Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1912-10-11
WHERE THE $4,000:

Three office buildings for the bust
ness section of Olympia, each to cost
not less than $4,000 and one to be of
special character, for which plans have
been drawn and contracts prepared
ready for signatures, have been held
up for the last month and will be for
another, at least. Perhaps they will
not be built at all this year.
Why?
Local option.
If Olympia goes dry they will not be
built at all; if the city goes wet they
will be built-they would have been
under construction now if the dry pc
tition had not been filed.
Why does capital refuse to 60 into a
dry town? Because the experience Of
capitalists and business men the cOun-
try over has established one incontro-
vertible fact, fact that no amount OF
haranguing can dispel:
The voting out of the saloon inevi-
tably causes decrease of from Is to
40 per cent-an Everett business man
just placed it at so per cent-of the
amount of general business formerly
done in that town.
merchant, the grocery man, the furni-
ture man, the shoe dealer, and the 9TH
ers, that suffers, not the saloon keeper.
The only one that prOspers is the drug
gist, for in 80 out of every hundred dry
towns the drug store takes the place
of the saloon, the only differences be-
ing that the drug store pays no tax
and serves rOttener whisky.
In just this same way the expert
ence of every dry town has been that
the mere voting of the town dry does
not stop the sale of liquor-it simply
cuts off the revenue that the city for
merly got from that source; 1t does
not increase the morality, it simply
makes it little harder-for while
to get the liquor, and stolen sweets
are always sweeter;" it does not aid
the city in any way, business, finan-
cially, morally. progressively, it simply
robs Peter to pay Paul-and Peter, it
happens, is the taxpayer.
There is not dry town in the state
of Ohio-the home of the Anti-Saloon
league-where the law is enforced or
where it ever was enforced. Just at
the present time, in city about the
size of Olympia and a city where there
is one of the largest Methodist uni
versities of the East, city that has
made a better effort to enforce the law
than any other in the state, there are
% "speak-easies," two to every saloon
formerly located there. Liquor is still
being sold and almost as freely as it
was before, more drunkenness is prev
alent on its streets than there ever was
before-there is only one difference:
the city lost $4,000 a year in revenue.
Twenty-eight "Speak-easies!" Could
there be any worse indictment of the
anti-saloon movement, any greater in
dication that 1t is an absolute failure?
The history of the dry movement Is
the same everywhere. 1t resolves it.
self into two big questions as far as
Olympia is concerned:
Where is Olympia going to get the
$4,000 annual revenue now paid by
the saloons?
Do the people of Olympia want the
dirty, sneaking, illegal and demoraliz-
ing "speak-easy" or the saloon which
they can regulate through the city Off
Gals they themselves elect?
The second question will be answer
ed by the voters at the election-to the
first there is no answer. There is at
the present time absolutely no way
Olympia can raise an extra $4,000 a
year to carry on its business. To vote
Olympia dry will mean that it will be
bankrupt, and that means that every
form of public improvement, every ad-
vance on civic lines, every proiec,
which has for its purpose the placing
OF this city in the position it should
occupy in the commercial world, will
be stopped peremptorily and perma-
nently. 1t cannot possibly be avoided.
1t is time the taxpayers of Olympia
took these things into account. The
city has reached its limit of bonded in
debtedness. it can borrow no more
money and it is having difficulty to pay
what it already has borrowed. It's taxes
are so close to the legal limit now that
there can be practically no increase
from that source. There is no way to
raise $4,000 more year.
The only alternative, then, is to cut
the city's expenses $4,000 year. or
almost Is per cent. This is what that
means:
The Gripping of every department
of the city government.
The destruction of the citys credit
in the financial world.
The elimination of the city as fac
tor of any importance in the CONNER
cial world.
The prevention of its taking advan-