Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1899-06-23

- 0SSI
of authority, our mayor, that the en-
penses of our city government and the
identifying of our town are paid Ill
most entirely from the revenue de-
rived from the vices of our people, and
that, too, contrary to our state law,
thel efore a species of blackmail
Twelve hundred dollars are received
from saloon licenses annually, and di-
vided between the county and the
town organizations; and 5000 from the
gambling tables permitted in those sa-
looms, which the state law expressly
prohibits. How much is received from
the licensing or filming of prostitution
he did not state.
If it be true that the saloons and
their attendant evils are furnishing all
or nearly all of our city revenues, it is
in the first place, very unjust to them.
It their business be right and legal
they should pay only their just pro-
portion of the city taxes; anything
over and above that amount is bribery,
extortion, blackmsil-a punishable
crime in the eyes of the laws of our
land, and every official who has to do
with the laying or collecting Of those
illegal revenues should receive sum-
mary justice at the hands of the law.
If, on the other hand, their business is
wrong in principle, harmful in prac-
tice or illegal, no amount of hush
money, brides, or license fees should
induce officials Tor citizens either)
to tolerate their continuance for a
single day. Unfortunately there is
some semblance of a legal right to
grant a saloon license, but the very
law that gives that legal right express
~ prohibits gambling tables in those
saloons; hence the s25 a month fines
imposed on those tables are purs black
mail and uncollectible by law, as are
also the licenses or fines imposed on
the houses of prostitution. All of our
executive officers take an oath to en-
force the law and uphold the state
constitution; yet the mayor himself
says that he advised one of the saloon
keepers to place curtains over his win
dows on Sundays, in open violation of
the law which not only prohibits all
distractions to the view from the side
walk on every day, but requires m en-
tire closing of the saloons on Sunday.
And he did this he says because this
saloon would not otherwise get it's fair
share of the Sunday sales, as the Evans
saloon or bar is entirely withdrawn
from the public gaze. He defended
his position by claiming that the city
government could not be u without
the saloons, and the saloons could not
be run (profitably) without the gamb-
ling tables, chairs and distractions to
the view from the street-all of which
are expressly forbidden by the same
law that permits the granting of the
license. He said as a clincher: "Why
you can't regulate them without wip
ing them out of existence" Terrible
condition ~ What a fearful thing it
would be if, in u attempt to "regu-
late the saloons of Hot Springs, we
"wipe them out of existence!" "What
q mourning there would be in Israel
Rachael weeping for her c%hildren?"-
oh no, rejoicing that her children were
once more safe from this modern Satan,
the liquor traffic, who goeth up and
down through the whole earth seeking
whom he may devour.
The identifying of our city with
trees and irrigating bitches is of itself
a commendable act; but il it must be
done at the expense of removing all re-
strictions to vice in all it's forms, of
taking away all the safeguards and
protection to the homes, it is paying
altogether too high a price. Beautiful
characters and useful lives growing
out Of happy and prosperous homes
are far more valuable than a beautiful
town built on the ruins of those homes.
The gambling permitted in Hot Springs
during tho encampment broke up at
least one home, to our certain knowl-
edge, separating husband and wife, and
booming the wife at least to years of
misery. But what matters it provided
only the city get a few hundred dol
lars out of it!
MARY j. DEWEY.
One Fare for the Round Trip
To Cleveland, o., via Nickle Plate