The Topeka state journal., 1899-12-21
MR.. GRIFFIN REPLIES.
Correets Statements Made Concerning
His Prohibition Views.

Your issue of Tuesday contains part
of an article from The Kansas Issue. the
organ of the State Temperance union,
that grossly misrepresents my posi-
ton. Its error may have been partly
due to an unintentionalIy misleading
heading which the Mail and Breeze put
over letter of mine; but even that
hardly justified the positive miSSCate-
ments, false inferences and slurs con-
tained in the Issues article, to which it
called its readers special attention
with it's blue pencil
have never thought, said, or written
anything that the intenSest bigOtry
could honestly cOnstrue into state
ment that conditions will not improve
until the prohibitory law is repealed" >"
Unfortunately for me, perhaps, 1 have
never become so fossilized that can
not learn, and 1 have never been
ashamed to admit that 1 know more to-
day than I did yesterday. lay no
claim to omniscience. have been mis-
taken in the past, and probably shall
be in the future, but when I become
convinced that am on the wrong road
leave it. Ny present position is:
l. Every law the real object of which
is to make it impossible. or more diff
cult, for men and women to get liquor
to drink-Or, in other words to compel
them to quit drinl1ing-dOes more harm
than good, in the long run, and, if had
the power, I would repeal all liquor
laws except, possibly, some provisions
making dealers responsible for the re-
2. Intelligent efforts to induce men
and women to become total abstainers
have never failed to do good. Indeed,
substantially all of the progress ever
made in the temperance cause is due to
such work. The saloon is not the priru-
ary cause of intemperance. At least 95
per cent of the responsibility for all the
evils charged against it rests upon the
moderate drinkers, who make drinking
a social habit. But for that class, in
the past, there would never have been
n G1eT7T7 n
Put an end to the social habit now and
it will not be long before the last
drunkard will be reformed or die, and
the last saloon close its doors for want
of patronage.
The vital moving powerin and behind
the moral suasiOn method is lOVe-per-
suasiOn. The vital moving power in
and behind the legal suasion method is
fOrce-cOmpulSion The one is essen
TALLY christian-christlike while the
other is essentially pagan-tyrannical;
and experience has proved that
the two are inheritently an
tagonistic and can not be
made to work together successfully. 1t
IS true that total abstinence may be aQ-
VOca ted, pledges circulated and many
sfgners obtained at prohibition meet
ings; but the great majority that need
most to be reached will not attend such
meetings. Indeed-and what is worse
they work untiringly to undo the good
Z that has been done. The advocacy OF
: prohibition arrays the mass of drinkers
actively and increasingly in defense of
the liquor sellers and against every
proposition and method which those
they come to regard as their joint en-
eInieS prOpOSe-including moral SuaSiOn
work. Consequently, the good done by
direct appeals to the few drinkers that
are Influenced is more than counter
balanced by the intensification of the
animosity with which the great mass of
drinkers regard the attempts to compel
them by law to regulate their personal
habits by other peoples idea of what
is right and proper.
4. For these reasons have, for a
dozen years, been trying to induce my
old co-WorkerS to give prohibition a
rest" so that moral SuaSion work can
be successfully resumed. I have never
proposed the repeal of the prohibition
laW-and, until quite lately, would have
opposed such repeal. What seems to
have excited the ire of some of the
blind leaders of the blind who persist
in remaining in the ditch in which they
have been stumbling downward for
nearly 20 years, is that, when Offering
: my services to those who wish the kind
of work done that 1 (and these prOhi-
bitionistS profess tO) believe in, said
Il would be willing to begin if I could
be assured of the active help of a dozen
or two earnest and intelligent men and
P women that are ready to make some
sacrifices for humanity. It would have
to be understood, however, that, let
their personal opinions be what they
may, politics and all forms of legal
suaSion are to be rigidly excluded from
/ the whole InOVem Snt" ."
/ If these words justify the Issues as
sumption that propose to bitterly OPP
! without allowing any Of its friends to ut
1 ter a word in its favor then can not
I understand plain English which 1 think
With gushing kindness the Issue says:
IF Mr.. Griffin wishes to do moral sua-
sion work no one viii object the work
is needed This shows how little its edi-
ment that ali forms of legal suasion must
be rigidly excluded, solely because each
nf m q =
movement have been frustrated by pro-
temperance meetings should be held with
of prohibition into them to make success
impossible wherever go everyone
must know that I do not believe in any
nd to deee1e 9a iee bg Reepng s
lence in advance of an enga cement. nor
am I willing to again begin a series of
meetings confning myself entirely to per-
SOnal temperance, and then before the
people have fully learned how differently
the subject was being handled from the
accustomed way, have some prohibition
bourbon throw a fire brand into the meet
ing and set the people by the ears again.
The sapient editor of the Issue says:
the back and shout their approval" I
have neither felt pat nor heard shout,
but even if he be correct I venture t. sug-
gest that, long before he has been in the
i1 IempejTaPbce r. be , MoTN as Iong bag as havs ne
MIND open, learn that prohibition bOur-
ought TO nave already learneq that hquOr
sellers always fight most determinedly
number of their enemies are at the time
advocating. Moreover. while they knew
| what law means, and read it more or less.
| they know little or nothing about moral
| suasion and have no conception of the
| potency of moral power.
| The three strongest reasons why. 7 have
come to regard prohibition as q had al
most said) a crime against humanity in
! the order of time whicn they impressed
/ themselves on my mind are:
1. From the beginning. it has been a
political football, Strengthening the worst
element in each party, lowering the NOR
al standard applied to its nominees and
helping to bring the very idea of better
ing humanity into contempt.
2. It has. paralyzed. and prevented ef-