The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1908-08-25
BISHOPS LAW REVOLT
ALL OVER JERSEY
No City Pretends to Obey the
Statute.
GOV. FORTS EFFORTS FUTILE
officials and Prosecutors Everywhere
Dodge Enforcement - Enemies
of the Law Jubilant-GermanJ
United to Obtain Beer Sunday.

Trenton, N. ]. - Atlantic City's
open defiance of the Bishops law is
only symptomatic of the almost gem
eral notification of the law by every
community in this State. The testi-
mony taken within the last six weeks
by Governor Forts Excise Inquiry
Commission, of which Mayor Charles
J. Fisk, of Plainfeld, is chairman,
discloses the whole State in revolt
against this one of its vital enact
ments.
Not only has 1t been shown that
the people ignore the law where they
do not refuse pointblank to obey 1t,
the hearings have been crowded with
local elective officials-sheriffs, may
ors, police chiefs, whose confessions
betray a brazen Indifference to the
act and general unwillingness to
force compliance with it; and, what
is even more significant, the Cover
nor's own retinue of officials, judges
and county prosecutors, though
named for their Offices only after
they had been foresworn to see that
this act of all on the statute books is
lived up to, stand confessedly neu-
trail where they are not confessedly
paralyzed by the unconcealed popular
contempt for it.
The Bishops law comes by it's
name because it was framed and
pushed through the Legislature two
years ago by coalition of interde-
nominational clergymen, with Bish-
ops McFaul and O'Connor, of the two
Catholic dioceses in New Jersey, and
Bishop Lines, of the Newark Episco-
pal Diocese, at their head. Its chief
aim is to compel strict observance
of the Sunday laws by the saloon and
hotel men of the State. There had
always been Sunday observance law
in New Jersey. But up to the time
when the system of exposure and
punishment mapped out in the Bish-
OPS law became operative no one
needed it.
When, as the result of this agita-
ton, the Bishops excise law was
passed, the saloon men set up cry
against it's rigors. The closing of the
saloons would not make the people
more sober they argued; the only
effect would be to throw into the bars
of New York from one end of the
State and into the bars of Philadel-
phia from the other end great sums
of money that ought to be kept in
New Jersey. Then came the Germans
of Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark.
Paterson, Elizabeth, Trenton and
Camden to protest against being de-
prived of their sip of beer at their
wonted Sunday afternoon family and
social gatherings.
The protest became so general all
along the line, and particularly in the
more crowded and cosmopolitan To-
calities, that the local officials began
to look about them for pretexts for
1axness in the enforcement of the act.
Governor Fort is trying to find
some expedient that will enable him
to keep his pledge to see that the
law is strictly enforced. The avowed
opponents of the act are jubilant over
the DISCLOSURES, and are even talking
about naming candidates for the Sem
ate and Assembly pledged to vote for
its repeal.
The situation in the State is much
like that described in a recent maya
zine artile by a writer from Maine,
who says that all Maine wants prohi-
bition, but all Maine wants grog, too.