Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1904-05-25
wALHALLA. SOUTH oARoLINA. MAY aS aeo4
J. a. Cooks Views on the Olsponsary.

i
Fort Madison, May 23.--Editors Cou-
rier: There is q petition being circulated
the dispensary, and we think this is as IL
should be. We think the people should
have o vote on the matter and be allowed
to say whether we will or will not have
q dispensary in our county. There Is q
good deal being said about the dispenary,
both for and against it, and we have
been asked for our views on the matter.
When you begin to think of it, this
whiskey business Is q great big thing.
We have been noticing the different at
tempts at legislation to control whjskey,
both State and National, for the last
forty years, and they have all been more
or less failures. We remember away
back In the f1fties, before the war, every
body made all the whiskey they wanted.
They sold all they wanted to sell. They
drank all they wanted to drink. It was
The people were not smart enough or
mean enough to adulterate it. The
whiskey was pure wbiskey, and it did
not seem to cause half the trouble then
that it does now. There was no revenue
tax or license of any kind on 1t. But
after awhile some little up. start in Con-
gress got very sorry for the poor old
drunkard. He made a fine speech and
told all about the old drunkard's family
being raised up in ignorance and rags.
He presented q bill to tax the whiskey
trust out of existence. They placed
revenue tax of 90 cents on each and every
gallon sold. But the whiskey trust was
smart enough to know that the poor old
drunkard, who had inherited desire for
strong drink from his birth, would have
it regardless of price. So they Just
simply added the 90 cents on the price of
their goods and sold as much as they
ever had sold before, and the poor
drunkard had it to pay. Then the
STATES, counties and towns all over the
country began. to legislate to control the
kinds Of laws. They worked @ P1sit% fait%tuiIY e.,
for many years.. but all their efforts
failed. Finally Ben Tillman, our Ben,
you know, took a notion that he would
do something that no other man ever
had done. He always had lot of little
Tommies running around after him to
help him do anything he wanted to do,
and they got up this dispensary law, and
He got all the poison stuff together, and
built big tank to hold thousands of
gallons. He put it all in the big tank;
then employed lot of girls to draw it
out and bottle it up, and, after Josh
Ashley took the dead rats out of it with
pitchfork, Mr.. Tillman called it chemi-
Qally pure. He established dispensaries
Ill over the State, counties and towns,
whether people wanted them or not, to
sell this chemically pure whiskey. They
would not allow us to send off to any
other State to get us jug of whiskey
We had to go up like slave to the dis
pensary and fill out an order blank half
as big as land deed; had to tell our
name, place of resic cence, etc. One man
lai1 thav axaminnA ,So IN, q
he had shed his colts teeth, or whether
he WITS moon-eyed or had the bolts.
After all this he was allowed to paw so
cents pint or four dollars per gallon
for this chemically pure rat soup; pro-
vided ho would not apply for any more
that day. They knew he could not stand
hut very little of it. At the same time
they paid out thousands and thousands
of dollars to their regiment of dispensary
constables to watch for blind tigers, and
sometimes they would murder the blind
tiger man for just precisely what they
were doing themselves He was proba-
bly, selling better whiskey than they
were and selling it cheaper. Well, after
several years, they decided they would
school fund and educate the innocent
children of our State on this blood
money. But it seems to me that they
had better take their blood money and
follow the example of Judas.
Now, Messrs. Editors, we notice in
your paper of May 11th a commune alton
signed "Moralist." We don't know who
"Moralist' is, but we think that name
signed to that particular article is a long
ways from home. What decent, manly
man in our county wants to take the
money of some poor old drunkard and
school his children with it, and the poor
drunkard's children at home in their
ignorance and rags, and their parents
not able to fix them up decent to 20 TO
schoolP What manly man is there in
our State who wants TO see his children
educated on the profits from the con-
tents of an Internal old whiskey barrel
good can we expect from children who
are educated under such circumstances?
What kind of morality is this anyhow?
We wish "Moralist" would tell us. We
don't want to exchange the dispensary
for the old bar-room system. We are
not obliged to have either of them. So
far as the blind tigers are concerned the
dispensary nor barrooms do not decrease
the blind tigers much. There was as
many or more blind tigers after the dis
pensary law was passed as before. l
think it our State will spend just as
much money trying to enforce prohibit
ton law, as they have been trying to en-
force the dispensary law, that they will
be more successful. The idea Ia, when
we have men who will not use whiskey
properly, make it just as inconvenient to
hlm as possible. We should not put the
temptation in front of his door Just to
get his money to educate our children.
That's the reason our public schools are
no account. Yours, etc.,
j. A. Cook.