how to put henry hinz out of business
Henry Hinz was the first man to erect a building on the townsite of De Smet. Laura Ingalls Wilder mentions "young Mr. Hinz" (age 25) in By the Shores of Silver Lake (see Chapter 24, "The Spring Rush" and Chapter 25, "Pa's Bet"). In February 1880, he drove up to the Ingallses' house with a load of lumber which he had hauled from Brookings. He planned to build a store, and he urged Ma to board him while he was building. Mr. Hinz was such a nice young man that Ma didn't refuse. It was only later that the family discovered that the first building in town was... a saloon!

That saloon was 16 by 24 feet, and although Mr. Hinz had intended to build on the corner lot, he missed the mark and built on the lot just south of where the hotel soon stood. He was granted a liquor license at the cost of $400, but residents soon took a vote to deny the sale of liquor and it was rescinded. No matter. Hinz and his partner moved the saloon to the Lake Preston area, and they moved it back and forth between De Smet and Lake Preston as often as votes were called to allow, then deny, the sale of liquor.

A license was granted during the Hard Winter, but business was light, mostly because nobody had any money to spend on liquor. In her handwritten Pioneer Girl manuscript, Wilder wrote that Mr. Hinz's supplies of drink were the only supplies that lasted through the winter. "A man might have taken a drink occasionally but we never saw or heard of anyone drinking and no one got drunk through all the hardships." The place was always popular, though; Hinz had put up 500 tons of slough hay prior to the Hard Winter, and loiterers sitting around and twisting hay could keep the stove red hot and themselves fairly warm.

The following appeared in the Lake Preston newspaper during the Hard Winter of 1880-1881 as a humorous and practical way to keep the drinking man at home, and to put the local saloon operators out of business.

If you are bound to drink - are determined to go to ruin - why don't you set your wife up in business? Instead of buying your liquor at ten cents per drink from the saloon keeper, thereby paying six dollars per gallon for what you drink, why don't you buy a gallon, which can be done for two dollars or less, and give it to your wife and let her sell it to you for ten cents per drink, and when you have drunk the gallon up, she can give you back two dollars to buy another gallon with and have four dollars left to support your family instead of going into the saloon keeper's pocket. In this way you will always have money to buy the next gallon - and the oftener you drink it up the more money your wife will make and the sooner you will go to the devil.

Although he was arrested a number of times for the illegal sale of liquor and appeared before Charles Ingalls (as Justice of the Peace) more than once, Henry Hinz seems to have straightened up and flown right after his 1889 marriage. He became a rural mail carrier and served over 25 years by team and later by automobile. He and his wife, Randi, had ten children. Henry Hinz died in 1938 and is buried in the De Smet cemetery.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:59 PM