Mexico weekly ledger., 1919-07-10
By DR.. George H. Combs.
In the Kansas City Star.

: :
By DR.. George H. Combs.
In the Kansas City Star.
No great reform comes easily.
There must be blood in the ground
from which it springs-the blood of
martyrs. And yet it is so easy to fer
get all save present leaders, present
victories. 1t is so of the great tenn
perance reform. Our eyes see only
the prohibition victories of recent
years and months and miss the vision
of the earlied leaders without which
they could never have come. What
partial vision! What ingratitude!
Lest we forget"
Can Missouri forget John A.
Brooks? More than any other man of
his generation, he advanced the
cause of prohibition in this state. He
fought when often he fought alone.
He was the champion of an unpopular
cause. He wa called d meddler, a
crank and a fanatic. 1t has been easy
in recent years to speak of prohibition.
1t always is easy to climb into a band
wagon. Anybody can ride on the crest
of a wave. But when in the sos the
eloquent voice of this prophet rang
out it was heard in the championship
of a detested cause. Yet eve so the
guardians of a vested evil knew there
was power in that voice and they
asked "Whence came this MANI"
Brooks was from Kentucky. He
was born in 1886. He was a preacher
in the Christian Church and success
full as a pastor in Louisville, Kansas
City and Memphis, and in London, En-
gland. With the success of these wide
ranging p~astorates we are not here
concerned, nor with his college de-
grees and honors. We are thinking
chiefly of how he helped, more than u
quarter of a century ago, to bring
about the prohibition victories of these
last months. This is how he helped:
He gave his great %eloquence to a fam
ing indictment of the liquor traffic
and called first upon Misourians and
then the men of other states to reg
lister at the polls their disapproval of
the evil. Had he merely protested
against the saloons he would have iefts
TO wide mark on public life. He de-
clared that men must back their pro-
tests by their votes. Mere emotion
alism was not enough. Verbal indict-
ments were not enough. Only the bal
lot could settle this question and set
tie it eternally right.
And so, Doctor Brooks identified
himself with the Prohibition Party.
That party, as we know, did not dir
ectly succeed, but indirectly it help
ed nightly. 1t registered a protest.
It turned the spotlight on the national
evil. 1t framed indictments against
the liquor traffic that, later used by
other agencies, struck home. In this
crusade, John A. Brooks, the Western
Neal Dow, bore a prominent and her.
Ole part. His eloquent support of
prohibition principles made him the
standard bearer of that party
in his native state, and in 1884 he be-
came its candidate for governor of
Missouri. He lost, but polled an as
tonishingly large vote. So forceful
was his personality, so great his abil-
ity as a vote getter, that two years
later he was nominated for the vice
presidency by the Prohibition Party.
Its candidate for the presidency that
year was Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, a ma
tional figure of commanding girth.
But so large bulked the Missourian
that the ticket was not ~infrequently
of as the "Brooks-FiSk"
ticket. That year the vote of the
Prohibition Party reached its highest
The contest between the
Democratic and Republican parties
was tense and the voters were urged
to throw away" their votes on
a "sideshow," but nevertheless the
ticket polled more than
three hundred thousand votes.
Doctor Brooks toured the country in
that campaign, and the force and fer
vor of his stump appeals contributed
to the resulting victory, 20"
it was, although again he lost.
A few years later Doctor Brooks
eft America to be pastor of the West
End Tagel, acle, London, and the party
with which ne had identified himself
vas no longer to he h' tened by his
powerful advocacy. That party was t
never to know the feel of the {
wreath of victory, yet no man can say f
hat, although dead, its voice did not 6
.reak in the acts of the immortal i
'fhirty-six" that so amended the con- v
titui or. of the United States that in
,~ioants may no longer be manufae- b
bought nor sold teneath the a
'tars ard Stripes. P
Reading today his speeches of ac- f
CT tarcc of the high positions .: e
leadership one c.inr OF fail to be struck t.
y their pryphec es. For every gam
reelected today by the "drys" as a re. +
cIt of sG.s amendment vas outliatd p
l those letters more thar a quarter
ago.
Freshest meat in Mexico, for t
brochinr WA TIP GAM {