Stevens County Sets a Date to Vote the Saloons Out
With the petition deadlines cleared, the county auditor orders a Nov. 9 local-option election — and the dry forces, organized out of Colville, are predicting the small-town saloons are finished.
The time for filing objections to the county unit local option petition having expired, the election will be ordered by the county auditor and held on Nov. 9.
That the county unit will vote dry seems generally conceded. The ranchers, as a rule, favor the closing of the saloons in the smaller towns, because of the fact that it is difficult to regulate and control the saloon traffic where there are no municipal governments to handle the saloons at close range and to make proper regulations for their government.
The county local option organization, headed by A. E. Veatch, of Colville, is keeping in close touch with the work, and will see that the vote is gotten out and every effort made to carry the day. There will be no let-up in the campaign until the saloons are voted out.
Whatever argument there may have been for licensing of saloons in the incorporated towns of the county cannot apply to the smaller towns. This point is generally recognized by ranchers, and it is safe to predict that the local option forces will be successful in their fight.
With the spread of the "dry" movement it is evident that the matter of state wide prohibition will come up at the next session of the legislature. By the time the next legislature assembles a large majority of the small towns of the state and the county units will have been voted dry, and the rural districts and small towns will combine to dry up the larger cities.
“There will be no let-up in the campaign until the saloons are voted out.”
Washington voted itself dry in 1916, four years ahead of national Prohibition — and county-unit local option votes like this one in Stevens County were the rungs of the ladder. The pitch here is revealing: ranchers wanted saloons closed in unincorporated towns precisely because nobody was close enough to regulate them. Today's county-by-county fights over liquor licences, cannabis retail and zoning still turn on the same question of who gets to decide what a small town permits.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.