AMERICAN LICENSE LAW.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VI, Issue 305, 28 May 1896, Page 10

AMERICAN LICENSE LAW.

The latest legislation on licensing matters in the State of New York is very stringent. The control is taken away from local boards, and is vested in a State commissioner, appointed by the Governor. The rate of annual license is raised from a maximum of two hundred and fifty dollaas in New York city to a fixed fee of eight hundred dollars. Clubs of all kinds must, like common saloons, take out a license, and must put a copy of it conspicuously in one of their front windows. Selling on Sundays, either in saloons or clubs, even of a bottle of beer with a dinner is strictly forbidden; and a minimum penalty for a proved breach of the law is a loss of the license and a fine of double the amount (1600dols), together with a term of imprisonment for the seller, in the discretion of the Court, of no less than a day nor more than a year. Mere restaurants, cannot serve wine or beer on Sunday eventhough licensed; nor can a hotel serve to other than registered guests. No license can be issued to premises other than hotels that are within 200 feet of a school or church ; nor even then if more than a third of of the owners of property within 200 feet of them enter a protest. At least half of the eight thousand saloons in New York will be swept out of existence at .a stroke, and as nearly all of these are practically owned by the brewers under chattel mortgages the loss to the, latter will be at least five million dollars —probably nearly double that sum. In this matter of suppressing saloons New York is simply following the general trend of legislation all over the Union. Massachusetts now charges a license , fee in the city of two thousand dollors annually; Michigan, Minnesotta, and Nebraska charge minimum fees of one thousand dollars. —Napier Herald.