The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1882-07-08
THE PROHIBITION CYCLONE IN
IOWA

Iowa has been swept by Il prohibition
cyclone that has done its work as
thoroughly as the tornado that recently
pouncel down on the the town of Grin
nell and left ruins and death in its wake.
While the people of this region have
paid little or no attention to the agitation
of prohibition in Iowa, the work has been
going on there that has revolutioniZed
the policy of great State, and that has
given from 40, 1000 to %, 900 majority for
a constitutional amendment which for
bids not only the sale but the manufac
ture of alcoholic liquors of any kind-in
Guiding ale, lager and cider-within the
broad commonwealth that is about cen
trail in it's position among the North.
western States.
While Eastern journalism has given
the minutest details of the extremely
personal politics Of the two old parties,
it has not prepared the minds of readers
of newspapers in this region for anything
like the tremendous victory of the com
ing party of prohibition that had begun
its hard fighting and victories in Kansas.
where Republicanism was first inspired
with fighting courage and baptized in
blood, and where, for the first time, the
people of a State incorporated the princi-
pie of prohibition III their fundamental
law.
This sort of agitation "means bust
ness and perhaps trouble. Constitu-
tional prohibition is prohibition that has
come to stay and occupies the inner
citadel of onr American system. 1t means
war to the knife against the whole liquor
| business. 1t means destruction to parties
and politicians that get in the way of
people determined to root out what they
regard as worse than war, pestilence and
| famine.
The success of the prohibitory expert
ment in Kansas has not been so decisive
and unquestioned as to help the fight OF
its advocates in Iowa. In tact. all the
| inconveniences of the Kansas trial of con-
stitutional prohibition, all it's evils, all
| its blunders, have been made the most
of by the enemies of prohibition, and the
Press has disseminated discouraging facts
and opinions all over the country. The
liquor business in this country is as pow
eriul, we'll organized, alert, active and
dangerous to its enemies as that of own
ing and working "niggers was twenty
five years ago, and it has managed to get
it's literature smuggled into the columns
of hundreds of good newspapers that
were innocent of any intention to help
the liquor traffic.
The Iowa fight, then, was not an easy
one. Prohibition did not get a victory
for the asking. 1t has had to fight for
all it got. all over the State. Its victory
is all the more significant.
The new epoch in the temperance
movement which has been successfully,
and wonderfully, inaugurated III Kansas
and Iowa, is worthy of careful study and
cool judgment. 1t would require oblivion
of the lessons of our past history for us
to imagine that the movement that has
swept two great States is sporadic. local
and temporary. Aside from which, we
know that the temperance reformers in
the East were never before so well or
ganzed. 50 well led. so determined OF SO
ready to open campaign Of tremendous
vigor. They have been waiting to see
the issue of the struggles in Kansas and
Iowa. The tremendous revolutions ac-
complished there will start the waiting
forces. in this region, that feel the pre-
monitions OF like successes here. "Con-
stitutional prohibition may become the
most living and exciting of all issues here
much sooner than most people expect.