26o HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



the line ; and if any of them want to appeal to higher courts we are ready 

 to go right along with them, clear through to the United States supreme 

 court if necessary." 



The report was formally received, adopted, and ordered placed on file. 

 After the committee adjourned, the newspaper men got wind of this report 

 and went to the secretary demanding a copy. It was furnished, and they 

 published the whole business. Then there was fire and fury and bloody 

 vengeance in the air, around all the liquor camps. Dr. O. H, Conger, who 

 had signed an Enforcement Note for $ioo, said facetiously, " I guess hell's 

 broke loose ! I think I can smell brimstone along the streets !" 



Within a week the committee had evidence and witnesses ready to 

 prosecute twenty-three cases of violation of the ordinance. But now the 

 attorney discovered that the ordinance was utterly null — wasn't worth the 

 paper it was written on ; for in its original enactment four specific require- 

 ments of the state law in regard to such procedure had not been properly 

 complied with. It had not been formally put upon its passage and then 

 waited the "legal" time before being finally passed. It had not been 

 "legally" enrolled in the Ordinance Book. Printer's affidavit to its pub- 

 lication had not been "legally" made and placed on file. It had not 

 been ' ' legally ' ' signed by the President of the City Board of Trustees. 

 The city attorney and city clerk then in service were unfriendly to the or- 

 dinance ; yet it is generous to presume that it was ignorance, carelessness 

 and indifference combined, rather than design on their part, that caused these 

 fatal omissions in details which it was their ofiicial duty to look after. At 

 any rate, the committee and its attorney were now obliged to stop all pro- 

 ceedings, abandon their accumulated evidence, wait till the ordinance could 

 be re-enacted, and then commence anew by getting new evidence after the 

 ordinance had been passed again in manner as required by the state law. 

 However, they met the emergency without flinching, and submitted the fol- 

 lowing document to the city council : 



To the Honorable, the Board of Trustees of the City of Pasadena: 



Genti^Emen: We, the undersigned committee duly appointed by the 

 people of Pasadena to act for them, find that the violators of ordinance 45 

 claim they can defeat it in court on some technical informality in its original 

 enactment — a point of law on which attorneys differ, and which might lead 

 to long and fruitless litigation. We therefore request, in order to place this 

 matter beyond a perad venture or the hair's-breadth of a doubt, that you 

 have said ordinance re-introduced and put upon its course of re-enactment, 

 whenever in your judgment you think best; so that this last possible hope 

 of those who have set themselves to violate the law may be deprived of the 

 least vestige of even a technical quibble to stand upon. 

 September 3, 1888. Signed, 



H. A. Reid (acting by appointment for the W. C. T. U.). 



Joseph Barnes (acting by appointment for the Baptist church). 



Frank D. Stevens (acting by appointment for the M. E. church). 



