The wearisome task of raising fresh signatures to combat every new application, sometimes surfacing monthly, across Indiana led to the enactment of the 1905 Moore Law.
The new legislation made it possible for a blanket remonstrance to block all liquor applications for an entire township for two years. This mechanism would also change the playing field in Owen Township.
Anti-saloon crusaders wasted no time in filing general remonstrances against “three saloons in Driftwood Township and one in Owen Township, which will be knocked out as fast as their licenses expire … ” the Seymour Daily Republican read.
In June 1905, the Republican Kurtz columnist flaunted the fact that “Monday, June 5 closes a year without saloons in our town … ” By July, townshipwide remonstrances banned alcohol in Carr and Salt Creek townships, closing four saloons in Medora and one in Sparksville.
But pro-saloon advocates were far from giving up. That same month, William Goen struck back with a countermeasure that promised “to cause an anti-saloon war in Brownstown Township.” He initiated plans to open a 30-by-20-foot roadhouse near Braden Bridge in the wetlands of Brownstown Township just over the dry Owen Township line. Prohibitionists raised a petition, but after clandestine negotiations, threats or persuasion, Goen suspended his plans.
When legal avenues to alcohol closed down, alleyways opened up to bootleg whiskey and backwater speakeasies, called blind tigers across the state. The first reference of a blind tiger in Kurtz appeared in The Brownstown Banner on Jan. 2, 1906: “The blind tiger has been closed and the blue goose has flown.”
The Indiana legislature responded in 1907 by passing a blind tiger law that gave officials the authority to search premises, seize alcohol and issue mandatory jail sentences for those found guilty of operating of a blind tiger.
The anti-saloon crusades shuttered saloons across southern Indiana. By March 1907, Bloomington, Paoli, Spencer, Petersburg, Orleans and Salem were all dry cities. By August, the Indiana Anti-Saloon League boasted of having rendered 787 townships, wards and districts dry.
“Since May 1, 1905, 904 saloons were either closed or prevented from operating,” read the Republican.
In December 1907, Jackson County prohibitionists scored another victory with a blanket remonstrance that “put seven saloons out of business in Brownstown.”
Over the next 11 months, the saloons closed like dominoes as nine of the 11 townships dried up.
“Washington Township has one saloon at Dudleytown, and Jackson Township has about 25 saloons in Seymour,” the Banner read.
Before leaving office, Republican Gov. Hanly called a special assembly of the state legislature that passed the County Local Option in 1908, allowing for special elections that could render the whole county dry. By May 1909, Jackson County was one of 53 counties to become dry. A year later, 70 of Indiana’s 92 counties were dry.
But the countywide ban in Jackson County only served to drive industry further underground. During the Fourth of July celebration in 1909, Deputy Sheriff Van Robertson and Frank Browning arrested Brown County resident James Moffit for selling “bottled goods” for 50 cents per pint on the picnic grounds. A second suspect escaped.
Some blind tigers surfaced under the cloak of soft drink establishments, supposedly selling “dry” beer and other nonalcoholic drinks. Although authorities raided, made arrests and confiscated alcohol, bootlegging and speakeasies were resilient institutions. County citizens, even police, had little appetite to incarcerate violators.
At a special session of the Board of Public Safety in Seymour in 1910, Councilman Davison tried to fire the entire night shift of the police force for failing to shut down blind tigers.
“Chief of Police J.T. Abell … stated that several places had been raided during the past two weeks and that an effort was made to secure an impartial jury of good citizens, but that they had been unable to obtain a conviction.”
The chief of police defended his record by arguing the city had made more arrests in 1910 that the previous year, but Chairman Mills insisted “there was more drunkenness this year than last.”
And the feuds waged on.
This is the third column in a series of four by Craig Davis, who was born in Seymour and graduated from Brownstown Central High School. He currently lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and works for a U.S. government contractor on school-based violence prevention. He is the author of “The Middle East for Dummies” and is conducting research for a genealogy and social history book in Kurtz and Freetown. Send comments to [email protected].