Dresden enterprise and Sharon tribune. (Dresden, Tenn.) 1907-1997, 1917-08-24
NOT A PARALLEL.

NOT A PARALLEL.
The liquor interest is in bad
way now. The food control law will
stop the manufacture of distilled
liquor from food poducts during the
progress of the war, and the senate
by a large majority has voted to sub
NIT a prohibition amendment to the
federal constitution for the ratifica-
ton of the states.
The liquor interest, once all pow
erful and defiant is having its trench
es and strongholds stormed and taken
one after another and it's final con-
quest and extirpation seems to be in
sight.
But for all that the liquor interest
is still fighting desperately and does
not neglect dry territory in the I'M
ceasing propaganda that it main
tains.
Recently there have been quite
widely distributed in Tennessee re-
prints of editorial articles from the
Louisville Courier-Journal and the
New York World in criticism of the
senate's action in voting to submit
the proposed prohibition amendment.
This, of course, is in the line of en-
deavor that would manufacture SEN
timent against the amendment before
the time for it's ratification by the
state legislature may arrive.
The New York Worlds plan Of at
tack is rather peculiar. That jour
nal compares the prohibition states
to the slave states prior to the civil
war. The slave states, it says, were
not satisfied with maintaining the
peculiar institution" within their
own borders, but insisted on carry
ing it into other territories and
thereby brought about IT'S entire de-
struction. The prohibition states,
by pursuing an aggressive policy and
endeavoring to make prohibition ma
tion-wide, will, the World insists, lose
what they have gained.
There probably never was before
so poor an attempt at parallel, or
so futile an effort to draw com
parison so entirely inapt. The World
lis very able newspaper. Its edito-
rails are usually clear, logical and
direct. This stumbling sort of an
argument shows the poverty and des-
peration Of its cause.
1t would be much more apt to COM
pare the open traffic in intoxicants
to slavery, both ancient vices that
civilization has refused longer to toll
crate. 1t was said in favor of both
that they had always existed and
therefore must continue to do so.
and scripture was quoted in favor Of
each. .
The crusade against liquor is very
much like that made against slavery
and it's progress is more notable than
that against SLAYER was up to the time
of the civil war. That war came in
part, but by no means wholly, of the
dispute concerning slavery.
The manner of comparison the
World seeks to make is in so many
respects faulty that it would be. diff
cult to note its weakest point, but
references to the civil war shows it
to be without foundation. When the
slave states seeded they "asked
only to be let alone" and having Sc
ceded, were making no effort to car
ry slavery into any territory where
it did not exist.
The war came primarily for the
preservation of the Union and the
abolition of slavery followed as an
incident. It would have come later
without any war, because civilization
had outgrown it, and refused longer
to tolerate it. The same fate is over
taking the traffic in intoxicants,
There is nothing sectional in prOhi-
bition and it is not a dispute between
states.
Slavery at the time the federal
constitution was adopted existed in
every state in the Union, except