Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1908 — PREACHERS VS. BREWERS. [ARTICLE]

PREACHERS VS. BREWERS.

The line-up is made. The preachers »f the state are against the brewers. The moral issue of temperance is arousing our best people to activity. They see the vigilance and earnest- , ness of the liquor men and are becoming alarmed. As an indication of the feeling of the preachers of the state. ! we quote from expressions of two lead* > Ing Churches. Rev. Somerville Light of the First Methodist church of Marion, in an interview said: ..."I regard the political situation in Indiana as a moral issue. It isn't a question of Republican success or Democratic success, or Prohibition sucoess or Socialist success,’ln the partisan sense. It is strictly a moral question. it occurs that the Republican party, by adopting a county local option plahk, has allied itself with a moral Issue. When a man In this campaign takes the position, as I do, in favor of county local option, he Is not to be understood as Indorsing the Republican party p.s a whole and all that it stands for. If the Democratic party had adapted county local option I would now Ke working-Xer the success of the Democratic ticket “I believe that every person who loves good government, uncontaminated by brewery control, should look at this question in the same light in which I see it It is in no sense a party matter. "I think it is a pretty safe proposition for a temperance men to be for everything the saloon and brewery interests are against and against everything the saloon and brewery interests are for. That is the rule I follow.

"The brewers, making use of all the machinery In their power for tnfluencIng and corrupting the electorate, are trying to create a stampede lhat will carry the house of representatives and defeat county local option. In this crisis I think it is the duty of good citizens to urge a crystallization of temperance sentiment all over the state, regardless of political affiliations. “It would be a great pity if, notwithstanding the temperance sentiment there is in Indiana, a movement like this for county local option should miscarry because the brewers prove to be more alert and better organizers than those in charge of the temperance forces. I hope that those who, like myself, would ilka to see the liquor traffic uprooted entirely, will not turn down the best in sight, which is county local option.” Miss Daisy Barr, pastor of the Friends church at Fairmount, one of the largest Quaker churches in the country, has this to say of this moral issue:

"I think that the defeat of county local option would be very bad indeed, and would prove a great setback to ow temperance work. However, I believe the effect of such a victory for the brewery interests would make them so rampant, so defiant and insolent that public sentiment would at once be aroused, although It would take years to regain our lost ground. If county local option does not carry, the condition of temperance work in Indiana for a time will be deplorable. I do not see why it should not carry. It is the voice of the good people against the voice of the bad. "The plan of ward and township local option would afford the brewers Just the opportunity they are after. The brewers, by massing their forces and resorting to fraud and chicanery, would be able to control the election in at least one ward in every town, and the, result would be that every dry town in the state, practically speakhi<. would be turned wet and every wet town would be fcept wet. The brewers know very well which aide of the bread their butter is on when they advocate ward and township local option."

In soma portions of the state the Brower-Democratic alliance Is beoomIng frantic and furions. Because some honest Democrats join Civic Leagues to fight saloon domination they are branded as fanatics. In Dekalb county the “combination” is calling on the shades of Washington, Jeterson, Jackson, Lincoln and Hendricks to deliver them from the clutches of the Civic Leagne and the wiles of the temperance advocate. Down in Rush county the whitecappers who beat Tribbey so terribly are protesting against the action of the state as represented by Attorney Gen* oral Bingham tn endangering their "parsons) liberty." Baah at the bench ■aye he wont vote for Bingham and will join the brewers to defeat the JteI pwblieaß pirty. Thto to serious.