p. 15 | A QUESTION OF DAMAGE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 28, 1906

A QUESTION OF DAMAGE.

If three saloon-keepers of this city [Chicago] have to pay $5,000 damages apiece to the family of a man whom they have ruined and debauched, how much would the 240,000 saloons of America have to pay on the same basis for all the homes they have wrecked and are now wrecking, provided simple justice in the premises were required at their hands at the present time? That is the startling question suggested by a remarkable decision in Judge Tuthill's court, in which a jury assessed three saloon-keepers $17,500 damages (under the civil damage act) for debauching John Hedlund, a skilled carpenter, and, despite the repeated protests and warnings of his wife and friends, persisting in selling him liquor after his will-power was gone and his body a prey to alcoholic poison.

Five years ago Hedlund was a successful workman, earning $4.00 a day at his trade. To-day he is a drunkard, made so by virtue of the license law, and his wife and five little children, the youngest two years old, are in desperate circumstances. The testimony developed the fact that the defendant saloon-keepers had put Hedlund under considerable financial obligation and had exhausted their wiles to bind him fast as a patron even after he had become a confirmed drunkard.—Press Despatch.