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The Field of the Prohibition Conflict.
A recent court decision in Ohio holds that: The
legislature has the absolute unrestricted right to
legislate what it pleases as to the regulation or pro
hibition of the liquor traffic; that it may or may
not, as it pleases, submit the question of prohibi
tion to popular vote, and it can specify to what
part of the populace, the question is submitted. It
may allow women to vote in such cases of referen
dum if it wants to.
This ruling is manifestly correct. The referring
of all such questions as removing fences, issuing
school bonds to build academies, or other bonds,
or any local option law, is a matter wholly outside
of the constitution, and entirely within the discre
tion of the legislature. It- creates the referendum.
It certainly has the right to create the referee.
Neither the constitution of the United States nor
of the state has one single thing* to do with it.
The legislature may pass a law and declare U
it shall become effective when one-third of the
school children in an adjoining county shall have
voted in favor'of it. The referendum may be to
the ordinary, or the grand jury, or the county com
missioners, or the matrons, or the young ladies, or
the Negro women, or the white men and boys, or
the 11 qualified white voters.” The Ohio court is
right.
The problem of the jug traffic has been giving
prohibitionists a vast deal of trouble. -The state
courts have allowed the express company t.o carry
on the business in dry counties because it is a
common carrier, bound to convey and deliver the
goods entrusted to it, to the person or firm named
as consignee in any place where it has an office.
The United States interstate commerce law has
been held by the Supreme Court to practically nul
lify state and county prohibition because the ex
press companies could still conduct the traffic.
Let our next legislature pass a bill like this- "A
bill entitled: An Act to declare commodities, and
the vessels containing them, that have been exclud
ed from sale by operation of law in this stat'*
in any county or municipality, or any other sub
division thereof, to be 'not property’ in the terri
tory where it is prohibited from sale under the laws
of the state, but to be contraband and not entitle l
to any right or protection under the law made and
provided for the protection of property in gener
al.”
The foregoing is the caption of a bill that has
been drawn, and is now receiving consideration
from competent men.
Another bill has been drawn making it a misde
meanor for anybody to have any condemne t <•
contraband goods to be delivered in any territory
where such goods are prohibited from sale. I
these bills are passed the jug trade will be reduced
to a very blind tiger.
One of the pet devices of the liquor men is to
publish articles that disparage the effects of pro
hibition. The Knoxville Sentinel in a recent issue
gives an excellent letter from Mr. J. P. Chumh.a
to a relative in Knox County. This letter fully
confirms the statements heretofore made in the,
Golden Age, that:’ln spite of all the efforts of the
liquor men to disparage the work of prohibition
in Kansas, recent experience has shown that the
laws can be and that they are now enforced even
in the large border towns like Fl. Scott and Kan
sas City.
Major Rose (wonder if he has any kin in At
lanta?) was deposed and fined SI,OOO for failure
to enforce the law in Kansas City. He was re
elected mayor and was again deposed by the courts
for non-enforcement of the law. Since this, Kansas
City has secured city officials who do enforce the
law.
The Statesboro News in an editorial disparages
the effort for state prohibition on the ground” that
local option does not cut off blind tiger jug trade
and the like.
The News has much company on that side of th'*
fence, but they are all affected by a serious fallacy.
Why can’t people of ordinary common sense see it*
It is this: The drink traffic is wrong, morally, so
cially, economically and religiously. It is more
destructive than war, pestilence and famine com
bined. It more completely destroys human homes
and human hopes than any agency out of Holl, and
Th; Golden Age for April 4, 1907,
yet! And yet!! The laws of our state license aiid
sanction the drink traffic. What we want is to
get the law on our side. Then every community
that wants to do s‘o, can prevent the sale of liquor
and cut off the jug trade. Then those people who
want to do the wrong and wicked business of drink
selling* will be obliged to do it without the sanction
of law’, and contrary to law. Then the crime and
sin and shame will be confined to the wicked people
who violate the law, and will not rest on the whole
community as is the case now in those places that
license the sale.
If a man in Atlanta gets drunk and kills another
because of that drunken condition, every man who
has voted for the maintenance of the liquor traffic
in Atlanta during the last two or four years is par
ticeps criminis and accessory before the fact in that
murder. The bartender is guilty. The proprietor
is guilty. The mayor (if he approves the license)
is guilty. Every councilman that voted to license
the barrooms that furnished the liquor is guilty;
the aidermen are guilty in the same way, and eveiy
voter that elected those men to office participates
in that guilt. If, however, a man gets drunk- in
DeKalb County, and kills another, I am not guilty,
because DeKalb County does not license liquor sell
ing and I voted for Dupont Guerry and against the
state license the last time I voted.
We want the law to quit making us morally re
sponsible for the wrongs that grow out of dra"
selling. We want all that desperate business ma le
unlawful. When it is made so, we can do some
thing toward stopping it We can do nothing, how
ever, so long as the law sanctions it.
