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SHAMEFUL METHODS OF LIQUOR LEADERS
UNBLUSHING FALSEHOODS EMPLOYED TO CARRY FLORIDA ELECTIONS—A CRUSHING TELEGRAM FROM F. L. SEELY.
JV
ERILY, the leaders of liquor campaigns
cannot be trusted. We do not make
a sweeping indictment against the hon
esty of many mistaken men who vote
in favor of the reign of barrooms, but
we do declare our conviction that there has
never been a campaign in favor of barrooms
that was not buttressed from start to finish
by misrepresentation, plus all the corruptions
that liquor and money can accomplish.
In the recent campaign in Palm Beach
county, Florida, where saloons have been in
trenched for twenty years, one of the liquor
papers, for instance told such a “big one”
that it gave rise to the following story in
The Tropical Sun:
The following false) statement regarding
conditions in Asheville, N. C., appeared in
the Palm Beach Weekly News, April 11, hav
ing been published several days before in the
Daily News, April 8. ’Tis the boast of the
News editor that such is his love of “fair
play” that he ever stands willing to print both
sides of questions he discusses.
At once a refutation, signed “Tar Heel,”
appeared in the Sun, showing that Asheville
was not wet, as stated by the News, but that
the entire state voted dry May 30, 1908, and
is still in that condition. The News editor,
however, paid no attention to the correction.
We submit the News article:
“Again, let us look at Asheville, N. C. A
few years ago Asheville went dry. Hitherto
it had been a w’holesome tourist and winter
Speaking of manhood that counts —not the
manhood that blusters, but the citizenship
Three Brothers
Who Are Not
Afraid of
the Devil.
templates a scene which he re
cently witnessed down the East Coast of Flor
ida. The modest men about whom this story
is told may not like it very much when they
read these words for the first time, but at the
risk of forfeiting their pleasure and approval,
we feel that the story ought to be told, and
such a story loses part of its charm when it
is purely impersonal.
Some fifteen or twenty years ago three
Georgia boys, Anthony by name, became im
pressed with the transforming development
which Henry M. Flagler brought to all that
East Coast country. They believed they saw
in it a great future and determined to make
the plunge and “grow up” with the country.
Scions of sturdy stock, and coming from
the consecrated altar of a Christian home,
these Anthony brothers, in that new and pro
gressive country, were like Joe Folk in St.
Imuis—they didn’t know how to do anything
but the right thing. They have stood from
the first on the right side of every moral
question. They have wisely, uncringingly and
aggressively fought the encroachment of the
liquor traffic in every form. They have not
been “long haired” about it. They have just
been out-and-out against barrooms both in pre
cept and in practice, because they have be-
which actually weighs great
big tons in the building of civ
ilization, the editor of The
Golden Age feels a tremend
ous stirring within as he con-
ANOTHER LESSON IN MANHOOD
The Golden Age for May 29, 1913
resort, similar to Palm Beach, where the
wealthy people who could not stand the rig
ors and cold blasts of winter resorted; and
spent their money lavishly—as they can af
ford to do. The prohibitionists had their way,
with the usual result. At the next election
the drys went wet again. The result is, that
among other things, one of the best hotels in
the world has since been built—Grove Park
Inn, which will be opened for the reception c
guests on July 1, 1913, and another hostelry
is being put up on the old Kenilworth Inn
site”
The News statement was so flagrantly false
that W. D. Upshaw, a noted lecturer and edi
tor of The Golden Age, who has been speaking
in the county during the past few days, and
who is intimately acquainted with conditions
in Asheville, having been a leading worker in
the campaign that put the state dry, at once
wired his friend, F. L. Seely, receiving a long
telegram in reply which completely and in
dignantly shows the vile nature of the fabri
cation the News has attempted to foist upon
the public.
He Stood by the Lie.
