me add that even co-citizenship, could not raise your great nation any higher than it already stands in the admiration and esteem of all intelligent Canadians. [Applause.] THE CHAIRMAN: I think you will all agree with the chair that Mr. Spence has made a real contribution to the discussion on this subject. The chair has pleasure in calling for further discussion on this subject from the Rev. Dr. John P. Peters of New York City, Rector of Saint Michael's Church, New York, and chairman of the Committee of Fourteen for the suppression of the Raines Law in hotels of New York City. [Applause.] DR. JOHN P. PETERS: How blessed are they who are in sympathy with their surroundings! I envy the last speaker his complete sympathy with the excise legislation and the administration of that legislation in the Province of Ontario. Unfortunately, I am, to some extent, out of sympathy with the excise laws of the State of New York and to a great extent with the administration of those laws, at least so far as my home city, New York, is concerned; but of that further in a moment. What we are discussing, as I understand it, is not excise legislation as such, but liquor traffic in its relation to city government. Professor Hat Not Excise ton has, I think, been somewhat unjust to the liquor traffic in that portion of his paper in which he spoke of its political effects. The liquor traffic and the saloons are undoubtedly in politics, but they are not the only forms of business which are in politics and their political influence is not, I believe, by any means so great or so dangerous as Professor Hatton implies. Some years ago in my own locality a number of us were fighting against the invasion of our decency by a number of very objectionable saloons, with dance halls and immoral attachments of one sort and another. We found no very great difficulty in putting them out of business, except one. That one, I regret to say, exists to this day. It was backed by one of the great street railway corporations of New York. The political influence of the saloon was not able to resist a citizens' movement, but the public service corporation was able to resist us successfully. The political danger in the saloon is its use as a tool by such corporations, seeking to obtain The Public public property for nothing, or without adequate payment. They, not it, are the real source of political corruption and the real obstacle in the way of proper control of the liquor traffic; at least that is my experience in New York, and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, it seems to be the experience of men who in other places have attempted to follow corruption to the bottom, as, for instance, Judge Lindsey in Denver. And here I may add that the method of some church leaders and church organizations in combating the liquor evil tends at times certainly to throw the saloon into politics instead of taking it out. They enter the political field only as it touches the liquor traffic. Provided a man vote for their measures in that direction, he may be as corrupt as possible elsewhere and yet receive their commendation and support. A couple of years since I noticed on the list of candidates for the Legislature, having the approval of the Anti-Saloon League in New York (an organization with which I have been glad to coöperate in some of its work), probably the most dangerously corrupt man in the entire Assembly, a man of decent exterior, gentlemanly surroundings and pleasant relations, through whom all the iniquitous sneak-thief legislation of the railway corporations was introduced. Bought and owned legislators of that description can never be calculated on to give us good and honest legislation on any subject, because their first consideration is the provision of proper tools for their own corrupt purposes and those of their clients. I do not think that we can take the saloon out of politics until we have succeeded in taking other businesses out of politics. The saloon is only part of the whole system. It is a branch, so to speak, of the tree. We must cut down the tree and dig up its roots. As to the liquor traffic and city government, I speak with much diffidence. I have no best method to propose for dealing with the liquor traffic in cities. Such experiences as I have, such knowledge as I possess and such ideas as I have developed pertain to my home city of New York and I must, therefore, ask you to bear with me if, instead of treating the theme as a whole, I merely speak of our problem in New York City and how, accepting the existing condition of separate state and city governments, and building on our present law, developing it, not revolutionizing it, we could, in a very practical and simple way, reach a condition which would remove certainly some of the most serious evils under which we now suffer. For those who are not familiar with the New York law, let me say that that law, the so-called Raines Law, after the name of its author and pro The Raines Law moter, took effect in 1896 and has been modified only in minor particulars since that date. Mr. Hatton has pointed out that the liquor problem is really a city, not a country problem. But this was a countryman's law, passed by country votes, in a state where the political complexion of the country is different from the political complexion of the great cities, especially New York, and it has, from that day to this, been administered as a country law, by countrymen, not sympathetic with city conditions and who seem to have made no serious attempt to put themselves into touch with city conditions and city ideals. The natural result is that in regard to this law there is a hostility between the state excise department, which is entrusted with its enforcement in the most essential particulars, and the city authorities, to whom falls the administration and enforcement of the law on the police and criminal side. The liquor tax provided by the law is extremely profitable to the state and the greater part of those profits are derived from the cities, the Borough of Manhattan alone paying one-half of the entire amount collected from license fees. Although the cities receive a part of this excise tax, they feel that they are being exploited by the countrymen, and that the country receives an undue proportion of the excise revenue which is raised almost entirely in the great cities. The law provides in New York City, for liquor to be consumed on the premises, a license fee of $1200 per annum, with a bond, forfeitable in case of violation of the law, of $1800. The licenses are issued by the state, half of the license fee going to the state and half to the municipality. In addition to the ordinary prohibitions of immorality, gambling houses, prostitution, and the like, in connection with licensed places, the state also prescribes the police provisions, nominating the hours within which the place may be open, requiring that the bar be exposed to the street at hours when sales are forbidden, and especially forbidding any sale of liquor on Sunday. To this latter regulation there is one exception: If the place licensed be a hotel, for no extra fee it may sell liquor on Sunday, provided it be sold with a meal. For violation of any provision of this law, whether moral and legitimately covered by the criminal code, as keeping gambling houses or houses of prostitution in connection with the sale of liquor, or conventional violations of what are properly non-criminal ordinances, such as selling out of hours, on Sunday, etc., the license may be revoked and the bond forfeited. The Powers of the Excise Department Revocation of a license occurs on evidence presented by the excise department of a violation of the excise law