The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1912-11-20
UNION COUNTY.
Editor The Advertiser:

Union, carrying with 1t note of
warning to those who stand for moral
ity and order is timely and well put
We need not be surprised at the re-
suit of the dispensary contest over
there. Apathy and Indifference on the
part of good people will inevitably
bring laxity in law-enforcement. Then
we should never forget that the hosts
of evil sleep not neither day or night.
There are always men who will ad-
vocate the sale of liquor with the hope
of Job and regardless of the shame
and ruin it always brings to the
homes of thousands.
Every now and then we hear some
one repeat the old gag prohibition
don't prohibit" No temperance advo-
cate ever claimed that it would Good
men and women know TINT prohibi-
ton laws against liquor will do what
prohibition against murder, theft, as
sault and battery, arson, burglary and
other crimes will do. namely, they
will restrict. Why not repeal the law
prohibiting murder because it does
not prohibit?
The public sale of liquor will in
crease its use ten fold. The use of
liquor causes more crime than any
other ten causes in the world, then
what incop sistency for a State to
heap up statutes against crime and
then allow tho Gala ~
ate crime. Then you hear another old
gag about sumptuary laws. No tenn
perance advocate has the remotest
idea of prescribing what others eat
or drink or how they dress. My dear
friend. eat and drink what you choose.
You have that right under the laws
of our country. No one would change
If it they could. But II you will drink.
you have no moral right, nor should
the laws allow the right to set up
place for the public sale of liquor,
place to tempt thousand boys. and
even men, who fail OF self-control,
and especially here, to put it in easy
reach of ten thousand irresponsible
negroes.
The white man here has and will
always have, supreme control He
makes the laws. l don't hesitate to say
that he owes it to the negro race to
refuse TO sanction the sale of liquor.
The white man should not put drink
in easy reach of the negro and there
by cause him to commit a thousand
crimes. and then turn loose on him
the machinery of the law.
There is yet a good deal of crime
amongst the negroes, considerable
part of it caused by blind tiger liquor.
But that will continue to grow less.
just as drunkenness has grown stead
lily less with the closed public sale
of liquor
1t Is rare thing to see a white
man arraigned now IN a prohibition
county for selling liquor. Go to Rich
land and Aiken, dispensary counties,
and you find not only crime and dis
order among both races, but five times
more blind tigers. Do you ask why?
Just because the lawless element can
find it so convenient to go to the dis
pensary, as they used to do here, and
get their supplies to retail.
Those who prize virtue, social or
der. the church and all that Chris
tian civilization stands for, had as
we'll Sit up and take notice There
has seldom came time when tho
lines were so sharply drawn between
virtue and vice, between law and
lawlessness, between order and dis
order. The recent outrage against
Gilreath is merely an outcroping of
lawlessness against law. For this
outrage, we felt that we knew from
the very first moment it appeared in
print that there was not the remotest
ground or excuse. That the whole
thing, from first to last, was base
less fabrication, having it's inception
and motions in deyifish malice. none
know so we'll as those, high and low,
who were partners in the diabolical
plot. What inducements, II any, ever
held out to Vaughn does not yet APP
pear. But no one should fall into
the error of confounding his state
ment (Which statement is so much in
the interest Of a lawless elemenO
with that of one who speaks, In what
the law terms "extremis." That is:
where one is stricken unto death by