The Monitor-register., 1896-03-20
It Tan Be Done

0WA hhOH q AuhhAO " NOuih6 AOA
prohibitory laws because they drink lisuer
or deriye profits from it's sale. Good men
have been against it chie6S@t6rough
ignorance. Sfindaess or a stolid but
honest belief that prohibition does not
prohibit.
We have tried to prove the contrary by
holding up before tn EN- the object
lessons of Maine, Vermont, Kansas and
the local option areas of the South, but
to this they replied that these were
exceptional instances and that to enforce
prohibition in our large cities was pre-.
cisely what could not be done. To
answer this objection was practically
impossible, as nc large city in the
Republic was under prohibitory law.
just at this juncture Theodore Roosevelt
appeared or the scene, and as the chief
of the police commissioners of New
York city, with it's two million of inhabi.
tants. he has now proved beyond all
question that prohibition can be enforced
in our largest city, which to complete the
force of the illustration is the city of the
largest percentage of foreign population.
Before this was done nobody would have
believed it possible. If a white-ribbon
woman had dared to say that it could be
accomplished she would have been hooted
at as a fanatic, or derided as one who, if
her visionary ideas were carried out,
would raise a riot in the metropolis. But
here are som of the cold facts, and the
figures that will not lie:
Three thousand saloon-keepers have
been indicted, and nearly all of them
have suffered the penalty of the law; two
hundred houses of i'll. fame have been
closed, and ''the abomination of desola
tion". was never under ban in New York
City as it is to-day; sixty gambling
houses have been shut up, n the
accursed thing is now publicly unknown
in New York City.
President Roosevelt, who is a man we'll
known for the exceeding care with which
he puts forth any statement, says that
Sunday crime has fallen off fifty per cent.
Good men are bordering these facts
they cannot help it. The press. religious
aud reformatory, keeps the subject
before them, and even the great dailies,
sold under sin as they are, cannot avoid
making some sllusion to the welIniph
miraculous change that has come over
the face of Gotham. Neither can the
patriotic citizen fall to be impressed BY
another fact, viz that New York has
recently held the most orderly and honest
election known to its annals, and the
Stree liquor" of the past was then and
there replaced by a free ballot and q fair
count.
1t is now in order for the Prohibitioniss
to renew the questions he has often asked:
LIS not the prohibition law, taking the
country over, enforced as well as the law
against bribery, or the law against carry
ing secret weapons, or even the Law
against petty larceny or defamation OF
character, or any n OF a dozen laws
that might be namedP And yet though
imperfectly enforced, you would not
dream OF taking any of these laws from
the statute book. The proof is before
you, written SO large that he who runs
may read, that the laws are not at fault.
but that men who swore to defend tbese
laws were public perjurers. What we
need is the officer behind the ordi.
nance, the ~law-enforoer back of the law.
But this final force can be had only by
voting him into power for the express
purpose of enforcing law, and this must
be done by a "~movement'' with that
thing in view, and suoh a movement
when it is begun is called a REFORM"
and when it is completed it is called a
party"
What we want is the Home Protection
Party for the protection of the home.
Nothing more will serve our purpose and
nothing less. Like all great statements
this one is simple, bat until our voters
learn it by heart the liquor traffic, the
gambling hell, the house of infamy will
continue to rule and ruin the young men
of the nation and degrade its municipali-
ties 20 the level Of ehabitations of
cruelty" We must then make a chain,
for the land is full of bloody crimes and
the CITY of violence" Voter, will you