Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1906-04-06
FAvoRs LOCAL OPTION.
Wants to Maintain Present Con-
ditions i'm Corvallis.

Ed. Gazette: If our city as a
municipal government is respon-
sible for the violation or obser-
vance of social laws, or laws of in
telligence, OF morals and of tenn
perance, then obviously e; ch
Individual citizen is responsible
for that standard Of public moral.
ity which he advocates and to
which his civic life gives sane
ton and support.
If this be SO, nowhere so much
in the world as in our city, the
seat of learning, ought our cit
izens to be on guard in order ser
viceably to defend the Christian
principles that bear on the civic
life of our city, as we'll as those
bearing on our own individual
lite and the lives of the
youth of our state who seek
learning within our gates.
An armed camp would not be
idle with an enemy prowling
through the ranks of its troops,
The last skulking intruder would
be apprehened and if not i'm
prisoned he would find it unsafe
to remain within reach of those
whose duty it is to clear the
camp of every disloyal fellow.
The vultures of the whiskey
traffic lost their legal status in
Corvallis year ago as the result
of the oft repeated crimes
and felonies traceable to
their commercial business
and now they hover with cir
cling wings ever their moral
wrecks. They will seek at our
coming municipal election to re-
store the broken sceptre of Rum
that it may again rule our city
with a rod of iron.
The people OF Corvallis will
never again restore whiskey ad-
ministration for our city gov
ernment. We may continue to
suffer from onr late guilty CO.
partnership with the whiskey
traffic, but our people will never
authorize commercial business
that logically leads to brutal
drunkenness. Our people will
never again legalize the dehu-
manizing business of making
drunkards-a business that con-
sumes with its liquid flames like
burning desolating sirocco.
There is stored up in the
whiskey arsenals a 6endish,
subtle power more destructive
to the moral life of the race than
disease or famine with outstretch-
ed wings over the world. The
armory of strong drink is the
incubator of disease and the
mother of moral famine in the
world.
It paralizes and skaters the
manhood of the race and leaves
its helpless physical wrecks as
desolate and powerless on the
shores of time as the land that
rocks and reels with convulsive
earthquakes. Our people will
never restore its degrading CO.
partnership with the whiskey
business, business that carries
on its front the mask of Cain
in every land and cline where
it is licensed, legalized, or toler-
ated.
Its criminals outnumber the
stars of Heaven and are found in
the dens of vice in every city in
the world. Our people will not
legalize a traffic that makes men
insane and robs them of their
reason, and fills their lives and
the lives of their helpless families
with unutterable woe, poverty,
sorrow and despair.
Our people know of the mon-
strous iniquity of the whiskey
traffic; innumerable witnesses
bear testimony, all covered with
the scars and wounds received
at the blood-stained hands of the
advocates of license for the prim-
ative traffic of the ages of bar
barism which has grown under
the impulse of the special legal
privileges until it is more power
full than the legions of dark
ness, But its power is broken
in Corvallis; we smote it hip and
thigh year ago through the free
man's bal1ot-let the next con-
test demonstrate whose God is