LETTER OF PROF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON CAMBRIDGE, 27 April 1886
EDITOR CAMBRIDGE TRIBUNE: I desire to call the attention of the
citizens of Cambridge to a recent proceeding of the majority of the
committee on licenses, supported by a majority of the Board of
Aldermen, which seems to me to deserve the serious consideration
of every one interested in the good government and the moral condition
of our city, and to warrant severe condemnation.
For a considerable number of years a man named Dewire has kept a
grocery, and sold liquor in a shop at the corner of Washington and
Beacon streets in Somerville, close to the boundary of Cambridge.
Washington Street is the continuation of Kirkland Street in Cambridge.
In 1884, when Somerville voted that no licenses should be granted
for the sale of liquor in that city, Dewire finding his chance of
profit diminished, bought a lot over the line in Cambridge, at the
corner of Lynde [Line] and Kirkland streets, a few hundred feet
from his original shop, and proceeded to erect upon it a double
house of some pretension, fitting up the lower story in a showy and
attractive manner, with large windows and other arrangements suitable
for a drinking saloon. His more modest establishment in Somerville
had been a nuisance to the neighborhood; his new one in Cambridge
promised to be still more objectionable. He applied to the committee
on licenses in 1885 for a victualler's license, and a license to
sell liquor. A protest against the granting of the license,
numerously signed by residents on Kirkland and the neighboring
streets was laid before the committee; and De wire's petition was
rejected. He, notwithstanding, proceeded to open his new establishment,
and, if evidence which seems trustworthy may be relied upon, to
sell liquor without a license and against the law.
Soon after the beginning of the present year, he made a fresh
application for a license to the committee. A remonstrance similar
to that of last year was handed in. The remonstrance was signed
by such well-known citizens as Professor Child, Prof. B.A. Gould,
Prof. J.B. Ames, ex-Alderman C.H. Munroe, the venerable Eben Francis,
Mr. L.E. Jones, three ladies, householders and residents in the
immediate vicinity of Dewire's saloon, myself, and numerous others.
The remonstrants asked a hearing of the committee in case there
should be any question as to the granting of the license, which
they did not expect. To their surprise, they were summoned to a
hearing on the 10th inst. Professor Child was prevented by illness
from appearing, but ex-Alderman Munroe, the Rev. Eben Francis, Jun.,
Mr. F.L. Temple (the proprietor of the nursery gardens on the corner
of Kirkland and Beacon streets), Professor Ames, Mr. Arthur E.
Jones, and myself attended, and presented clearly the reasons against
the granting of the license. The main objections we made were the
lack of any legitimate ground for the existence of a drinking-shop
in the neighborhood; the injury done and the nuisance created by
it; the difficulty of keeping strict police supervision over the
establishment on account of its position on the line of division
between Cambridge and Somerville; the want of due regard to the
express wish of the majority of voters of Somerville in case a
license should be granted for the sale of liquor on its immediate
boundary. We urged that the petitioner for a license ought to show
cause that the granting of his petition would be for the public
advantage, or, at least, would enable him to supply a legitimate
public need. We pressed upon the committee the fact that the
remonstrance of well-known respectable citizens of the neighborhood
against a license ought to be a sufficient ground for rejection of
any such application; that the committee were primarily bound to
consider the moral interests of the community, and to protect it
from the grave injury resulting from a practically indiscriminate
granting of applications for licenses. We urged that an excessive
number of licenses had been granted in previous years; that
intemperance had thereby been promoted in Cambridge; that this was
a case plainly of a sort in which no just ground whatever for the
granting of the petition could be shown to exist.
The chairman of the committee, Mr. J.J. Kelley, avowed with a cynical
frankness that did credit to his honesty, that a majority of the
voters of the city of Cambridge having voted for license, and the
estimates for the expenditure of the city having been made upon the
basis of a receipt from licenses of at least thirty-five thousand
dollars, the committee proposed to grant licenses in sufficient
number to secure that sum; and that they did not regard the moral
interest of the community as a matter which deserved their consideration
in the administration of the license system. Further, upon being
questioned, he with equal frankness admitted that the number of
licenses, nearly two hundred and twenty, granted last year, was in
excess of any legitimate need of the inhabitants, leaving it to be
inferred that, by the granting of a number so excessive, the habits
of intemperance and drunkenness in the community were inevitably
encouraged.
In spite of the views held by the chairman of the committee, the
remonstrants against Dewire's petition could not believe that their
arguments would not, in this case at least, prevail with the
committee. They could not believe that the reasonable desires of
such a number of the respectable citizens of the neighborhood, most
of them old residents, all of them known well as having the real
interests of the city at heart, most of them payers of large taxes,
would not be heeded as against the petition of a recent inhabitant,
one who had taken up his residence in the city for the avowed purpose
of carrying on traffic injurious to the morals of the community and
condemned by every good citizen.
It was with astonishment, therefore, that they learned a few days
after the hearing that the majority of the committee on licenses,
consisting of Mr. Kelley and Mr. P.A. Lindsay, had, in spite of the
earnest opposition of the third member, Dr. E.R. Cogswell, himself
a resident on Kirkland Street, voted to recommend to the Board of
Aldermen that the petition of Dewire be granted.
The remonstrants still believed that the Board of Aldermen, upon
learning the facts of the case, would refuse to adopt the report
of the majority of the committee.
But, on the contrary, the Board of Aldermen, at their meeting on
the 21st inst., in spite of Dr. Cogswell's presentation of the
objections to the granting of the license, voted, by six to four,
that the license should be granted. The names of the majority ought
to be known to the citizens of Cambridge, that their course in the
matter may be remembered against them. They were E.W. Hincks, G.
Close, J.J. Kelley, J. Cogan, C.W. Henderson, and P.A. Lindsay.
The personal interests involved in this special case may be of small
moment; it may be of little matter that the desires and arguments
of a weighty body of the best citizens of Cambridge have been
unceremoniously disregarded. The interests involved are not local
or personal. They are those of the whole community. An outrage
to the moral sense of every good citizen has been committed by those
to whose guardianship not only the material but the moral interests
of the city are committed. A great wrong has been done, not to the
residents on Kirkland Street alone, but to every inhabitant of the
city. It is a matter in which the fundamental principles of good
municipal government have been brutally violated. I trust that the
voice of other citizens, who have the interests of the community
at heart. will be heard concerning it. I am sir,
Your obedient servant, (From Ten No-License Years In Cambridge published by the Citizens' Committee, Cambridge, Mass. 1898, available at books.google.com) |