Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1903 — GOT THE EXTRA MILLION. [ARTICLE]

GOT THE EXTRA MILLION.

Chicago Record-Herald: The battle between the “drys” and “wets” in Collinwood, a suburb of Cleveland, 0., on Thursday attracted attention all over the country because of the valuable prize at stake in the result of the contest. Seldom has there been presented such a strong incentive to zeal in the work of ridding a municipality of saloons, and rarely indeed has there been furnished such a striking example of the practical value and wisdom of the “local option” principal in the regulation and control of the liquor traffic. Collinwood is situated ten miles east of Cleveland on the lake shore, and is not only the home of many Clevelanders, but the site of the shops of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railroad. This corporation has underway improvements amounting to $2,000,000. The corporation announced that it would invest an additional $1,000,000 in building homes, which would be sold to employes at cost if the dramshops were, driven out of the suburb. The presumption is that the railroad company had found that the presence of the saloons was a menace to its interests, that they decreas ed the reliability of its employes, and exerted a demoralizing ’influence upon them. Thus, while the railroad company was actuated by motives of self-interest, it at the same time empbasizedthe premium that is put upon sobriety in this department of industrial activity. The election also illustrated the effectiveness of woman’s influence exerted upon voters when a moral principle is at stake. The majority against the saloon was not large, but it was big enough to wipe them out for a year, and to secure for the suburb the million-dollar prize offered by the Lake Shore road.