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Page 156 TAVERNS AND HOTELS
for want of a drink of liquor, but at that time the drug stores sold
liquor indiscriminately without the prescription of a physician. It
was said that one drug store in the town sold more whisky than two
or three hotels. The facts are that the country store carried raw
alcohol and sold it to whoever wanted to buy.
On one occasion a citizen of DuBois applied for a
wholesale liquor license, which was refused by the Court. He came
home and opened a drug store and stated afterwards that he had been
very foolish for trying to get a wholesale liquor license. In his
drug store he had no restrictions. The Internal Revenue Department
arrested him for rectifying spirits. He complained very bitterly
about this and said he did not rectify, as all he did was to take a
gallon of alcohol, dilute it with water and put in some coloring
matter and out of one gallon of alcohol he got three of whisky.
The "saloon" license was supposed to cover nothing but
wine and beer, but it was very apparent that people patronizing
these saloons got just as drunk as they did in the barroom that sold
hard liquor, and it was a notorious fact that these places sold hard
liquor as readily as the light wines and beer.
One woman peddled liquor from house to house. In the
morning she filled her market basket with half-pint and pint bottles
of whisky and waited on her regular customers. She finally
accumulated sufficient money to buy a hotel in which she lost her
money more rapidly than she had acquired it.
The illicit sale of liquor became so great that the
license trade employed a detective and a lawyer and at one September
Term through the evidence secured by the detective eight operators
of speakeasies were convicted and one or two carrying on a wholesale
business were driven out of the State.
About payday or at a christening or wedding, the
salesmen of the liquor interests were quite busy and usually there
was enough "wet goods" supplied to the different mining localities
and throughout the town to furnish business for the local Justice of
the Peace in riots fights and stabbings to last a week.
When one reviews the situation as it existed in the
early history of the sale of liquor he is amazed to see the change
of sentiment and the drift of the minds of the people on this
question.
As before stated, all that was needed was four beds for
the entertainment of guests and a stable in which to keep the horses
of the travelers.
To obtain this license the proprietor presented his
petition to the Court of Quarter Sessions, first certifying he was a
man of "good moral character;" and second, that he had a house
sufficient to meet the requirements of the law; third, that this
house was necessary for the entertainment of the traveling public,
and then he filed a bond with surety in favor of the Commonwealth in
the sum of $2,000.00.
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