Saloonkeepers Try to Clean Up Their Own Trade Before the Prohibitionists Do

J.R. Barry and J.J. Dunlap, of Newport, were at Colville last week, in attendance at a meeting of saloon men of the county, which resulted in the organization of a county lodge of the Knights of the Royal Arch. Official State Organizer Wm. Bachrach was present and instituted the lodge.

The order has for its purpose the elevation of the liquor traffic, and believes that it is up to the saloon men to so improve their business that those who oppose the saloons may be robbed of the force of their strong arguments against the liquor interests. Mr. Bachrach made a speech, in which he said:

“The most powerful argument which the prohibitionists can present is the drunken man reeling from the doors of a saloon. Let us put ourselves right as a business before our fellowmen. Let us cut off, root and branch, the minors, the drunkard, the tramp, the criminal, the dance hall and the vicious of every class and kind.

“We should adopt a model license law and urge every city, town and county to put it in force. We should urge the retailers to adopt a stringent code of by-laws for the government of their members. When, by our own efforts, we have stripped our business of all ground for just complaint, we can, as a business, appeal to the liberal-minded for fair treatment.

“I strongly urge the enactment of sound, wholesome laws looking to the regulation of licenses to respectable men, who will in time raise the sale of drinks to a position of such respectability that saloons will become something like clubs for men of small means and far from any just ground of complaint. There exists in every country and in every locality a class of unfortunate people who in their fits of despondency indulge to excess in strong drink, or if drink is not to be had, in strong drugs. The saloons should refuse to sell them—let not their misery be laid at our door. The whole community should not be made to suffer for the weakness of a few.”