CANNOT BEAR RESTRICTION.
By W. N. Glenn
SATAN'S prime minister, the liquor traffic, is very zealous in the matter of territorial conquest, as well as in the struggle for unlimited time for carrying on the work of human destruction. That "industry" not only demands the privilege of conducting its nefarious business twenty-four hours in the day, and seven days in the week, but insists that there shall be no space on earth exempted from its operations. It is about the only business in which man is engaged, endorsed by law, that is not willing to be limited in some respect, and which does not seem to realize the possibility of impropriety as regards time or place. There is a little spot, two miles in diameter, enclosing the State University at Berkelely, within which it is unlawful to sell intoxicating liquors. This is more than the traffic can bear; it must get within that little circle also. There are several hundred young men there being educated, and if rum should be kept away from them during that important era of life it would be an irreparable loss to Satan. Under the law they must go at least a mile to get a drink of liquor. Some of them doubtless get it too often even at that distance, but the archdealer is so accommodating that he would "deliver" his wares to the customers' doors; then there are many at the University who do not as yet indulge at all, and these must be tempted. So it is necessary that the rum merchant be established a little nearer the institution of learning. The inevitable attorney is consulted; the law is believed to be "unconstitutional"—that strange fatality that seizes nearly all temperance laws in California. The result is, the law has been violated and the offender arrested—merely to test the validity of the statute. The defendant demurred on the ground of unconstitutionality. The Justice sustained the demurrer, and the case will be appealed to the higher courts.