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‘Battling Tor Prohibition in Texas
(From The Beaumont Enterprise.)
AST night a crowd that was limited
only by the number that could get with
in hearing distance of the band-stand,
gathered in Keith park to listen to Wil
liam D. Upshaw of Georgia, and al
though contending for supremacy with
passing cars and various other street
noises, he managed to make himself
heard over a, wide area. He used to be
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called in his home state 11 Earnest Willie,” this lit
tle man who goes on crutches and yet possesses
seemingly a vitality that many another man might
envy.
Mr. Upshaw Speaks.
Mr. Upshaw was introduced by Rev. Caleb A.
Ridley, who spoke briefly but strongly upon the
subject matter of the evening.
Mr. Upshaw, in opening his talk, referred to Dr.
Ridley’s remarks, and presuming upon old acquaint
ance rallied him for his fiery earnestness, which
served to put the crowd in good humor at once.
Referring to Dr. Ridley’s remark that he was not
a partisan democrat, that is, that he did not hold
allegiance to party above right and his unbiased
judgment, Mr. Upshaw said he was a free born
American citizen, a southerner, a democrat and a
Baptist, and that he was glad to have a hand in
the campaign in Texas —that the most undemocratic
thing he ever heard of since Columbus discovered
America was the refusal of the anti-submissionists
to submit the vote to the people on true democratic
principles. He congratulated Roy M. Farrar, the
secretary of the Submission club, on the advertis
ing pages he had run in the two local papers, and
said he also wished to compliment the anti-submis
sionists for their absolute frankness. He said he
was just a decent, sensible, sober, old-time democrat
and that was what every man who called himself a
democrat should bp.
The Honest Democrat.
He said that this was the kind of a democrat
that would not deny to the people of their state
the right to vote upon any question pertaining to
their interests.
Mr. Upshaw carefully explained the methods by
which this subject came before the people through
the democratic primaries, and recited the placing of
the local option section therewith. He said that as
the state had local option, that question had no
place before the people, and was used to make the
matter complex and to fool the people. He ex
plained that to vote for submission was Io mark
off all paragraphs but the first or submission par
agraph. He then turned his attention to the demo
cratic phase of the question and maintained that it
would be undemocratic to deny the people the right
to vote upon a question of such importance. He said
that to vote for submission now was but a badge
of democracy, the good, clean, sober old-time democ
racy which believed in letting every man have his
chance, and it was in no way binding on the man
to vote for prohibition, nor did it pledge the demo
cratic party to prohibition.
Mr. Upshaw’s Title.
“I want to get the newspapers straightened out
about my title before I go further,” said the speak
er. “I noticed that the Rev. W. D. Upshaw of
Georgia would be the speaker tonight. I am not a
preacher —that is, I am not ordained —I am just
‘constrained.’ I feel that the God of my being
has called me to ‘do all the good I can to all the
people I can.’ Sometimes I try to do good by
speaking ‘agin licker.’ The only title I bear is
one accorded several other fellow Georgians recently
which gives me the right to place R. F. D. after
my name.
“1 see good men quoted as declaring that preach
ers ought only to be teachers of the Gospel—of ‘the
Extracts Erom Speech by the Editor of The Golden Age
good, the true, the beautiful’ —preaching ‘love,
goodness and mercy.’
“Yes, yes! That kind of love that loves home
and children well enough to turn them out amid the
saloons that love them well enough to debauch and
destroy them for the sake of ‘liberty’ and gold.
That kind of mercy that turns out his children and
yours to be enticed, and then stagger and fall at
the mercy of the legalized saloon —an institution
that must live, if it live at all, on the debauchery
of the sons of merchants, and bankers, and farm
ers, and working men, and congressmen, and govern
ors, and mayors. How awful the picture! It seems
that your mayor and all who cheered that senti
ment to the echo are joining in the old, old cry, so
widely misunderstood in its application. That the
preacher preach only Jesus Christ and Him cruci
fied, and lot the duties of citizenship alone. And
while the. preacher thus cowardly turns from the
Pauline, admonition to ‘reprove, rebuke, admonish’
and smite spiritual wickedness in high places, the
saloon goes on crucifying the mother by tempting
and ruining her son; crucifying a wife by debauch
ing her husband; crucifying a sister by luring her
brother to the devil; crucifying the trusting maiden
by holding the wine cup to her sweetheart’s lips
and shadowing her hear), her hopes and her love.
“I tell you verily (turning to Dr. Ridley), Ridley,
Ihe day you grow too cowardly to preach the duty
of Christian manhood and citizenship to the men
of your church and congregation, that day T want
to write an editorial about yon as a man who is not
fil to be pastor of a coop of chickens.
About Georgia.
