The St. Lucie County tribune. (Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County, Fla.) 1905-1920, 1910-11-04
JACKSONVILLE CITIZENS
PETITION THE VOTERS

counties of Florida during the pending
campaign that the people of Jackson
vile, with the exception of propertyless
fadists and extremists, advocate the
continuance of the whiskey business in
this city as it is now conducted.
! This claim is unfounded and untrue,
/ 1t is circulated, like many other
yarns" gotten out by the wet forces
to further their false plea that the
voters of the dry counties ought not to
"force prohibition" onto the wet coun-
ties.
( To refute the false claim that the
real business element of Jacksonville
favors the continuance of the liquor
traffic, few leading men prepared a
letter to send out to the dry counties to
brand the reports about this city as
just common lies.
They drew up the letter which is
printed herewith and many more asked
for the privilege of signing it. In that
way the names given were obtained.
The list could be multiplied many
fold. 1t is not intended to be complete
and no effort was made to have it COM
plete.
Below you will find enough of the
great big business men of the city to
show you how the men that really make
Jacksonville feel about the liquor bust
ness.
They ask you to help drive the saloon
out of that city. Can you disregard
their wishes in favor of the saloon men
who ask you to defeat the amendment
so they can stay in Jacksonville?
Think it over and read carefully the
letter and names given below.
Jacksonville, Fla, Oct. 81, 1910
To the voters of the dry counties of
Florida:
The men whose names are signed to
this appeal are business men, profess
sional men and laboring men of the
city of Jacksonville.
This appeal is made direct to the dry
counties of Florida for help in the State
wide contest now On--help to save us
from the concentrated power of the
Whiskey and Beer Interests of Amer
lea.
We are helpless under local option.
We cannot redeem ourselves from the
curse of the domination, in our politi-
cal, social and industrial life, of the
Whiskey Trust and the Beer Combine.
There are thousands of men in this
city who will vote for the Amendment;
although many citizens for motives
satisfactory to themselves will vote
otherwise. Arrayed with the latter
class we find the saloon and vicious ele-
ments driven from dry counties of the
State and neighboring dry states and a
large negro vote between four and
five thousand) qualified by the whis-
key interests. These refugees and ne
groes hold the balance of power in Du-
val county and make up the majority
of the vote that will be cast against
the amendment.
1t is humiliating to US, as citizens of
this splendid Southern city, that we
are the dumping ground Of an idle, va
grant and often vicious mass, driven
out of our sister Southern cities when
they outlawed the saloon.
1t is humiliating to US to feel that the
foreign Whiskey Trust and Brewery
Combine have made our city the point
from which the dry counties of Florida
and all the dry lower South are flooded
with liquor.
We denounce the false cry of so
cal self-government" for Jacksonville
as fraud, a miserable device of liquor
politicians and liquor interests to try to
deceive the people of Florida
Prohbition has been good in your
dry counties. We want it here. A
license issued anywhere in the State is
issued by the State. The licensed sa-
loon is an enemy to morality, an imped-
iment to social progress, and has no JUS
tification for existence.
We therefore, appeal to you to join
with US and together vote out this evil
on November 8, 1910. Il
Arthur 7. Williams, real estate.
w. c. Powell, banker.
A. d. Stevens, president Merrill-Stev
C. C. Bettes, druggist. lens Co
John H. Powell, naval stores factor.
P. M. Ulsch, wholesale lumber
j. A. Crawford, real es tate.
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