Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/183

174. . . the class which must be regulated and restrained in the interest of peace and good order will not be permitted to regulate and control the city. In particular, about the liquor traffic, whose dangerous features every community is forced to recognize, guards must be erected and maintained.

For this traffic is unlike any other. The public safety requires that it be kept under as stringent regulation as public sentiment will support and enforce, and in all parts of the country there is a growing demand that it be dealt with as a thing which, because of the dangers to social order and public peace that attend it, shall be kept under careful regulations and made, by taxation, to contribute to the support of communities upon which it throws so many burdens.

The conspiracy of the Liquor Sellers' association to bulldoze the Oregonian having failed, perhaps the next best thing would be to mob the common council and burn the mayor in effigy.

The paper which was founded here to do the work of a disreputable political ring now by natural process becomes the organ of the hoodlums, of the "dives," of the lowest class of drinking holes. Natural selection had probably been observed before Darwin, but no one had given it a name. "Birds of a feather," however, did very well.

The Daily News, commenting on this editorial, argued that the term "hoodlums of the dives" applied to all who sold or dealt in liquor was "rather severe" and would be "appreciated" by the large element of business men to whom it had been applied.

The News of Monday, March 12, containing a full column of church news, including reports of Sunday services at five churches carried also a half-column report of an "Indignation Meeting of Liquor Dealers and Brewers." Liquor dealers' licenses had been raised by the council from $250 to $800 a year. Increased license fees had been favored by both the Oregonian and the Telegram and the Oregonian had said editorially that there was "good reason to believe the action of the council will receive the commendation and support of a majority of good citizens."

"Resolutions published in the News issue of the 12th read: Resolved, that we, the members of the Liquor Protective Union, and others interested in the manufacture and sale of liquors and beer, denounce the said papers (Oregonian and Telegram) as unfriendly to us and our interests, and we withdraw all our patronage and support from the said Oregonian and Telegram."

A resolution adopted assessed a fine of $5 upon any member of