St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-09-06
THE PROHIBITIONIsTs.

The attempt Of political leaders to win
the Prohibtionists over to the Republican
party on the compromise ground of high
license is not proving much of success.
Taking Mr.. BLAINE's speeches in the
Maine canvass as their keynote on the tenn
perance issue. the Republican politicians
throughout the entire country are appealing
to the ProhibitionistS to abandon their in
dependent movement and to come back to
the Republican party. The reasons that
are urged in behalf of this appeal are that
the Republican party is and has always
been temperance party, and that while it
does not commit itself to direct and abSo
lutte prohibition, it does propose to come to
it in the round-abOut-way OF high license.
The Republican argument in behalf of high
license is that by this system the poorer
classes will be driven out of the liquor
traffic, and that when it is made respectable
by being placed in the hands of the wealthy
exclusively, the traffic will cease to be often
sive. This argument is legitimately in the
line of Republican doctrine. The Repub-
lican idea is TO give wealth monopoly of
everything and that then the millennium
will be established. But somehow or other
the Prohibitionsts do not see it in this
light. They are imbued with the pious be-
lief that intemperance is the blighting curse
of modern civilization, and that there is no
golden mean of virtue and vice. They
hold that there is no safe middle course on
the temperance question. They say that
the compromise offered by the Republican
party is more dangerous than an open adj
vocacy of wide-open liquor policy. To
their minds it involves sacrifice of princi-
pie and would indirectly draw them over to
the support of vice which they started
out to eradicate. They want no COM
promise. They are not looking for middle
road. Eradication is the motto on their
banners, and if there is to be union be-
tween them and the Republicans it must be
on their own platform. That is the stu
alton to-day, and it will be the situation
when there is political union
between the two parties. The Republican
leaders may as well make up their mind
either to step over on the Prohibition plat
form or to cease dickering with the Prohibi-
tionists.
1t is gratifying to observe, however, that /
some of the Prohibition leaders are at last
awaking to the fact that it is impossible
to Iegislate morals into a people. An Illus
tration of the more practical views that are
now being held and taught by leading Pro-
hibitionists is found in an article in the
September number of the Forum, written
by DIR. FELIX l.. OSWALD. in which the
al j,o hot ;fo
ing tyranny of Sabbatarianism is the very
tap root of intemperance. He SAYS that in
our centers of civilization, six out of ten
topers use alcohol for exactly the same pur-
pose that the life weary toilers of the East
use opium-as an anodyne to tighten
the burden of hopeless misery. He shows
that in a primitive state of society
Naturel herself provides abundant oppor-
tunities of recreation. In the modern state
Of society wealth restores those opportuni-
ties. Our privileged citizens can leave the
city for weeks to propitiate Nature by
pilgrimage to the sanctuaries of the wilder
ness. and to restore their health by the fare
and the outdoor sports of their nature-abid-
ing ancestors; but those privileges are de-
MED to the very classes most sorely in need
of their blessings, and by suppressing all
popular pastimes on the day when vast
plurality of the workingmen find their only
leisure for recreation, we force them to
seek relief in the narcotics of the rum shop
and drown their misery in the Lethe of in
toxication. ''They drink to get drunk; they
take refuge in the delirium of the poison
fever, as in a dream, to escape the soul
sickening roundabout of six days of
drudgery followed by a seventh day of I'M
satisfied longing" Whoever may disa-
gree with DR.. OSWALD concerning his Sab
batarian notions, there ought to be general
concurrence in the opinion that public
amusements are potent agencies in keeping
people from vice. 1t is just as easy to Sc
cure the safety of the boiler by heating the
furnace fires and shutting and riyeting the
valves as it is to prevent the explosion of
vice after shutting the gates of mercy on
the painting toilers by closing their libra
res. their parks, their excursion boats and
their picnic trains. If Sunday is not the
day for public amusements, then let another
day of the week be set aside for that pur-
pose If tie temperance people are in earn
est in securing temperance reform, then
let them follow DR.. 0swALD's advice and
change their battle ground to open fields.
When they found temperance gardens with
Fairgrounds, free music and hygenic
restaurants; when they have free gymna-
Sums in every village and in every city
park; and when they devote one day of the
week to health-giFing sports and neutralize
the allurements of the rum shop by making
harmless pleasures more attractive than the
riot of vice, they will have accomplished
more for the cause of temperance than all
the prohibition parties can do from now till
doomsday.