The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-02-28
WHAT Is THE GOVERNING POWER,

| dHAlOuS 10 pass HlSu-llceIlSe law, lor WHICH
| there is a general demand, but the Demo-
cratic minority, at the bidding of the whis-
kyites, have put in a factious opposition
which absolutely obstructs all legislation
among other things such important and
imperative measures as the bills for the re-
lief of the sufferers by the Braidwood mine
disaster and by the food in the lower Wa
bash. The demand on behalf of the liquor
men is that the high-license bill shall be
withdrawn or no legislation will be permit
ted. The Republicans propose to stand their
ground, and in that attitude will be upheld
by the people. Government cannot afford
to be abdicated to the liquor league, nor to
any other organized class
But this action shows the spirit of the
liquor traffic. 1t is essentially lawless and
defiant. In Ohio it defied and INSTRUCTED
the operation of low-license law; in Indi-
ana it declared that the people should not
exercise a constitutional right in voting upon
a prohibitory amendment to the constitution;
and in Illinois it puts itself in the way of a
high-license law, and with insoent imperti
nence obstructs all public business until its
will is obeyed There, can be but one result
| of such an un-American unrepublican,
law-defying attitude as the liquor traffic has
seen fit to assume Sooner or later it must
and will meet with crushing defeat The
representatives who stand for the people in
| ND foct md
the liquor autocrats come to understand that
this country and the government was not
made specially and exclusively for
them. In Indiana we have had a
fierce and close contest Prohibition has
been defeated before it could reach the peo-
Pile. We have urged, and the overwhelming
popular opinion has urged, a high-license
law, with provisions restrictive of the evils of
the traffic, provisions which could be readi-
ly enforced on behalf of law, order and pub
lie morals. Such appeals have been to deaf
ears in Legislature controlled by and under
pledge to the liquor power. We want law
framed to restrict; framed in the interests of
the people, and not in the interests of the
saloons. We want law which shall recog-
nize the unquestioned evils flowing from an
unrestrained traffic in liquors, which shall
put the worst crime-breeders under the
heaviest penalties and guards. We want a
law not produced by and passed at the in
stance OF the interest it is intended to
lay its hand upon. There will be no such
law passed by the Indiana Legislature, and
there will be no amendment OF the present
faulty and inefficient statute. The people
will be left to precisely the same safeguards,
or rather want of safeguards, there have been
since the liquor league assumed control of
the Democratic party and wrote the law
passed by the Democratic Legislature of 1875,
and which the Democratic Legislature of
| 1888 dares not amend or supersede.
We have said to the liquor men them
selves, time and again, and the same advice
has been given by shrewd men of their own
business that they cannot afford to place
themselves or to continue in the attitude in
which Hotspurs have succeeded in put
ting them by such movements as have been
made in their interest in Ohio, in Indiana
and in Illinois. They are making for them
selves bitter enemies all the time,
treasuring up wrath against the day
of wrath, turning moderate men into ex-
tremists, and inviting the thing they most
violently oppose in its most radical form.
We do not believe this antagonism of
classes this virulent and heated opposition,
to be for the best interests of society gener-
ally. 1t is likely to result in incorporate and
ill-advised legislation. the net result of which
will be adverse to those things which it
should be the duty of all good citizens to
conserve.
High license and strict restraint is the
drift OF public sentiment. The St. Louis
grand jury, in a recent report, referring to
the condition and prospects of the penal,
charitable and reformatory institutions of
that city, says all the city institutions are
overcrowded, "chehy from causes incident
| to liquor" and urges that something be done
to ''limt in some degree the most obvious
crime-producing agencies" The report says
'the dram-shops induce at least nine-tenths
of the crime and pauperism," and with the
facts before us, we say deliberately that it is
almost impossible to use the language of ex-
aggeration." The report says to the Legis-
lature of the State of Missouri that "the pres
ent law cannot be properly enforced, and it
! is not nearly good enough for this city if it
could be enforced. This question is one of
simple justice to the immense preponderance
of numbers and of business values in the city
they were chosen to represent" Arguing the
i most feasihle remedv the renort SAYS