The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-21

mean ana Democratic parties took posi-
tion unreservedly, agreeing on both sides
throughout the campaign that the result
would De decisive one one way or the
other and the proposition of state wide
prohibition.
Inc campaign of 1891 will be memoir
able IN the history of our politics. 1t is
not such a campaign as either party can
care to repeat. The lines were never so
Sharply drawn; never before on either
side were the extremes of forces so con-
spicuously arrayed. 1t was felt TO be a
fight to the finish, and so declared
on both sides through the press and
on the stump. Governor Roies was
reelected by an increased plurality and
with him the entire Democratic state
ticket was elected upon the largest vote
ever polled in that state. The Democratic
party saw its best partisan opportunity in
taking decisive stand on the mainte-
nance of the prohibitory law in its state
VICE application. The Republican party
was compelled to submit the issue to the
determination OF the people of the state,
pledging allegiance to the will of the
majority, and III that iustifying its past
record upon the question. There is prac-
tlcally no escape from the verdict 1t was
definite ag ainst the present policy of ex-
elusive and state wide prohibition. 1t
was demand for a change; it is
reversal of the will of the ma
Jority reaffirmed. Every true friend of
temperance in Iowa is hoping now that
the unity of the Republican party may be
preserved and that such common ground
may be found as shall win back many who
III recent years have strayed from it,
There is no gainsaying the fact that the
Republican party in Iowa is a temperance
party. 1t is necessarily the agency through
which the evils of the dramshop are to be
held In the largest measure of restriction.
1t is the force to be employed if resistance
be continued against the saloon-allies OF
the Democratic party from whose power
and dictatlon there is no immediate pros
pect that the Democratic party can escape.
The results of the past election go TO
show that the Prohibitionists, the tried
and true friends of the prohibitory law,
are seriously considering whether in the
interest of true temperance or the interest
of the cause of prohibition itself
they ought now to be insistent
for the continuance of the present
law on the statute books with all the
power tor enforcement or nullfication
lodged in the hands of the opponents of
the law. If sentiment in behalf of modifi-
cation shall spread among the classes and
be the cause of these, conditions and from
conviction that modification now is in
line with the best results, the way will be
easy for the Republican party in the fu-
ture."
The views held by Congressman Perkins
are in line with those of General Clarkson,
and the indications strongly point to
new plank in the party's platform in the
next state campaign, provided the ques-
ton is not settled by the Iowa legislature
during its present session. In all quarters
the sentiment is as already stated, that
the only way that the Republican party in
Iowa can carry the state upon local ques-
tions in the future, is for the party to take
stand in favor of the repeal of the pro-
hibitory law now on the statute books in
that state.