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TAMPA TEMPEST TOSSED
Most Tamons Saloon Center in Florida Sends Prohibition
Legislators to Tallahassee.
T
HE day of miracles has not passed.
Tampa the beautiful Tampa; —Tampa,
the most famous cigar-making city in the
world; —Tampa, the commercial capital
of the eastern coast line of the Mexie
Gulf; and Tampa (sad to tell it),-the
most tenacious, blatant, defiant whiskey
town of fifty thousand people this side
the “other place” —this Tampa, I tell
you, has just sent prohibition representatives to the
Florida Legislature for the first time since Columbus
discovered America I
And it was just about the privilege of ray life to
be allowed to have some little part in this tremend
ous Tampa tempest. Under the auspices of the
ministers’ conferences of Plant City and St. Peters
burg and the AV. C. T. U. of Tampa, I hurried to
the scene of battle in Hillsboro county.
At Plant City on Friday before the election on
June 16, I fell into the hands of three plucky
preachers, Morton, Presbyterian, Boggess, Metho
dist, and Thiot (pronounced “Teo”) Baptist, stand
ing together like a band of brothers in fighting for
the Right. Richard AV. Thiot is an old Georgia
friend who was saved from a life of stage-struck
worldliness and who, though very young in the
ministry, is “making good” in the best sense of
the term. His was a difficult task at Plant City,
for he followed the magnetic John A. Wray, and it
takes a man to follow such a man. And Wray, by
the way, is having such an experience at Live Oak,
Fla., where he is following the magnetic and vic
torious C. A. Ridley who is now preaching to
fifteen hundred people every Sunday at Beaumont,
Texas. But back to Plant City. John A. Wray had
begun the crusade against saloons and the people
got to thinking—a very dangerous business for the
liquor traffic. And then the present trio of pastors
joined their hearts, hands, wits, tongues and ever
lasting energies for the overthrow of the saloon
and the elevation of the home in Plant City.
“You preachers better keep out of politics!” cried
the conservative brother, and the saloon men, alas,
with all of their supporters in principle and
practice, took up the cry. But the preachers answer
ed: “We are not talking ‘politics’—we are
teaching the duty of Christian manhood and the
sacred call of citizenship.”
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of
Plant City, under the modest but ever-aggressive
leadership of Mrs. Joe Franklin, is one of the
livest wires I have ever seen —-and between all these
workers some of the greatest advertising that ever
preceded ray visit to ia town had made “all things
ready.” But to intensify this readiness some of the
preachers went with me to each of the three saloons
in town and extended a good humored invitation
to the bar-keepers and their patrons to come. The
crowd at the opera house that night was enormous,
in face of the fact that nearly seventy young men —
members of the military company, were compelled
to meet the army officer at a “muster.'’ Their
absence led to a special meeting Saturday night
for the military boys when I spoke on “The Young-
Man and the Community.”
That day on the streets in his discussion with
some of the citizens I had heard a prominent candi
date for a prominent office in Florida openly and
repeatedly use “cuss” words with a number of
young boys standing around him in the crowd. And
I felt like saying to him what the judges say to
the man who is going to be hung: “May the Lord
have mercy on your soul.”
What a shame to offer or indorse leadership like
that!
A Sunday in Tampa.
Three speeches on Sunday!—first on “Old Time
Religion” at the First Baptist Church where Pastor
A number of bright College Students paid their way through college this year by representing The
Golden Age last vacation. The same opportunity is open to you this summer. Write to us,
The Golden Age for July 2, 1908.
Claude AV. Duke, but recently from a commanding
influence in North Carolina, is doing the work of
his life; in the afternoon at The Casino, a graphic
report of which was copied in The Golden Age last
week from the facile pen of Bentley on The Times,
a royal reporter, with a head on his shoulders and
a conscience in his bosom (if that’s where the
conscience lives) —may his tribe increase!—and
that night in the pulpit of the First Methodist
Church, whose gifted pastor, Dr. Piner, was with
the immortal Sam Jones in his last meeting in
Oklahoma City.
The Casino address was a general speech “agin
licker,” and the night message my new speech on
“The Citizen and the Community.”
AH told, my first Sunday in Tampa was to me a
delight—and to my audiences —well, that’s a
problem.
St. Petersburg-on-the-Bay.
On the steamship H. B. Plant, down the dimpling,
flashing bosom of Tampa Bay, I sailed away to
St. Petersburg, the beautiful winter home of ten
thousand tourists —and two saloons!
The growth of St. Petersburg has been phenome
nal and the type of her citizenship is of a very
high average. For the most part the northern peo
ple who have come there to make it their home are
people who put morals above money, and the same
is said of the winter visitors. In this noble charac
teristic they are aided and abetted by the native
Floridians, and, altogether, St. Petersburg makes
a town rare to be found. Editor Powell, of the
Daily Independent, is a stalwart defender and pro
moter of every good cause and just about the livest
wire I have ever met at the head of a daily paper
in a town the size of St. Petersburg.
