The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1914-10-17
BILLIARD AND BOOZE.

0a9 - TO-DAY more 00terIu1noo IMAM ever
| to maintain and more rigidly enforce
her prohibitory law.
So well satisfied are the people Of
this state with this method Of control
of the liquor question, which II mo-
mentous wherever government exists
or savagery prevails. So well IL ac-
copied this doctrine In KAN
sas that the man who
undertook to make the question of
the re-establishment of the saloon an
issue. found himself without a party.
Obliged to run az an Independent He
had NO following but an individual one
Some years ago, Kansas stood almost
alone az q statewide community pro-
hibiting the sale OF Intoxicating drinks.
but state after state has followed her
example; the latest. staid old. Hospital
bic Virginia, which last month came
into the company Of the prohibitory
states. Kentucky. noted for her whisky.
is fully three-fourths prohibitory ter
ritory.
There In now absolute prohibition
| in ten states: Maine, Kansas. Okla
homa, Georgia, North Carolina. North
Dakota, Tennessee. Virginia, West
Virginia Mississippi; eighteen
other states, through local option. are
more than half dry" Next month
five more states, Colorado, Oregon,
California, Washington and Ohio. will
vote on constitutional amendment
providing for prohibition.
Liquor has been prohibited at all Of
the army posts Of the United States and
on all Of the ships Of the navy.
1t is becoming almost impossible for
a drinking man to connect himself with
the operation OF railway trains. Great
railway companies require their oper-
ators to abstain from drinking either
on or on duty, this being a primary
tenet in the spreading principle of
safety hrst." 1t IL said that fifty mil
lion people in the United States live on
prohibition ground, this territory hav-
ing now reached the amazing figures Of
seventy-one per cent of the area of the
entire country.
Kansas IL out of debt and prosperous,
| while wet states are issing bonds to
pay increasing Indebtedness
The percentage Of alcoholic insan-
ity in Kansas il less than three per
from thirty-four to sixty per cent
In Kansas. eighty-seven out Of one
hundred and five counties have no in
sane; ffty-three counties have no
prisoners in the penitentiary; fifty
four counties have no feeble minded;
thirty-eight county poor farms are
without the inmates for which they
were created. being used now as ag-
ricultural experiment stations; almost
half Of the counties have had scarce
ly single criminal jury trial in ten
years.
| The people of this state do not
want the return of the saloon to pros
titute morals or participate in politics.
In view Of this condition, why
should Billiard receive votes? Out of
the estimated poll Of 100000 to be
cast at the November election, even
extravagant estimates give him less
than one-tenth; even one-tenth or
one-twentieth is far more than should
be cast for him because he represents
a dead issue in Kansas.
1t is said that Billiard will have con-
siderable strength in Leavenworth,
Sedgwick. Shawnee. Wyandotte. Cher
okee and Crawford counties. In all
of these. except in Shawnee alone. any
estimated strength he may have must
be due to the fact that in those coun-
ties the liquor interests were slowest
to give up their battle against the
fates and a lingering percentage ex-
lists which gives new hope to the out
side liquor power. which has lost its
influence in Kansas, never to be re-
gained.
In Shawnee county the Billiard vote
may not be SO much due to the grim
determination Of Billiard to float upon
an abandoned plank as to his high
personal standing and popularity in
this neighborhood.
q Billiard is a man of unQuestioned in
tegrity. good business ability, good
morals and Of transformations charity
These things. with his long residence
in this community. give him a pecu-
liar strength of his own and which
does not exist in the other counties
where he will gather most OF his vote
A good citizen of temperate habits
Obsessed with the idea that he mus
grant a liberty to whisky which he
scorns to exercise himself-knowine
that liquor would punish him and his
own, and pull down upon them griei
and sorrow and the evil which he
would place before others less frai
than he-but none of Billiards. exem
, plary qualities Is an issue, which ii
r purely one of whisky.
Wherever a vote Is cast for Mr.. Bill
lard it will be heralded as a protes
against prohibition. The coming No
vember should be the last time that thi
a sort of a protest is permitted by pub
! lie sentiment to rear its head. 1t viii
e be better for the state to sQuelch thi