The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1888-09-14

HSNRJ -
of merit there might be in the local option,
high license measure passed last winter,
and its full share of the benefits flowing
from the recent decided expression Of the
will of the people at the ballot box i'll the
counties that have voted thus far. But our
esteemed contemporary the Salem Standard,
which heretofore has been rather distin-
guished above its brethren in its fairness
of treatment of the prohibitionists, seems
latterly to have lost its head entirely and
gone clean daft with joy or something else
| over the returns. We cannot otherwise ac-
count for the remarkable production on the
editorial page of that paper of Wednesday
last. Whatever may have been the feeling
Of the Prohibition rarity concerning the
local option bill when its provisions were
M for discussion in the Legislature, when
| it became a law the almost unanimous sen-
| timent among them was that, being the law,
it should have u fair and unprecedented
test. and whatever of good it had the peo-
| pie should have if possible. h one thing
necdful to give the law its effect was the
holding of an election and the casting OF a
majority vote against license. To this
work the Salem County Prohibitionists
and the MONITOR at once addressed them
selves and were at work before the Stand
ard, which claims to have borne the brunt
of the battle single-handcd and alone. saw
fit to say a word or lift a hand. The Salem
County Temperance Alliance, a mon partisan
temperance organization, but three-fourths
of whose working members arc politically
affiliated with the Prohibition party, took
the work in hand, but all partisanship was
laid aside and the cooperation of all was
invited and urged. Petitions were c%ircula-
ted (argely by third party Prohibi-
t~ionists) and we nave yet to hear of one
who declined to sign them. The election
was ordered and in due season the work of
the campaign commenced. A call was is
sued for a meeting for conference and to
lay plans for the canvass. 1t was attend
ed by whom? Twenty-one third-party
| Prohibitionists of Salem county, all ready
and willing to work, and not a single Re-
publican! Committees were appointed in
each township, made up of men of all par
ties, who at once entered upon their work.
| Many meetings were held, addressed in
| nine instances out of every ten by third
party Prohibitionists, but you wouldn't
nave known it, for the speakers, with
| p~raiseworthy caution, sunk all party allu-
| sion for the time being and addressed them
selves to the one work of rolling up a big
| anti-license vote in Salem county, without
| which local option would have proven nu-
| gatory. AND in the work Prohibitionists,
Republicans and Democrats labored side
| by side, noticeably in P~ilesgrove township.
But in the very heat of the campaign and in
a most vital point of the argument they are
| confronted by an electioneering document,
issued by the whisky element, containing
| a forcible objection to the law in the state
ment that it would be imperative to close
the quart places-a statement which stag
gered many who were well disposed to-
| ward the anti-license ticket, and doubtless
caused that ticket the loss of hundreds of
votes. Whence did this statement ema-
nate? From the friends of local option?
1T was taken direct from the columns of
the Salem Standard, where it appeared as
an editorial answer to a query of a cor
respondent. That this ''oLinion as was
- a.::.-Ss oo,oOI A. ~. lioo,,eo UArIrarc
much anxiety and effort to counterfeit, is
not to be denied, and yet the marplot
Standard has the u%nblushing effrontcry to
claim hat it fought the battle for local
option single-handed and alone, and fur
thcr, in the face of the facts above cited,
to deny to the Prohibitionists and temper
ance Democrats any share whatever of
credit for the result in Salem county.
Not that the Prohibitionists are worry
ing on that score. They did but their duty
and ask for no flourish of trumpets on their
behalf, but we cannot help noticing the
suggestive fact that while the Prohibit
tionists hope only for the good that may
result from the operation of the law in the
counties that voted dry, the Republican
organs seem, as a rule, to felicitato them
selves upon the result mainly because of
the partisan advantages which they expect
to begin to reap and finally harvest in
November. And in this self-righteous
Iaudation the STANDARD 'out-Herods
Herod."