Against A Disorderly Saloon

New York, 1895

A Methodist Clergyman Insulted at an Excise Meeting.

The war against the alleged disorderly saloons of Whitestone by the clergy and numerous other villagers is now thoroughly under way. Sunday night the Rev. James J. Moffit, pastor of the Epworth Methodist Episcopal church, at the conclusion of his sermon on "The Home" requested his people to remain in their seats. He went among them and requested them to sign a paper which he read to them, and nearly all of them did so. It was a protest against the granting of a saloon license to Edward Margolies. In the complaint Margolies is charged with having kept a place of bad character. It is said that he catered to boys and violated the excise law.

The protest, with fifty signatures of prominent villagers attached, was presented to the excise commissioners at their meeting in Flushing Monday afternoon, by the Rev. Mr. Moffitt and the Rev. Jonathan Greenleaf of the Presbyterian church. The clergymen were confronted by Corporation Counsel Lewis W. Ensign and W. S. Overton on behalf of Margolies.

Ex-Judge Overton told the board that Margolies was a man of better character than the minister who had handed in the protest, meaning the Rev. Mr. Moffitt.

The protest was received, and a hearing of the case was set down for Wednesday morning.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 8, 1895, p. 1.