The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1894-10-27
A SERIOUS OBJECTION.

Among the many serious objections to
the present liquor license law there is one
which possibly has not been sufficiently
emphasized in this campaign, so far at
real estate owners.
! 1t is il fact, which no one will seriously
dispute, that drinking saloons depreciate
the value of property in close proximity
to them.
Nobody cares to reside near one, for the
very simple reason, that their presence is
constant menace to the peace and good
order of the immediate locality in which
they are located
Their proprietors may be peaceably dis
posed men, and may honestly endeavor to
conduct their traffic in such a manner as
not to disturb those who reside near them.
But whatever may be their good inten-
TONS it is a fact, that when ''whiskey is in
wit is out, " and that it requires a very mod
crate quantity of the liquid that inebriates,
to convert quiet man into rowdy, and Il
peaceful man into quarrelsome fellow,
and disturber of the public peace.
Now it is a fair proposition, that when it
comes to locatiag soioops, the owners Of
property, and those who reside immediately
near them, are the persons who shouH BE-
consulted as to their lcWingaess to hare them
so iocatcd
The present license law contemplates
this, in requiring bondsmen and given
number of property holding sgners to every
application for license to conduct a
saloon.
But strange to say, the law does not
specify that such signers shall live near the
saloon they endorse, and which it is fair to
presume they don't object to live close to-
1t does provide, that such signers shall
be property owners, but in violation of
every property right of every body else, the
law only requires that the endorsers of 4
license shM lire in the same election district.
4 man who owns few square feet of land
at Bay View, may fJrce sdiooR upon 4
property owner at Turkey Point Harts, OF
Charlestown, and while his wife, his chill
dren and his daughters may not have their
ears offended by the ribald oaths and pro
family of drunken men, yet the law enables
him to afllict these injuries upon the wives,
daughters and children of other property
owners and against which imposition they
are without remedy.
Now we do not assert, that all saloons
become in the same degree public nuisances
and disturbers of the public peace, but the
majority of them do become such at certain
hours, and on certain occasions, and the
liability that they may at any time become
such is ever existing from the nature of
their traffic.
The record of the clerks Office exhibits
very forcibly, the strain, to which many
signers for licenses have been put in the
last few years. to comply with the property
owning requirement of the present law.
In two cases, men were accepted as prop
erty owners, when their proprietorship CON
sisted in the title to a narrow strip of la, d
forming an alley between two houses in
Port Deposit, twenty inches wide at
one end, and tapering down to fourteen
inches at the other end
Yet these men, whose slender claim to real
estate ownership becomes laughable, could
help and can now help, put a saloon next
door to quiet family living in their own
house at Perryville, can help depreciate the
value of that mans or that woman's home,
and yet the injured property owner has no