The Temperance Fight Hits Local Garrisons
Legislators move to ban saloons near military homes, targeting Orting and Puget Sound shipyards in a sweeping dry campaign.
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Olympia, Jan 21. Bremerton, Charleston, Port Orchard and Orting saloons are coming in for a considerable share of attention at the hands of the legislators. The latest slap at the saloons is a bill which will be soon introduced by Representative Sayre of Pierce County providing that no liquor shall be sold within three miles of a soldiers' home. This on the face of it affects only the vicinity of Orting, but if the bill gets through both houses, it will also knock out the Charleston and Bremerton saloons. This measure in a way backs up the bill introduced by Senator Bryan which places a three-mile saloon limit on any reservation upon which there are soldiers or sailors. Representative Sayre already has a bill up in the house which provides that minors cannot secure liquor even on the order of parents or persons of legal age.
“Parental thirst which heretofore has been relieved by sending Will and the 'can' to the saloon, will under this law, have to be assuaged by personal effort.”
This 1909 legislative push to restrict alcohol near military installations highlights the long-standing tension between the state's moralizing politics and the realities of garrison town economies. Today, the debate over the regulation of vice has shifted from alcohol prohibition to the complex intersections of zoning, veteran services, and commercial density in Pierce County.
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