Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1909-04-02
The Pace, Not the Man, Should
Be Licensed

N10OAs aS RAAS&
censed as p in which liquor can be
Sole in the term liquor are included
wlrkos, WHISTLES, ale, beer, etc., every
thing specific. under the general term
liquors.
The license of the place gives to the
place a real estate aud rentable value
which is very considerable. The vio-
lation of the license forfeits the right
of that place as one in which liquors
can be sold. for a period not short,
and if the license is ever rene wable at
all for that place, the charges and
conditions are very severe, and the
old landlord and the old tenant or the
new landlord and new tenant are made
the victims or subjects of the penalty
in a way and to a degree not ever to
be forgotten.
Both the landlord and the tenant
are thus interested in preserving the
license, that is, in obeying the law.
The law permits selling on Sundays
in the afternoons, between l and b
p. NJ, but not before or after those
hours on Sundays, and the law as to
selling and closing hours on weekdays
were, at latest accounts, between 8
A. M. and 1890 P. NJ, with equal
privileges and penalties as to the
place. The license is thus a fran
chise as to the place, and the franchise
is a valuable one in buying or in SELL
ing the place.
Here the license is to, or for, or by
the man. A violation of the law by
him enables the place to be still con-
Quoted by another man or a new place
to be rented by the same man, and a
license to be secured by him in such
other place. The licensing of the
place in Great Britain makes the
owner and tenant both interested in
obeying the law. The licensing of
the man here makes him reasonably
immune from penalty Or Indifferent
to 1t, and really interested in the rela-
lively safe violation of the law, to
which violation the police are obliv-
ious or friendly, while jurors, mainly
OF customers, are blind or friendly to
such violations. As politics in great
cities largely turns on these licensed
men or their friendly customers, the
excise law in cities is largely a farce.
The law in Great Britain is a force.
The law in American cities Is largely
a fiction, a fraud or a sham. In the
United States, especially in large
cities, the absurdity of the licensure
of individuals, instead of places, is
further illustrated by the difficulty
of finding out who the real owners
actually are. Many saloons that is
the absurd word for places in which
liquors are sold) have men posted as
'sproprietors" who are only decoys.
y-aFe really tenants or underletters
from brewers Or distillers whose
''goods'' are exclusively sold there, and
the fact is actually as well known as
it is courageously denied.
Some clergymen in and around
Manhattan have recently declared
that the present excise law is unen-
forcible; that the fact is one to be
admitted, and that set hours on Sun
day should be named in which the
sale of liquors should be permitted.
These gentlemen of more candor than
influence should face other facts, such
as the one that so long as the man is
the licensee and not the place, that
long responsibility is minimized and
that long the licensee is Indifferent to
any such penalty as now can be de-
clared, but cannot be practically and
permanently enforced. The place can
be relet to any series OF tenants, of
whom the available supply never runs
out. Till the place is made the subject
of a reyocable and practically unre-
Movable license, the apparent owners,
'the proprietors" or the masked own
ers, the bre wers or distillers, can be
indifferent.
We do not for the purposes of this
discussion care about the matter of
local option and the like. That is a
local question, especially as the de-
cision of it at the rural polls is an
nually traversible, and especially as in
great cities as a whole the selling of
liquors in ''saloons" would never be
voted down, SO long as it was per-
mitted in clubs which are the
'~'saloonsn of the well-to-do. The minor
phases of the questions are insignifi-
cant when compared with the larger
and the main ones.
The law should be so changed as to
license the place, not the man ; as to
make violation of the license of the
place work forfeiture of the place as
the territory of a license as to make