Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1899 — Moonshine No More. [ARTICLE]

Moonshine No More.

It is surely time people ceased to apply the opprobrious name of “Moonshine” to that well disposed and well conducted villiage, fourteen miles north of Rensselaer, whose proper name is Rniman. The. name Moonshine was originally applied because in the very first building erected there, the proprietor sold “moonshine” whisky, made in an illicit still, in the neighboring swamps. The men who made the “moonshine” and the men who sold, and evident*r> ly also the men' who drank it, have been crowded out and been replaced by a better class of people, and the swamps have been drained and some of them have become among the most fertile lands in Jasper county. And the people of Kniman and of Walker township generally, now rank in morals, intelligence and sobriety with any community in the county. As an evidence of this fact, consider the resolute determination by which those people, but by wholly lawful means, prevent the the re-opening of a saloon in Kniman. For the second time now, within two years, they have defeated a saloon applicant by a Nicholson law remonstrance, and by “overwhelming majorities.” And in both cases, the applicants themselves were not personally objectionable, and the fights were against the saloons and not against the individuals.

On the remonstranca presented at the present term of the commissioners’ court contained the names of 136 out of the 190 voters in the township, or more than two thirds. What other township in the county would do better? And the signers included practically all the better people in the township, irrespective of nationality and still less of politics. And in spite of the large scope of country to be canvassed, Walker being a very large township, 100 of the 136 names were obtained in one day. The people signed and were glad to sign, and even those signed who are not conscientiously opposed to saloons, because they had had good opportunity to observe the different results to the community in having a saloon and in hot having a saloon, and they had seen plainly that the general results of the saloon to the community was bad. Bad, morally, socially and financially, and they will have no more of them.