Before undertaking to publish Mr. Seely’s
message, we got into touch with Mr. Davies
and asked if he desired to correct his mis-state
ments by giving as wide publicity to the true
state of affairs in Asheville as he had done to
the false report. He replied that he wanted
nothing to do with it. Since this is Editor
lieved that any community is better and clean
er and more solidly prosperous without the sa
loons, which can only prosper on the deple
tion of purposes, the destruction of manhood
and the downfall of homes and happiness.
And yet because of their unvarying loyalty to
all things clean and high, and largely because
they have been grandly successful from a com
mercial viewpoint, the friends of the liquor
business have singled out the “Anthonies”
for every form of basest caricature and bitter
malignment. The editor of this paper saw it
on every hand during the recent campaign
to free Palm Beach Gounty from the ruin of
barrooms.
Not because the liquor men thought it was
true, but because they thought it would help
them to win, they turned their arguments away
from defending barrooms and landed at ev
ery possible turn on the successful, unbought
and unbuyable Anthony brothers. Charging
them with “gambling in politics,” the liquor
people only tried to dissuade the public from
depositing in the Bank of Palm Beach, of
which “Gus” Anthony is president, but we
were pleased to note every time our eyes turn
ed in that direction that the Bank of Palm
Beach was doing a rousing, rushing business.
The truth is, men who have good, common
sense usually like to trust their earnings with
men who are sober and unafraid in the pres-
LOOK AT YOUR LABEL—DON’T FORGET.
$1.50 (Year’s Subscription to THE GOLDEN AGE) is a small mattier to you, but if two or
three thousand, who, like you, have overlooked their date, will send a check TODAY, it will
mean a GREAT DEAL TO US!
Davies’ conception of “fair play” and honest
journalism, the Sun publishes the telegram,
adding still another exploded falsehood to the
many that the dry papers have already shat
tered for the wets during this campaign:
Day Letter From Asheville.
Asheville, N. C., April 20, 1913.
Will D. Upshaw, West Palm Beach,
In answer to your telegram, the finest re
sort hotel in the world is being built at Ashe
ville. I designed it myself and am building
it by day labor. Such a thing as Asheville
going wet is absurd, and any such move or
even sentiment is unheard of. Asheville has
never before known such prosperity. Her pop
ulation was never so great. Southern Railway
states that past year showed by far the larg
est business in its history, and they are spend
ing thirty thousand dollars enlarging station.
Manager of Bell telephone told me yesterday
they have increased from twelve hundred
phones, four years ago, to over three thousand
now. On a single night last summer, one
hotel slept 28 in ballroom on cots, and no whis
key all that time. And, what is more, there
never will be. I spent twenty thousand dol
lars on a winter home in Florida last year in
one of Florida’s dry counties; and, if that
county ever goes wet, the place will be 'Or
sale. If the p‘ i.rrs have printed such a lie
about Asheville and won’t correct it, buy the
space to print this telegram, and I will pay
for it. F- L- SEELY.
ence of temptation and all manner of char
acter assassins.
Isn’t it funny—isn’t it tragic—that decent,
respectable men anywhere will find themselves
lined up with a reeking, stinking cause that
must employ such methods of abuse of good,
clean, brave men in order to prolong its tem
porary life?
The only crime of the Anthony brothers is
the fact, which everybody knows, that they
have always, everywhere, without apology or
equivocation, stood on the side of the home
against the saloon. Regardless of politics—
regardless of cost, regardless of mud-slinging
on the part of the minions of LIQUORDOM,
these modest, fearless Anthony brothers, un
daunted and undisturbed, go bravely on with
a smile and a kind word for everybody —and
it is this failure to stoop to the methods of
their traducers which makes the public be
lieve in them.
Traveling far and wide, and taking part in
all kinds of campaigns between right and legal
ized wrong, it is positively refreshing to touch
the lives in every conflict around whom the
battle rages, and we have never seen any
vhere in all the land a more inspiring exam
ple of unselfish, intrepid manhood than is fur
nished by the Anthony brothers down at Palm
Beach. God bless their plucky, big-hearted
souls! May their tribe increase.
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