" Our early city elections were the sensation of the town, as they were a battle royal between the wets and the drys. [In 1900,] the ballot box was stuffed, the poll book showed but 35 had voted and the ballot box contained 42 votes. The wets accused the drys and drys accused the wets for the fraud. Another election was held with an officer in charge to check up on the voters. At one election the drys won out and the saloon operators started gallon joints outside the city limits. "--J. E. Morback, Sherwood Valley News, April 27, 1939. See also: The Town Council Minutes.
6 comments:
Ah yes. I those days there was not much notice of Democrats and Republicans. It was the "Towns" and the "Citizens" on the ballott. Can you guess which group was for Prohibition? Which one was against? Were those out-of-town gallon places another name for "drinking shops?"
They were more like a convenience store. You didn't do a lot of "shopping" there.
OK. Let me guess. Were the "towns" the people mostly for saloons as the saloons were in the town? Were the "citizens" the ones for prohibition? So then they had cut-rate gallon shops outside of town? That must have made the "citizens" pretty mad. I heard they had to sell the dynamite outside of town too.
Every time we vote, us "Drys" and always out-voted by the "Wets." Then how come it is when we look at all the pictures, there always seems to be more "Drys" in the pictures than the "Wets." I don't get it!
Mr. Brown, you ask an interesting question. The "citizens" of Sherwood were a pretty elite group. The "Town of Sherwood" was a corporation. The "Mayor" was officially addressed as the President of the Corporate Town of Sherwood. Each citizen was a share holder in the corporation because he owned property. Without that "share" you could not vote in an election. It cost money to run for office. Two "bondsmen" would post $2000(!) on your behalf and they could withdraw the bond at any time. At the same time, there was a homeless population wandering the West Coast in groups large enough to be called armies. If they had any money at all it was from temporary, extractive work such as logging. They also traveled by rail a lot and Sherwood was a railroad town. And so the conflict between wets and drys could have had deeper sociological significance than we imagine.
Anon. is so right! Did you know that the City Council of Sherwood,
"The Corporation" financed the first bank? In the early 1890s the "Citizens Bank of Sherwood" was on the corner of Railroad and Main. The remnants of that building still remain today. In those days, there were no private banks. It was not until the 1950s when Sherwood's first bank went corporate.
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