Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1904 — GOOD HORSE SENSE [ARTICLE]

GOOD HORSE SENSE

Characterizes What Chaplain Lucas Says on Party Prohibition. Rev. D. R. Lucas of Indianapolis, is one of the leading ministers of the Christian church in Indiana, and is commander-in-chief of the Indiana department of the G. A. R. Here is what he has to say about the Prohibition propaganda in Indiana: “I see that F. T. McWhirter, the Prohibition candidate for governor, says he is going out over the. state to stir up ‘bitterness.’ This means, or course, that he is going out to abuse every man and party tint does not agree with him. “It is strange tjiat a party can hope to succeed, or do any good, when its leaders go out and impugn the motives and honesty of all who do not agree with them. Men who have not learned that people may honestly differ as to the best means of accomplishing an end are too narrow in thought to do any good in any cause.' “It is especially unfortunate that a class of men should start out to organize a party, who are determined to quarrel with everybody. “The mistake of the party Prohibitionists lies in the fact that they are seeking the impractical and fail to credit the work that practical men are doing. They talk as though license and tax laws were made in the Interests of the liquor traffic, Instead of against it. They utterly ignore the (act that if all our tax and license laws were repealed it would be as legitimate to make and sell beer as bread and whisky as flour. “Under the constitution of our country and the common law they stand on the same basis. It is only as statutory laws intervene that the traffic and under the decision of the supreme court of the United States the power to regulate or prohibit the manufacture and sale of Intoxicants is wholly in the province of the police power of the state. “In the 11th Howard reports, a hundred pages are devoted to this discussion and the decision, and yet those leaders have not the courage, or honesty, to state the question as ft Is. If they had a president and congress of Prohibitionists they could do no more to prohibit the liquor traffic in Indiana than they could do now.

“Under the local option and prohibition laws now In operation more than 36,000,000 of the people of our country are under prohibition and without the legalized saloon today. And not one of those laws has been made by the Prohibition party or Is upheld by it today. “All this has been done by what are called by them 'whisky parties.* I submit if the ‘whisky parties* have given prohibition to 36,000,000 of our countrymen, while the Prohibitionists have never as a party given it to one township, It is evident that it is better to stand by the ‘whisky parties* that do something for prohibition rather than the party that only resolves and talks and spends Its tlmo abusing Its fallowmen who prefer to be practical as well as theoretical.

"Only having convinced one voter out of each forty that he ought to vote their ticket, after forty years of party organisation, it would seem that the Prohibitionists should see the fallacy of their method and start out to get prohibition in the towns, counties and states where they can do something”