Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1908-07-17
MAKE STATEMENT
National Model License League
Quotes Party Leaders on
Prohibition.
QUESTION OUT OF POLITICS
Bryan, Taft and Mitchell Quoted and
Attitude of President Roose-
welt Referred to.

Louisville, Ky, July 1.-THE Ma
tional Model license league has issued
i brief statement showing the relation
ship of prohibition to politics and
labor as Illustrated by the recent ut
termces of men who are most prom
inent today in the public eye The
league publishes communication from
William Jennings Bryan, to the effect
that the liquor question is not ma
tional issue, but that the only time
that MIR. Bryan ever had occasion to
vote on the question of state vide pre-
hibition, he voted against it and eX-
pressed himself as follows:
q believe in the right of each COM
munity to attend to its own business.
I believe that the people of the com
munity know better what they want
done than any outside persons can
know
The league also quotes the recent
utterance of Henry Watterson, editor
|of the Courier-Journal. who has laid
down the rule: NO democrat can be
a prohibitionist."
Taft's View of Prohibition.
The league then calls attention to
the fact that the prohibitionists cannot
find solace in the utterance of the re-
publican nominee for the presidency
of the United States, William Howard
Taft, who. in lecture delivered at
Yale on -Four Aspects of Civic Duty
said:
Nothing is more foolish, nothing
more utterly at variance with sound
policy than to enact law which, by
reasons of conditions surrounding the
community III which it is declared tC
| be law, is incapable of enforcement
Such an instance is sometimes pre-
sented by sumptuary laws by which
| the sale of intoxicating liquors is pro
hibited under penalty in localities
where the public sentiment of the i'm
mediate community does not and viii
not sustain the enforcement of the
| law. In cases where the sale OF
liquor cannot be prohibited in fact, il
| is far better to regulate and diminish
the evil than to attempt to stamp il
out"
| what Mitchell Says.
| In regard TO the position of labor as
to sumptuary law, the league quotes {
letter received by President Gilmore
from John Mitchell, late president o.
the United Mine Workers of America
and second vice president of the AEcr
lean Federation of Labor, in which Mr
| Mitchell says that he regards mode
license as much superior TO the presen
system and that il would remove man.
lex:sting evils Backing this up is tn,
following quotation from an Officia
lstatement of the American Federation
of Labor:
"The continued growth of prohibi
tion and the destruction of the brew
ling and distilling interests will resul
in the farmer and the allied trades o
manufacture being made to suffer grea
llosses by destroying the market fo
their products
The prohibitionist's views as to .r
democratic party, as given in th
American Prohibition Year Book fc
I190S, are quoted as follows:
i This tthe democratic) party doe
not employ deep thought in its Att
tude ON the liquor question. 1t has
few sounding phrases on 'sumptua.
law and on the liberties of the ci;
zen,' which it airs on every occasion
They will not bear analysis in tn