The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-05-18
OMAHA AS a "WIDE OPEN
TOWN.

| The Transmississippi exposition opens
at Omaha on the 1st of June. and the
/ indications are that it viii have large
patronage. Very naturally the people
! of Omaha are anxious to make their
town attractive and pleasant TO all Wis
| itors. The Bee says that many men
who occupy prominent positions in the
community and are in good standing
in society openly favor making Omaha
"a wide-open town during the EXPOSE
ton. The Bee is opposed to this policy
urging against it these. among other
reasons:
The invariable experience of towns
! that have tolerated the open gambling
den contradicts this assumption. In
stead of helping business, gambling de-
moralizes business and wrecks business
men.
Those who advocate a wide-open town
forget that the money so circulated is
money stolen from wageworkers, farm
ers. and other weaith-producers de-
coyed by hired stool-pigeons into places
where they are fieeced and plundered.
They forget that the money won by
/ gamblers would circulate just the same
in the legitimate channels of trade
which supply the wants of the families
; bank.
They forget also that public gam
bling is the source of embezZlement,
defalcation and suicide among men
who. without this temptation, would
lead honest and frugal lives. They
forget that every treasurer convicted
in this city and state can ascribe his
dawnfall to gambling.
Business men who favor the wide
open town seem to forget that every
public gambling house is recognized as
a house of refuge for criminals, who
always find there congenial spirits
ready to conceal their booty, to ad-
vance them money, to go their bail
when arrested and to bring influence to
bear upon prosecutors and courts to get
them out of the clutches of the law.
These facts are attested by the records
of courts and the experience of prose-
cutting attorneys.
Once entrenched in power the gam
blers usually have no difficulty in de-
stroying the memory OF policemen, spir-
iting away witnesses and tampering
with juries. Nearly every case of jury
fixing can be traced directly 20 mem
bers of the profession, who, not content
with taking care of their own affairs,
bring their corrupting machinery to the
aid of confederates and sympathizerS
in other lines of crooked business.
Those are very good reasons why
there should be no ''wide-open town"
for Omaha and apply to every town;
they fail to make mention of the special
impolicy of making Omaha wide
open town" during the exposition. Do
those who advocate this policy antici-
pate that the class of people who will
visit the exposition are of the class who
favor 'wide-open towns?" Is Omaha
to cater to the tastes and vices of this
class of people, or is it anxious to be
agreeable and pleasant and to give
good impression to the industrious, re-
spectacle and moral-loving people who
constitute the great body of the Ameri-
can people?
The people upon whom the success
of the exposition will depend are not
going to Omaha to indulge in a satur-
MALTA; evidently those who favor max
ing Omaha "a wide-open town" have
the idea that they are. To make it such
and invite people there is to invite the
fly into the spiders parlor. The duty
of Omaha will be to prevent its visitors
being victimized; to make it a wide
open town" would be to encourage their
VictimiZation.