The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-11-09
IT CANNOT STAND THE LIGHT.

The result in Ohio shows what good
men can accomplish if they are coura-
geous and sensible. The Republican
majority in that State at the last cleo
ton was nearly a quarter of MIL
lion. The task of cutting that ma
jor;ty down and converting it into
Democratic majority was a herculean
one. and no man who lacked faith
and courage would have undertaken
it. And no man would have succeed
ed whose candidacy meant only get
ting an office for himself, or
making merely change of par
ties. Revolutions never come I'M
less the people are profoundly
stirred either over some great
moral question or to end some great
evil. In Ohio the man and occasion
met. The Democratic candidate for
Governor does not know the taste of
alcoholic drinks. In the Legislature
he had been a consistent advocate
of temperance legislation-not seek
ing the unattainable and despising the
feasible-but practical and sensible
like those men in North Carolina who
secured the passage of the Watts and
Ward acts in this State. He did not
make a play to the grand-stand and
say 1--WE must have State Prohibit
ton or nothing" He stood for effec-
tive and feasible remedies that would
make better conditions, going step by
step to temperance that can be main
tanned. Fortunately for him and for
temperance, the Governor was weak
man who stood in mortal dread of
antagonizing the liquor power, and did
not fear to antagonize the temperance
forces. He sought to carry water on
both shoulders, and when he had to
act he stood against the real demand
of the temperance element, incurred
their distrust and lost their support.
But he argued with himself that the
liquor crowd were well organized and
had a long memory, while the tenn
perance forces were not well organi-
zed and would forget before the cleo
ton. He had good reason for think
ing that the good men would divide
err. All the experience in Ohio justi-
fed his trifiing with tn good men
and conciliating the liquor forces.
But he failed to note the intensity
and earnestness of the great fight
pressed by the Anti-Saloon League in
Ohio, and even after they began\ to
denounce his truculency to the whis-
key crowd and the brewers, Governor
Herrick and his advisers thought the
storm would soon blow over. Like
wise when Mr.. Patterson, the Demo-
cratic nominee for Governor, began
his vigorous attack on Bossism as the
foe of good government, they comfort
ed themselves by saying they had
heard that song an hundred times be-
fore, but it would amount to nothing.
that the people in the great cities had
reached a point where they had de-
termined to free themselves from
boss rule, and nobly did they assert
themselves on Tuesday.
The Ohio lesson is one that men
is this: The liquor and like forces
are all powerful and strong except
when confronted by the organized
forces of virtue and light. Then they
are as weak as q rope of sand, they
run to cover they cannot stand up in
the open and fight, and just as sure as
the good men are courageous that
crowd of evil influence is certain to be
smitten hip and thigh and vanquished
There is nothing SO powerful in Amer
lea as organized civic righteousness
The result in Ohio proves that moth
ing can stand against it, even in the
State of Garfield and Mckinley, where
party fealty was invoked to save graft
and bossism and subserviency to the
saloon