The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-11-26
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The Topeka Capital, under IT'S new
management. announced that what
ever else 1t might or might not DE, IL
would be found uncompromisingly al
herring to the principal OF ProhlDilioh
as a state policy, The CONSTITUTIONAL
amendment and the laws passed pur-
s,lant thereto meets with its hearty
sympathy and appreciation nile
gloryirg in our esteemed contempor-
ary's spunk we are In no wise lnc1illed
To ouestion its wisdom. Whether the
people are governed too much. or too
little. may be open to wide discussion
and honest differences of opinion.
Washington. Jefferson and their conf
no rtiorts. no doubt, were sincere In
their belief that an intelligent ana
liberty loving people might, in time,
largely become a government unto
themselves; that enlightened manhood
and woman hood would in time render
legal limitations and statutory pro-
sr.iptions largely migratory and IN
necessary. But as their present has
slipned into the past and the future
they looked forward to has become
ours. the desire TO regulate the lie OF
our neighbors seems to have developed
into a governmental principle. The
law making power inherring In the
people it becomes everybody's desire
To take a hand in formulating and en-
forcing law. Every other man ID our
own markedly progressive state is an
officer of some character, either NUM-
cipal. Unconventional, fraternal or
what not. feeling the weight OF or
fetal responsibility. Having by law
proyided for all the phazes Of civil and
criminal life, and largely regulated the
moral and religious status OF mankind,
the only thing left TO take care or is
the Dersonal habits of the individual.
What we shall drink having been
legally defined, next come the question
of what we shall chaw. This touches
directly upon the almost universal to-
bacco habit. Our contemporary is evil
IDENTIFY preparing for a formal step In
this direction. 1t cites the instance OF
a neighborhood where sixteen widows
were found, the husbands Of every one
of them having been addicted to the
excessive use of this destructive, ter
rible and disgusting weed. 1t also
mentions the case of lynching IN
Texas of a notorious chewer, and Of
another who had his leg taken off by
trolley car in Brooklyn, New York,
from which he would probably have
recovered had his system not been pOls-
oned with the noxious weed.
If the prohibitory principle is correct
as a governmental policy then it only
becomes a question of what is found TO
be or what is deemed injurious, to in
woke the alction of the law making
power. As to tobacco, the first step
has been taken, and there is already on
the statute hooks law against the
selling of it to any boy under sixteen
years of age. Why not make. it
twenty As for girls, there is the
deleterious and disgusting habit of
gum chewing, the age of consent 10
which ougt not to be under forty, after
which woman, for the most part, will
not risk their store teeth. These new
measures, the advocacy of which out
radical and progressive contemporary
has set itself out TO bring about. will
naturally necessitate an additional set
of police commissioners, or the like,
which will still farther mark our for
ward movement as a self-governing
people