Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1885-12-10
A Question Answered.


From Manhattan, Kas., a call has
been issued, signed by several hundred
prominent Republicans of various states
men who have never voted the Prohi-
bition ticket-for national convention
of anti-saloon Republicans. to be held
at Toledo, o., on Nov. 5, 1886. The
call directs that primaries be held in
precincts on April q, and county con-
ventions May 9th, for the election of a
double number of delegates entitled I'M
der the call of the National Republican
convention. The call declares for i'm
mediate national prohibition, but does
not intimate that a national ticket will
be nominated except in the alternative
OF the failure of the Republican party
TO do so.
In conjunction with the above we
reproduce the following extract from a
leading editorial in the Iowa State Reg
lister, of Des Moines, the organ at the
capital of the Republican party of that
state:
A postal card inquiry, with a chirog-
raphy with German angles and an ap-
ijearance of the saloon, wants to know:
VIII The Register dare tell the public its views
now as TO the prohibitory law and as to the sa-
loon, and what il wants done with both? win II
asO dare tell how many Republican members Of
the legislature will vote for the repeal or modil-
cation of the law
Yes, we can tell. The Register was
never more in favor of the prohibitory
law than it is now, and it is in favor of
enforcing the law so faithfully, and if
need be so vigorously and unsparingly,
that every saloon on Iowa soil, of every
description, shall be shut up, and shut
up permanently. The Register is
against every saloon on the face of
Christendom, and it does not know and
never has been able to find, a single hu-
man being who can give single good
reason in favor of the existence of a sa-
loon, while any child can give hun
dred reasons why it should not exist.
There is not the least reason on earth.
no living man can give single reason,
why any saloon should be allowed to
exist. 1t can do no possible good. 1t
never has done any good. 1t never has
done anything but evil. 1t never can
do anything but evil. 1t is an impu-
dence that is of lower world than this
for any man-who can do his drinking
at home, or behind the barn, or in some
secret place, or any way in which man
takes other poisons-to demand that in
every city shall be set these dead-falls
for the young, and slaughter-houses for
the old, in order that he may quench
thirst that has run away with his self
respect, his self-control, and his own
mastery of himself
That is part of what we think of the
saloon. 1t is dishonorable, murder
Gus, infamous traffic, that ought to be
swept by the hand of public wrath for
public protection from the face of the
earth. Every saloon, no difference
where located, nor how managed, nor
how owned. nor how licensed or legal
lied, is place that ensnares young men
to ruin and finally to murder them; to
rob the poor drunkard of his last five
cent piece that his family needs for
bread or his children for clothing. 1t is
a place that every criminal haunts as
his natural lair, just as the wild beast
haunts the deep jungle. 1t is open day
and night to make innocent boys guilty
and to furnish courage to criminals. A
man at midnight wishing to commit
crime and lacking the courage to do it,
goes to saloon and gets the courage
in a cup of poison, paid for out of the
proceeds of former crimes. If he needs
n confederate to commit crime larger
than one man can commit, he goes to
the ever open saloon and finds him. Its
doors are ever open to entrap the inno-
cent, rob the weak, and shield the gull
ty. 1t runs day and night, and while it
does savage and murderous work any
time in the day, it does its most fatal
and most malignant work in the hours
when the most or all the good people
in the community are in bed. If it were
wild beast, and half as cruel as it is.
and did tenth of the fatal work that it
does, the community would hunt it
down like it would wild animal. 1t
has no mercy on man, woman or child
1t is rs malignant as Satan and as cruel
as hell. No human being living ever
thought of it but to curse it. and of the
thousands of millions of human beings
who have ever lived on the earth, its
name has never been raised on the lips
of any of them in prayer except to be
held up to God as curse that should
be smitten with the wrath alike of
Heaven aud of earth.
This is what we think of the saloon,
and it is what everybody who has the
heart to hold an opinion thinks of it in
fact, no difference what he may say to
the contrary. We believe it is curse
to be fought by all good men, and as
soon as possible abolished by Govern
ment.
Through the courtesy of Lieut.. Geo.
Barnett, of Boscobel, now stationed at
Sitka, Alaska, we have received cspy
of the first number of The Alaskan, the
first and only paper published in that
far off land of the western main. The
editorial pages bear the unmistakable
ear-marks of Alfred Peter Swineford,
governor of Alaska and late editor of
The Marquette (Mich. } Mining journal
A Ioft