The Sunday Closing Wars in Tacoma

Tacoma is in the heat of internal strife, which is indigenous to financial stress. The local leaders of the American Sunday School Association have been pushing the Sunday closing movement against the saloons, and in a test case have obtained a conviction under the state law. The liquor dealers held meetings and employed the ablest attorneys to find a way around the difficulty, but without avail. The only thing that could be suggested was to lock their doors and under no consideration to furnish liquor to anyone, and not only abide by the law in their own line, but to insist and assist in enforcing it in all other lines, thereby making the movement as odious as possible to the community. Saturday a committee, representing the liquor dealers, notified the proprietors of all businesses that they must close or that warrants for their arrest would be sworn out Monday morning. The result was that those who were accustomed to a nip had to provide themselves with a bottle the night previous, go without or make a trip to Seattle and spend hard-earned Tacoma dollars to enrich the merchants of a rival town. Those who were in the habit of having their bread fresh from the bakery on Sunday either went breadless or had to put up with the remains from previous bakings. Not a cigar could be bought, and there were more villainous-looking, ill-smelling old dodgers around on this, the Lord’s day, than one would usually encounter in a whole week.