The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1915-12-13
NO MORE LIQUOR ADS.

Star has decided that, as soon as all
present contracts are out, or can be
Cancelled, it will exclude all liquor
advertisements from it's pages.
The Star decides on this policy at
considerable financial sacrifice. The
double event of the result of the wet
or dry election, and the approach of
the Christmas season, ensures US a
considerable amount of lucrative ad-
vertising
With no liquor houses in Marion
county, this paper could take in more
than thousand dollars revenue from
the liquor mail order houses of Jack
sonville, Tampa and the north during
the next twelve months, as there will
be veritable harvest of this class of
advertising now for the paper that
will take it.
The wholesale liquor houses pay
the highest rates and settle their
bills promptly. The copy for several
such advertisements has already been
sent in, and as long as Marion county
remains dry, this paper, if it prints
whisky ads, is insured of a consid-
cradle and steady revenue from that
source. The fact that the paper de-
nounces the liquor traffic makes no
difference with the whisky dealers. In
fact, it rather makes it more valuable
to them.
However, it does not seem consis-
tent to the Star that Marion coun-
ty paper, especially one that upholds
prohibition, should publish such adj
vertisements, so as soon as it can fill
or cancel the contracts on hand, it will
cut that sort of business from its
books.
The Star feels that, having closed
the saloons in Marion county, the vic
tory for prohibition would be only
about half won, if every time its
thousands of readers picked up the
paper they would be stared in the
face by big advertisement from
mail order liquor house, offering them
tempting drinks at tempting prices,
with the easy delivery at their doors
of the modern transportation meth
DDS.
In doing this the Star is doing just
what it did when it took the dry side
in the recent campaign. 1t is going
ahead of its support. 1t is depending
on the revenue drawn from its entire
business to support particular
cause; a good many of the adherents
of the said cause being rather slack
in everything except words in sup
porting the Star.
Let US take, for instance, several of
our business houses, the proprietors
of whom believe in prohibition, and
have praised the paper for its work
on the dry side. For over a year,
they have given it little or no adver-
Using or joe work; indeed, in spite of
the fact that they instigate us to de-
nounce mail order houses, some of
them have sent good deal of their
job printing out of town. In short,
if this paper had not by sheer hard
work won for itself a circulation
among the people and a footing in
the business world in general, Ocala
would not have daily carrying press
dispatches, and the prohibition party
of Marion county wouldn't have had
a fighting organ in the recent cam
paign.
The Star is not beggar, and it
doesn't want anything but legitimate
business. 1t has never had any rich
friends, nor any official teat to swing
to. 1t has earned every dollar it ever
received, thousands it has never re-
ceived, and has to almost fight for
some of those it obtains. But it
thinks it has right to all the adver-
Using our business men can give it,
and it knows it can give value receiv-
ed. 1t has the biggest circulation in
city and county, and the people who
take it read it and put faith in what
they see in it. If our business men
give it plenty of advertising, and en-
able it to enlarge, it will not only
give them individual returns, but
every copy that goes abroad will adj
vertise the prosperity and solidity of
0cala and Marion county as no other
medium can do.
AS for the prohibitionists among
our business men, prohibition means
as much to every one of them as to
the Star. We think we have a right
to ask them that, they have as much
faith and make at least half as much
sacrifice as we do. They have a COM
rade's duty to help fill the gaps in our
advertising columns and show that
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