Saloon controls

 Democrat, April 11, 1911

Franklin County Saloons

Under the Proctor Law, regulating the saloon business, counties are allowed to fix the number to which a community is entitled, from 500 population to 1,000.

The Board of County Commissioners of Franklin County held that the action of the Legislature was satisfactory and allowed the limit of one saloon to each 500 of population to stand. The population basis is fixed as five persons for each vote cast at the last preceding general election in the municipality.

Under this construction, when a township contains but one incorporated town, the two are considered as one.

Brookville is entitled to 11, Butler to 2, Highland to 2, Laurel to 2, Ray to 3, Salt Creek to 1, and Whitewater to 2, a total of 22 as against 43 now in business. FORTY-THREE? 

Under the law, the saloons now in business may be re-licensed but whenever any quit for any cause, no new one may be licensed to take its place, until the number has been automatically reduced to the legal limit.

The town boards of Brookville and Laurel fixed the town license fee at $300 per year, the maximum rate, while Cedar Grove and Oldenburg selected the lowest rate for towns, $150.

NOTE:  Fairfield Township was technically always dry.

Proctor law was a state law regulating liquor licenses, replacing a law that let the various counties enforce prohibition with a series of scattered local ordinances. Proctor was enacted in March 1911 and signed into law by Gov. Thomas Marshall. Local options for communities were not impacted by this. Local option referendums closed many saloons in Indiana in 1915, including Laurel, and all of them closed in 1919 when Prohibition was ratified.

None of these laws were better than the people who were paid to enforce them. You could still get a drink if you knew the correct knock.

A saloonkeeper could lose his liquor license for opening his saloon for business on any Sunday, holiday or election day, or for allowing any of the following in or about his saloon:

• slot machines, or any other form of gambling;
• the presence of "lewd women";
• bartending by any woman, even the saloonkeeper's wife;
• the display of "nude or lascivious pictures";
• rooms above or behind the saloon maintained "for immoral purposes"; or
• the operation of any other business directly in the saloon, including real estate or employment offices, pool rooms or barber shops.