Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1891-05-15
FREE WHISKEY,
How the Prohibition Law is Violated In
Northwestern Iowa.

Northwestern Iowa.
Sioux Cry, Iowa, May THE north
western quarter Of Iowa affords an inter.
esting study Of the workings of the pro-
hibitory laws. It is purely a rural dis
trict. Outside of Sioux City there Is no
large city in the twenty northwestern
counties. LeMars, which is thirty miles
north of Sioux City, with 1000 popula-
ton, is the only other considerable town.
These counties are a vast farming dis
trict, peppered with villages and small
towns, where, if anywhere, the traffic in
liquor should be suppressed under the
prohibitory edict.
In Sioux City and LeMars, as in the
other large cities throughout the state, it
is needless to say, whiskey and all intox-
icants are virtually free. "There are"
says Chief of Police Stanley, "over 300
places in Sioux City where liquors are H.
legally sold, in hole-in-the-wall,' alley
dives, cellars, stables, etc. They have
multiplied amazingly since the law and
order league by prosecutions under the
state law broke up the irregular license
system, by which the city authorities
limited the number of saloons" There
are almost 400 government licenses in
effect in Sioux City, of which not more
than fifteen or twenty, if that MANY.
are used in strict obedience to the state
law.
There are scores of small towns, good
country trading points, of from 800 to
500 inhabitants where there is no inter-
ference with regular and open liquor sell
ling. Among them are such towns as
Charter Oak, Danbury, Remsen, Hol-
stein, Ute, Denison, Carroll, Smithland,
Otto, etc. The village of Holstein, Ida
county, has had four saloons for years.
The little town of Danbury, fifty miles
from this place, has three saloons, and
what Is more surprising a thriving whole
sale liquor house, which supplies ten or
fifteen villages in it's neighborhood.
There is almost equally free whiskey
IN the more numerous small towns and
villages where regular saloons do not
exist, and where the public authorities
are not openly ignoring the liquor trade.
There are in effect, according to the re-
cords OF the revenue collectors office, al
most LOO government licenses, and if
we allow 400 license for Sioux City an
LeMars, the only cities, it leaves and
average OF 40 licenses per county, a liber-
al showing for the purely rural districts
and country villages. Liquor is dis.
pensed, where the sale is not conducted in
drug stores and saloons, through the in
teresting instrumentality of the "boot-
leggers." The little towns and villages
OF all northwestern Iowa to-day are
swarming with "boot-leggers." It is for
these p%erlpatetic rum fountains that an
average of 40 government licenses is is
sued to the exclusively agricultural
counties. Nor is the situation much
more pronounced than it has beea during
the last two or three years. In each of
the towns are from two or three to ten or
more of the boot-!eggers, always sup
piled, always ready. at a moments no
tlce, to assuage thirst. They are easily
found. Their haunts are usually tie liy-
cry stable, the hotel, the restaurant, the
blacksmith shop, the Temperance bill
lard hail." or similar place. Each one
always has in his pocket several pint or
half pint bottles. The commercial tray-
eler, the farmer, anyone who happens in
one OF the apparently arid villages, has
only to suggest his wants to the hotel
keeper or almost any business man, to be
pointed to the perambulating whisky
seller.
Between the b%ootleggers, the saloons
and the drug stores the small towns and
the villages of the rual districts are al
must as we'll supplied with intoxicants as
the larger cities. There is not one ex-
ception throughout northwestern Iowa
not a town so small nor so strict that a
drink of whisky cannot be had for
money.