The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-14
WAR ON SALOONS
Plans to Close One
Thousand.
The Indiana Temperance League Are
Getting in Shape to Enforce the
Law Passed BY the Present
Legislature.

Especial to the Washington Post.)
Indianapolis. March 13.-The tenn
perance wave that has been sweeping
over Indiana and has forced the legis-
lature to enact law that will mean
virtual local option wherever it is en-
forced is to be followed by a spectacu-
lar campaign against saloons. Under
the law a majority of the voters of
a ward or township may demonstrate
against the sale of liquor, and when
the remonstrances is signed by sucn
a majority the county commissioners
are inhibited from granting license
to any applicant for two years.
The temperance people have found
from experience that in localities
where liquors could not be legally sold
blind tigers have sprung up and -four
ished These~places have always taken
out government licenses. An act to
facilitate the prosecution of keepers
of blind tigers has been passed and
makes the possession of a government
license to sell intoxicants prima face
evidence of their illegal sale.
Under this law it will be necessary
only to show that the proprietor Of the
blind tiger has a government license
in order to fine him for violating the
law. The bill also applies to clubs
formed for selling liquor to their own
members only. and thus reaches an
other evil with which the league has
had to contend.
The campaign of the Anti-Saloon
League, which is to open at once in all
parts of the State is designed to pre-
vent the granting of licenses at the
June terms of the county commission
ers' courts. There are now nearly
s. 600 licensed saloons in the State, and
the league expects to defeat at LEAST
/. 900 of the applicants who will Apply
for licenses.
In order to work up the proper SEN
timent among the voters and get the
greatest possible number of remon-
stranceS in circulation, meetings under
the auspices of the league are to be
held in every county, and at those
meetings persons to circulate the re-
monstrances will be selected. These
meetings will be followed by township
meetings, at which the remonStrances
will be signed, and, if majorities are
not thus secured, voters will be visited
personally at their homes for the pur-
pose Of securing their signatures.
Under the old law the remonstrance
was aimed at the individual saloon
keeper. When it proved effective
against one saloon-keeper he sold his
business to some one else and then the
temperance people had to get up
another remonstrance.
1t became thus necessary to keep
canvassers in the field al 1.-The time;
but the present law, which permits
the remonstrance to be aimed at the
traffic as we'll as the individual. in
hibits the sale of intoxicants within
the ward or township for a period OF
two years when once a majority of
the legal voters have signed a remon-
STRANGE. When the work is once done,
therefore, it does not have to be done
over again for two years.
In order that there may be no mis-
take about the future policy of the
league, notice has been served
throughout the State that the remon-
STRANGE legislation of the present legis-
lative session is but preliminary to an
effort to broaden the law two years
hence. Remonstrances now apply on
ly to wards in cities and to townships
in the county, but the next legislature
will be asked to amend the law so as
to make county remonstrances pos
sible and thus enable the temperance
sentiment to become effective over
larger areas than it can now be under
the law.
That it is intended ultimately to ex-
tend the .remonstrance feature to the
entire State is not asserted, but lead
ing temperance workers say that such
a thing is not improbable.
A peculiar thing in connection with
the strides that temperance sentiment
has made in the last ten years in In