Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1886 — Next Legislature on the Liquor Question. [ARTICLE]

Next Legislature on the Liquor Question.

I t. Wayne Gazette. „> . '” r Just what shape legislation Trill take in the next legislature it is now impossible to say; but we doubt not a local option law will !.e tendered the Democratic senate. and if rejected as it likely will Le, it will be followed by opg imposing a five hundred dollar tax nd requiring that cities shall levy as much more. This law will be guarded by many restrictions of the traffic not now found in the present one, and it will be made much more effective, and much easier to execute. Such a law will receive enough Democratic votes, in the senate to pass it, and Gov. ‘ Gray will not dare veto it. If the senate should reject it also, then the issue will be joined fair and square for 1888. The Prohibitionists this year polled 8,000 votes as against 3,000 two years ago. This does not show any actual permanent increase of the third party craze. The greatest increase came from strong Democratic counties, where the Democrats were- dissatisfied with their, own party, yet were not ready to join hands with the Republicans. They went to the polls to vote for some one on the local ticket and while there cast a. ballot Prohibition state ticket to express their dissatisfaction with their own party. Two years hence they will • ither be with the Republicans or back in their old camp. They also gained quite largely from the Greenbackers, that party having disintegrated. The third party

Prohibitionists have worked so long hanfl in glove with the saloon keepers, that should the Democratic party break its alliance with the league, the two a ties—lunatics and saloohatics*-might unite and organize a common party. That would bo a queer combination, but no more queer than the one that has been in existencebetween them since 1880. The Republicans downed the league this year in a fair fight, notwithstanding the aid it got from the Prohibitionists, and as they pledged the people to do certain things, they will keep the pledges as far as in them lies, and the prospect now is that the whisky element will be as greatly surprised at the success of tempermice in the next general assembly as they were at the result of the election.