By Tom Collins

For over four decades (1864-1907) Prescott was a gambler’s paradise. The numerous saloons on Whiskey Row offered not only plenty of liquor, good food and musical entertainment, but also games of faro, poker, keno and the inevitable slot machines.

By the early 1900s, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Salvation Army, YWCA, YMCA and the Anti-Saloon League were spearheading the movement against alcohol and gambling in Arizona. Saloonkeepers in Prescott could read the handwriting on the wall when the Tucson City Council curbed gambling in that city by placing a high license tax on all "public houses of chance" before the 23rd Assembly convened in 1905. Phoenix followed suit in November 1906 when the voters gave the city fathers a mandate to end gambling. Phoenix Mayor L. W. Coggins announced to the press that the city would pass a gambling ordinance that would prohibit every form of gambling, including dice and slot machines. The intention, he said, was "to sweep the city clear of the evil and put the gambling houses out of business." (Tucson Citizen, November 21, 1906)

Territorial Governor Joseph H. Kibbey (1905-1909) was determined to obtain statehood for Arizona but knew that he had to improve its wild reputation before that goal could be accomplished. His speech to the 24th Assembly in 1907 called for a higher standard of morality. For starters, he recommended that the assembly repeal the law that permitted the licensing of public gambling: "One of the most flagrant of the evils of which there is just cause of complaint, and for the abatement of which there is an urgent demand, is public gambling. I know of not a single word that can be said in favor of gambling. It is productive of no good thing. It is the direct and indirect source of so much of unhappiness, of despair of ruin, of poverty, not only of its devotees, but of innocent, helpless, despairing and neglected wives and children, that it can have no claim on our indulgence. To it can be directly traced other vices and crimes, and of all the temptations of the young to evil and crime, gambling is the most insidious." (Arizona Journal-Miner, Jan. 23, 1907) "The time has come," Kibbey proclaimed, "when more care should be taken in our deportment than has been the rule in our earlier and ruder days."

Accordingly, the Territorial Council set to work. George W. P. Hunt, a Democrat and former president of the Council (and later, in 1912, First Governor of the State of Arizona), introduced an anti-gambling bill on the third day of the session. In addition, Lawyer Eugene Brady O’Neill, "Buckey" O’Neill’s brother, introduced a second anti-gambling bill similar in its wording to Hunt’s. (This was ironic, considering that "Buckey" had been a devotee of gambling.)

Hunt’s bill, the one ultimately considered in the legislature, "provides for the repealing of the act permitting the licensing of gambling within the Territory. This, it is thought, will be the bill passed." The original act, permitting the licensing of gambling, contained two important penal code sections. Hunt’s bill repealed Paragraph 2868, which provided a license of $30 a month for all forms of gambling. Section 289 specified the following: "Every person who deals plays, or carries on, opens or causes to be opened, or who conducts either as owner or employe[e] whether for hire or not, any game of faro, monte, roulette, lasquinette, rouge et noir, rondo or any banking game played with cards, dice, or any other device, for money, checks or credit, or any other representative of value is punishable by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars and shall be imprisoned in the county jail until such fine and costs are paid, such imprisonment not to exceed six months." Section 290, which Hunt’s bill would repeal, exempted from such punishment any person who first obtained a license in the manner provided by law. The wiping out of section 290 left the gamblers fully and inevitably exposed to the punishment described in the preceding section (The Arizona Republican, January 30, 1907).

While the majority of citizens approved the proposed legislation, it was open to controversy and involved many in the legislature before it went to a vote. Even if the bill passed, would it be upheld by the public? How would the law be enforced? Would this attempt at government regulation of private morality fail? Next week, we will answer these questions concerning Hunt’s anti-gambling bill of 1907.

(Tom Collins, a Professor Emeritus of Theatre, is the author of "Stage-Struck Settlers in the Sun-Kissed Land," a history of the amateur theatre in Territorial Prescott. He is a volunteer in the archives at Sharlot Hall Museum.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Wikipedia Foundation) Reuse only by permission.

Governor of the Arizona Territory from 1905 to 1909, Joseph H. Kibbey worked hard toward ‘a higher standard of morality’ in his attempts at restricting alcohol and tobacco and prohibiting prostitution and gambling in the territory.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po0742pa) Reuse only bypermission.

Territorial Council member, George W. P. Hunt, introduced the anti-gambling bill in 1907 following the lead of Governor Joseph Kibbey in an attempt to clean up the wild reputation of the territory.