The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1911-01-06
TEMPERANCE DEPARTMENT
OeaIa W. c. T. q. Meets on the Second
and Fourth Mondays of Each Month
at 4 p. I'M. in Room No. 2, Merchants
Block. All Invited.
WHO WAS TO BLAME q?

A citizen Of DeSoto county, residing
in the Lily neigh borhood. went TO
Wauchula one day last week to get a
package of twenty-six half pints of
whisky expressed TO him by a Jack
sonville or Tampa mail order house.
He received his package all right but
never saw his home or wife or chill
dren again. having been shot to death
by man on whom he was advancing
with threats 10 take his life while in
a drunken rage Many similar oc-
currences will be chronicled in Florida
during the years to come a result
of the efforts and votes of Pleasant
Holt and his local option crowd.-Man-
atee River Journal
That is what they call personal lib
erty, local self-government, etc. Had
that same man had sent him by express
an Internal machine of some kind, an
investigation would have been held
and somebody prosecuted. And yet he
did have sent to him that which in
spired him to undertake just the thing
| he would have wanted an Internal ma
| chine for, namely, to kill his fellow
man, and it was sent not in violation
| but with the protection of the state
and national governments. Had he
! committed the murder he intended TO
| commit, in all justice. the state would
| have had no case against him. II is
| true. the state makes no allowance for
| drunkenness in the trial of a murder
case. But il is also true that the
state knows when it licenses the sale
| of liquor that some men will drink il
| TO drunkenness and commit crime
while drunk. Where is the justice of
| state furnishing a man for a crime
! l. fr1o
the state has given him? Or better.
where is the sense in the state plac-
| ing in the hands of the citizens that
/ which makes them criminals and sub
/ jects them TO punishment by the state?
They tell us prohibition makes GRIM
| inals. The license system also makes
| criminals of the most vicious kind.
| The difference is, in the one case the
criminals are made, or make them
selves, in spite of an attempt of the
state to suppress crime: in the other,
the criminals are made by the au-
| thority of the state.
There is law in Florida which for
| bids the sale of cocaine and such drugs
| without a physicians prescription, and
the reason, or one reason, for such a
| law is that these drugs make men vi
! cious And vet the vice and crime re-
! SuillnS from cocaine are HOlHlHS when
compared with the vice and crime
! produced by strong drinks But the
local optionists and the liquor crowd
/ say no matter about the vice and
crime, just so the state is saved to de-
mocracy, tho a state law against the
|! sale of cocaine is as undemocratic and
robs some citizens of personal liberty
just much would a state prohi-
bition law against the sale of liquors.
The difference. Well. just this. The
| local optionists don't use cocaine; they
| do drink liquor. 1t is mostly colored
! people who use cocaine, while both
white and colored drink liquor. The
white liquor drinker consents to the
violation of the democratic principle in
order to stop the colored man from
buying his cocaine. and then hires
. the colored man to help him save that
| same democratic principle-and his
| good Ticker. Well, its a funny old
world when it gets warped and twist
ed by selfshness.-Baptis Witness.