(A) No person shall, without a city license, engage in or prosecute, within the city, any of the businesses, activities, trades or employments, or exercise any of the following privileges:
(1) Keep a hotel or eating house;
(2) Keep for public use or resort, any bowling alley, pool table, billiard table, bagatelle table or any table of like kind;
(3) Exhibit any circus, menagerie, circus and menagerie combined, theatrical performances, street or other carnival, or public show, to which admission is charged for money or reward, except any educational, literary, dramatic, musical or benevolent society, or volunteer fire company, not conducted for private profit, unless professional or paid talent, other than director, is employed in such performance or exhibition;
(4) Run or operate for profit a merry-go-round, or roller coaster, scenic railway or like device, or keep for public use or resort a shooting gallery, skating rink, or run or operate a crane rack, doll baby rack, knife rack, striking machine, jingle board, punch board, artful dodger, candy wheel, or other scheme or device by which merchandise or other things of value are disposed of by game of chance, or like device, or human laundry device, or dip device;
(5) Act as hawker or peddler; provided that, bona fide farmers vending farm products shall not be required to have a license;
(6) Act as auctioneer;
(7) Practice the business of a real estate agent, stock broker or other broker by buying and selling for others stock securities or any other property for a commission or reward;
(8) Practice the business of money broker, buying or selling undercurrent or depreciated money or funds, or exchanging one kind of money for another for benefit or reward;
(9) Practice the business of pawnbroker by lending money or other things for profit, for or on an account of personal property deposited with the lender in pledge;
(10) Sell or offer for sale merchants’ trading stamps, premium stamps or stamps or certificates of like nature, or to undertake to redeem such stamps or certificates in money or goods;
(11) Carry on the business of junk dealer, or act as agent, solicitor, canvasser or salesperson, for any junk dealers;
(12) Sell pistols, revolvers, dirks, sling shots, billies, Bowie knives, metallic or other false knuckles, or weapons of like kind;
(13) Maintain any slot machine, or other automatic device, which for the same profit or reward, in each case, and without any violation of law, furnishes music or exhibits pictures, or provides facilities for weighing, or supplies merchandise or other thing, or renders any service, but no slot machine or other automatic device with respect to which, or its operations, service or supplies, there is any element of chance, (being a gaming table within the meaning of the West Virginia Code) shall be provided a license;
(14) Solicit or carry on or practice the business of a collection agency or association, whether it be a person, firm or corporation;
(15) Manufacture, sell or distribute, either at retail or wholesale, any and all preparations of every kind, character or nature, commonly known as soft drinks, including bevo, pable, milo, moxie, ginger ale, near-beer, coco-cola, pop, grape juice and all other preparations of like nature and character;
(16) Keep or maintain for public use or resort, a taxicab stand or any place of like character;
(17) Act as a fortune teller, palmist, phrenologist, spiritualist, medium, clairvoyant, mind reader or perform the art or profession of telling the past or forecasting the future;
(18) Engage or conduct in the transient business of selling goods, wares and merchandise and commonly known as “itinerant vending”; or
(19) Manufacture, sell or distribute, either at wholesale or retail, non-intoxicating beer.
(B) Nothing in this subchapter, and no license or payment under the provisions hereof, shall be taken to legalize any act which otherwise may be in violation of law, or exempt any person from any penalty prescribed for such violations.
(Prior Code, § 741.01)