The following particularly sane article appears in The Toronto Daily Star regarding a town (Durham) where Local Option is in force;— One day a man came along and sought permission to open a pool and billiard room. The suggestion did not meet with favour and a by-law was passed fixing a license of $200 per year for the first table and $100 for each additional table. This was considered prohibitive. But somebody came to the town, paid the money, and is operating three tables. Now the town of Durham is wondering what to do about it.
The question has far more than a local interest and deserves consideration everywhere. When a town closes its public-houses it should, perhaps, open something else.
In this case the license fee for a pool and billiard room was fixed at what was supposed to be a prohibitive figure, but it did not prove to be prohibitive, because the young men of the town were willing to pay whatever it cost to have more diversion than the place ordinarily afforded. The moral of it is that a town cannot be conducted entirely to please its oldest inhabitants.
A pool and billiard room is what its owners and frequenters make it. Pool and billiards are games of skill. There is little of chance and no call for gaming in connection with them. Any ill-favour in which a pool room may stand in a town is due to readily ascertained causes. The place may be so managed that betting is indulged in, but there is no more need for betting in connection with a game of pool or of billiards than in connection with a game of checkers. Another fault found with such a place is that a young fellow may become so wrapt up in the game that he may neglect his work in order to be present, and may spend money there which he cannot afford to part with.
These objections are real. The pool room frequented almost exclusively by those who are willing to make a little bet and by young fellows who cannot quite afford to waste time and money earns the censure of the community.
But a huge license fee merely makes pool and billiards expensive to those young men in a town who are bound to seek amusement somewhere. When the bars are closed— and they are closing in more towns every year—why should not the leading people in a town face the fact that reform must not only be destructive, but constructive? If liquor-selling public-houses are to be closed, another kind of public-houses should be opened. Liquor may be an evil, but is there any reason why pool and billiards should be abandoned to the cause of evil? Hundreds of people in Toronto have tables for these games in their own houses, and thousands more would like to have.
In a small town there is no evil connected with the games that could not be brushed aside in a moment. How would it do if the town of Durham should buy out the pool and billiard business, run it as a municipal enterprise at cost in connection with the public library, make it popular and respectable, and see how the idea would work out?
In the article entitled "More About the Billiard Pointer" on page 8, in the 19th line of the first column, the word "originally" should be "visually" and the word "and ' in the 20th line of the second column should be" cue."
At Sydney, New South Wales, a new billiard room has been opened. Forty tables, a small regiment of white coated markers, two huge floors, each large enough for a dancing-hall, and three private looms. This, in brief, is a description of the new Empire Billiard Theatre, housed in the premises that were known as Rickard's Buildings at 239, Pitt Street, opposite Tattersall's Club. It claims to be the most spacious saloon in the whole world, and the best lighted and ventilated.