Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-05-04
DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALK
ING ABOUT.
DAVID"

Time and time again the Republican
party of Kansas mas asserted that prohibit
ton must prevail, and this being so every
conceivable trick to bring obstreperous
municipalities to time is fair and reason
able. The editor of the EAGLE has sup
ported the platform and candidates with
out squeal for years; it is his duty to
continue to swallow Until the whole hog
is absorbed. The trouble seems to be that
he Is living in a sort OF an amateur city,
and he scarcely realizes that ne Is not away
from Burlingame. We don't know how
general the necessity for state Interference
with registration may be, but that the
sitter and more stringent it can be made,
and the further removed from the local
bosses who manipulate the cleaner the
ballot is a certain inevitable reSult.-kan-
sas City Gazette.
You say you ''don't know how gener-
al the necessity is" How would the Sug-
gestion strike you that you had better
wait until you have learned before at
tempting to teach others? For one we
profess to know, and our knowledge
warranted the attack we made. Wich-
liza is a city of the first class, situated
farther away from the base of civiliza-
ton than Kansas City is supposed to be,
yet we declare, unequivocally, without
any mental or other reservation, that
there never has been, in all Wichita
history as town or city, any election
crookedness, any ballot-box frauds, or
any defeating of the Will of the people
by election officers, and that therefore
the law which saddles upon the people
an extra expense Of several thousand
dollars, under the pretense of curing
election frauds, is a fraud itself. That
Supervisor of Election law is
only a fraud and nothing but
a fraud, and all the legislatures
that ever assembled in Kansas, all the
courts that ever sat, and all the newspa-
pers that ever washed hogs can't con-
vince us to the contrary.
AS our old friend at Kansas City is
ever advising the EALLE to submit, init
mating the only trouble with Wichita is
that she don't obey the law, and all that
in the face of the fact that
the editor of the Gazette was
never in this city in his life. he will
please permit US TO say that that often
sive Russian relic known as the police
commission law was drawn up and en-
acted solely for the benefit of Kansas
City, Kansas, and without the remotest
idea that it would be applied to this city
or to Topeka. Wyandotte had been the
dumping ground, the cess pool, for all
the worst elements of her Mis-
I,rhI A1. Iol, IL,
Dor was recognized as the hardest
town in America, and some unusual and
far-reaching law became a necessity for
the preservation of life and property, to
say nothing of the enforcement of the
prohibition law. which in fact never was
enforced there, and now, when Martin
talks of disreputable and unlawful
scenes, and of cities being showed under
on election days by a few hundred
roughs, and the necessity for cold-blood-
ed discipline, he talks frcm the ex-
periences of his own town on the borders
of Missouri, and not of Wichita of
which he knows nothing except as his
opinion has been distorted by the lies of
enemies and the misrepresentation of
envious neighbors.
And so this thing has gone on and on
until we are becoming weary of it. To-
peka, which by the showing of her own
papers, has been lousy with Joints: Atch-
ison, in which brewery kept right on
without any reference to the prohibition
law; Leavenworth, where no attempt
was made to close the open saloons until
long after Martin was inaugurated as
governor; and Kansas City, in which
liquor can be obtained in almost every
business block in the city, all these
places and all their papers have been for
years holding up comparatively clean
Wichita as the fearful example, while
the towns named have been all the time
stepped in the damnable traffic, their
papers and officials soaking in beer and
reeking with hypocrisy and dissimula-
ton.