This is suppose to have been actually printed in the local paper: Appeared in West Prince Graphic July 16,2008, Alan MacRea
Friends and Neighbors:
Frank Statement Issued By Man In Tombstone, Arizona
“Tombstone, Ariz: claims credit for frankest saloon keeper in the United States. He keeps the Temple Bar Saloon, and advertises his business with most surprising frankness. ‘Allow me to inform you that you are fools; he says, yet his place is usually filled. He maintains that he is an honest saloon keeper, and that it will not hurt his business to tell the truth about it.”
“He has had printed an advertising card which would make an excellent manuscript for a temper-
ance lecture. Copies are being circulated through the western states and are attracting much attention. The card reads as follows:”
Well at least he is honest, Right?
Friends and Neighbors:
"I am grateful for past favors, and having supplied my store with a fine line of choice wines and liquors, allow me to inform you that I shall continue to make drunkards, paupers and beggars of the sober, industrious and respectable." Honest Saloon Keeper, Tombstone, Arizona...The Guardian, 10 February 1906.
Frank Statement Issued By Man In Tombstone, Arizona
“Tombstone, Ariz: claims credit for frankest saloon keeper in the United States. He keeps the Temple Bar Saloon, and advertises his business with most surprising frankness. ‘Allow me to inform you that you are fools; he says, yet his place is usually filled. He maintains that he is an honest saloon keeper, and that it will not hurt his business to tell the truth about it.”
“He has had printed an advertising card which would make an excellent manuscript for a temper-
ance lecture. Copies are being circulated through the western states and are attracting much attention. The card reads as follows:”
“Friends and Neighbors:
I am grateful for past favors, and having supplied my store with a fine line of choice wines and liquors, allow me to inform you that I shall continue to make drunkards, paupers and beggars for the sober, industrious, respectable part of the community to support. My liquors will excite riot, robbery and bloodshed.”
“They will diminish your comforts, increase your expenses and shorten your life. I shall confidently recommend them as sure to multiply fatal accidents and incurable diseases. They will deprive some of life, others of reason, many of character, and all of peace. They will make fathers fiends, wives widows, children orphans and all poor.”
“I will train your sons in infidelity, dissipation, ignorance, lewdness and every other vice. I will corrupt the ministers of religion, obstruct the gospel, defile the church, and cause as much temporal and eternal death as I can. I will thus ‘accommodate the public’ it may be at the loss of my never dying soul. But I have a family to support—the business pays—and the public encourages it.”
“I have paid my license and the traffic is lawful; and if I don’t sell it, somebody else will. I known the Bible says:’Thou shalt not kill, no drunkard shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven: and I do not expect the drunkard make to fare any better, but I want an easy living and I have resolved to gather the wages of iniquity and fatten on the ruin of my species’
“I shall, therefore, carry on my business with energy and do my best to diminish the wealth of the nation and endanger the safety of the State. As my business flourishes in proportion to your sensuality and ignorance, I will do my best to prevent moral purity and intellectual growth.”
“Should you doubt my ability I refer you to the pawnshops, the poorhouse, the police court, the hospital, the penitentiary, and the gallows, where you will find many of my best customers have gone. A sight of them will convince that I do what I say Allow me to inform you that you are fools, and that I am an honest saloon keeper.”
Well at least he is honest, Right?
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