The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1909-05-24

nearly thousand saloons have been
wiped out. The league believes that
II 1T is allowed to go straight ahead
with its present plan it will be able
to wipe out many hundreds more, and
that when it gets through with its en-
tire campaign in the state there will
be few il any saloons left in the state
Fear the Agitation.
But the league fears that if the
prohibitionists continue their agita-
ton for state wide prohibition when
the state is not ripe for it the result
will be disastrous to the plans of the
league and that many of the saloons
may be reinstated. This fear was ex-
pressed in statement given out by
r. c. Minton, attorney for the Indiana
Anu-Saioon league and chairman of
the legislative committee. There is
no question but that Minton is the
man who caused the special session
of the legislature to be called by Gov.
Hanly last September for the purpose
of passing the county option law and
it was largely due to Minton's work
that the bill finally got through. He
has conducted many of the legal fights
that the league has had on its hands
He has been a real power in the work
Of the league all through the cam
paign and If there is any man in the
state who is in real touch with the
situation it is Minton. He fears the
effect of the agitation by the prohi-
bi,ionists. He does not say that state
wr,s
tually. but he believes this is not the
time to go after it. He believes In
diana will finally be entirely dry, and
when the time comes for this agita-
ton to start in earnest Minton will
be in the thick of it.
Law Enforcement.
Minton says the thing to do now is
to bring about strict law enforcement
in the counties that have gone dry.
One of the plans Minton has in mind
is to ask the next legislature to enact
a law that will reach those prosecu-
tors and other officers who fail to en-
force the anti-liquor laws in their
counties. Under this law whenever a
prosecutor was lax in his duty any at
torney at the bar of mis- county might
constitute himself a special prosecu-
tor with all of the authority of the
regular prosecutor to prosecute viola
tors of the anti-liquor laws. Kansas
has such a law and it is said to work
well. Then IL the league wished to
prosecute offenders in a certain coun-
ty and was not able to get the CO.
operation Of the prosecutor it would
turn the matter over to an attorney
at the bar who was known to be
friendly to the league and it's purpose
and he would act as the. special prose
cutor for those cases. In this way,
Minton says, the league could bring
about the results that the league
promised.
The greatest difficulty in the way
of enforcing the anti-liquor laws in
Indiana always has been and always
will be the failure OF prosecutors and
other officials to do their duty. In
too many instances these officers
owned their election to office to the
brewers and the saloon interests, and
1t was not to be expected that they
would strike the hand that gave them
bread. II the Anti-Saloon league can
change this condition it will be on the
high road to proving that it can do
what it promised the people.
For Special Judge.
Some one has proposed a law that
would give the governor authority to
send an attorney from one county to
any other county in the state to act as
special Judge at the trial Of cases for
violations Of the anti-liguor laws
This. however, does not meet with
favor, not even with the Anti-Saloon
league for it saws such a law would