The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1908-04-03
GREAT BUSINESS oFDIssIPATIoN

vi DAEJOAI IA Ao3v
The Leading Branch Of 1t Is the Sale
of Alcoholic LiquOr-Higher Lii
cense Does Not Reduce Sa-
looms.
The criminal is a savage, nothing
more nor less. Civilization builds up
painfully our definite, orderly rules
of life. The criminal simply discards
these laws and slides back along the
way we came up. To understand
the matter of crime in great cities,
the first step is to measure the posi-
tive forces working continually to
produce savagery there. These forces
are today, as they always have been
greater than can easily be imagined.
The city-from scarlet Babylon to
smoky Chicago-has always been the
great market-place of dissipation. In
the jungle you would call this thing
savagery. In the city there is new
side to it. The dweller of the city,
true to the instincts of city life
has made it a financial transaction.
He has found it great source OF
gain, of easy money. There has
grown up, therefore, a double motive
in promoting 1.-THE demand for the
thing itself, and the stimulus of the
great profit in providing it. You may
call the sale of dissipation in the
city, savagery by retail. Ethically
considered, this thing Is hideous be-
yond belief; socially considered, 1T is
suicidal.
$1OO,OOO,OOO Year for Alcoholic
Liquor.
The sale of dissipation is not only a
great business; it is among the few
greatest businesses in Chicago. The
leading branch of it is the sale of al
coholic liquor. In the year 1906 the
receipts in the retail liquor trade in
Chicago were over 100000, 900;
they were probably about 5,000,-
900. The city spends at least half
as much for what 1t drinks as for
what it eats-not counting the cost
of the cooking and serving of food.
The gerat central power in the liz
our business in America is the brew
cry. In the past thirty-five years, the
per capita consumption of spirituous
liquor in the United States has in
creased not at all. The per capita
consumption of malt liquor has .treb-
led. This increase has come, partly
because of the demand for milder
drink, but largely also because of an
other fact:-because the breweries
own or control the great majority of
the saloons of American cities. They
have a distinct policy:-If there are
not as many saloons as there can be
supply them. This Is what has been
done in Chicago. Fully ninety per
cent of Chicago saloons are under
some obligation to the brewery; with
at least eighty per cent, this obliga-
ton Is serious one.
The bushes of the brewery is to
sell beer. There are excellent men in
the brewing trade, but that fact has
never interfered with the carrying
out of the development of the indus
try to it's utmost limit. 1t could not
be allowed to do so. The brewery,
under present conditions in Chicago,
must sell beer at all cost, or prompt
ly die. This is because the brewing
business has been over-capitalized
and over built there for at least ten
years. There has been furious COM
petition. Under these circumstances,
the breweries of Chicago can have
but one aim-to fill Chicago with
beer to the point of saturation.
Take the sockyards. Around that
long and dismal stockade, at every
hole from which a human being can
emerge, a shop or group of shops
sits waiting. At the main entrance
they lie massed in batteries.
The Chicago market is thorough
1y saturated with beer, and incident
ally with other liquor. The main
object of the brewing business is well
fulfilled; the consumers of Chicago
expended not less than SIS, 900
for beer in 1906.
Now, if the competition is red
handed among the brewers, it is sim
ply ravenous among the saloonkeep-
ers. The pressure of the brewery to
sell beer almost brushes the retailer
out of existence.
All this means one thing-a prem
ium on the irregular and criminal sa-
loonkeeper. There are two general
business methods of attracting trade:
M giving unusually large measures
d ID big bonuses of free lunch; or by
g Frying illegitimate and illegal side
Isles.
The first, generally speaking, does
h t leave large margins of profit, the
second does.
A year ago the license fee was
raised in Chicago from five hundred
to one thousand dollars. 1t was
hoped that this would wipe out the
criminal saloon. It did, of course
nothing of the sort. The poor, mis-
cradle little dives in the working
mans ward, each snatching starva
ton living from the lips of the dwell
lers of the dozen smoke-befoulel
frame tenements about it. staggered
down--a few hundred of them ant
died. The man with the side-line o
prostitution and gambling NATURAL,
survived and had the benefit of tn
others failure.
So much for the great legalizes
branch of the sale of dissipation IL
Chfco The nat roc,,1fc of 10 e.