The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1914-10-22
SALElI SUFFERS
BUSINESS LOSSES
FROM DRY RULE
StoreProperty Rentals DropS75
a Month in City
BANK DEPOSITS OFF 100000
Fourteen Business Houses Quit in Less
Than Year. School Attendance Less
BANK DEPOSITS OFF 100000

Many Oregon papers have
been loaded down within
the past three weeks with
repeated assurances that
"Business is Fine in Dry
Towns
The three most important
Oregon cities to become
dry nine months ago were
Salem, Oregon City and
Springfield.
If business is fine in those cities
the taxpayers and most of the
business men would like to have
the "drys' explain just what
they mean by fine. If they
had said Cuisines IS thin then
they might have been more easily
understood.
Let them answer first about
conditions in Salem. Ex-Council
man John D. Turner, of Salem,
an attorney, is sponsor for the
following facts about that city:
Salem went "dry' December l last,
closing Is saloons, three restaurants
and two wholesale houses and withdrew
liquor permits from eight drug stores
and cut off an annual license revenue
of ST., 400 Ninety men and monthly
payroll of $500 were put out Of com
mission. Most of the men have left
the city. All buildings vacated by
these concerns are still empty, except
six, which have been occupied by ten
ants who have vacated other buildings,
several of the best buildings being
boarded over and used as billboards.
More than five hundred modern dwell
ings are "for rent Store property
rentals on State street have dropped
from $ls5 to $l10 a month, but "busi-
ness is fine.N
Fourteen other business places have
closed since December last, aside
from the saloons and restaurants. In
cluded are three shoe stores-two by
sheriff and one voluntarily; one Of the
largest drygoods store. has been sued
for the first time in twenty years.
Scores Of clerks have left the city,
causing the less Of more payrolls to
the city, but "busincss is fine"
A leading prohibitionist promised to
build 16 new dwellings if the city went
"dry" Nine houses were begun, two
have the windows and doors in, but
have never been finished no work has
been done on the others, besides their
bare frames
Building permits from January to
August, the last nine wet months of
1919, We're t3sS 92J; from November,
1913, 70 September. 1914, the next
eleven "dry" months, they were $780,
o09 less. or $z68 100.
The grammar school opening day en-
rolllaent in 1918 was 1910; on the same
dov 1914, 14G1, but ''business is fine "
B9nl: deposits show decrease of
$309G42 since the town went "dry," "
even after allowing for the $485,000
deposited this year from sale of bonds
in Boston The decrease, therefore,
really should be $794,942, but "busi-
ness is fine"
The attendance at the "Cherry
Fair" this year was about one-half
what it was the lest "wet" year. The
Ministerial Association before the cleo
ticn which made Salem "dry," told
the Cherry Fair promoters that they
would make up for the donations usu-
ally made by the saloons, brt utterly
failed to do so this year and the pro
moters refused to hold that carnival.
The "Cherrians, consisting of 100
real boosters, but of no prohbitionists,
then pledged their personal member
ship for the necessary funds, requiring
the payment on their part Of $500. To
rub it in, the Methodists then turned
their church into a restaurant, put the
kitchen in the pulpit and competed
with the legitimate restaurants for the
little business that their proprietors
had hungily looked for as a possible
annual sodsend.
Business must be "finen in any eitg
whom building permits, payrolls, bank
deposits, bankruptcies, closed stores, de
populated dwellings, depressed realty
values school cnrollments and carnival
statistics all tell so dreary a story Of
literal fact, Maybe the prohibitonists
mean that the "agitating business i.
fine.
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