The Alaska daily empire., 1913-12-05

COURT SAYS JUNEAU
 HAS ENOUGH BARS

noon Judge R. w. Jennings again rel terated his previous declaration that there are already too many saloons in Juneau, and that he will not grant any more liquor licenses until after the end of the fiscal year that terminates June 3Oth, next The refusal of the Petite witch application was based solely up on that conclusion. Judge H. B. Le- Fevre, who represented Petievitch, thanked the court for ruling on the real point of the case rather than in deciding it upon some techanicality
 Judge Jennings ruling on the appli- cation and the evidence admitted in support of it was as follows:
 This is a matter that is committed to the discretion of the District Court. The code prescribes that no man can engage in the liquor business, either wholesale or retail, unless he gets q license from the District Court. The District Court is, in this particular. not a judicial body, because passing oIl d liquor license and limiting the number of saloons, are not judicial acts. The courts of Alaska have authority grant ed them by Congress to do great many things that are not purely judi cial. One of them is that it passes on these license matters. Another one is that it is a member of the Board of . Childrens' Guardians in the District of Alaska. Another one is that it has charge and supervision over our poor, in a sense, and administers the fund created by Congress and called the in- digent fund. Those are instances. There are some others that I cant call 1 to mind just now.
 Tt is a rather peculiar situation. don't think you will find a like situ- ation in any other part of the United States, where this sea of duties has 1 been cast upon the Judge of a Court Not only by Congress has matters of this kind been placed upon the Dis trict Court, but the Legislature of the Territory of Alaska has placed such matters upon the court.
 1 Tn this matter the court acts just i as any other license body, and with the same powers and jurisdiction-as ! Nbn Ir,r, v,,ic c.fy ,f other license board, sitting as such. Now I will state for the record, in order that you may get everything in the record that you are entitled to, that I know of no objection to your client, on the ground of his inability to conduct a saloon in an orderly man ner. am not putting the refusal up- on that ground at all. l put it upon i the ground that there are in the City of Juneau at the present time nineteen saloons; that the number of saloons in proportion to the population in the that the saloons are not a factor that conduces to the welfare of a communi- ] ty. l also put it upon the ground that there are already in that one block the one that you are asking for a li- cense for, five salOons-the Juneau Liquor Company, Peter Carlson, the Peerless, Mauzey and O'Brien - five saloons. Yours would make six. And there are right across the street from it, the Heidelberg saloon, and the Louvre saloon. And near your loca- tion is the New York saloon, and a sa- loon in the Cain Hotel; and near that place, also, just around the corner, is the Opera House saloon in the same block
 "There are too many saloons in the City of Juneau right now. I had de- termined before your application was made, and I gave notice in the papers, that I would not grant any more sa- loon licenses until the first of July. Whether 1 shall grant any more then depends on the circumstances obtain ing at that time. may and I may not.
 q also put the denial upon this fur ther ground there are as many as three other saloons that I know of that are figuring on starting up here, and I have concluded that the matter has gone far enough for a while any way.
 That puts your record in good shape if you want to appeal or man. damus"
 Judge LeFevre said:
 ''I am very much obliged to the Court for meeting me so much more than half way in considering this mat ter"
 Judge LeFevre had taken the posi- tion that the Court had no power to limit the number of saloon license af- ter deciding to issue them at all, and that, if there were no objectionssto the applicant, he was bound to order the issuance of a license if legal applica- tion had been made
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