The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-01-22
'ITMEANS CRAFT"
DIR. J. f. Callen, Editor of the
Pittsburg Kansan,
Attacks the Prohibition Law of
the Sunflower State.
POINTS OUT SALIVA
And His Own City as Horrible
Examples
And Tells His Hearers That
There Are Others.

Louisville, Ky, Jan. 22.-The second
session of the second annual conven-
ton of the National Model License
league, began today with addresses on
the subject of regulation.
Mayor David s. Rose of Milwaukee
was one of the speakers.
DR.. J. F. Callen, editor of the Pitts
burg Kansan, took up the line of argu-
ment at the afternoon session. dealing
with Prohibition VS.. Temperance"
''The liquor question: the speaker
said, belongs in politics; it has the
same right there that the tariff ques-
ton has; it is a national question. not
question that can be determined in
vested meeting. or even in one
state legislature and it
should be governed and regulated
from the head of the nation. The
United States owns every drop of
liquor and beer in the country today.
There is not a distiller in the state of
Kentucky, or any other state. that
dares to make me present of gal
Ion of whisky today. that cost him to
make and store twenty-five cents, I'M
less he first pays Uncle Sam $1.1O, and
the state, or states, that set up laws
to prohibit The sale of this product
are in a measure boycotting, not only
a product of the government. but a
product that paid in the forty years az
ter the Civil war over fifty-seven per
cent of the entire cost of the war. or
in other words. eighty-three per cent
of the combined cost of the navy and
pension departments.
eff the federal government needs
the revenue it collects from liquor. it
should lend its protection to the man
who dispenses the product and who
pays the government tax.
Prohibition is not a temperance
movement as applied to the sale and
use of stimulants. Prohibition move
ments seek to wipe out the legal sale
of all alcoholic stimulants and
beverage s-that is, if we are to believe
the advocates of the cause who are
stumping the country. But prohibition
where I live. Prohibition out there
means graft. The prohibition law out
there is the power that upholds graft
and enables dishonest officials to play
fast and loose with the 'jointists.
81 believe state wide prohibition
would never be mentioned if it We're
generally understood by our people,
that prohibition is but the name for
a law that takes the sale of liquors
out of responsible hands and places 1T
in the hands of men who are desper-
ate enough to defy the law, that instead
of protecting the young from the tenn
tation to drink, it brings the vilest
to the very shadows of the
home and that there is no way to pro-
tect the youth from the influence of
the boot-legger who is here today and
there tomorrow who has no response
bility, and whose only aim like that of
many of his more respectable brothers,
is money, only money.
IF it should be more generally I'M
derstood that the quantity of liquor
consumed is as great or greater in
prohibition state than in others; that
there is no regulation of the sales or
of the quantity of the stuff sold, no
revenue to the state from such sales.
in prohibition states, and that often the
prosecutor becomes prosecutor who al
ternately protects and prosecutes.
prohibition means not temperance
hut Iawlessness, and the more power
full the movement becames and the
more numerous its advocates, the near
er we approach the reign of anarchy
and outlaWry.
DR.. Callen discussed the effect of the
anti-liQuor law in Kansas, particular
ly in SaIina and Pittsburg. AS a tenn
perance movement, he said, prohibit
ton in Salina is a failure. both NOR
ally and financially, and the end is
not yet. This was true of other cities
in the state, he asserted.