El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-02-19
SALOON WITHOUT
BOOZE IS THE
MODEL CLUB
Organizer of Railroad Clubs
Tells Why They Are Sue
ceSsful.

''The saloon without booze is the
model club. 1t is the model on which
all the railroad clubs along the South
ern Pacific and the Oregon Short Line
are organized" says F. G. Ahern of Salt
Lake City, superintendent of railway
clubs and at one time professor in the
University of California, in an article
in the Railway Record.
THE saloon keeper is the one man
who has solved the question. 1t has
been a long. slow growth with him,
the result of actual experience going
back for centuries. The saloon is the
only place in the world where all men
meet on exactly an equal basis II
president Taft should walk into any
saloon he at once is on the level with
every man in the place and every man
in the place is on his level.
All Same Level.
This applies to the saloon alone. In
theory it applies to many other places,
but in practice to none other than the
saloon There is not a church in this
country or in any country where the
members meet on an equal footing.
There is not club of any kind where
membership fees or dues are charged
in which the members meet on an equal
footing.
Membership fees and regular dues
spell the death of all clubs. There are
many reasons for this; one, for instance
is that If any man pays a membership
fee he feels bound to some extent to
patronize that club to the exclusion OF
other clubs, and this in some measure
interferes with his daily personal liber-
ty- He does not feel free to drop into
another place and buy a cigar or
meal, but feels compelled to go out Of
his way to his club. The consequence
IS that. as most men prefer their indi-
vidual freedom above all things, they
will not join anything.
Fees Are Fatal.
But a club that is without fees of
any kind, where a man is free TO come
and go a hundred times day or only
once year as he feels like it, where he
can spend 500 or not one penny as he
feels like it without any feeling of be-
ing mean, this kind of a club succeeds.
Such is the saloon. No man likes to
put the hat boy to the trouble of TAX
ing his hat so times in a day, so he
does not feel free to come and go where
there is hat boy for just because OF
that hat boy. But he is free to walk in
and out of a saloon all he wants to,
free TO stay all day. or only to light his
cigar. So 1 say that the saloon is the
model club. all except the booze.
Our railroad clubs are organized on
two basic principles; that value is CIV
en- for everything received on both
sides. and that morality is based on
physiology. A man may be clean,
healthy, and depraved, but no one can
be dirty, diseased and moral. A hint OF
charity is confession that no one side
is the superior Of the other, which
every man secretly resents and avoids
Why Clubs Succeed.
I'VE figure that we pay for services
rendered and have nothing more to
give the men. If we gave il to them II
would imply two things, either that
they were beggars or that the railroad
had held back on them and was trying
to make good. The man gets his full
pay check. That is all he is worth If
he were worth more he would get
more, if not from our road then from
another.
TT pays the road to have clean,
healthy men. so we sell them good beds,
baths and meals at cost They pay for
everything they get, but the road
makes not one cent out of it in cash.
In fact, the road actually pays out
cash as the investment in the club
house and all that comes from the rail-
road.
why should the railroad do this?
Just as a business investment In re-
turn for the cash SO spent the rail-
road gets better service. 1t is a cold
blooded business proposition based on
pure selfishness. That is why. it sue
ceeds and so many of these philan-
thropic schemes fall