The Vinita weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1902-1905, 1904-10-20
THE soUTH's LARGEST GAIN.

For decade remarkable change has beer
going on in the South. The manifestation
have been local but the results bear the sem
blnnce of a great movement. After the wal
the South had almost as many drinking places
as it had stores. Today more than one-half Of
the counties below Mason and Dixon's line pro-
hibit the sale of liquor For instance, almost
sixty per cent of Texas, nearly eighty per cent.
Of Georgia ninety per cent, of Mississippi and
all of Tennessee except eight cities have voted
out the saloon, while even in Kentucky forty
seven counties are under prohibition rule.
There is no particular political Importance
in,these facts, but there is in them vast deal
Of social and dipersonal significance In literature
pretending to represent the life of the South
the mint julep figures as conspicuously as the
genial sunshine or the climbing roses, when, as
a matter of fact, ice-water or lemonade might
be more realistic The Southern "majah, sahl :"
with some of his old manner, still hangs on,
but the Southern man of today is quite another
kind of person. This may be loss to romance,
for, even to the abstainer, there is fragrance in
theImention OF mint which lemonade fails to
suggest, and the major with his large manner
and contempt for statistics fills more of the at
mosphere than the quiet, agile worker who
thinks of crops, cotton mills and stock quota
tions instead of the lost cause and its battles
But the same qualities Of grit, endurance,
fidelity and cheerfulness which made splendid
records in war are bravely at work solving the
problems of peace. In most eases the liquor
..,,ae.tay, hos baap havdfad ag ,Iasn hre;nasp
proposition The saloon baked enterprise, re-
duced the labor supply, increased lawlessness
and kept communities poor; worse still, il
played havoc with the individual. In more
than four hundred counties the good citizen
ship of all parties arose and banshed it.
Behold the benefits! This year the South
has more money than it has ever known, more
money for spendingi so much of it, in fact,
that three of the great cities of the North have
formed special business organizations to secure
Southern trade, while the cities Of the West
have met the competition by the most allunng
inducements But the larger gain is in the
genial uplift Of the population. Despite the
occasional outbreaks Of crime-in most cases
where the saloon still exists-the whole trend
OF the South Is steadily toward wise and safe
conservatism and the evolution Of Southern
personality is producing broad-minded Ameri-
cans who live clean lives do good work and
carry no chips on their shoulders.
1t has been said that had it not been for
whiskey there would have been no Civil War.
Hard drinking, both North and South, inhamed
the passions engendered by slavery. II follows
as a inost hopeful fact that in the consideration
Of the race question, which fingers long after
the abolition Of human slavery, the work Of
Cancellation and adjustment will be done by
men of temperate habits and temperate minds.
In the new conditions being wrought by the
South itself there must come higher character
and achievement than it's older and finest chiv-
airy conld show.-Saturday Evening Post