Wichita eagle., 1890-01-18
IMMIGRATION NOT DEPENDENT ON
RESUBMISSION.

precede resubmission.
That resubmission may honestly b.
contended for on the broad basis of com
prehensive state policy we not only con
cede, but firmly believe. If the argu
ment of the resubmissionist is reduced
to the question of financial prosperity tt
flow from intoxicating liquor, the con
servative citizen has no ground WHEREOF
to stand.
If, however, resubmissionists or theil
organs frown on immigration prior
to resubmlssiOn. we are bounc
to conclude that they fear that a year Of
successful immigration will deprive
them of the state, threadbare argument
that prohibition is the cause Of all the
ills that Kansas at present possesses, and
that prosperity must come out OF q
''bunghole.' Our judgment is that this
argument has passed through so many
engagements that it is entitled to ''ser'
vice pension" The argument that a
sound financial business epoch can be es
tablished on beer key foundation is
not supported by historical data nol
warranted by the history of Kansas.
And covert sheer at
| IMMIGRATION.
under the loud assumption that immi-
grafton must follow the renaissance of
the liquor traffic-may ''split the ears of
groundlings," but will wound some
| voters whose belief in resubmission is
founded on an experience that judicious
license laws, regulating the liquor traffic
are conducive to a better condition of
morals. preventive of wholesale perjury,
and give better local control and govern
ment than the present condition of
affairs.
Without entering into a minute dis
cussion of the merits of resubmission we
will observe that a newspaper which
gives immigration backhanded lick
for fear that the "service pension" beer
key prosperity argument will have to be
abandoned should furnish facts based on
Kansas history, taking the ten years
prior and subsequent to the prohibitory
amendment. The year 1872 and 1873
thousands of dollars of real estate in
Sedgwick county were sold for taxes,
the three years elapsed and no one took
tax deed. The same condition of
affairs existed throughout Kansas, and
the legislature was importuned to enact
a law to enable the various counties of
Kansas to get rid of this vast amount of
dead real estate. And in 1878 and 1879
somewhere near 1000 pieces of real es-
tate were sold by the sheriff the
most of which did not pay costs of suit
This was prior to 1881. The years 1873
and 1879 were years of financial agony
In Wichita SO far as real estate was con-
cerned, the causes we cannot explain,
but it was not for want of, practically,
free liquor in Kansas.
This stagnation continued until the
spring of 1888. There was no great diff
ference, but there was a feeling that
things were tending upwards. From
1888 to July, 1887, population, capital
and business came in a steady stream
with full bank and strong current.
The population of the state almost
doubled, and but very little was SAID con-
corning the accursed and counteracting
influence. Prohibition had on immigration
and the majority of people from 1883 to
1887 who argued against prohibition
original bias from former association,
early education or fond desire to root, in
our soil, customs that reached to an
tiquity in other chimes and zones and
were dear to them from memory and
tradition.
The growth of public opinion, and the
crystalization of public sentiment, that
prohibition was impolitic, was the ripen-
ing of fruit from experience, that the
law was not being and could not be en-
forced, and that high license was better
statecraft than prohibition.
The question of demanding immigra-
ton was the result of observation
that storm cloud had burst on Kansas
and that people had acted unwisely,
values dropped, business stagnated, rail-
roads went into the hands of receivers
and paid no dividends, thievish, in
solvent, rotten, bankrupt loan companies
flooded the east with paper secured on
land that never, at any time, was worth
the face of the note; crops failed, inter-
est was defaulted and capital, which is
always cowardly, fled the state, grain
and stock had no live market and the
the people all at once traced
the cause of our misery and
wretchedness to prohibition, when
the real cause of the depression was
the fatal and unfortunate elimination of
a series of unwise business ventures,
superinduced bv short crops and the
demoralized, unhealthy and almost
diseased condition of grain and stock
markets, and the rapid growth of cor
porations, trust and combines, which
formed in the business jungles of COM
merce squeezed small bodies into pulp
and swallowed them with the voracitv
and digested them with the rapidity of
boa-constrictor. To all of which causes
we may add the insanity of speculation
in neglecting to supply the farms with
new husbandmen TO take the place of
those who abandoned farms to become
real estate spectators. many of whom
are poor if not insolvent.
Whilst we do not wish to deprive any
newspaper man of his laurels, nor even
smile at the egotism that arrogates to
itself the ACKNOWLEDGMENT Of the Repub-
lican party of Sedgwick county, we sim
ply desire to remark that although it is
usually the prerogative of the minority
OF a dominant party to aid and abet the