Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1884-05-22

hibit1on in that instrument, for the
members Of that body were two-to-one
In favor of that principle; but . slave
State full Of bitterest hatred stood be-
} tween us and our Eastern friends, and
Kansas was riven with apprehensions OF
its fate, in that whirlwind of civil war,
whose portents were even then shooting
luridly along the horizon. But there
has never been time, in my belief, that
the people of this State, with fair vote
on the question of dram-shops or no
dram-shops, would have recorded them
selves on the side of the drunkard
makers.
With the advancing years the evil of
intemperance rose into clearera and whittier
light. Every lawyer ruined by intoxica-
ton preached Q sermon that sunk into
the hearts of q dozen of his brethren.
Every dismantled home, every sobbing
wife, every trembling child, every forlorn
and penury-haunted roof, every wall Of
distress, every mother praying for lost
son, every unswarded and unhallowed
grave of the drunkard became tongues
of are, preaching the doctrine Of prOhi-
bitiOn of the deadly traffic that produced
all this woe, to ears that never listened
before. Many an easy-going father was
startled as he saw a bright and Noble
young man, full of hope and promise,
suddenly fall out of sight, stricken down
by the dram-shop-for it, like death,
"loves a shining MARYLAND he at once
began to dread lest the fatal arrow should
lodge in the pride and hope of his own
manhood. Men were struggling to over
come the power that enmeshed and en-
shaved them, but at every corner the
tempter lured them back to their chains
and dens.
Sharper and more plaintive rose the
cry for relief, and more and more certain
became the sovereign cure. No more
clipping of the leaves or cautious trim
ming of the branches of this deadly
shade-the axe must be laid at the roots
of the tree, and it was done. Politicians
sought to put the question out of sight,
or to avoid taking an open position ON
the really dominant thought of the day.
But it asserted itself as ever a moral pur-
pose will. 1t matters not that its imedi-
ate source was device to evade direct
vote on more stringent dram shop law.
No matter what the crucible in which it
it was refined or through what furnace it
flowed, as soon as men saw it they knew
it for pure gold.
The dram-shop by the fundamental
law of the State is forever under the ban
of prohibition. As the mysterious fingers
of mans hand wrote on the succeed
wall of Belshazzar's banqueting hall:
Thou art weighed in the balances and art
found wanting, SO has the conscience of
Kansas inscribed in constitution and law
q like legend and doom upon the liquor
traffic.
1t had been tolerated only to abuse the
lenity given it. Of all its compacts it
observed not one. 1t promised not to
sell intoxicants to minors, and it made
drunkards of our boys. It promised to
keep its bar closed on the Sabbath, and
it turned the day of rest into a revel and
debauch. 1t promised not to deal oft
the deadly potions on election days, and
it sent men, exercising the hottest office
of the freeman, Keeling and debased to
the ballot box. 1t said it would not sell
to the drunkard, and the deeper the
mans inebriety, the more pit;ful his
wife's appeals, the more Unsuitable and
shameless were its solicitations of bis
money. In flaming eloquence Burke
describes the perfdy of the creditors of
the Nabob of Arcot as the treachery Of
men whom no treaty and no signature
could bind, and who were the determine
ed enemies of human intercourse itself"
And so Hyder Ali "decreed to make the
country possessed by these predestinated
and incorrigible criminals a memorable
example to mankind"
Not less false than these Indian credi-
itors to their obligations was the dram
shop to all it's treaties with the State.
And so at last the people said, no more
truces, no more sufferance, but eternal ex-
tinction to q business faithless in it's
promises and full Of Unreasonable woe
to the State.
And now it is claimed, here and there,
that on this matter there is a nearly di-
vided opinion, and that timidity should
enter into all discussions touching it.
The reverse is the truth. Around this
principle there is more popular respect,
more entertainments on the part of quite
q class of men who without fixed princi-
pies of their own, yet eagerly study the
face of the political sky and who, by
keen intuition, realize the unfinching
resolve of the best men and women OF
all parties to maintain pure and unde-
filed prohibition, and more obedience to
the law of the land than ever before.
l have no doubt of the realization Of
Gov. st. Johns prophecy, made when
this question was before the people, that
for every family lost to the State by pro-
hibition it would gain three by it.
Within the radius of my acquaintance
there are none kept from our midst by
the fact that sobriety, diminution of
crime peace and happiness are here in a
larger degree than ever before. find
many allured to State where the SOL
emr sanctities of law are lif. Il as irwin.
chile barriers against the tide of desols1
ion and sorrow that unvaryingly followd
he dram-shOp. The closed saloon ID
transformed into shop of honest tradd
'r busy manufacture. The drunkard'G
aome is filed with happy steps. Bright