Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1909 — Wet or Dry. [ARTICLE]

Wet or Dry.

Advocates of the temperance cause have tried various measures for yeari past to drive Bacchus from his citadel, with but little success. The kings of the liquor traffic have stood behind their ramparts and watched with impunity the shafts of the besiegers crash against the solid masonry, only to fall to the earth harmless as reeds thrown by urchins on a-village green. • A new political party was organized and called the Prohibition pary, but it didn’t prohibit anything. Drunken inebriates drank and reveled in the saloon and spent the money which should have, been spent for bread for the babes. They reeled against and insulted decent people on the streets, fought with each other in the gutter and paid fines which took more bread money, or served time on the stone pile when they were badly needed at home. There Is a point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Decency became shocked at the impertinence of vice. A great wave of reform it sweeping over the United States. Whatever men determine to do they can do. This great epidemic, like a tropical tornado, is sweeping over the land with relentless fury. Our own old Hoosier state was caught up in the flames, two-thirds of the counties have gone dry and the fever is not yet abated. Only three battles have as yet been lost in the Indiana campaign in the war against champaign, viz, the battle of the Wayne Plateau, fought near the source of White river; the battle of Cass county, in the Wabash Valley, and the battle on the plains of Blackford county. These dereats were due to the fact that spies of the enemy took time by the forelock and by cunningly devised speeches and circulars inducted the • t.... . t"T v ’ business men of the large cities to believe that to maim the saloon would cripple business. Several more battles are to be — t- t —-V4 ; « fought In the near future, but the enemy is massing his strength fn Lafayette, of Tippecanoe county, where tremendous strength will pit against strength and valor and vim will cause the fur to fly. We predict a victory for the temperance cause there, however, for the leaders, unlike those of Cass, Blackford and Wayne, are Educating the business men to their best Interests by proving to them by signed reports from dry counties that absence of saloons does not injure, but faciliates trade, and that a mucl greater per cent of defered payments are being liquidated.

In Jasper county we will have an easy victory if every man shoots who owns a gun, but if we lie on our arms and allow the enemy to enter the camp unmolested, we will certainly be taken and marched off as prisoners of war, where we will be guarded and he compelled ho dance to the music of the other man’s whistle for two years to- come; but there is no call for this state of affairs, the fourteen hundred names asking for an option election to be held in Jasper county, means something. It is not only straws to show which way the wind blows, but it Is a broad weather vane which can not be mistaken. Now, comrades, you each have your credentials, you are furnished with ammunition, one round is sufficient if you “let er fly,” but this you must do or defeat will take the place of victory and our general will be compelled, in shame, to hand his sword over to the enemy. '' Good weather may prevail about that time and -the tendency among farmers, especially, will be to stay at home and plow sor # corn with the excusing thought that there will be plenty without me. Too many may say and do this. Let us rally under the great standard, temperance, and, with banner In hand like the Crusaders of old, rush to the protection of our youths and own homes. Leave the oxen and plow In the field, like Israel Putnam, of Revolutionary fame, make a rush for the pells and In after years you can proudly proclaim “I cast a dry vote in Jasper ceunty, Indiana, on the first day of May, 1969.”

BILL BAT,

The Rev. L. P. Marshall, of Franklin, Ind., for almost twenty years stated clerk of the Presbytery of Indianapolis, has offered, his resignation. The minister said merely that he had held the position long enough and that It should be given' to some other person. The resignation was retired with surprise ami i I'Btrot oy toa irfßoytery. A oounnittee whs chosen to name a successor to the Her. Dr. Marshall.

President David Starr Jordan, of Iceland Stanford university, will five the commencement address at Indiana unlTerafcy Jude 83. The address to the law school will be made by Governor Hadley, of Missouri, Got. Marshall will preside during the exercises.

Hoy Try on, working before the fire in the Root glass factory at Terre Haute, stepped aside to take a drink of water and later arms found unconscious on the floor. Bis Jaws were tightly locked, hat he revived sufficiently to be able to write hie address.