Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1906 — GOOD WORDS FOR THE DRY TOWN [ARTICLE]

GOOD WORDS FOR THE DRY TOWN

The Thorntown Argue Enterprise says: “For almost a year this town has been without a gin joint of any kind except a few days’ effort at ‘wholesaling’ by one Ev. Hopkins. The effect is noticeable in the improved moral atmosphere. Men, who, when there was a saloon here, spent their earnings for drink, have devoted themselves to making a living for their families, and a drunken man on the streets has been rare. It is true that a few persons have imported a few ‘snifters,’ and now and then some misguided citizen has gone away from home and taken on a jag, and arose next morning with all the after drunk symptoms. “But it is admitted by all people who have a thought, both for the present and the future, that Th <rntown dry is much to be preferred to Thorntown wet. There is no getting away from the fact that real stability of a town lies in its man-making influences, in the honor and stability of its man and womanhood. The children of today are the raw material of which the men and women of the future are made. If we of today expect the best results we must guard the present by making the atmosphere clean in which our boys and girls move. The moral atmosphere cannot be clean with a saloon to pollute it. The stable, thinking fathers and mothers of this town and township know this to be true and they have made Thorntown dry, a much more wholesome place in which to live than Thorntown wet. One year without a place at which the bibulous could wet their whistles and blot their morals has had a most wholesome effect.”