CanÌƒon City record. [volume] (CanÌƒon City, Colo.) 1883-192?, 1898-03-31
TIE SALOON N POLITICS.

THE SALOON IN POLFIICS.
Wherever a candidate with clean,
uncompromising abstinence and pro-
hibition record is put up for any i'm
portant Office which might be used
to weaken the saloon power money is
lavished in buying votes to beat the
reform movement, and the lowest ele-
ment of society is bought and sold
for a song or keg of beer or demi-
john of whisky. A notable example
of this was given in Georgia in '96
when Hon. Seaborn Wright, a sup
porter of prohibition, state and
national, was nominated for governor
and led his ticket by 1900 more
votes than any other man on the tic
ket. The best people in Georgia ad-
nit that but for the open and shame
less purchase of the vote for
the old party tickets Wright would
have been triumphantly elected. Yet
in the face of thousands of such
instances in all elections from the
small borough to the national elections,
there are many presumably well mean
ing people who pose as leaders of pub
lie sentiment but who clamor for the
saloon to be kept out Of politics as
though their own acts of licenseing
the saloon had not put it into politics.
They force it into politics by connect
ing its traffic with the government.
We, as reformers and prohibitionists
of such revenue and legalized political
connection, are striving with moral
suasion' by voice and vote to divorce
the Saloon from Miss Government.
The saloon and politics can never, ac-
cording to the laws of God and moral
ity, be Joined by the voice (yote) of a
people who worship God other than
a God of appetite and ayarice. 1t
was the worship of appetite and the
almighty dollar that put the saloon
into politics and never can it again be
divorced from politics till we get the
majority of voters by ballot to do it.
The claims of those favoring the
liquor traffic that it booms business
other than its own trafiic-is the most
delusive and false idea that ever had
birth in human thought, and only
indicates utter lack OF a thorough
study of the laws of economies in the
increase of permanent growth and
wealth.
Everyone in business in Canon City
except the vender of liquor and his
servant who votes for the establish
ment of the saloon and its traffic, is
voting dollars out of every other busi-
ness that adds to the permanent COM
forts of homes and city, and especially
from the personal homestead posses
sions and bank deposits of the drink
ers. Such method of raising money
by removing taxes from real estate
and other wealth and taxing the de-
PRAYED appetites of its citizens is the
worst of politics. But it is politics
that does it and politics must answer
for its evils 1t were better for our
children not to be educated in our
grand and expensive public school
system and for every property owner
to keep up his own streets th&n to
pay the educational expense and pave
the streets than to pay the educa-
tional expense and pave the streets
and water the town by the legal sane
ton of public business that cannot
possibly be sanctioned by moral law.
But some will say. Let's license it
till We can drive it out by moral sna-
sion"
There are only two kinds of suasion.
moral and immoral. All methods and
Influences used to persuade men to
think and act are either moral or i'm
moral; all right and just powers used
to accomplish good are the legitimate
means of moral suasion; all wrong and
unjust are the means of immoral sua-
sion. If politics and votes are not
means of moral suasion or the means
of accomplishing good they must be
immoral powers. If good, let them
be used to put down all wickedness
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