Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1907 — OKLAHOMA. [ARTICLE]

OKLAHOMA.

Indianapolis New»: * f The country may at least learn what the people of Oklahoma think of their new constitution —the people who made the constitution and who have to live under it. We have had a great deal of specification from people that did not make it and do not expect to live under it of its faults and iniquities. We were told that the convention that framed it was grossly partisan and preponderatingly one-sided. But no explanation, we believe, has been tendered as to how this came to pass. The delegates to the constitutional convention were chosen before there was a constitution, chosen while the people lived under territorial rule with a partisan Governor appointed by the President. Yet this covention was as one-sided politically as the election of yesterday. Manifestly it will be difficult to explain away the situation. If people want to be Democrats or Republicans, or what not, they have a right to we hope, and they are not to be robbed of their free institutions because their politics may not be accord with the desires at Washington. If after this election there is attempt to withhold statehood the reason will have to be made very plain to the American people, When it comes to denying a people statehood because their politics does not have the approval of the the national administration, we should be going a long step beyond the chronic American flouting of law. If gerrymander explains three Democratic Congressmen to '.wo Republican, what explains the 40,000 majority of the Democratic candidate for Governor? That is obtained by a plain mass count of all the votes without reference to locality of gerrymandered districts. The majority for the constitution probably will be larger still, for the Republicans declined to oppose the constitution as a party measure or to attempt to defeat it. So we shall have presented for national decision whether a constitution made by a free people bolding a convention under an election as a Territory and ratified by them at a general election for State officers shall be set aside or not. And this the whole American people will concern themselves with.

It may be added that after the fashion of the time this constitution whose length and detail make it a a marvel among documents of its kind confirmed absolute prohibition jor twenty-one years Brewers can not “fix” a Legislature or engage in any of the many things that have roused the anti saloon opposition in this country. For Oklahoma’s constitution fixes prohibition for a time sufficient for a new generation to be born and come to voting age, It will at least have had the chance to be a sober generation and to know with a clear head whether it wants liquor to flourish in its land or not.