Health and Temperance by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 45.

Health and Temperance.

By Editor

A READING NOTICE.

A NOTICE in the New York Sun called our attention to a new saloon just opened in this city by a local politician of some note, and—"The floor," said the Sun, "is inlaid with silver dollars, which are cemented in the marble floor in holes bored in alternate slabs—heads and tails up alternately. . . . The place is named 'The Silver Dollar,' and the sign bears a huge counterfeit of the obverse and reverse of that much-coined coin. The assemblyman has chosen a location near the police court, with a keen eye to the place where the biggest crowd is always to be seen in Essex Street. There are to be seen . . . in all about $700."

A member of the staff of the Christian Union visited the gorgeous saloon, and found that the Sun's description was nowise overdrawn. The room is finished in stained cherry. Handsome mirrors are on every side. The glasses of the chandelier and the wine glasses ranged behind the bar are many-colored, and lend a gaudy brilliancy to the scene. Everything about the place was cleaned and polished to the very pink of neatness—that is to say, every inanimate thing. The patrons were quite in keeping with the character of the district in which "The Silver Dollar" is located.

The number of customers clearly showed that its proprietor, Assemblyman Smith, had not miscalculated the degree of splendor for which his constituents were willing to pay. Two bar-tenders were kept busy passing out the drinks, while the statesman was entertaining a group of his guests by telling them how beautifully the place lighted up at night. He was a heavy man, about five feet ten in height, with a thick neck and a dark, coarse, sensual face of the Jewish type. Though in his shirt-sleeves, he was well dressed. There was nothing of the cheerful, hail-fellow-well-met about him; in fact, he had apparently no single element of personal attractiveness. The fact that he could be the political leader in a working-man's ward was a significant and uncomfortable fact to contemplate.

One of the bar-tenders, in the course of a talk with our representative, told him that in the evening the place was in its glory. Then it was always crowded, and sometimes the crowd amounted to a jam. The lavish outlay of money had proved an immense investment. Since moving into the new quarters, where the patrons saw the shining faces of their silver dollars gleaming at them from every point, the "business had doubled." In speaking of the political influence of his employer, the bar-tender said that his repeated election to the Legislature was not due to the fact that the district was naturally Republican, but to the fact that Smith knew "every man, woman, and child in the ward."

The neighborhood in which this saloon is located formed an interesting study. It is one of the poorest of the poor. The windows and the little iron porches of the tall tenements were disfigured with dirty clothes and bedding hung out for airing and drying. Most of the families have but two rooms apiece, and one of these is a work-room as well as parlor and sleeping-room. With the exception of a few miserable groceries in the basements, most of the store-rooms were occupied by saloons. There were four of these on the same block with "The Silver Dollar." In front of the one shoe store on the block the shoes exposed for sale were marked 75 cents and $1.25 a pair. It would seem as if the stores where the necessities of life were sold were supported by the copper cents earned by the women and children, while the silver dollars earned by the men were all taken to inlay the marble floors of the saloons. Yet the proprietor who flaunts into the very faces of the poor the fact that his wealth means the wasting of their wages is for the fourth time elected to represent their interests in the Legislature!—Christian Union.