The public weal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1906-1908, 1907-05-01
The Organization Defeats the People.
Secretary Cderwo Observer Close
Machine the CdphOThe People Should
The Prohibition Party Their Only Hope.

Delighted This is the way the
whiskey interests, steel trust and i'm
moral agencies of this state express
themselves concerning the session of
the Legislature recently adjourned.
The whiskey business triumphed
over the county option bill; sandbag-
ged the attempt to validate the saloon
keepers bond; put to sleep the pro-
hibitiOn amendment proposition;
chlOroformed the innocent bill making
better provision for scientific temper
ance instruction in the schools, and,
in fact gave the quietus to every move
that was intended to in any way bring
the liquor business under better con-
troll They are hugging themselves with
satisfaction and chuckling with glee.
Nor was this because the Legisla-
ture was whiskey crowd. The major
ity of it's members were decent men.
1t was because the Speaker of the
House, who had promised the COM
bined temperance forces to appoint a
temperance committee who would give
temperance legislation a square deal"
was either so false or so foolish as to
stack that committee into a whiskey
lobby with a majority of twelve to
three
1t was because, as a leading Repub-
lican said, Every appointive employee
of this House is member Of the
whiskey lobby"
1t was because, as our detective
learned direct from brewery head
quarters, that the head of the legis-
lative whiskey lobby was clerk to the
Speaker.
It was because in the Senate a
Christian Lieutenant Governor who
had given his word of honor to ap-
point a temperance committee that
would deal fairly with temperance
legislation selected crowd who with
one exception served the liquor in
terests as faithfully as could Senator
w. w. Dunn, the attorney for the
Hamm Brewing Co., had he been re-
appointed chairman of the temperance
committee.
It was because the whiskey lobby
(being composed on Republican au-
thOrity as above stately was an Of
ficial lobby, and therefore had the
rights of the floor at all times.
It was because good temperance
men, absolute total abstainerS, enc
mics of the liquor traffic at home and
who would vote and work for local
option, were there as representatives
of a political party that is committed
by more than thirty years of unbroken
history to the protection of the
whiskey interests and, after all, this
is the explanation of every other rea-
son above given. No man who knows
Lieutenant Governor Eberhart would
accuse him of personally favoring the
liquor traffic, but no man with a grain
of sense would believe that the ap-
pointment Of the temperance COM
mittee in the Senate was an accident.
Lieutenant Governor Eberhart did not
appoint the committee and had no
moral right to appoint tit was the
Republican party, composed mostly of
good men controlled mostly by bad
men. And it was not alone Mankato,
where LieutenantGOvernor Eberhart
lives, that controlled him; nor was it
alone st. Paul where Lieutenant-Go
ernor's Eberhart's political labors took
him. It was essentially Washington
and the Republican interests that
must keep in line the beer interests
of Wisconsin, the saloons and slums
of Chicago, the distilling interests of
Rochester, New York, and Peoria or
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