AMERICAN PROHIBITION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 256, 22 October 1908, Page 4

AMERICAN PROHIBITION.

"HOLDING DOWN THE LID." New York, September 1. Governor Fort, New Jersey's famous moral reformer, who is an administrator of similar stamp to Governor Ungues, of New York, yesterday {jucceeded in what Americans cull " holding down the lid" in Atlantic City, •' and sitting on it." In other words, he directed the strict enforcement of tlie new ordinance forbidding the sale of intoxicating liquors within the City boundaries oil Sunday. Now there is no more popular seaside resort in either hemisphere than Atlantic City. Its sands, its sunshine, its live miles ol wonderful broadwalk are for ever coaxing Philadelphia or Baltimore or Washington, or even New York, to half-empty themselves at all seasons of the year. At the present moment there are probably 200,000 visitors crowding its huge hotels and innumerable boarding-houses. On almost any hot day in summer you can see 30,000 people disporting themselves in the waves. You can therfore readily guess the commotion caused by Governor Fort's threat to send a military guard to the back doors of the s aloons yesterday, anil the manifold devices employed by visitors to avoid the distressing calamity of spending twenty-foar consecutive hours on a thirsty August day without anything more stimulating than " soft " drinks. There arc 220 licensed saloons in Atlantic City. So tightly was the lid held down that, the police say that not a single drop of intoxicating liquor was sold between midnight on Saturday and midnight on Sunday. Over the front door of a saloon on Illinois Avenue one , mute and inglorious Mr. Duoley had hung the sign, "No liquor sold her on. r Sunday, and d d little oil Monday." I Another proprietor had knotted aboat the knob.of his locked bar-room door a t beer bottle drapi'd with black crepe, and beneath were the words. "Smell and pass right on." The landlord of the ' Old Vienna, one of 'the best-known saloons on the Atlantic coast, invited a 'coterie of politicians to tea in his place n during the afternoon. lie put up nutbrown iv il for nil, and since Governor Fort himself cannot prevent a man givj ing away intoxicating liquor on Sunday (r or any other day, this seaside SamariD tun was hailed as blessed throughoat the evening. 1 U-ite on Saturday night hundreds of people were seen staggering under a weight of beer cases, or trundling sus-picious-looking casks in children's waggons on the way home. When midnight came and brought two hours when the jj saloons might open, the rush for liquor resembled a huge tidal wave—London . j Daily Telegraph.