William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[319] before a magistrate on a charge of selling whisky without a permit. “ You are fined ten dollars,” said the judge. “ Ten dollars!” sneered the Jew. “I pay him-shell agen.” Next time the offender was fined twenty dollars. “ Twenty dollars!” he snapt; “pay him, and shell agen.” Brought up a third time and fined a hundred dollars, he looked blank and beaten. “Eh! A hundred dollars? A hundred! Den I schtop.”

But magistrates are lenient-perhaps too lenient with offenders. By the Adair Law any barkeeper in Ohio who supplies a man with drink is answerable for that man's misdeeds;. answerable whether he supplies the whole or only part of what his customer may have drunk. Thus a man may come into a bar and drink a cocktail. He may go to a second house and have a mint-julep. Later on, he may take an eye-opener, and after that a whisky-smash. By this time he may be tipsy, quarrelsome and disorderly, and the landlords who have each supplied him with six-penny worth of liquor, are each and all responsible for his misdeeds. Such a law needs to be wisely read and cautiously applied. The crusaders and crusaderesses say it is not applied at all.