in any of its provisions, important or unimportant, before a judge of the Supreme Court. The power placed in the hands of the excise department by these provisions is very great. The law itself is constitutional, as has been decided by the highest courts of the state, only as a police measure. By decision of the court the object of the law is to regulate the traffic, and licenses are issued not primarily for revenue purposes, but to enable the state to regulate and police the liquor traffic. In spite of court decisions, however, from the outset the excise department has treated this law as a revenue measure, administering it not to regulate the liquor traffic, but to collect as large a revenue as possible from that traffic, and especially from the great cities. It has even undertaken to throw the burden of the police administration, with which it is primarily entrusted, upon the city and county authorities, which have, it is true, by the provisions of the law, coördinate jurisdiction. This is, to begin with, ridiculous. The cities having had practically no voice in the determination of the police regulations of the traffic, which were framed by persons politically, socially and economically quite out of sympathy with the city, have naturally regarded the law very much in the light of the yoke of a conquering enemy. The city not having been consulted, this law having been imposed upon it by country legislators and being administered from top to bottom by country officials, even the most honest city officials have felt no great responsibility for its enforcement, while the citizens at large have regarded it with actual animosity. It is for this reason that grand juries in New York City will not indict offenders against this law. Licensing Vicious Resorts Moreover, the law having given to the state authorities a particularly efficient means of enforcing the law and paid the state enormously for doing so, at the expense of the cities, the city authorities naturally feel that the burden of its enforcement should lie on the state. The result of this conflict between state and city has been that neither party has enforced the law, except for graft. The state, on its side, developed what may be called an extra legal system of licensing vicious resorts. Having ascertained by inspection or by complaint of citizens that some licensee was conducting a vicious resort, it would secure a revocation of his license and a forfeiture of his bond at intervals of some years, intervals sufficiently remote to enable him to stand the extra tax without going out of business. These extra taxes for running vicious resorts, so calculated that they would not put those resorts out of business, considerably increased the revenue derived by the state from the city, without at all giving that control and regulation of the traffic which the city was entitled to expect from the state in payment for those fees. In New York these penalties are actually more than enough to pay the entire running expenses of the excise department, including the expenses involved in enforcing the penalties. The city politicians found their profit from the traffic in a manner somewhat different from that of the up-state politicians. Through threats of arrest and criminal conviction for violation of the excise law, they levied an illegal tax on the traffic. By this means practically every saloon, whether running legally or illegally, was compelled to pay a certain monthly sum, which was collected directly or indirectly through the police. This was supposed to be payment for the privilege of running illegally, and saloons which would not open on Sunday were liable to special per The Saloon an Agent of Corruption secution and prosecution by "framed" cases, to force them to run illegally and pay for the privilege. Extra vicious resorts paid in proportion to the amount of their vice and its profits. The policy of state and city officials thus tended to degrade and criminalize the liquor traffic more and more and made the saloon an agent of increasing political corruption. The hotel provision of the law, giving a special opportunity for Sunday violations and being enforced as to the provisions with regard to what constituted a hotel neither by the state authorities nor by the city authorities, the result was that a large number of saloons added to their saloon accommodations a few rooms, which they designated a hotel. To pay for these rooms, as there was no demand for them for real hotel uses, the saloons came in most cases to allow their use for purposes of prostitution. This was winked at on the city side, because each vicious resort gave so much additional revenue, and, on the state side, because it increased both the number of licenses and the amount of the extra license fees collected by the state at intervals on vicious resorts. A couple of years ago, in the Borough of Manhattan alone, there were about 1200 fake hotels as over against some 200 to 250 actual legitimate hotels. The effect of this whole system on the social and political morality of the city was horrible. The law as administered was and is infamous. It should be added that the present excise commissioner appears to be making an honest effort to comprehend the situation and to administer the law efficiently; but he is seriously handicapped by the heritage of past maladministration. And now for a few suggestions with regard to what can be done, substantially along the lines of the present law, for it seems as though it would be practically an impossibility to change that law in its fundamental provisions. Limiting the The answers to the questions sent out in preparation for this discussion show a pretty general agreement as to the value of limiting the number of licenses in any given place in proportion to the population. This would probably be a good thing in New York City. It is likely to be opposed on the revenue side, however, from fear that it may diminish the revenue received by the state from the sale of licenses. This is a practical if immoral difficulty. It might be obviated on its practical side to the distinct advantage of its moral side by making the present license fee a minimum and providing that licenses like ferry franchise should be bid upon and knocked down to the lowest bidder who complies with the conditions, financial, moral and otherwise, attached to the license. Some licensees could very well afford to pay a great deal more than $1200, and this might become the case with all licensees if the number of licenses were regulated. Of course this involves the danger, which is a peculiarly great one in New York state, that the license, having thus become property, should be regarded by the court as a vested right, a contract on the part of the state which can not be violated, never mind how grossly the licensee on his side violates the law which was the condition of his license or franchise. To make such a system effective it would be necessary, also, and that would be a great gain, to extend the term of the license, which would not, of course, affect the annual revenue derived from the same. It would also be necessary, and in this there would be a very great gain (in fact, this should be the next step in amending the law in New York, whether the number of licenses is regulated or not) to connect the license with the property. At the present time each license is granted to an individual. An individual may have as many licenses as he pleases, provided he comply with the conditions, pay the fee, put up the bond, etc. If a license is revoked the same licensee may not have the license renewed. But in point of fact the business continues, in 99 cases out of 100, to be conducted by the same |