The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1912-08-16
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
DONE FOR KANSAS
And What 1t Will Do
for Tennessee
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

- -, "''' 'N'' "AN
the Kansas horse, the beef steer and his
sister are all in class by themselves
with these there is none to compare.
Our bank deposits lay all others into the
shade. More of our working people own
their own homes than any other working
people on earth.
There are thousands of young men and
women III Kansas, yea, tens OF thousands
of them, married, living in their own
homes with children about their door
steps, who have never seen a saloon.
That our progress and our unequalled
prosperity have been wrought largely by
prohibition no man can deny. 1t is ap'
parent and self-evident. 1t cannot be
duplicated elsewhere where liquor selling
is permitted. Prohibition has developed
side by side with our farms, our shops,
our banks, our factories, our packing
houses, our mines and mills and ware
houses and railroads. 1t is rooted down
to bedrock with our homes, our schools,
and colleges and churches and institu-
tions of charity and correction.
These are in deficient and partial
degree some of the results of what pro-
hibition has done for Kansas. And to
those who think that prohibition is
bad thing, you must admit that prohi-
btion has not prevented this marvellous
development, this universal and uniform
prosperity, this prevalent, widespread
and largest measure Of happiness enjoyed
by any like number of people the wide
world round. Prohibition has not pre-
vented or hindered anything under the
sun which can in any way contribute to
the sum total of human happiness.
Prohibition as Compared with
High License.
l have been asked to discuss the rela-
tive value of prohibition and high license
as a means of abrogating the evils of
the liquor traffic There is no relative
value. High license is not means of
aboishing the evils of intoxicating
liquor. The only solution of the liquor
problem is it's total suppression. High
license is first of all confession that
the liquor business is a bad business. 1t
is bad business. And tax upon bad
business, a cruel, vicious and wicked
business, means that the state says to
the rumseller, "You are corrupting the
morals of my people, you are undermln-
ing the manhood of my young men, you
are robbing the cheeks of my young wo-
the blood of my babes, you are wreck:ng
my homes, filling my jails and furnish
ing spawn for the brothel. You are at
the back of all the vilanies of the age,
and are tuning my people into drunkards,
lunatics, and suicides, and you make a
very large amount of money out of this
Infamous business and 1 shall require
you to stand and deliver to me q very
considerable portion of this dirty money
which you are making in this villainous
fashion," High license! The money Of
blood and tears! Such money is ae.
cursed! 1t does the state no good. What
does it profit community to exact toll
of $1,000 year from business which
will annually cause two murders, wreck
six homes, fill four drunkards' graves,
rob the children of thirty families of a
high school education, and start dozen
young men on the road to the peniten'
tertiary and hundred others on the
road to hell
License System Not q Revenue
Producer.
Our ideas of equity acquiesce readily
in the doctrine that luxuries should bear
heavier rate of taxation than neces;. !
ties. But Intoxicating liquor is neither
luxury nor a necessity. 1t is vice
and the fountain of vice and we have
no moral right to depend upon viee as a
source of revenue. Luxuries are to be
taxed vice is to be suppressed. Fur.
thermore, it can be shown from myriad
proofs that the license system is
not revenue producer, it is not even
what it pretends to be. In cities where
the prohibitory law has been enforced
and the revenue licenses or license fines
shut of, the incidents of the liquor bust.
ness-court costs, paupers, dependent
and neglected children, and kindred pub.
lie expenses shrink also, so that the loss
of the license revenue does not affect the
ordinary taxpayer. In Topeka where