WASHINGTON, D. C., April 23, 1902. The committee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m. The CHAIRMAN. The hearing this morning is to be on the bill (S. 3968) to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors in immigrant stations and other public buildings, which is as follows: A BILL To prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors in immigrant stations and other public buildings. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter it shall be unlawful to sell intoxicating liquors in any immigrant station or other building owned or used by the United States Government or in the grounds appertaining to the same. SEC. 2. That any violation of this act shall be deemed a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall for each separate offense be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars. STATEMENT OF REV. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, PH. D. Mr. CRAFTS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I wish to say that Mr. Dinwiddie, who would naturally have been with us this morning, is out of the city on account of a previous engagement. But Hon. S. E. Nicholson, secretary of the National Anti-Saloon League, is here representing that body. The CHAIRMAN. Whom do you represent, Mr. Crafts? 35 Mr. CRAFTS. The International Reform Bureau, which has drawn four of the laws enacted by Congress in about a year past one on divorce, for this District; another closing the gates of the St. Louis Fair on the Sabbath, and two for the protection of uncivilized races against intoxicants. The Rev. O. R. Miller, field secretary of the same bureau, is also here. The bureau's headquarters are in this city. There are also present Mrs. Margaret Dye Ellis, legislative superintendent of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and Mrs. Ella M. Thatcher, superintendent of the department of soldiers and sailors. The National Temperance Society is represented by a statement from Joshua Bailey, of Philadelphia, who has visited all the National Soldiers' Homes, save one. These four organizations together fairly represent the sentiments of the churches of this country, whose membership is 27,000,000, more than one-third of our population. We have here three eyewitnesses of the liquor selling in immigrant stations, and also three eyewitnesses of the liquor selling in Soldiers' Homes. The CHAIRMAN. Can liquor be sold legally at any of these places now? Mr. CRAFTS. The present anticanteen law is applied only to the young soldiers in the Army. Personally, I agree with the opinion of General Sewell, that the law should be enforced against canteens in the old Soldiers' Homes also. In a letter to a constituent, which I have, and in a speech in the Senate January 10, Mr. Sewell interpreted the words "premises used for military purposes by the United States" (on all of which liquor selling is forbidden) as applying to Soldiers' Homes, which are in reality hospitals for veterans. But the War Department interprets the anticanteen law as applying only to young soldiers in the Army. The bill now before us is the same in substance as the Ellis bill, reported favorably in the Fifty-fifth Congress after a very thorough consideration. There were more petitions for it than in behalf of any other measure coming before that Congress, Pennsylvania sending in the largest number of petitions. I wish to call attention to a weighty statement in the House report on that bill, which was reiterated substantially in another House report, when, a part of the bill having been reported in the first anticanteen law, the committee said: "Even if the canteen results in the decreased consumption of liquor, the United States Government should not in any sense be connected with the liquor traffic, but should let private parties conduct it under the laws of the different States." This repeated declaration that "the United States Government should not in any sense be connected with the liquor traffic" has unquestionably been the weightiest consideration in all the anticanteen legislation, and conservatives agree with radical temperance men in that doctrine. Even drinking men would, few of them, defend Government liquor selling. The effect of the pending bill would be simply this: The bill before us applies to all the buildings owned by the United States Government, whether used for military purposes or for any other purpose, but the only buildings in which such liquor selling is not already illegal are those on Ellis Island, our immigrant station, and, perhaps, the old Soldiers' Homes. It is already illegal to sell intoxicants anywhere at army posts, but the law is not fully enforced, and this law would help by a civil penalty that any citizen could apply when army officers neglected their duty. It is also illegal to sell in the Capitol or in any other Government building in this city, but liquors are sold in the Capitol-they were sold in the Museum and Library also till we interfered—and this new law might be better observed than the old one. So the force of this bill, I want to say very distinctly and to have that point made very clearly, is simply to add to the present law. In the main, however, this bill seeks to suppress Government liquor selling at Ellis Island and at National Soldiers' Homes. The CHAIRMAN. Is liquor now sold at Ellis Island? Mr. CRAFTS. Indeed, it is. We have three witnesses here.who have seen it sold there. Immigrants being the wards of this Committee on Immigration, this aspect of the bill is perhaps most likely to receive favor and early action on your part. But let me first complete my general protest against Government liquor selling. I have quoted from two committee reports the conviction that it is not fitting that the United States Government should in any way be connected with the liquor business. It may be questioned whether the United States is in the liquor business. On this I will read a statement of General Patrick, of the Soldiers' Home at Dayton, quoted in the Senate January 8, 1901, by Senator Sewell, who has been the most influential man in the management of the Soldiers' Homes: "The beer hall is the property of the United States and can not be taxed. It is entirely under the control of the council of administration." In the same speech, in reply to a question as to whether the present anticanteen law, then about to pass, would not apply to the canteens of old soldiers as well as young ones, Senator Sewell said: "It [the Soldiers' Homes] is a Government institution. ported by Congress and may be considered an army post." The points which we expect to prove are: First. That the canteens in the Soldiers' Homes do not keep the old soldiers from harder liquors and harder places outside, but only add a daily drinking place to whet the appetite for the monthly drunk after pension day. I have seen proof of this myself in one visit at Hampton and in many at Dayton. Others of wider observation will testify to the same effect. Second. We shall prove that the Homes which have no canteens, as at Marion, Ind., notably, are the best in every way, with the least drunkenness, the least waste of money, the soldiers in the best physical as well as moral condition. We shall show by the evidence and by a diagram, which I hope may be republished in the report of the hearing, that instead of a beer canteen keeping the evil places away from the Soldiers Homes, saloons and dives gather like a besieging host about the Homes, as shown in this diagram of the Milwaukee Home's environment, which could be Not only are the conditions more favorable, physically, morally, and financially, in the Marion, Ind., branch of the National Soldiers' Home, where there is no canteen, but a like superiority is seen in the Home for regulars here in Washington and in State Homes for old soldiers at Waupaca, Wis., and Marshalltown, Iowa, which have no canteens. In all these canteenless Homes the soldiers are healthy and happy and contented, and spend their money wisely. duplicated from every Home with a canteen. est outside dives is the one at Marion, Ind. The Home that has few That has no canteen. Part of Milwaukee How the "Canteen" does away CANTEEN Mational Park. T |