The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-01-27

1 seem one-sided. The saloon is an inde
 fensible quantity. Away with itl Alec ! holism has been the bane of humankind
 Down with it! The fanatic is not con
 tent with this. He goes to not onil l sumptuary extremes which experience
 has shown to be impractical but he lays 1 the lines and asserts the right to go stil
 further. Today it is the lighter with the i stronger beverages, tomorrow 1t will bt i tobacco, next day tea and coffee, no limit I set upon the duty and power of govern l ment to regulate the habits of the people l their meat and drink-even theil clothes. Why not their religion? Thus | deprived what other than a resort tc | drugs?
 | In America prohibition has, as we have | seen, failed to prohibit But in Turkey l Where religious tenet has proved et- fective, the Mohammedans were quick to find an alternative. Even the negroes | or the cotton belt, cut off from whisky are substituting cocaine Yet to make this hare-brained experiment the organic structure of our system of government come down to us with the wisdom md blessing of the fathers upon it, must be torn away and the rule of mop of zea-
 lots be set up on foundations laid in a morass of mistaken theory, espionage it's
 main reliance, no household safe against federal intrusion, statehood a myth and personal liberty thing of the past
 Truly the frenzy and folly of Puritan bigotry, the selfishness and cowardice of office seeking politicians could go no further. The average prohbitionist sees nothing beyond his crazy scheme. Being
 a 1ooi ne becomes unconsciously a traitor
 to free institutions. He makes himself party to corruption. The prohibition lobby at Washington is the most shame less and fraudulent that ever appeared Tn the national capital, using money dlshonestly obtained to buy, and black
 mall to intimidate members of Con gress and getting an unholy living out of the credulity of innocent people, mainly women and children
 NO reasonable argument can be made against the right" of women to vote. There is not right possessed by the man to which the woman is not entitled. But there are differing sex functions al- iotted by God and nature; war and jury service, for example on the one hand. wifely, motherly service on the other. We encounter this sex distinction every where in life. To it the world owes brave men and tender women; love and marriage; children anc churches, reli- zion and morals; the sanctuary which we call the home.
 It were absurd to say that women are not as fit to vote as men. They are just as fft-no more and no less. Where they have been given the ballot they divide as the men divide. It does not appear
 that anywhere they have induced laws
 more favorable to women than existed
 before
 l have all my life put the woman first
 have been all my life fighting women's
 battles; fighting to widen the area of
 her opportunity, to protect her person
 ana property, to expand the application
 or her special utilities. The Kentucky
 statutes, to the making of which I may
 claim some share, attest this. In the de-
 partment of education she already has
 the ballot. l have been urging that to
 this be added the departments of cor-
 rectlon and charities. If a majority of
 Kentucky women indicated a desire for
 complete suffrage they would promptly
 get 1t.
 Assuredly I would not oppose it. That
 to which I cling is womanhood: that which I fear is feminism It is because womanhood is a sex asset and feminism sex danger that the intelligent, the good, God loving and God fearing women of America shrink from the self-exploit- ing he-wonlen making up the Pankhurst crowd in Great Britain and the Catt- Shaw crowd in the United States.
 That the President, incapable of resist ing the swish of petticoat-for he cam not have been terrified, however dis gusted, by the hags that infested the White House gates-should have been lured into the unspeakable disloyalty to Iundamental democratic principle of advocating an amendment taking from the states the last vestige of their state- hood, is lamentable as evidence of a weak character in the essentials of moral sensibility and intellectual conviction. because, much Of student and some- thing of philosopher, he must know that behind woman suffrage stalks fem- inism, repudiating the Christian religion and asserting the gospels of Sidon and Tyre and Babylon. He must know that no worse fate can befall women than to drag her into the mire of politics and degrade her to the level of the mudslls she will there encounter. He must know that the notoriety seeking females who lead the suffrage movement are already as selfish and sordid as the office seek ing politicians whom they will profess sionally join when they can put up for the deal'-
 TO get some on 'em office and some on
 'em votes''
 Ana, finally, being a man of southern birth and breeding, he must know that it means moral and political degradation. little short of ruin, to the states of the south
 cannot forbear quoting the following rom the New York World, the closest friend the President has in the press of the country. In its leading editoral ot last Friday that journal says:
 we do not mean that the democratic organization has ceased to exist. We do not mean that there are no more demo- crats. Nor do we mean that the demo- cratic party is dead in the sense that the federalist party is dead, or the whig party IS dead. or the greenback party is dead, or the populist party is dead. What has died is the democratic party ot