The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-17
PROHIBITION IN IOWA.

PROHIBITION IN IOWA.
Prohibition, according to United States
Senator Allison, is breaking the back of
the Republican party in Iowa. The mayor
of Des Moines says:
must admit that there are lots OF dives in the
city where liquor is sold, but with the ma
chinery we have it is impossible to stop them.
We have no support. The people who raise the
loudest cry about non-enforcement of the liquor
law would go into Mysteries if we should sub
p1na them to go before jury. We get neither
their moral nor legal support The drug store
keepers, however, are violating the law to a
greater extent than any other class of men.
Under the cloak of the law they are selling
liquor In enormous quantities. and there is no
way TO stop them. With all the laws we have it
Is impossible to keep down drunkenness. As
long as druggists are allowed to sell liquor to
people who will take 1t to some lumber yard or
alley and retail 1t out to drunkards, Just SO long
you will find drunken men on our streets.
Judge N. NJ. Hubbard, in an able adj
dress delivered at Ottumwa on the 22d
ult., held that eff the observation, expert
ence and judgment of the European
countries is to be considered of any value,
the overwhelming majority is in favor of
the method of high license and restrictive
legislation. Judge Hubbard, among
other things, argued the inherent logical
weakness of a prohibitory law which does
not make it crime to drink intoxicants.
"There is an absurdity inherent in the
proposition that it is unlawful to sell and
lawful to drink whisky. The effective
prohibitory law must provide for the pun
ishment Of the man who drinks equally
with the man who sells intoxicants to be
drunk" Judge Hubbard believes that
society has made great mistake in treat-
ing the victim of alcohol as an innocent
person, for whose ruin the saloon-keeper
is responsible. "The truth is" in his
opinion, "that young man who destroys
mental or moral weakness, or both, that
units him for successful competition with
his fellow-men, and little sympathy need
be wasted on him."
Judge Hubbard holds with all intelli-
gent students of social science that there
is much less suffering and distress from
the drink habit in this country now than
there was forty years ago. Intemperance,
he argues, must steadily diminish before
the discipline of the controlling material
forces of modern civilization, steam and
electricity. Farmers are more temperate
now than ever before. and they include
about half the laboring population of the
United States. "They no longer require
jug of whisky to raise a barn, nor a barrel
OF whisky with which to do harvesting"
OF the population not engaged in farming
one-third are engaged in various branches
of the transportation service, and one
third in manufacturing, while the remain
ing third are merchants, middle men and
professional men. Concerning the demand
for total abstinence in railway service
Judge Hubbard said:
It has come to be thoroughly understood now
that, from the section hand to the president of
railway company, every employe must be
sober. The lives and property of all depend
upon tho highest care and vigilance in tho
operation OF railways, and every railway man
aEcr quite thoroughly understands the abso.
lutte necessity for sobriety in every employe
ON every well regulated railway in the United
States the rule is soon to be absoIuts that drink
u
ground FOR immediate discharge from the service
So, too. as to manufacturing. The
large manufacturing establishments of the
country are compelled to have sober men.
rs they almost exclusively use steam or
electrical machinery with which to carry
on their enterprises. No manufacturing
enterprise can long make head against its
competitors without sober employees. {"
The same thing is true among merchants
They can no longer carry on a successful
business either drunk themselves or with
drunken clerks"
Temperance reform is coming through
the business necessities OF the country
and Judge Hubbard holds that when
every avenue of honorable or lucrative
business is closed except to sober men we
may look TO see the great middle classes of
farmers, mechanics, merchants, manufac-
turers and railway workers universally
practice temperance, if not entire total alb
stinence.
The Judge is right. Less than fifty
years ago in rural New England every
contract for labor included rations of rum
served three times day TO the workmen.
Today it would be impossible for work
man who insisted on this condition to get
employment. Temperance reform will
proceed rapidly when the social forces of
material self-interest are enlisted on its
side. Human slavery resisted fifty years
of most able, eloquent and thrilling moral
denuuCiatiQn argument and anneal hint
the moment that slavery struck at the
Union and it became matter of national.
material selt-interest 10 fres the negro his
letters were at once struck off with the
sword. The business forces OF society