The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-11-03

the saloons of the town, and it would allow ample funds for the maintenance of the present extra vagant, cumbersome, inefficient ifs cal policy of the Nome city council. When however it is pleaded that the saloons are necessary because the city needs the money, it pre- sumes that the saloons are wealth providers, which they are not. The saloons, it is to be insisted upon live off the productive capacity of that community wherein they exist. Re move the saloons which are only taxable because of that which they annex from the community, the money formerly annexed by the sa- loon is still remaining with the com munity and still taxable.
 If not, why not?
 The saloon business is delibe- rate extravangance. God and the world know that. Il conseryes, pre- serves and saves nothing. On the contrary it wastes everything. You cannot have your cake and eat it, said the Scotchman, and you can't have a ten dollar blowout and a twenty dollar jag and have the twenty dollars at the same time. The individual members of the commun- ity are impoverished to that ex- tent which they spend in saloons. Remove this destructively consum- ing, wasting business in our midst, and surely the wealth of the com munity is increased, and to that extent the eommunity's taxability is increased.
 If not, why not?
 The territory taxes an attorney ten dollars a year. If the attorney blows it all in the saloon, his tax paying powers will be reduced ac- cordingly. So with the community as whole but when the saloon is removed, the tax-paying capacity ot the remainder of the community is increased by the extent, exactly, not of the amount which the saloons had paid, but by ten times more than that, by the exact amount which heretofore was wasted in the saloons. That is to be demonstrated with mathematical accuracy. It has been demonstrated by positive expe- rience in every prohibition state where precisely the same arguments were used against prohibition before it passed. It was found that the tax paying ability of the states. towns and cities increased in direct proportion to the saving effected by the removal of the saloon. Why the immaculate effrontery, the con summate gall of any person to argue that the saloons, as saloons, paid one cent towards the up-keep of schools, city or anything else would only make an impression upon the man whose brain is case hardened against capacity to think. To read about the revenue producing glory of the saloons one would think that money grew in beer barrels and gold was precipitated in whiskey, bottles; when the plain, downright, undeniable, incontrovertible, unan- swerable. unquestionable fact is that the saloons annex it from the com munity, reduce the tax paying abil- ity of the whole by the amount an noxed, and endeavor to make amends for the general impoverish- ment of the town, by stating, well the town is too poor to keep up the schools, the saloons will.'
 We say the business in this town that cannot show bad debts because someone or another spent the money on rosined beer or squirrel wfiskey is the excpetion and not the rule. That is why with these unpaid bills hanging around the city hears so many kicks about high assessment. The saloon has reduced the money. available for taxation, and robbing Peter, and taking ninety per cent of it, returns ten per cent to Paul and persuades the Peters and the Pauls that it is the savior of the community. Was there ever such