JUAREZ HIT BY ORDER
Nine o'Clock Law Is Invoked
Hilarity Defies Drought as Revelers Do Late Drinking Early
Los Angeles is Blamed by Saloon Owners for Their Sad Fate
BY NORMAN WALKER
[EXCLUSIVE DISPATCH]
JUAREZ (Mex.) March 28.— This is a long, dry night for the boys and girls who think that "On the Bridge at Midnight" is the national air of Mexico.
Promptly at 9 o'clock tonight the customs inspectors at the American end of the bridge stretched the chains across the bridge-head barring both foot and horse as well as horseless carriages from crossing the American side of the river that is wet on one side and dry on the other. No more owl cars carrying Mexicans, Americans, Negroes and Chinese in various degrees of liquid contents up to and beyond the point of saturation. No more queues of automobiles extending down from Juarez avenue for blocks after midnight, all as heavily loaded as their passengers. No more whisky wheezes to the general effect that the only thing dutiable they have is what is inside of them. Bridge closing, which has been a subject of heated conversations locally for more than a year, is now a reality and the El Paso preachers' prayers mixed with the saloon keepers' curses when the Treasury Department order from Washington was officially put into effect.
It was a sad night in Ciudad Juarez. Despite all the boasting threats of retaliations and free zones, the saloon and cafe men admitted they were throwing a big bluff and that their business would be on the bum from tonight on. As Juarez depends largely upon this element for its life, it promised to be a long, lean summer for this frontier town. Even the managers of the gambling concessions, which are held directly responsible for the closing border, lost a little of their defiance and even admitted that maybe it would have been better to have listened to reason and closed gambling in the open and let it run in the upstairs places.
BLUFF IS CALLED
When the question of closing the bridge was put squarely up to the El Paso Chamber of Commerce by the Treasury Department, there was a division as to the question of closing the port because of the cafes and saloons, but all agreed that the gambling was a positive evil and one leading business man cited cases where his own employees had been short in their accounts after gambling in Juarez. An ultimatum was issued to the Juarez Chamber of Commerce to the effect that, unless gambling was stopped in Juarez, a recommendation would be made to Washington that the bridge be closed at 9 o'clock.
Evidently thinking that the American organization was bluffing, this threat was not taken seriously. The customary telegrams were exchanged with higher officials and that was that. Then came the order from Washington to close the bridge tonight. Offers of compromise were made to the end that gambling would be cut out if bridge closing could be averted. But the train had gone and the order went into effect tonight as originally directed from Washington. What the effect, if any, upon El Paso's morals will be is problematical. Whether it will mean that men will leave their business to come to Juarez in the afternoon remains to be seen. But one thing is certain, Juarez itself will be as quiet as a Quaker meeting after night and the wail of the saxophone and the thump-thump of the muted drum will not be heard much longer in this town after 9 o'clock.
BLAME LOS ANGELES
The saloon and cafe men, who are one in the common cause of an open bridge openly arrived at, blame Los Angeles for the local bridge closing. They reason after this fashion: When Tia Juana was closed, Los Angeles realized that it would hurt her tourist business if Juarez remained open. For, the boys with the acrobatic haircuts argued, it would divert all tourists marked "f.o.b. Los Angeles" to El Paso and Juarez. So Los Angeles got Washington on the wire and had the bridge closed here. Last week they were blaming it on the El Paso preachers and the week before on the president of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce. The fact that Los Angeles knew nothing of the local bridge situation until the closing order was issued, makes no difference to the bar-room boys, who are mad at Los Angeles and refuse to use any California oranges in their cocktails.
With typical Latin temperament, the Juarez business men and bootleggers are making all kinds of threats against El Paso, Los Angeles and Salome, Ariz., for their asserted part in closing the bridge as tight as a Salvation Army drum. A [...] zone, a barbed-wire fence a[...] the wet side of the Rio Grande, and the removal of the border bodily are some of the milder threats being made by the men whose financial dogs have been stepped on.