A great crowd assembled in the city park that
night, the night before the battle, making one of
the most inspiring audiences I have met in many a
day. They were another set who could see an idea
coming a mile before it got into town and would
come down to the depot in a band wagon to meet
it. Such a crowd can make just an ordinary speak
er feel like he is doing tolerably well. I will never
forget that hour in the pavilion at St. Petersburg.
Next day the prohibition candidates scored a mag
nificent victory at that precinct.
I was a fortunate guest in Hie home of a splen
did Kentucky family, Pastor Mullins, of the Bap
tist church. His son Truman, who is also a cripple,
and I got to be chums. He is small of stature but
high and hustling’ in life and purpose. He makes
real estate dealers know he is living, and does not
forget above all things to show a hustling devotion
to his church and the things of good.
Entertained by the W. 0. T. U.
Gratitude glad and abiding reigns in my heart
while I stand with head uncovered before the royal
women of the Plant City AV. C. T. U. They made
me come back and deliver my platform lecture,
“Schools and Fools,” under their auspices and in
sisted on giving me all the proceeds, and not content
with this, they “got out a special edition” of the
Union in honor of the “visiting brother,” and the
afternoon entertainment given in the Presbyterian
manse was unique in conception, exquisite in execu
tion —and didn’t have a dull line in it. Airs. Frank
lin, the president of the W C. T. U., is a sister of
Airs. I). F. Pattishall. the brave little wife of the
prohibition legislator in Plant City, who did lots
toward getting- her popular young husband elected.
Aly! Aly! AVonder if I could get a k ‘helpmeet
wife like that to help me get elected to something?
AVhile I was guest in the City Hotel, the charm
ing- family of proprietor Knight made me feel like
I was living in the circle of “kinsfolk.”
The Gospel on the Street.
I found that Pastor Thiot hasn’t any more sense
than to preach .the gospel on the streets of Plant
City every Saturday night. Surrounded by a band
of faithful workers they sing and talk the Gospel,
and many who might not otherwise be reached are
thus brought to the Truth and the house of God.
And so, obedient to the request and the behest of
my friend, my last act in Plant City was to sit in
a wagon on the street corner, sometimes standing
up on my crutches, and give a heart message on
“The entrance of thy word giveth light.”
Thus I hade good bye to the Tampa district. I
did not mention the name of any candidate during
my speeches, but urged voters with a conscience
and a backbone to find out where the saloon element
wanted them to vote and then stand and work
bravely on the other side. The two “licker” dai
lies in Tampa declared that it would be a calamity
if Don McMullan were elected to the senate and
Taylor and Pattishall to the house. This, I heard,
was their best recommendation, and I left a major
ity of the people of Hillsboro county rejoicing that
this “calamity” hod befallen them.
The campaign will be fought in Florida to have
the question of State prohibition submitted to the
people, and we unhesitatingly declare that if the
Tampa district can send prohibition legislators to
Tallahassee then there is hope for every other place
on earth. AVm. D. Upshaw.
* M
A Great Southern Chautauqua.
AVith flying banners, a hundred floats and a great
parade that made an imposing pageant beyond any
thing that a Georgia town has even seen, the peo
ple of Gainesville, the queenly commercial capital
of the North Georgia mountains, opened their great
new chautauqua movement last Alonday. They call
it “Brenau,” after the great college for girls
founded by that magician of educational move
ments, Prof. A. AV. VanHoose, and “led to corona
tion” by VanHoose and Pearce, Alma Afater, also,
of Alabama Brenau at Eufaula and the handsome
new Riverside Academy for boys on the banks of
the Chattahoochee. This is the first summer chautau
qua with the one month program which has ever
been launched, so far as we know, south of Alont
Eagle, >and Professors VanHoose and Pearce de
serve the thanks, not only of Gainesville and the
State of Georgia, but of all the South and the
friends of intellectual and spiritual development ev
erywhere for leading the movement to this happy
consummation. After the parade, which was par
ticipated in by merchants, manufacturers and farm
ers, and witnessed by cheering thousands, the crowd
packed the spacious Brenau auditorium to hear
addresses by Professor VanHoose and Col. 11. H.
Dean, of Gainesville, and Fred L. Seely, editor of
The Atlanta Georgian.
Dr. J. AV. Lee, the famous Methodist preacher
and author, preached the opening sermon on Sun
day, while such celebrities as Judge Emory Speer,
on the Fourth of July, and Chas. A. Towne at a
later date will wake the mountains with eloquence.
Gainesville on the Chattahoochee is the ideal
place for a summer chautauqua —for there the tired
body may rest and bathe itself in the ample waters
of the Chattahoochee as it eddies and flows “down
from the Hills of Habersham through the A r alleys of
Hall.” while tired brains and hearts may rest and
drink in inspiration from a program hardly sur
passed even by Chautauqua, New York.
AVe hope that many of our readers from far and
near will plan at once to enjoy at least a part of
this great and inspiring month at Gainesville.
Professors A r anlloose and Pearce have inaugurat
ed an epoch in the chautauqua life of the South.
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