Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1892-05-05


cumstanced as to be in position t.
take comprehensive view of thi'
whole question. Some view it anC
draw their conclusions only from To-
calities where under local option
laws. the open saloon has been driven
ont aud the business thus cOncentrat
ed and intensified in other cOmmu
mites while we have studied it il
and now write from Paducah, Ky.
where the business has been cOncen.
trated and intensified by the same
sort of local option measures in ad.
joining territory, and from which
point it is now claimed that tire,
hundred barrels of whisky week, oI
fifteen thousand year, and "a proper
tiOnate quantity of beer, is regularly
dispensed, large amount which goes
to the same local option territory in
bottles, jugs and kegs just as Mr.
AthertOn told the liquor trade it could
be made to do. This one statement
! illustrates a fact borne out by the
cOuntry's statistics that local option
is doing but little, if anything, to-
wards crushing out the liquor traffic
but simply driving the business to
centers of population, where, by in
creased majOrities in its favor and
concentration of influence in its be
half, it becomes more deadly in its
cts-Overpowering, paralyZing and
crushing the hopes of the better ele-
ment of society, and then i'll turn
sending out its corrupting influences
into the very territory from which it
had been driven. This latter result
is greatly aided by another well
! known fact that where the Prohibit
tiOn majority element in two liquor
licensing parties have united and
voted liquor out. the liquor minority
element in the same parties have fire.
quently afterwards united and forced
candidates on their parties who, after
being elected, would refuse to en-
force the law, and would thereby as
sist the very men who have been
| driven out in over-running the same
territory again. This is happening
every week, and is being used by the
| liquor men to effect just what Mr..
AthertOn told his elan could he done
make the wet counties supply the
dry counties until the opposition of
the people could he sufficiently brok-
ell down to make the license business
more universal. Then again the
worlds history shows that
THE CONCENTRATION OF EVIL INFLUENCES
IN THE CENTERS OF POPULATION
Has been the initiative process in
the work of disntegratiOn and the
downfall of the departed nations of
the past, and nothing under the sun
is helping this process along more
rapidly in the United States than To-
cal option and the principle undeIly-
ing it iu government. The idea that
an evil can be eradicated by massing
it in its strongholds and there leaving
it free to riot in all of its infamy un-
der the special protection and foster
ing influences of statutory law, fed
eral, State and municipal, would ap-
pear sublimely ridiculous were it not
for the sadness of the reflection that
such an idea has given rise to so in
consistent an effort by an intelligent
people. The principle underlying it
being wrong, its practical workings
can never be a success.
THEN WHAT IS LOCAL OPTION?
1t is but Il partial remedy for a
wholly unnecessary evil. 1t simply
drives the business a little further off,
while those engaged in it are deviSing
plans to force it back again. Depend
ed on alone, it divides up the friends
of Prohibition into small squads, and
gives the well organized liquor forces
an opportunity to attack and crush
them in detail. 1t delays aggressive
action against the liquor forces, while
thousands of foreign paupers land on
our shores every week to reinforce
their vandal hordes. 1t impresses our
children that the licensed saloon is
right wherever might or corrupt
methods can establish it and that civil
government is farce, and innocent
minorities are without protection
wherever each separate neighborhood
has not a majority of good people in
| it. 1t impresses the youth of the
country that we are not to be con-
cerned for the good of humanity out
side of our immediate neighborhoods
and that it makes no difference what
| happens to others so 1t does not hap.
pen to us and ours. And while God
takes notice of even the sparrow that
falls to the ground, local option en-
tirely ignores the one thousand wives
and mothers who are annually muir
dered in the United States by hus-
bands made drunk in saloons licensed
by the representatives of local option
voters. 1t refuses to assist in the re-
demptiOn of three hundred thousand
other wives and mothers, who through
fear, are living lives worse than death,
and toiling daily to support husbands
brutalized by the same saloons. 1t
says to the five hundred thousand
children made worse than paupers by
drunken parents, and to whom Christ
] says even a cup of cold water given in
his name shall not lose its reward,
no difference how many of you suffer,
starve and die, just so our party wins
and our children are not among your
number. It,says to the eighty thousand
grown up victims who annually fill
drunkard's graves, and so to recruit
a DEVILS hell, we know that Christ
died to save you, but as you are not
in our immediate neighborhood we
prefer that you die drunk and go to
hell, rather than weaken our political
party in an effort to destroy the sa-
loon. 1t says to helpless minOrities i'll