redeeming feature; a nuisance in any habitation fit to reside in; as inimical to society; the propagator of crime and the dispenser of untold misery and suffering."

Supreme Court of the United States in Crowley vs. Christenson, 137 U. S. 86: "By the general concurrence of opinion of every civilized and Christian community, there are few sources of crime and misery to society equal to the dram shop, where intoxicating liquors, in small quantities, to be drunk at the time, are sold indiscriminately to all parties applying. The statistics of every state show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at these retail liquor saloons than to any other source."

So, we are to ascertain the proper legal status of an institution, which is the propagator of more crime and the dispenser of more suffering in each one of the states than any other cause; an institution which is a recruiting station for the poor house, the insane asylum, the jail and the penitentiary; and which, for three years, has kept up an unending procession of broken hearted women-mothers, daughters and wives-to the executive chambers of Indiana, to plead for clemency for loved ones, whose liberty the state had taken away, as a penalty for crimes committed.

The City Prosecutor recently said: "It is true. that three-fourths of the crimes of Chicago are due to the saloon."

A. F. Knotts, a former Mayor of Hammond, Indiana: "Ninety-five per cent. of all crimes is caused directly or indirectly by drink. The police

records of our city show that more than ninety per cent. of all the offenses committed are the results of intemperance, and that the police force, maintained at an expense of $15,000 a year, is almost wholly and exclusively employed in watching and caring for men, women and children affected by drink."

Judge Gookins, in the case of Beebe vs. the State, 6 Ind. 542, said: "That drunkenness is an evil, both to the individual and to the state, will probably be admitted. That its legitimate consequences are disease and destruction to the mind and body, will also be granted. That it produces from four-fifths to nine-tenths of all the crimes committed, is the united testimony of those judges, prison-keepers, sheriffs, and others engaged in the administration of the criminal law, who have investigated the subject. That taxation to meet the expenses of pauperism and crime, falls upon and is borne by the people, follows as a matter of course. That its tendency is to destroy the peace, safety and well-being of the people, to secure which the first article in the Bill of Rights declares all free governments are instituted, is too obvious to be denied."

CHILD LABOR

Senator Beveridge has greatly aroused the sympathies of the people of the United States for the child laborers, and the conditions that he depicts are truly deplorable. The difficulty with his crusade is that he is proposing to doctor the effects alone, without treating the cause at all. Reliable

authorities on the child labor problem claim that fifty per cent. of the child laborers of the entire nation are such from sheer, abject necessity in the drunkenness of one or both parents.

Innocent children are compelled to perform, day in and day out, the most slavish drudgery, to avoid starvation, because the saloon has deprived them of parental support. It would naturally seem that the sincere child-sympathizer would do the child the greatest service by striking at the greatest cause of his miseries-the saloon.

CHAPTER IV

THE COMMON LAW STATUS OF THE SALOON

In debating any question, it is of first importance, for the contestants to find an agreed and common starting point, if possible.

As against the saloon, its opponents pin their faith to the contention that it is a legalized institution-legalized by the license, while, in its favor, its supporters claim that it is a common law right, and that the saloon license is merely a limitation or restriction upon the free exercise and enjoyment of that right.

Simplified, the first contention is, that the saloon is unlawful at common law, while the second is, that it is lawful at common law, so that we reach a common or an agreed starting point on the common law status of the saloon. We are to take the saloon, in its original native state, unmodified and untouched by legislation, and measure it by the common law. In other words, the unlicensed saloon. If it is unlawful at common law, then it is legalized by the license. If it is lawful at common law, then the license is not a means of legalizing it. To find a satisfactory answer to these antagonistic propositions, we must ascertain by what standard the institution is to be weighed and what estimate we should place upon it. We can not well determine the common law standard without first defining the, common law,

THE COMMON LAW Defined

The common law is defined to be "the unwritten law," to distinguish it from statutory law, and sometimes as court made law or "the law enacted by judicial legislation," to distinguish it from that formally enacted by legislative bodies.

The meaning of the phrase, the unwritten law, probably, can not be more clearly expressed than it was by the United States Supreme Court, when, speaking by Chief Justice John Marshall, it said: "The mere act of instituting a state government adopts, without reducing them to writing, those general, legal principles necessary to secure the safety and authority of the state as a body politic and to preserve its constituent members in safety, peace, health and morality, and these general, unwritten, legal principles constitute the common law."

The adoption, merely by organizing a government, of those general, legal principles necessary to preserve the safety, peace, health and morals of the people, necessarily makes unlawful and imposes a prohibition against those pursuits and acts which, within themselves, endanger the safety, peace, health and morals of the people.

From time to time, in the progress of society, courts have been called upon to interpret the unwritten principles, rules and maxims of the common law and to make application of them to specific cases, and, in doing so, they have announced the tests and standards by which we are to ascertain