The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1918-09-11
SALOONS ARE HIT
BY BEER EMBARGO.
New Occupations if~Cheaper
Gases Dry Up.
sALooNKEEPERs ARE THRIFTY
'Swnbbcr" Has Gloomy outlook, for
He Lacks Adaptability.
New York Morning Telegraph.>

New York Morning Telegraph.l
Already the signs of disintegration
have begun to show in the saloon
business and. on the East Side espe-
cially, an evident desire on the part
of saloonkeepers to stand from under
the responsibility of lease or long
tenure after October ! is apparent.
The estopment of the breweries on
December / already is being antici-
pated by the downcast bonifaces of
the poor mans club" and before the
snow flies. according to estimates
made by the brewing factors yester-
day, between 5000 and 10000 saloons
of the cheaper class will have locked
up their GASES and turned the key
over to the landlord.
Not less than $4,000 men who now
derive their livings from the saloons
of Greater New York will find their
occupations gone. These derelicts of
an ancient apocation are bartenders,
porters, janitors and drivers Of beer
trucks, most OF whom have no other
trade or handicraft, and many of
whom are beyond the appointed. age
for military service. Contrary to the
general opinion. however, the en-
ployes, as well as the proprietors, of
New York's beer saloons. are neither
shiftless nor a wayfaring class of
men. Most of them are of abstemious
habits, especially as to alcoholic drink
and many of them have laid aside
considerable money and even com
Portable fortunes as the result of long
attention to business and thrifty ways
Saloon "Swabbers" WIN Suffer.
The saloon "swabber" is a type of
barroom attache of whom little is
known to the general public. but he
will suffer most by the closing of the
cheaper saloons because these obscure
esta biishments long have been the last
haven of hope in the stormy and ship
wrecked lives of thousands of such
social castaways and pariahs of the
gay life" The saloon swahber is
usually a combination sexton and
night watchman of the establishment
which houses, feeds and sustains him.
His hours of work are from closing
time at night until opening hour in
the morning, He locks up and he
opens up for the rest. he is the janitor
polisher. garbage man and all-around
scrub" of the beer saloon industry.
The barroom, or it's basement is
usually his home. his workshop and
and he fits them all with
the easy and effortless familiarity of
the mop in its bucket
Inquiry among mem bers OF the
pers' association and of the
Bartenders union. dscloses the sur
prising and heartening fact that the
prevalent and. usually, long cherished
desire of every saloonk eeper. bark eep.
brewery driver and "swab" is to be a
farmer. Many of the more prosperous
saloon proprietors already have "a
little place in the country" and as
most Of them have families. the future
holds no lonely terrors for them.
Women Don't Like the Business.
Every man in the saloon business
is always wanting To get out or it.
said a veteran bartender in Sixth
avenue beer saloon ASK any of them
how their wives and daughters their
mothers and sisters feel about the
prospect of shutting up the joint ana
getting into some other line That's it.
Not one woman in hundred wants
her men folk in the saloon business
They're preiudiced, that's what they
are, | got a daughter in high school
and she tells everybody her father In a
salesman and she's tickled spitless
because now she thinks I'll have to
find another trade I'm not sorry
neither. I'm a strong man yet.
never drank much and I'm going out
in the Michigan berry country. where
they need men and women and girls TO
pick the berries"
The old familiar beer saloon hang
erson OF peace days have almost dis
appeared from the saloon districts
Thousands of the Idle younger men
have found themselves" and are
making good in the army. in the ship
yards and munitions factories and the
work or fight law has at least put new
motion into the older loafers. AS in
Dictated by the veteran barkeep the
families and women folk of the rapidly
vanishing "suds brigade" OF the East
Side, Brooklyn and neighbor;ng tene-
ment districts are shedding no tears
over the impending submersion of the
corner boozery. The needs and op-
portunities of wartime have mini
mized the beer-drinkinr habits of
most OF the poorer families, and their
women as well as their men are find
ing new interests new occupations
and new ambitions.