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JUN 8 1914
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THF:
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SAL00NS OF ANN ARBOR
By pºor. ºf steent.
2:
READ BEFORE THE STUDENTS’ CHRISTIAN ASSOCHATION,
- SUNDAY, DEC, 6th, 1891.
*-***-*-*-**-r-: * *-*** -
In the discussion of this question it must not be forgotten that
the University is a State Institution, governed by a Board of
Regents elected by the people of the State, and supported, to a
great extent, by funds coming directly from the taxation of the
people or voted by the State Legislature.
The University has at the present time two thousand five
hundred and eighty students, who average about twenty years
of age. The Ann Arbor High School, which serves as a Pre-
paratory School for the University, has three hundred and fifty
foreign students, averaging about seventeen years of age. There
are then in Ann Arbor nearly three thousand students, most of
them away from home and away from their natural protectors
and advisers. They are at an age most susceptible to temptation.
They are thrown together in large numbers, in classes, societies
and clubs, where individual judgment is in danger of being over-
come by the enthusiasm of numbers directed by designing and
evil-minded leaders.
This number of students is altogether too great to allow of
their being personally known or in any way looked after, outside
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of the class-room, by the officers and teachers of the University.
The students choose their homes and associations for themselves,
the place of the one and the character of the other being not even
known to the officers of the University.
The city of Ann Arbor, in which the University is located, has
at this time thirty-eight saloons. These are scattered through the
city among the business houses and about the Post Office and
other places of resort of the students. These saloons, like others
of their business in this State, notoriously break all of the pro-
visions of the law made to control them, but the simple items of
paying their tax and filing their bonds. The clauses of the law
forbidding sale of liquor to minors and students, and selling after
hours, and on legal holidays, have been, and are, especially disre-
garded. The saloon keepers look upon these provisions of the law
as an exasperating and unjust interference with their business, and
especially so since they have paid a heavy tax for the privilege of
carrying it on. - " .. "
The gambling places of Ann Arbor are usually found in close
connection with saloons and located behind or above them, in the
same building, so that the legal business of the saloon screens and
protects them. -
The houses of ill fame are also frequently in close connection
with saloons. -- - - - •.
The foreign born element of the population of Ann Arbor
holds the balance of power in the city elections. These citizens
are, most of them, entirely out of sympathy with, and opposed to
the enforcement of the restrictive portions of the liquor laws,
and this with them is a matter of birth and education, or prejudice,
which will take at least a generation to overcome. In only one, .
- the sixth, out of the six wards of the city, can a man who is known
to favor the enforcement of the liquor laws be elected. On this
account the Mayor and a majority of the Common Council, of what-
ever party, are always disposed, not only to shut their eyes to infrac-
tions of the liquor laws, but to make it difficult or impossible for
private individuals to prosecute such infractions with success.
The police appointed by these officers carefully fail to notice such
infractions of the law as their superiors wish to go unpunished.
–3–
This has been the almost uniform condition of things in thi
city for the last twenty years. * -
The city government for the present year, which for certain
known reasons, desires to make the better portion of this com-
munity believe that it is trying to do its duty, and therefore has
ordered a few arrests for keeping open after hours, has notoriously
broken its oaths of office and been recreant of its duty in allowing
the unchecked sale of liquor to students and minors, and drunk-
ards. It allows the screens of the saloons to be kept up contrary
to law, and it has allowed the illegal sale of liquor to go on in the
most public way, and without question, upon the County Fair
Grounds and at the German Park.
The University being necessarily non-sectarian and each of
the great religious denominations having its own college in this
State to specially look after, the Christians of the State have, up to
the present time, taken no pains to know or to remedy these ad-
verse conditions.
Then, to recapitulate, there are in Ann Arbor nearly three
thousand students, away from home and their natural protectors
and guardians, at a critical period of life, too numerous to be
known or looked after by the officers of the University, finding
their homes and associates where they will or may, and then left
to the mercies of nearly forty saloons, all notorious law breakers,
whose special interest it is to sell liquor to them, a part of these
saloons hiding gambling dens, and in close connection with
houses of ill fame, and with a city government hopelessly under
the control of an element favoring law breaking by the saloons,
and with the best citizens of the State ignorant of or careless in
regard to this condition of things, and with many of these con di-
tions steadily increasing in importance and evil influence.
The fact that, with all of these adverse circumstances existing -
at the seat of the University, so little drinking or disorder exists,
speaks in the highest terms for the general good character and
self-control of the students themselves in the presence of un-
necessary temptation and in spite of it. The desire for an educa-
tion among Americans is at least very frequently born of a desire
to be useful to humanity, too noble a motive to be associated with . . .
frivolity and dissipation, -
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–4–
But, that there have been, and on this day that there are, most
terrible results in Ann Arbor, among the student community, from
drinking, we know only too well; and that a large proportion of
these have had their origin in the conditions mentioned above,
there can be no reasonable doubt. Many students acquire bad.
habits in Ann Arbor, then failing in their studies, they come
under the notice of the authorities and are sent home when it is
too late to save them. It is probable that every town of any size
in the State has men in it who were ruined in the saloons of Ann
Arbor.
