"Beating" Chi's Cabaret Law
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Source: Variety, 5 July 1918, pg. 3.
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The anti-cabaret ordinance recently passed by the city council of Chicago has proven to be a most malodorous and dismal failure. A group of aldermen have spent the past week in touring Chicago cabarets to see how the ordinance was working out. They found that it wasn't working out at all.
Practically all the cabarets, while living up the letter of the law, were violating its spirit.
The only thing the ordinance has done is to cause a loss of profit to the cabaret people. In other words, they are doing just as they formerly did, but it is costing them more money to do it.
It is said the ordinance will be repealed before fall, and that cabarets will resume operation under the old law, with a higher license fee and a stricter police regulation than formerly.
The principal clause in the ordinance prohibits dancing and cabarets and the sale of liquor under the same roof. A number of the larger cabarets have gotten over this by taking the roof off. In other words they are running gardens, or outdoor cabarets, and the corporation counsel has held that this is in compliance with the letter of the law.
Others have divided their places by glass partitions, thin enough to permit the noise of the music to be heard in the "booze" department of the resort. Others have used lattice partitions.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 9 April 2000
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