A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE SALOON "KICK."

Otago Witness, Issue 3414, 20 August 1919, Page 59

A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE SALOON "KICK."

Saloon substitutes do not trouble Cordova, a little town in Alaska, not the big one in Spain. The substitute is already there in the Bed Dragon Club, which started as a rival to the first saloon, and will soon proudly wave the flag of victor. Ite great superiority over most of the proposed substitutes is that it has the saloon "kick" or bar—" a 4 kick' not entirely alcoholic, but • increased and made human by sociability minus the frigidity of formal gatherings and the personal freedom which permitted any man to say whatever he pleased in whatever way ho pleased." Just how this personal-liberty '' kick" is to be applied to all the retrieved corner saloons of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, et al., the Public, Ledger of the latter place is not prepared to say. But small towns and rural centres are urged to take notice, and the Ledger sees in this Alaskan rival to the "poor man's club" a means of saving "recourse altogether to theory," since this club "has been weighed in the Alaskan balance for 10 years and not found wanting." Founded in 1908, the Bed Dragon Club boasts this interesting history: " With more than a score of saloons in "the little town of slightly in excess of 1000 inhabitants, not to mention numerous dance halls and dives, the Bed Dragon has held its own and made a name for itself not only throughout Alaska, but in many parts of the world. '' The Bed Dragon has a ' kick 'in it, although no alcoholic beverages have ever been served there. Any man, drunk or sober, is welcome there. He can read, write, box, play pool, talk 'trade' Avith men from all parts of the territory, drink coffee, swap stories, or express his opinion „on any matter that comes up from 10 o'clock in the morning until midnight every day in the week. If he is too drunk >to navigate, friendly hands will be found to steer him to his cabin or to a bunk where he can sleep off the effects of a spree. "The 'Bed Dragon Club-house was opened in Cordova by the Protestant Episcopal Church many years before it had a church building there —in fact, St. George's Mission has just been completed. v"ln 1907, when the Copper Biver and North-western Railway Company was preparing to build a terminus near the native village of Eyak and lay its-track into . Cordova, which then existed only on paper, the Bev. E. P. Newton, a Protestant Episcopal missionary, visited Eyak. The railroad company assigned a site near its proposed terminus in Cordova where the church could erect a building. Mr Newton decided that a seven-day and seven-night-a-week club-house was needed in that rough, pioneer community much more than a church. Work was soon begun on the Bed Dragon. " It was a neck-and-neck race between Mr Newton and the proprietor of the first saloon to be built in Cordova to see "which would be finished first. The saloon :wdn, but the Bed Dragon was the second building to be finished in the new town. "It was then, and still is, a very crude affair—a one-storey, one-room frame building, 24ft 'by 36ft, with a storm porch, it had little to differentiate it from its rival saloons, dance halls, or stores, except for the equipment which it housed. It contained a fireplace, a piano, a large 'mission' table with writing-pads and magazines, three bookcases filled with 1000 volumes (most of which were the gifts of individuals later), boxing-gloves, a pooltable, a large davenport, two couches with nillows, Morris chairs, and a stack of folding chairs, three game-tables, an alcohol coffee-urn, and a chafing-dish, and an altar with its equipment, which was kept in a closet until Sunday, when the one room was transformed into a place of worship." It took the name Bed Dragon Clubhouse in order to convince those shy of anything religious that it was not a place where religion would be obtruded upon those unwilling to hear it. Neither dogma, church standards, nor tests of the moral character of its visitors have been brought forward. But—- " Everyone has been welcomed. A second reason for selecting the name Bed Dragon was that the church, when it should come to be built, was to be called St. GeoTge's, and the dragon was deemed a fitting name to be used in connection therewith, because of the story of St. George and the dragon. " And then Mr Newton wanted a name which, with a dragon painted in red, could be used on the stationery of the club-house to help advertise it throughout Alaska. It coon became famous. Letters to men who expected to be in Cordova were frequently addressed in care of the Bed Dragon Saloon, the writers knowing the proclivities of the persons " The Bev. Leonard E. Todd, of Fall River, Mass., spent his vacation in lSufl in charge of the Red Dragon. In January, 1909, Eustace Paul Ziegler, of Detroit, since ordained and now rector of St. George's in Cordova, was placed in charge, and still directs its destinies. "The history of Alaska could be reconstructed from the persons and events that passed under Mr Ziegler's vision in the- Bed Dragon Club-house. He has made strange friendships with rough and desperate men, with drunkards, spendthrifts, miners, foreign labourers employed in railway construction gangs, gamblers, college boys of good principles seeking fame and fortune, and the word spoken in season, when, in trouble, they appealed to him for advice or aid, has often borne unexpected Tesults. The Red Dragon has "reatly extended the field of his usefulness. " Now that the saloon is going out_ of business, Cordova should have no _ difficulty in finding a substitute. It is already there, prepared to begin substitut-

ing. And it will not be without a 'kick,' albeit a non-alcoholic one, '"What Cordova, and, through Cordova, Alaska has tried and proved may be the active suggestion which will solve the problem puzzling many lay and clerical minds as to what shall bo substituted for the saloon.