Drinking among the students has been on the increase during
the last few years. The strong sentiment in favor of total abstin-
ence built up during the Red Ribbon Crusade and which lasted for
several years has been weakened or lost. Saloon advertisements
appear in some of the publications of the students with but little
comment. In times of great excitement and enthusiasm students
have been seen drunk in public on our streets, and men who never
drank before are in danger of being led into drinking with the
rest. - . -
There is great danger to the morals of this State and the North-
West if our thousands of students shall go out from here with
loose and foreign ideas of drinking imbibed with their education
at the University. They may, as teachers and ministers and
- lawyers and physicians, do much to antagonize and destroy the
best and most advanced moral sentiment of the country, of which
sentiment they, as educated men, are the natural leaders.
There seems to be but one feasible plan for freeing the Uni-
versity from these places. The city is helplessly and hopelessly in
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the power of an element opposed to the enforcement, even of the
present liquor laws. The county has too great a percentage of
foreign born population to allow of the passage of County Local
Option, Our only resource then is to apply to the people of this
State for help. The University is theirs, and it is their duty to
free it from these purely local conditions of danger and actual
injury. We believe that the majority of the citizens of this State
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desire that all proper safe-guards should be thrown around the
University and that all unnecessary temptations should be re-
Jºoyed from its neighborhood, and to them we appeal.
§ &
—5–
We must labor then for the passage by the Legislature of
'92-3, of a five mile act, outlawing the saloons within that distance
of the University and the State Normal School. The motor line
of railway connecting the towns of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti
makes it necessary that both schools be included in the same
law. Such a law should be enforced by a State Constable, ap-
pointed by the Governor. Such special acts are not unusual in
special cases like our own, but are found among the laws of our
own and neighboring States.
The strongest reasons to be urged against such a law would be
ſirst, that it would interfere with the business and livelihood
of forty of our citizens, and compel them to take up some other
pursuit, or put them to the inconvenience of removing to some
other locality, and would collaterally and more remotely touch
the business of many more of our citizens; and secondly that it
would deprive the city and county of the liquor taxes now paid
into their treasuries and in So much increase the taxes of Our citi-
zens. To the first we answer, that the convenience of forty men
should not be set against the Safety of three thousand. To the
second, that if the saloons were removed from Ann Arbor there is
good reason to believe that the increase in the number of students
at the University, caused by that fact, would much more than repay
such a loss.
It will be said that even such a law as we ask will not stop
drinking at Ann Arbor and the University. That is undoubtedly
true. There will probably be drinking, as there will be murder
and theft, until the Millennium. But it will require a very large
hole in any law, made for the relief of the University, through
which forty saloons with their big beer and delivery wagons may
be driven. - -
It is also objected that if pains were taken to close the saloons
students would drink more than now simply because it was
prohibited. The greatest law-givers of earth have followed God's
example in forbidding and prohibiting evil, without fear that mis-
chievous men would do evil simply because they were forbidden to
do it. We may rest assured that every enforced law, which tends
to make drink harder and harder to get in Ann Arbor, will at the
same time lessen the amount drunk and the temptation to drink
sº - -
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—6—
We are already encouraged to hope and labor for the success of
this plan. There is nothing partisan about it. We may expect
good men of all parties to favor it. Among the signs of success
already manifest is the interest Christian people begin to show in
the matter. At least eight of the ministers in charge of
churches and congregations in this city have already pronounced
strongly in its favor. Who should know the hidden springs of
action for good and evil in this city better than they? Their active
leadership of this movement is proof positive that they know its
need. Three of the great Christian denominations of the country
have already spoken emphatically in its favor in their State asso-
ciations of ministers. We may expect many more as strong
endorsements from other State organizations as soon as they are
in session.
Every father and mother with a child in Ann Arbor will be
our active ally. Many of the Alumni of the University, know-
ing its needs and having its welfare at heart, will help us with
their money and influence.
We should be able to unite every religious and moral force in
the State for our help, but best of all we may expect God's guid-
ance and help.
There is much to do. Every honorable means for success must
be used. Thousands of dollars must be raised and spent in plac-
ing the truth before the people of the State and the Legislature.
Every step toward making the facts in this matter public is a
step toward success. The opponents of measures like this are
always alert and united. They are used to secret methods of
attaining their ends. Our success lies in acquainting the whole
people with the truth. We believe this to be powerful enough to
compel their action, and we can await that with confidence.
At the close of the service, the following was unanimously
adopted by the Association :
We, the members of the Students' Christian Association of the
University of Michigan, feeling that the time has come when the
sº
—7–
good name of the institution and the welfare of the students
under its charge demand the passage of the proposed law, prohib-
iting the sale of liquor within five miles of the University and the
State Normal School at Ypsilanti, do most earnestly solicit the
coöperation of all good people throughout the State in the endeavor
to have such men elected to the State Legislature as will favor the
passage of such a law; and ask that all ministers, of whatever
denomination, throughout the State, will speak of it from their
pulpits, devoting, at least, one full discourse to bringing the sub-
ject before their people; and we commend the paper of Prof. J. B.
Steere, read before the Association December 6, 1891, as being, in
our judgment, a fair and moderate statement of the condition of
affairs in Ann Arbor.
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