Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1914-11-05
An Inner View of a Pending
Issue.
l1ouisville Courier-Journal.l

louisville Courier-Journal.l
The Prohibition movement "a tyran-
nous scheme to establish virtue and
morality by law-to regulate personal
appetite and individual habit by the
will of the maiority-in embryo to
resurrect and re-establish the principle
and affinity of church and state-is
quite as mischievous delusion as any
of those which have gone before it.
But, being based on half truth it is,
like all half truth appealing to sentl-
ment, the more misleading. It's fall
lacies are harder to expose to the
simple and credulous who dwell apart
and think the cackle of their little
barnyards the voice of the universe.
In the Kentucky counties, which
have just obtained Prohibition, two
thirds of those thus arraying them
selves at the polls believed they were
voting for temperance against in
temperance, whereas, which the event
will prove, they were voting against
lawful procedure and just taxation on
the one hand and in favor of eutlawry
and no taxation on the other hand.
If this were all of it the consequences
might be in sense at worst indeter-
inmate. The matters in dispute could
be left to future consideration. The
result would probably take care of it.
self. But, under the ministration of
unknowing though well meaning NOR
alism, set on by calculated leader
ship in quest of far-reaching, and
more or less selfish ends, the spirit of
fanaticism, often bordering on emo
tional insanity, is sown in the hearts
of men. This, the wide world over,
reasons not, nor would believe though
one should arise from the dead.
1t is the spirit that in what we call
the Dark Ages could hurry a man to
the stake because of theological tenet
heralded for the moment and in the
vicinage as religion. Where it was
strong enough it set up the Inquisition
and the Star Chamber. 1t lighted the
fires at Smithfield. 1t drove the Pill
grims from England, and, when they,
the creations and victims of intoler.
ance, set up the same standard in New
England, it drove Roger Williams and
his fellow freemen from the gibbet in
Massachusetts to the wilds of Rhode
Island.
Through its "blue laws" in Con-
necticut and it's Prohibition laws in
Maine it established smuggling as q
profitable pursuit and Pharisaism as a
popular characteristic. Nowhere has
| it promoted virtue, diminished vice or
made for any of the graces of life.
Yet it could have never flourished
except by the consent of people not
wicked, or of evil intention. 1t was
of these that Buckle, cited the other
day by the Courier Journal, said:
"They are not bad d-intentioned men,
who seek to enforce opinions which
they believe to be good. Still less are
they bad men, who are so regardless
of temporal consideration as to en-
ploy all the resources of their power,
not for their own benefit, but for the
purpose of propagating ideas which
they think necessary for the future
! happiness of mankind. Such men as
these are not bad; they are only ig-
norant; ignorant of the nature Of
truth, ign orant of the consequences Of
their own acts. But in a moral point
of view, their motives are unimpeach
able"
That is to say, as the Courier Jour-
nal observed when it made the quota
ton from the historian of Modern
Civilization, the machine made Puri
tans of the vale of wooden nutmeg
and the act Of assembly religionarie
of the land of Lorenzo DOWN who's
image Prohibition would recreate Ken
lucky and the Kentuckians-are no
of those grocers who sand the suga
and water and the milk before the
go to their prayers.
But the moral question is not alon
involved The whole trend OF tn
miscalled temperance movement !
Kentucky-the K aim and end of il
leaders lis, and from the first ha
: been, statewide prohibition. Ths
: means destruction of no commo
: kind.
If the whole of Main street shoul
j awaken some morning to find ever
1 house between its eastern and wester
\ extremities burned to the groun
! ! without dollar of insurance the rui
|. would not be greater. Virginia has fe
\ If any distilleries. Hence the vote *
i prohibition the other day cost main
n the loss of revenues very seriol
4 loss, indeed, which the taxpayers W
: surely and'sorely feel. But suppof
. the proposition had been to outla
!! tobacco-to burn down the tobac(
Y warehouses Of Richmond what mig
h the Virginians have thought about !
n Yet, tobacco is but step behif
4 whiskey, and, when the zealots hay
! disposed Of whiskey, they will
course turn upon tobacco. Some
Y the churches have already done 50.
The Courier-Journal has spoke
in unmeasured terms of the scouAdre
4 who work the temperance racket +
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