When a community gives the sanction of law
Io a sinful business like gambling, lewdness or
drink selling, everybody in the community is in
volved in the sin committed in those licensed dive*.
When, however, there is no license but those wicked
things are forbidden by law nobody is guilty ex
cept those who take part in them. “Go not with a
multitude to do evil.”
*
Track Through the "Bible.
(Continued from Page 6.)
the center of observation as with calm dignity he
stood against the combined evils of a corrupt court
and priesthood. His vindication by the answering
fire of God was perfect. The slaughter of Hie
prophets of Baal aroused the ire of Jezebel to
such a degree that she sent a message full of fury
to Elijah. The man who stood erect in the pres
ence of such tremendous odds, now fled for his
life. Full of tenderness was the method of God
with His overwrought and fearful servant. At
tending, first, to his physical needs, He then grant
ed him a revelation of Himself. It was a new rev
elation by which Elijah found that God was in "the
sound of gentle stillness.” It is evident that from
this time of the failure, of his faith, he was large
ly set aside. Once or twice only does he appear
again in the narrative.
The resit of the book is occupied with the story
of the downfall of Ahab. The first phase of it
was public. Benhadad came in the pride of his
arms against Samaria. By the voices of prophets
Jehovah spoke to Ahab who, .acting under their di
rection, gained a complete victory over his enemies.
In the very moment of triumph he failed by making a
covenant with a man whom God had devoted to
destruction. The next step was that of his sin in
connection with the vineyard of Naboth. Elijah
suddenly presented himself before the king, and
in words that must have scorched his inner soul,
he pronounced upon him the terrible doom of his
wrong-doing. The third and final movement in the
downfall was that of his disobedience to the mes
sage of Micaiah. The arrow shot at a venture, so
far as man was concerned, found its true mark.
Thus ended the personal career of the worst, man
that ever occupied the throne of tiie chosen peo
ple.
Nelv Work For Women.
The twentieth century woman in America today
asserts herself, not so much as a "suffragette,”
after the manner of her English sisters, as in her
sell-reliant and successful way of tackling occupa
tions hitherto regarded as the undisputed monopoly
of the sterner sex.
Mrs. Agnes E. Paul is a ward superintendent of
the Chicago Street-Cleaning Department. Besides
keeping her home in spick-and-span order, she
earns her living by keeping a number of Chicago’s
streets clean.
Mrs. Frank Woodward, of St. Charles, Mich.,
earns a considerable sum of money each season
shooting wolves. Last winter Mrs. Woodward re
ceived from the state $2,970 for the scalps of 198
wolves, which were killed by henself and her hus
band.
According to Government statistics, there are in
the United States women in every occupation neces
ary for house-building’. There are in the country
150 women builders and contractors, 167 masons, 515
carpenters, 45 plasterers, 1,759 painters, glaziers
and varnishers, 126 plumbers, 241 paperhangers,
2 slaters and roofers.
There are women steamfitters and boilermakers,
and more than 665,000 women farm laborers. In
the great timber regions more than 100 women are
engaged in the work of lumbering and rafting, and
there are 113 professional women wood-choppers in
the United States. There are 2,086 saloon-keepers
of the fair sex in the country, and 44 rosy-cheeked
barmaids.
Miss Mary A. Stubbs, of Indianapolis, was ap
pointed head of the Indiana State Bureau of Sta
tistics some time ago.
Aliss Leah Klein represents a Chicago grain com
pany in the Merchants’ Exchange of Memphis,
Tenn. She is only eighteen years of age. yet she
goes on the floor of the exchange and buys and sells
as complacently as the oldest member.
There is a little woman in New York who earns
her living’ by conducting blind people about.
To have discovered more stars than any one else
in the world is the reputation of Miss Dorothea
Klumpke. an American girl astronomer, who won
renown for herself at Paris Since 1899 Miss
Klumpke has devoted herself to taking photographs
of the heavens from a balloon.
Tn making a claim against the estate of her
mother, Mrs. Aurora B. Kronck, of St. Louis, said
she had performed services for her in the eapacitv
of canvasser, housekeeper, manager, draughtsman,
saleswoman, solicitor, nurse, superintendent, coach
man, yardman, carpenter, bookkeeper, secretary,
treasurer, collector, overseer, pattern-maker, dress
cutter, dressmaker, expressman, buyer, general man
ager, clerk, manufacturer, fireman, plumber, carpet
layer, paperhanger and painter.
Mrs. Ogden McClurg, a daughter-in-law of the
late Col. A. C. McClurg, of Chicago, recently se
cured papers to act as pilot on a boat on Lake
Michigan. There are said to be forty women civil
engineers in the country and thirty women me
chanical and electrical engineers.—The New York
World.
I? *
Crossing the Bar.
By Alfred Tennyson.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
Bui such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
'Twilight ami evening bell.
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For, though from out our bourne of time ami place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
W. T. WINN, Fire, Accident and Health Insur
ance. Both Pliones 496. 219 Empire Building.
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