Honolulu star-bulletin., 1915-01-19
EDITOR
THE SALOON AND BUSINESS.

the beginning of the end of the saloon is in
lsight 1t is they and not the brewers or the
! saloonmen themselves who are prohibition s
strongest enemies. Yet how much of the
strength of the business argument lies in repe,
tition and how much in factf
i ( Here is an illustration from fact. The Dry
Goods Economist, a powerful trade paper on
the mainland, recently asked an unprejudiced
businessman living in a saloon town to go to
Rockford, ILL.,, which has for some years been
dry, to make first-hand investigation of the
effect OF prohibition on business He did He
went there, looked about for himself, talked to
the managers of the largest concerns in the
] city, and went over some statistics. This is
what he found: .-.#: - III. +
| I'D. j. Stewart & Co. are said to be doing the
largest dry goods business of any store in
Rockford and their manager told me that
their sales for the preceding year showed an
increase of $4,000.
Wouldn't they have increased anyhow, ;
/ asked, whether the town had been wet or
dryl'
MAYBE he conceded. I'VE did good
business in wet years, too, and of course it's
hard to tell how much of our increase has come
from the towns being dry. Collections are
certainly better.
Here he gave me figures
Rockford is better without the saloons, :
one merchant said, but added: In small
place things might be different Even this,
however, was fatty contradicted by one firm
operating several stores, who cited the case of
|fvyf, o,11 ~ hofh &c
which they had long done business, and where.
all their data favored the dry town.
but surely, insisted, you must have
lost some of your trade here to your wet neigh
Ibors, Beloit, and Pecatonia, and Belvidere.'
9 Nothing to itl' declared one This talk
about losing trade when the town votes dry
that's all myth @
" Some of the men do go out of town, an
other confessed, 'but they're the fellows who.
have the least money to spend; and they only
go Saturday nights anyhow If Rockford had
saloons, they'd be spending their money in
them here every night And he went on to
cite instances of customers from neighboring
wet towns who had recently begun trading in
Rockford
s.Some stores had special reasons for favor
ing dry regime. Our business has grown
steadily, even in wet years, one dealer told me,
but right next door to us was saloon, orderly
and we'll conducted enough it was, but, of
course, we have more women customers now
that it's gone.
ssThe question asked the oftenest was prob
ABLY that regarding collections, and the answer
was in every case practically the same.
1--WE have folks on our books now that We
never could trust when the town was wet. I
There are people who now pay their bills and
have money In the bank, who in wet times
never had one dollar to rub against the other. I
The saloons used to cash the pay checks
now we cash them, are typical answers" !"
This speaks for itself. It is what business
men themselves have to say of the effect pro-
hibition has had on their business. 1t is not
theory but fact, taken from experience. Doubt
less most of these men who now have accounts
on their books they never had before went
about freely predicting bankruptcy when the
election on the subject was in progress
Do you have to go to this, though, for argu-
menti Isn't it sound business argument that
if you spent so many millions on something
that has absolutely no productive value, you
might just as well hire men to drop it into the
sea or burn it up in bullets for all its economic
benefit in the long runi Saloons and breweries,
it is true, have payrolls. So have ammunition
factories.
President Wilson delays callers to visit his
new grandson Showing that matrimony