The Parma herald. (Parma, Idaho) 1903-1917, 1911-08-03
Prohibition Question
Again Before People


eating beverages. promote good gov
ernment and minimize the evil ef-
fects of over-indulgence, is again be-
fore the voters of Canyon county,
and we feel it our duty to give to
our reads whatever of information
we have acquired by past experience
and the study of the principles of
government to aid them in deter
mining how to vote on this ques-
tion-the most important question
that now confronts the American
people; for it involves every aspect
of government, moral. social and
financial.
Every person entrusted with that
greatest of human privileges-the
making of laws to govern his fellow
citizen-should study this great
question calmly and judiciously,
with malice toward none, and in an
honest and earnest effort to bring
his mind to a correct conclusion.
Sentiment and personal desire
should have no place in the argu-
ment.
1t is said that the legislature
makes the laws. That is not true,
either in theory or practice: the
legislature enacts statutesi the peo=
pie make the law. 1t is also said
that we are trained in self govern
ment. That is true in theory, but
not in practice; the laws we make
are made to govern the other man,
not ourselves. That being true, it
is all-important that we study care
fully and act eonseientiously on
every matter of government. We
should not make a law that we our
self are not willing to obey, and we
should not make even that law un-
less we have satisfied ourself by a
calm and dispassionate study of the
question that it is conducive to the
general civic good.
Government was instituted and
laws are made not for the purpose
of enforcing righteousness, but for
correcting evil. The spiritual well
fare of the people belong to the
vicegerents of Omnipotence; our
temporal welfare is in our own
| hands.
Nine times out of ten the ques.
ton of temperance is confused in
the mind OF the voter with that OF
prohibition, and every advocate OF
prohibition will attempt to so con-
fuse it. Temperance is a cardinal
moral virtue, and we have never yet
| seen or heard of human being
who did not believe in it, regardless
Of his own method of life. Pro
hibition is simply a human law
made, as we have said, to control
tho other fellow. Temperance is q
law of Cod prohibition is a man,
made law for controlling the appe-
tite of our fellow man. Neither fol
lows the other; neither controls the
other. Ask any physician or drug.
gist and he will tell you that the
prohibitionist attempts to violate
the prohibition law or the local op-
tion law with tthe same cheerful.
ness, the same regularity, and the
same frequency htat an opponent oi
prohibition does. According to a
man engaged in the drug business
whose word we have no reason tc
doubt, the first customer who asked
him to violate the prevailing loca
option law in Parma was a promi
nent prohibitionist. This man was
temperate in the use of intoxicants
but he was not willing to observe
the law that he himself had helped
to make for the control of his fel
low man. Temperance and prohi
bition are not synonymous terms.
In this article we are not talkin,
to the saloon bum or the narrow
minded bigot; we are not talking Il
the man who has neared the foo
of the ladder in the scale of human
degradation, onr the one who ha.
sprouted angel wings in his efforts
to send his fellow man to glory b,
legislative enactment. In our jour
ney through life we have learned
that it is a waste of energy to en-
deavor to impart motion to an i'm
movable object, or hinder an ir
resistable force. We are talking t.
the men and women who are honest
, ly trying TO live up to the ideals O
civic duty, and whose minds ar,
capable Of receiving impressions.
Primarily. the making of law is
OF necessity, a selfish proposition
It follows, therefore, that the NOR,
selfish the individual, the more re
strictions he wishes to fasten upoi
his fellow man. The acme of sci
fishness is reached when we tell ou
fellow man what he shall eat, an,
how much, and at what intervals
what he shall drink, and how man,
swallows of It he shall take, ant
how much at a swallow. Such law