The Windham County reformer. (Battleboro, Vt.) 1876-1897, 1895-08-16


claiming $50, 600 damages against tn
Rutland Herald, Saturday, for its re
cent articles calling him rumseller o
! the owner of two buildings, the Va
!, Ness house and another containing
drug store, in both Of which liquo
is regularly sold, and likening him t.
ex- landlord Howe of st. Johnsbury
who has recently been sent to thu
House of Correction under the prohibit
tory law. Ex-Gov. Dillingham; ant
state tax commissioner Foster are the
counsel for Woodbury..
Gov. Woodbury. wrote letter to the
Herald on the 7th in which he declared
that during the IA years he has been
proprietor of the Van Ness house he
'has not been engaged directly or indi
rectly in the liquor traffic in the Van
Ness house or in any other place. and
been done in the house had been by
the guests persuading employees to OBJ
tain it out side the house on their own
responsibility and at their own peril.
And he added: MY personal self respect
and my respect for the high office in
which the good people of the state of
Vermont have placed me, and my desire
that the fair name of Vermont should
not be traduced and dscredited abroad,
forbid my passing in silence the highly
| libelous article referred to. there
fore ask you to make a complete and
immediate retraction in your paper,
failing in which shall adopt legal
means to bring you to account for your
outrageous libel.
The Herald invited him to come on,
promising to maintain all it had said
and likely enough a few bits more.
The Herald's charge was that ,the GOV
ernor owned two rum holes and ran
one. The latter referred to the Van
Ness house which he runs himself and
the former to the Woodbury. & Walker
building in which the drug store is
situated; but the Burlington News
says in his defense that he is only a
part owner of the latter building and
has nothing whatever to do with the
management of it. -
= The facts about the Van Ness house
are not susceptible of dispute and the
Governor does not seem to dispute
them. The employees of that house
in the ordinary performance of their
work, do furnish liquor as a regular
business and to any guest that calls
for it, in the dining room or in their
rooms. These employees sometimes, and
perhaps always, explain that they do
not keep it in the house but will send
out after it. The patrons, ordinarily
at any rate, pay them direct instead Of
having it charged on the bill.
\ just statement of the case is that
Coy. Woodbury. sacrifices several thou !,
sand dollars year that he might make
n profits from a bar, but he will !
lot sacrifice several thousand more |
hat he would have to sacrifice if ne
an the house on absolute temperance y
principles forbidding the sale of any O
liquor whatever on the premises, as he V
night do if he set about it in earnest II
nd as it is his plain duty to do if this +
law is right, and if he was T
n earnest in his unctuous advocacy of U
in his message. His liability. there u
Dre. is that of the owner of building II
a which he permits liquor TO be sold. il
nd after Ii years of it, it would be alb 81
urd to doubt that he knowingly per q I,
tits it. In fact, he does not deny that is
G knows, or SO far as appears, claim fl
lat he has ever made any effort to stop g
!. The drug store matter stands ON u,
lie same ground under the theory of OF
lie law. and the excuse that his b.
wicked partner" is to blame for al q
wing rum business to be done in it ~, -,
too thin an
These things make him what might ID
: called rumseller in the second p'
gree.
If the selling of liquor is such sin
the law makes it, the man who al in
VS. it to be done on his premises and if
his advantage in business sense M
it certainly is in the hotel for if it m
rs prevented there the patronage of tn
e house would be reduced largely-is WI
sinner who deserves the punishment tn
1ich the law provides for the owners gu
such buildings. tn