“The men who are managing that undemocratic
anti-submission campaign in Texas ought to he
mighty thankful that there are some preachers to
teach them the sublime doctrine of sublime forgive
ness for mon who honestly repent of lying. Tt,
makes mv blood boil to see the ‘groat big black
ones’ that they are tolling every day on my own
state of Georgia. They are declaring that the de
feat of Hoke Smith and the election of ‘Little
Joe’ Brown moans repudiation of prohibition in
Georgia. Ono of those Houston lawyers said so
the other night in a speech, and they are telling
it with tongue and pen all over Texas. 1 want to
toll yon that it is absolutely false, and T am from
Georgia and T know the facts.
“Are you going to take a whisky man’s word
a thousand miles from Georgia, or the word of a
Georgia man who has the reputation of being a
gentleman? As an evidence of how strong prohibi
tion sentiment is in Georgia, neither Mr. Brown
nor Mr. Smith would dare make the race for gov
ernor until each had declared his purpose to veto
any bill that sought to weaken or emasculate our
state prohibition law. Mr. Smith openly stated
that he was a local optionist, when prohibition was
not a vital issue, in his anti-corporation campaign
for the governorship, but after the bill had been
passed by an overwhelming majority of both houses
in the legislature he redeemed his promise to sign
the bill if it should be presented to him, and then,
after seeing its splendid effect of statewide prohi
bition, he declared himself a convert to the measure
and said he would stand by the law if re-elected.
“Joseph M. Brown had declared himself a pro
hibitionist for years, and after these declarations,
on the part of both candidates, the people divided
in their votes according to their choice. Tt was the
campaign of the panic, economics and personalities.
Tt was a white primary, in which former populists
were invited to take part.
Tom Watson’s Work.
“This same little man, named Tom Watson,
who I was telling yon resembled me, though not
quite so good lookin", and who supported Governor
Smith in his former campaign on his disfranchise
ment and anti-corporation platform, had not been
pleased with some things Governor Smith had done
The Golden Age for August 6, 1908.
along these lines, and so this same Tom Watson,
himself an ardent prohibitionist, turned against
Hoke Smith and urged his friends to do the same
in the last campaign. A change of 5,500 votes
would have re-elected Smith, and Tom Watson car
ried more than that number of votes in his vest
pocket. This is the real situation.
“As a crushing, overwhelming and everlasting
refutation of the false claim of liquor men the state
democratic convention that nominated Joseph M.
Brown indorsed statewide prohibition with great
enthusiasm, and J. R. Smith, the prominent Atlanta
merchant, who conducted Brown’s campaign, him
self also a devout prohibitionist, wrote me after
the nomination declaring that prohibition in Georgia
is absolutely safe. T just dare one of the men who
has been making these charges to write or wire J.
R. Smith or Joseph M. Brown for a confirmation
of this statement. May the Lord have mercy on
Ihe souls of the men who have been telling these
‘great big black ones’ about the result of the
Georgia election.
Telegram from Georgia.
“And then these .same men are telling awful
things—as false as they are shameful —about the
effect of prohibition in Georgia. They are saying
that there is more whisky .being drunk, more blind
tigers, and more everything that is terrible, than
Georgia had when saloons wore open and regu
lated.”
Here he road a telegram which he received from
Georgia since he has been in Texas from the re
corder of the Atlanta police court, which follows:
“W. D. Upshaw, Houston, Texas.
“Atlanta, Ga., July 20, 1008. —Since prohibition
crime here has decreased 50 per cent and drunken
ness 80 per cent, and fewer blind tigers than when
bars wore open.
“N. R. BROYLES, Recorder.”
“Take that,” holding the telegram high in the air.
“Take that, all ye undemocratic friends of the sa
loon, as one. brief, crushing answer to the charge
that there is more drunkenness, more crime and
more blind tigers in Atlanta and other Georgia
cities than we had when saloons flourished. Macon,
a city of 50,000, reported for February, T remember,
only thirteen cases of drunkenness, against more
than 100 cases during February, 1907, with saloons.
And commenting on this striking record, Colonel
C. R. Pendleton, the veteran editor of the Macon
Telegraph, who had been perhaps the strongest anti
prohibition editor of the state, declared that he
would never again favor the open saloon —at least,
as it had been at one time conducted in Georgia.”
The Georgian closed with an impassioned appeal
to Texas Democrats to show both their democracy
and their manhood by voting to give the whole peo
ple of Texas the privilege of voting “Yes,” or
“No,” on the question of saloons—predicting that
if such opportunity were given next year or any
year, “all the best people of all parties and creeds
would arise in their might and sweep the barroom
and its debauchery from the fair face of the Lone
Star Empire. ’’
Enthusiastic applause followed the close of the
address and many gathered around the Georgian to
shower congratulations upon him.
H *,
A duplicate of the national flag of 1814 was
raised over the old Key mansion in Georgetown,
District of Columbia, on June 13, after exercises
conducted by the association which has planned to
preserve the house as a memorial of the author of
“The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Marine Band
played the song, and a salute of twenty-one guns
was fired by a detachment of men from the navy.
The national flag now waves over a much wider
land of the free and over more homes of the brave
than came within its shadow in 1814.
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