The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-10-28
along the ethical and moral plane has
started in a prayer circle.
Some Prominent Facts.

along the ethical and moral plane has
started in prayer circle.
Some Prominent Facts.
Let us note now. in brief sentences,
some prominent facts that were true
of the situation on May /, 1881, when
the Kansas prOhibitory law went into
effect:
the amendment lave it less than TO-
600 majority.
(21 The brewers and distillers
brought suit in the courts to recover
| damages or compensation for their
Property loss. After carrying their
case up to the United States supreme
court they were denied compensation,
altho the decision was not unanimous,
(3) Kansas found herself alone in
the center OF the United States with
a state prohibitpry law. surrounded
by sea of whisky and beer.
(4) The United States government
thru congress refused an interstate
commerce law which would have pre-
vented liquor from other states being
shipped into pfokibitofy state. Fer
more than twenty-five years Kansas;
with a pfehibitofy law which had
been declared constitutional by she
highest court of the land, had to
fight the brewers and distillers of
Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Indian
Territory and Oklahoma, which
shipped into Kansas trainloads of
liquor which could not be seized until
then editors of eastern dailies in New
York and Boston ridieuled Kansas for
not being absolutely dry.
60 Under a drug store clause,
drug stores were permitted to sell
whisky, beer and wine as medicine.
This led to the establishment of hum
dreds of places called drug stores
which were in reality saloons. This
medicinal sop to the old habits of the
people was repealed fifteen years ago,
but until it was. the drug store was a
prominent and constant source of law
violation.
: (6) Places called "joints'' sprang
up in nearly every town and city all
over the state. In several towns these
joints sold liquor openly under a reg
ular system of fines levied by the
mayor and council, and amounting to
a license fee. II was the presence of
these joints in hotels and business
buildings that started Carrie Nation
on her career of smashing with her
little Ratchet. And this condition pre-
vailed as late as twenty-five years
after the prohibitory law was passed.
% Many officials, including
mayors of large cities, county attof-
neys. and judges of courts were open-
ly hostile to the law and encouraged
the liquor men in adjoining states.
In the course I the battle that Kan
sas fought out there all alone, many
officials were ousted from office for
nom enforcement, including mayors of
and political burial of many county
attorneys was due to the attitude they
took on the prohibition issue. 1t may
safely be said that more political
graveyards may be found in Kansas
than in any other state with this
av11 hn th1ahc4nhhs ssDiad q
violent and permanent death from
failure to enforce the prohibitory
law" And it is a significant fact
that of all the public officers who
thus met their death not one ever
had a political resurrection.
(8) A constant propaganda was
carried on by the liquor forces, after
the law was enacted. to create public
sentiment against it and to repeal it.
For twenty years a powerful lobby
was maintained md worked with sue
ceeding legislatures to resubmit the
question to the people. No legisla-
| tUfe ever succeeded in gathering
enough votes or courage to resubmit
it, but 1t is safe - say that the brew
ers spent millions of dollars in propa-
ganda to buy UP the press, to bride
voters, to publish lies and corrupt the
minds of public officials.
For more than thifty years after
May 1, 1881, the prohibition question
was the one great political. social,
| business and moral issue of more
than 100000 people, living in the
geogra phical center of a nation, iso-
| lated by more than $500 miles from
any other state having q similar law,
ridiculed by powerful national press,
| by financial and political organiza-
tions, and handicapped by a govern
ment which refused to pass an inter-
state commerce law which would
have protected a state law. The
| highest state officials were elected or
defeated on the sole issue of their be-
| ing favorable or hostile to prohibition.
! If the reader of this simple narra-
tive will pardon a person / item here,
| one or the governors of Kansas par
doned one of the most notorious joint
| lists who had been convicted on sew
eral counts in a court hostile to the
law, Immediately after the sentence
| of the court was uttered and the
man went Immediately back to his
| law breaking business. 1 was per-
| sonally responsible for securing the
evidence against this jointist, and it
was on my testimony that the court
| reluctantly instructed the jury to
bring in a verdict of guilty. But the
man never served a single day of i'm
prisunmeht and on the other hand the
| governor vas never reelected and
never regained tiny political influence.
torically true of the conditions in a
prohibition state. it is now in order
to say that all the lawlessness and
disorder and deceit and trouble OF
various sorts Under an imperfectly
ebeyed prohibitory law were not a
drop in Noah's flood compared with
the same things intensified which
Kansas had endured under the saloon.
In other words, prohibition at its
worst was tremendously better than
the saloon at its best, and the foes OF
prohibition need to nave this fact
hammered into their skulls with a
| bung-
Some Americans Are Worried.
There are some men in America
who are very much exercised over
the dreadful perjury and contempt OF
law that they say the prohibitory leg
islatioh has produced. To : say and
believe a thing like that is to confess
ones ignorance of history. Those who
point with horror at the violations OF
law under prohibition have forgotten
if they ever knew, the violations u
H.