Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1907-08-21

STATE PROHIBITION BULLETIN.
The political columns Of the Min
neapoils Journal point the republic
an party to nice, ready-made issue
which they can get before the peo-
pie of the state, as follows:
''Will the republican party of
Minnesota adopt county option as it's
slogan in the next state campaign.
Judging from the present drift of
things, such development would
not be surprising. The G.. o. P.
has been hard up for state issues
because the alacrity of the Demo-
Gratis in meeting the peoples every
fancy in their platform, getting to
every issue as soon as the republic.
ans, or even beating them to it.
There seems no prospect now Of
establishing any issue on which the
re can be much if any difference of
opinion next year, unless it is on
the temperance question:
Probably the majoriy of the rank
and file of the republican party is
against the liquor traffic. 1t is
probable that the same is true in
the democratic party in this state.
But the politicians in St. Paul, and
the politicians in Washington, are
not slow to understand that the
campaign barrel would be very seri-
ously interfered with, not only in
this state but turnout the nation,
if the republican party of the ma
ton as whole should prove itself
unable to dictate how that party
should behave itself in Minnesota.
Iowa learned that lesson some
years ago. The republican party
took up prohibition. The screws
were put to it's local leaders with
sufficient force to generate a "bolt"
lead by A. B. Cummins, when he
marched out of the republican con-
vention with about a third of the
delegates and went into the cam
paign that elected Horace Boies,
a democrat, as governor of the
state. The republicans of Iowa
were against the saloon, but they
were taught to say nothing about
it, and Cummins, who taught them
the lesson, has been rewarded by
being made the governor of the
state three times, distinction en-
joyed by no other man in the whole
history of the Hawkeye state.
The daily press, as we'll as many
weekly papers, of the state is be-
ginning to wake up to the fact that
the saloon men who Is years ago
were business men in their COM
rnunity no longer sustain that rela-
ton. They have become the hired
men of the brewers often ire
sponsible, with no property or other
interests to protect and to every
essential purpose aliens as to all
local interests. They are there to
make money for themselves, with
no pride or ambition as to the build
ing of the town or the general pub
lie good. When a few of these
facts ''soak in'' a little deeper men
will use their support at the polls
against a business which destroys
the producing capacity of part of
their customers.
Besides, the republican party of
Minnesota declared for temperance
measures before the election last
year, and the legislature, as fast as
temperance and reform measures
came up they knocked every one
worth picking up in the street in
the head and pitched it out Of the
window.
The Kansas City Star, the most
influential paper of that section of
the country, which stood so n3bly
by C. w. Trickett in his campaign
of closing the dives of Kansas City,
Kansas, and which has within re-
cent years stood squarely on every
proposition of law enforcement in
Missouri and Kansas, the two states
in it's sphere of greatest influence,
recently expresses itself in the fol-
lowing terms on the Oklahoma stu
alton: both political parties in
Oklahoma dodge the question of
prohibition. Politicians who are
fairly brave at other times tremble
like caitiffs in the presence of the
brewers and the rum question.
Not only is this true of Oklahoma,
but we have known politicians as
we'll as newspapers in intersections
of the nation to do that same trem-