The Temperance Debate in Seattle
A look at the Women's Christian Temperance Union’s push for high license fees in Seattle and the broader fight for liquor regulation in the late 1880s.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The work of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Seattle speaks well for its practical methods. These earnest workers realize that prohibition is temporarily unattainable. Therefore, they now devote their efforts to accomplish that which is possible. While they aim to reach the ideal, they are doing all they can to effect it. These Christian women are for prohibition, but until prohibitory legislation is possible, they will earnestly support high license, as that which is the next best thing. And with their support, high license will undoubtedly soon become an acknowledged fact in the city. The record of such a union will go a long way to establish confidence in the work of the W.C.T.U. throughout the United States. An analysis of the figures in the table shows that in the four cities where the tax ranges from $500 to $1000, the average number of saloons is 54 to 10,000 people; in those where the tax is from $250 to $500, the average is 65; and where it ranges from $100 to $125, it is 71, or more than three times as many saloons as there are in the high license cities. This demonstrates clearly enough the restrictive influence of the high license laws, and the best of it is that the saloons closed are those of the most disorderly kind, thus reducing the volume of crime and assault upon the public peace. In the meantime, the more orderly saloons are made to contribute a reasonable revenue to the city as compensation for whatever trouble they may impose upon the taxpayers.
“This demonstrates clearly enough the restrictive influence of the high license laws, and the best of it is that the saloons closed are those of the most disorderly kind.”
This 1887 report highlights a classic era of Seattle municipal reform, where civic leaders debated whether to eliminate vice or regulate it for revenue. Much like today's intense debates over zoning, harm reduction, and city tax policy, the article reveals how Seattle has long balanced social morality against economic pragmatism.
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