling bands. The i'm
pudence and the falseness Of the liquor
men in their talk of "puritanic
laws" and in the vivid picture they draw of
depressed and decaying business" life, are on
a par with the impudence and falssness of
their whole conduct. The special law which
the Police Commissioners are seeking to en-
force. and with such gratifying effect, is the
liquor mems own law; it is their creation,
and they must and shall obey it so long as it
is on the statute book. The people
of Indianapolis will not be frightened
from their purpose by the cry of
the w-breakers, that the city's ''busi-
ness" will be Frustrated unless the saloons
can be left open on Sundays, and be permitted
to fill the Mayors Court on Monday morning
with scores of "drunks" and disorderly me1
and women; unless the saloons can be opened
all night and on Sundays to induce men to
squander their wages in making sots of them-
selves and in depriving their wives and chill
dren of necessary support unless the work of
pauperizing and Of criminalizing can go on
for one hundred and sixty eight hours during
each week of the year. This is not ''husi-
ness that adds to the prosperity of city, it is
business" that must be and will be regulated
and restricted by law