Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 278, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1916 — BRYAN LAUNCHES DRIVE ON LIQUOR [ARTICLE]

BRYAN LAUNCHES DRIVE ON LIQUOR

Wm. J. Will Start Four Years’ Fight On Liquor—Plans to Make U. S. a Dry Nation.

Wm. Jennings Bryan has arrived in Indianapolis and wiH start a four years’ drive to make the United States a dry nation. Bryan will have his headquarters at the Indiana capital. He asks that the democratic party join him in the move and also that they insert a prohibition plank in their platform in 1920. It is Bryan’s desire to head the ticket in 1920 and he will ask that he be given the nomination then by virtue of his fight on the liquor interests of the country. He will also seek a plank favoring federal equal suffrage. It is said that many of the democratic leaders of the state are bitter over their defeat in the state and claim the liquor dealers did not come through with the number of votes expected of them, and in retaliation against them they are going to start a state wide move for state prohibition. This drive in the state launched by the democrats at this time, s thought to have been actuated wholly by resentment against the liquor interests and because the election was lost by them and also for the purpose of having a good campaign in 1920, and not for the reason that they have suddenly had a moral awakening and become conscience stricken. It "seems but strange that democratic state officers, supreme court judges and others who have been in . close touch with the acts of the demo- j cratic legislatures for the past eight years should so suddenly after a los-' ing fight, be espousing the prohibition cause. Why didn’t they get busy when they had control of the legislature, instead of waiting until the republicans got control ? Maybe they thought there was no chance to win. Statements have appeared that the democratic leaders are also miffed over the German-American vote going to the republican party and that state-wide prohibition will be started as a retaliation against the GermanAmericans, thus inferring that the Germans as a class are the liquor drinkers of the country. There is no question that the majority of the people of the state are in favor of state-wide prohibition, or nation wide for that matter, and, whether they be republican or democrat, and the movement will receive hearty support from all of the parties, but we believe that it was started by the democrats, not from a moral standpoint, but that it is a political movement, in order that they may turn the voters to their ticket in 1920. We hope that the state goes dry, and that the time is not very far off when it will do so, but it will not be the democrats who put it dry any more than any other party. The republican vote of the state will do it. Wm. J. Bryan did not just happen to be sent to Indiana.