Date for final action on the Sylva liquor bill drew closer today after the senate, meeting as a committee of the whole, last night held the last of its public hearings on the measure. The meeting was marked by:
1. Protests against the sale of intoxicants by girls, presented to the senate by representatives of the YWCA and YMCA, Inter-Church federation and other church groups, and the juvenile court.
2. Claim that 1,200 bootleggers are operating in Honolulu, that bootleggers get the cream of the business while licensed liquor dispensers pay the taxes and that elimination of barmaids would drive those girls into the ranks of the bootleggers.
3. That tavern licenses for sale of beer only be provided in the Sylva bill.
4. That some girls are paid only $5 a week for working in bars, some work for nothing but tips.
Mrs. Jane B. Dranga, manager of the YWCA employment service, said that girls are being used as decoys to attract male patrons to bars. Liquor dispensers say "that boys don’t bring us business," Mrs. Dranga said.
She asserted that some control over that situation must be provided. Many girls, she went on, come to her for employment, saying that they object to the relationships which are unavoidable in their work.
Marshall McEuen, representing church organizations including the Inter-Church federation, as well as the YMCA and YWCA, presented a petition from those organization urging no extention in the hour or day time restrictions on liquor sale, opposing sale of intoxicants by women, opposing amusements in places of liquor sale and favoring reduction of the number of such places and forbidding minors to be present in them.
Charles D. Costas and M.P. Medeiros, both in the restaurant and liquor dispensing business, spoke against elimination of barmaids, the former claiming that their discharge from licensed places would result in increased bootlegging. …
Miss Edith Field of the juvenile court told the senate that employment of girls as barmaids is attended by harmful moral results and argued that if girls are not allowed to work in such places it would be possible to provide additional employment for young men.
The liquor commission furnished figures that 605 women are now employed serving liquor.
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Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
