Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1909 — No More Polities in the Liquor Question. [ARTICLE]

No More Polities in the Liquor Question.

Indianapolis, April 28.— Local option will not be an issue in the next campaign, if Governor Marshall and John W. Kern and others of the democratic leaders can prevent it. They want the campaign to be fought out on the tariff issue and not on the beer issue. They insist that there has been enough of the beer issue in democratic politics already, and that the tariff question is more important right now than anything else. The party that takes up the fight of the brewers at the next election will get a soaking from which it will be a long time in recovering. By that time the state will be so nearly dry that there will be little left for the brewers, and the people will like it so well that they will wish to continue it. That has been the history of such movements in other states and there is no reason to believe that Indiana will be any different from other states. -- _ In fact, if the brewers seek to make any alliance with the republicans, it is more than likely that the democrats will retaliate by favoring state wide prohibition to get even with them. State wide prohibition will be an issue at the next session of the legislature. Just where it will come from no one knows, but it is going to come before that body in some form or other. This is what the brewers fear, and they do not want to do anything to stir it up. On the other hand, they want the local option law repealed; but how to do it without drawing oh a fight for prohibition is the question that confronts them. So, it will be seen that the local, option law looks like a healthy youngster and one that has come to stay and grow. The brewers were not able to kill it at the last session of the legislature when the democrats controlled -one house,* and it does not seem likely that they will be able to kill it at the next session when both houses are almost sure to be controlled by the republicans.