Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-11-09
TORPID TOPEKA AND WICKED
WICHITA.

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as an example of how the pronibitory
law can be enforced where officers do
their whole conscientious duty. The
thin pretence, the hypocracy of the
claim, becomes irksomely tiresome.
Wicblta's officials are just as conscien-
tious as are those of Topeka. Col II. w.
Lewis, Hon. w. E. Stanley and VIM
Mathewson, ESQ.,, constitute a police
commission no more to be bribed THAI the
supreme court of the United States.
Stanley and Lewis are both pronounced
temperance men of the prohibition
stamp, and both members of prominent
churches. Mathewson, SO far as any,
thing we ever heard to the contrary, is a
teetotaler. 1t is certain that he is no
drinker. All these men are men
OF iron nerve, who can not be in
Inundated; are men with minds Of
such clearness OF conviction as
not to be baked by pretense
or subterfuge. In short, the
commission which rules Wichita, meas
ured by any conceivable standard, are as
! good as the men composing the Topeka
commission. The difference between
Topeka and Wichita is difference of en-
vironment, difference of life, differ
ence of business activity, difference Of
people, therefore, difference of opinion.
Local option would keep Topeka just as
much a prohibition town as she is today,
because the sentiment of To-
pekas people is for prohi
bition, is her prohibition. Local option
in Wichita would not attempt to drive
out liquor selling, but would simply at
tempt to control its sale. Law is greater
than an Individual but not greater than
the people themselves. The law pro-
tected slavery in Kansas at one time but
no slave owner dared go out of sight of
the Missouri lines with his slaves. Rev.
Bernard Kelly, the pension agent of
Kansas, the advisor of the last two state
administrations and the pet of the pres
ent congressional delegation, can't al
ways dominate the affairs of Wichita's
forty thousand people. 1t was the
favorite reply of the late lamented Gov
ernor Martin that "Wichita is
not greater than the state of
Kansas" True enough, but Wichita, as
q component part Of the state of Kansas,
was and is big enough to make herself
felt. Leavenworth, Kansas City and
Atchison are very much in the same pre-
dicament touching the prohibitory law
that Wichita is in. There is no innate
meanness in these peoples to be contrast
ed unfavorably with those of Topeka,
Emporia, Hutchinson and Lawrence,
where the majority sentiment renders
the enforcement of the prohibitory law
as easy proceeding and as certain as
that of any other law. 1t was only
last week that the county attorney of
Sedgwick county informed us that he
had eighteen men in Jail as convicts I'M
der the charge of the illicit sale of
liquors. Topeka nor any of the towns
named have got any such number of
jointists in jail. The officers of these
towns have never arrested and con-
victed and punished one-fourth as many
men for the violation of the prohibition
law as have the officers of this city in
their persistent and honest efforts to en-
force this law, nevertheless cheap poll
ticians around Topeka are eternaliy
bowling that Wichita officials are vio-
lating, openly and outrageously, their
Oaths.
If Topeka was as full of business as is
Wichita, and was not her population
largely under the dominancy Of single
corporation upon the one hand and that
of the state house ring upon the other;
was she SO far removed from Kansas,
City, Mo-, as to be unable to order her
drinks every hour in the day by tele-
phone, delivered by express, in spite OF
enactments, her own commissioners
might find as difficult problem to meet
as have the commissions at Wichita, the
difference between Topeka drinkers and
Wichita drinkers being that the former
keep their joints at the other end of
telephone in Kansas City, Mo-, while
Wichita drinkers are compelled to
sustain their joints within the corporate
limits of the city, or not at all.
No statute ever proves a law unto any
people which fails of being a crystaliza-
ton of the sentiment of that people, as
people, we care not what the power that |
inacts nor how great the army which |
attempts to enforce. therefore, and con-
sequently, Wichita is getting very tired |
of having the hypocracy OF Topeka set /
up to her as particular bright example !
of honesty worthy only respect and emu
lation.
OFF FOR WICHITA.
Kansas City Times.
\ copy of S7,500.000 mortgage exc
cuted by the Kansas City, Wyandotte & |
Northwestern Railroad con1nany ~ tba |