Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-08-08
IMPRACTLCABLE REFORNERS.

CLASS, dIt ulcu WIZ OuSll W CASlClSC
great influence for good. As a rule,
they are among the best men of the
County-many of them men of force of
character, equipped by nature to WELD
influence among their fellow-men, if
their efforts were directed in practical
line.
The time has passed when either of
the great political parties of the County
has anything to fear from the political
prohibition movement, hence newspaper
organs of the rival parties may debate
the wisdom and practicability of that
movement without fair imputation of
selfshness on their part. Time was
when that movement threatened Repub-
lican ascendancy. but now, so far as that
is concerned, Republicans look upon it
with Indifference, but with regret that
capable men should throw away oppOr-
tunities of usefulness.
The moment a man leaves the politi-
cal organization to which he has been
attached, his influence is gone. He is
powerless to cripple or to aid any politi-
cal movement. In his party, he is in
fiuential to the extent of his abilities
Out of it he is nonentity, and practi-
cally, had just as well remain away from
elections and from any participation in
political movements. That has been
the experience of all time in the treat
ment of the liquor question. We know
enthusiasts in the prohibition movement
refer to the growth of the anti-slavery
movement in the country. But there is
no parallel whatever between that and
the attempted organization of a dis
tinctively prohibition party. The one
was a revolt against degrading system
of human slavery, and against an inso-
lent attempt to spread that system over
the Territories and to make the entire
people of the country a posse cOnlitat1ts
to hunt down and capture fugitives.-
The other is an attempt to control the
appetite, to organize political party upon
the proposition that the State shall de-
termine what men shall not drink-a
proposition which many men sternly re-
sent as an interference with the person
al liberty of men, and which the great
majority of the men of the country think
wholly impracticable. We repeat, there
is no parallel whatever between the two
movements, and history sustains the
declaration. Sixteen years after the
first distinctively anti-slavery candidate
for President was nominated (Mr. Bir
ney, in 1944) Mr.. Lincoln was elected,
In 1860. We do not recall just when the
first Prohibition candidate for President
was put in the field, but it is our i'm
preston that an equal period of time
has elapsed; and what is the result?-
And what is the result in this County?
Last year its electoral ticket received
434 votes, out of total of 1850. Six
teen years ago its ticket received about
half that number of votes, in a total of
about 5000. There are good arithmeti-
clans among the brethren, and they may
be able to cipher ont at about what period
their descendants may hope to accom-
plish any practical results at that ratio
of gain.
If political reforms are accomplished,
they must be accomplished through the
agency of one or the other of the
great political parties. Men who fly off
on a tangent because they can not in
stantly realize their demands, hinder re-
forms, rather than advance them. In
stead, men should attend the primaries
of the party to which they are attached,
and in other ways do what they fairly
can to promote the nomination of the
right kind of men for ali manner of
public offices. Failing there, it is their
privilege and their duty, if unworthy
men are nominated despite their best
efforts to prevent it, to strike their names
from the ticket and do what else they
fairly can to defeat them at the polls.
Suppose the four hundred and odd men
who are chasing the prohibition jack
o'-lantern were doing this, what power
for good they might exercise, and what
a factor they would be in the politics OF
the County.