The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-12-11

a bosses swear for three months during
e every campaign that prohibition is ;
!, success and a complete triumph in Kan
r sas. If these boss liars would but quail
e Ify their declaration by saying
that prohibition is an entire
success in some portions of Kan
sas, and then add, parenthetically,
the uncultvated prairie portions, they
would deceive nobody. The fact of the
enforcement or acknowledgements of pro-
, hibition in any town in Kansas, or in
the state of Maine. determines at once
the relative commercial importance of
that town. Maine has had prohibition
for more than a quarter of a century,
yet nobody could be found who would
say that in either of the two important
commercial cities of Maine any pretense
is made Of enforcing the prohibitory
law.
A number of the prohibition papers of
Kansas, whose editors personally are
anything else, have been for weeks
bowling over the non-enforcement of the
prohibitory law in Kansas City, Kan,
one of these papers roundly abusing
Governor Humphrey for not enforcing
1t. There is just one way of doing it, or
of making it possible to be done, and
that is, by killing the place CONNER
cially-by stopping its growth and shut
ting off its enterprise. There is no
City, Kansas, continues to grow and
spread and increase and deepen her COM
mercial foundations as a center of popu-
lation, just so long will be found within
her corporate limits the distinctive char
acteristics of such centers. If it were
otherwise, statutory law could be sub
stituted for the Bible, and the policeman
and his club would take the place of the
church and Of the preachers, and thus
humanity would be saved from its frail-
ties and appetites, from its wickedness
and moral delinquencies, by the simple
edict Of a police commissioner behind
whom would be only the purities of hui
man law.
We are not going to say that the surest
indication that town is finished. and
that all of its further possibilities have
flown when these characteristics of |
growth and importance are no longer |
visible or possible within its limits; but
we do say that man will make just as
much money, and no more, by investing
in one of these high moral burgs today |
as fifty years hence. Such towns
as Kansas City or any other
growing city cannot afford to
ignore the money and the enterprise of
people who lack some particular mora!
status. But that our laws forbid there
are communities in Kansas today so lost
to the truth that prohibition is a great
success that they would welcome to their
towns both of the breweries located in
Omaha since November 4th, and each of
which, breweries. is to cost one million
of dollars. Just as like as not that is
true. There are men in Wichita, and
women too, who are not bit too good
TO welcome anything in the way of big
not forbidden by the laws of
the country, and Wichita is not collect
ing cent, today, in the way of liquor
license, either.
There are number Of towns in Kan
sas that have given over all their ambi-
ton to become cities. They are subsid-
ing, rapidly, in population and in values.
A lot in them is not worth as much to-
day as it will be fifty years hence, but
which is not one-fourth what such lot
would have brought four years ago.
1t is all right for these
towns to make strenuous effort
to enforce the prohibitory law. They
are but country TOWNSVILLE never be
anything else,-and they can with the
necessary effort not only enforce the pro-
hibition law, but render their places
noted for morality and sobriety. It is
.he undoubted duty of the peoples of
such places to do this earnestly and hon
sstly. But when it comes TO their more
and enterprising neighbors, in {
he name of all that's decent and fair.
ion't demand impossibilities. We know
GEORGE Martin to be as strict and as con-
'cientious prohibitionist as can be !
ound IN the state, but there is therefore !
10 sense in a lot of dead-town editors
abusing him and the officials of Kansas
laily for failing to enforce a law which :
,nforces itself by the mere weight Of SEN [
iment in towns whose people have little t
Use to think about or sentimentalize over.
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