The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1890-01-31

ruined Iowa financially. On June 80,
1887, there were thirty-seven savings
banks in Iowa with total assets of Sl2,-
600, 0G0. In two years of prohibition
these have increased to fifty in number,
and the assets have grown to ST, 1S5, 600.
banks nave increased from sixty-fve to
eighty-one and their assets from $40
276,000 to $l3, ITO, 900. In other words,
during the last two years, while prohibit
ton has been running" Iowa financially,
we have had an increase of tw%enty-nine
banks with q total increase of assets of
over $1,000 900 in two years, a greater in
crease than in any two years in the his
tory of our State.
More mortgages have been lifted in
Iowa last year than have been placed, a
fact which cannot be stated of any previ-
Gus year in the history of the State.
Chief Justice Horton of the Kansas
Supreme Court wrote:
with the abolition Of the open saloon
the vicious habit of treating has passed
away. With US the habitual use of intox-
icating liquors is a bar to political prefer
ment, and the saloon is no longer a
potential factor in elections
The late lamented Ex-Governor John
A. Martin said in q public address a few
months before his death: Il believe and
declare that, as a result of the enforce
ment of our prohibitory laws and the
Punishment of the open saloons, fully
nine-tenths of the drinking and drunken
ness prevailing in Kansas eight years
ago has been abolished; that thousands
Of men who were then almost constantly
under the influence, more or less, of in
toxicants are now temperate and sober,
and that in thousands Of homes all over
the State, where want, wretchedness, and
woe were the invited guests of drunken
husbands and fathers, plenty, peace, and
contentment now abide. I affirm that
public sentiment in neaLy every section
of Kansas has been steadily strengthened
in favor of rigid temperance laws and
their rigid enforcement, and that this
growing sentiment is due to the plainly
apparently and now generally-conced-
ed fact that our temperance laws have
largely abolished drinking and drunken
ness, and the poverty, wre~tchedness, and
crime of which the open saloon is the
fruitful and certain cause"
Senator ingalls,, in a carefully prepared
article published last August in one Of
the popular magazines of the nation,
stated: Prohibition is right in principle,
but total prevention Of the use of intoxi-
eating liquors is obviously impossible SO
long as they are permitted to be manu-
featured for any purpose. The real
question then is, which Of two methods,
both Intellectual TO prevent the use, is the
better to prevent the abuse of alcoholic
drinks, and relieve the individual and
society from the evils of incompetence?
From com 2~arison of the results in Kan
sas with those existing elsewhere the SON
clusion is irresistibly in favor of Prohi-
bition.
1T can be efficiently and successfully
enforced. It does not retard the growth
nor injure the resources Of the people.
Its operations practically close with the
closing of the saloon, leaving personal
liberty unimpared. It exonerates the
State from completely and participation
in the most formidable agencies Of its
own destruction.
Kansas has abolishedthe saloon. The
open dramshop traffic is as extinct as the
gale of induIgcnces. A drnnkard is q
@ss=Nseann,llElalharkaepe has Joined