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“OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNE AND OUR SACRED HONOR” DELEGATES IN THE FOLLOWING DECLARATION OF PURPOSES PLEDGES FOR NATION-WIDE PROHIBITION BY FOUR THOUSAND SET FORTH BY THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE OF AMERICA. underitaetnT!mper t hem : Ue “ Uati ° nal COnVenti ° n aSßembled Submits the followin K declaration of its purposes and the reasons that L h n„u reS R Va ft 011 ° f SeUeral Welf T iS the highest purpose of government. The general welfare rests upon the intelligence and morality of om people. By the general concurrence of opinion of every citizen and Christian community, the liquor traffic is an acknowledged source of crime ana misery to society and an organized agency for the corruption and debauchery of government. No rights of property or of personal liberty can prevail against the right of the people to protect public morals and promote the general welfare. pp 1S nat J on ® annot en^ re ls continues to exchange public morals for public money. The morals of the nation are more valuable than any revenue this traffic can yield. J It is wrong for the government to accept revenue from this liquor traffic, or to issue to liquor dealers tax receipts in dry territory. In order that federal legislation relating to the interstate shipment of intoxicating liquors may be made effective, we urge upon the legislatures of the various states the passage of laws prohibiting common earners from transporting and delivering such intoxicating liquors into Prohibition territory. We urge Congress to enact a law forbidding the use of the mails to the liquor traffic for advertising, or soliciting the purchase of intoxicating liquors in such territory. ° The executive officer who refuses to enforce the law for the preservation of public morals is as grave a public enemy as the lawbreaker himself; and laws should be passed in all the states providing for the speedy and summary removal of every executive officer guilty of non-feasance in office. V e declare it to be the sense of the League that when officials of the national government interferes in an election in a state the people have a right to expect them to take care that the candidates for whose election they i n terc ede upon national issues shall not be out of harmony with the convictions of the people upon moral issues in that state. The Anti-Saloon League has always been both non-sectarian and omni-P arl isan. The League never opposes a party, a candidate or an official who faithfully attempts to preserve public morals by the enactment or enforce 111611 ! of laws intended for their preservation; but whenever a political party or politician or executive official prefers the liquor traffic above th e public morals, we come to a stand. On that issue we fight. Nice and cunning distinction will no longer do. Os cavil and evasion we have had enou^ h e want the decision and the action of the statesman. Henceforth, we know this cause only and for it whenever necessary man shall be set aside a ll( l parties abandoned. We declare our settled conviction that license and regulation are inadefinate to exterminate the liquor traffic. The license system, instead of eliminating the evils of the traffic, has become its last and strongest fortress.. The liquor traffic is national in its organization, character and influence. It overflows the boundaries of states and refuses to be regulated or controlled. It is a federal evil; a national menace, too powerful for state authority, requiring national jurisdiction and treatment. It beggars the individual, burdens the state and impoverishes the nation. It commercializes vice and capitalizes human weakness. It impairs the public health; breaks the public peace and debauches the public morals. It intimidates and makes cowards of public men. It dominates parties and conventions’. It cajoles, bribes or badgers the makers, interpreters and administrators of the law, and suborns the public press. It claims for itself a special right and privilege asserted by no other interest in all the land, however great or powerful; a right and privilege utterly incompatible with free government—the right and privilege to infract municipal ordinances at will, to violate and break legislative resolves and enactments and to set aside the constitutional provisions of sovereign states, however solemn and sacred. Refusing all domestic regulation and control, it leaves the American people but two alternatives, the abject surrender of their inherent right of self-government or its national annihilation. Between such a choice free man cannot hesitate. We therefore declare for* its national annihilation by an amendment to the federal constitution which shall forever inhibit throughout the territory of the United States the manufacture and sale, and the importation, exportation and transporta tion of intoxicating liquors to be used as a beverage. To the consummation of this high purpose, relying on God for the victory, we here pledge, as pledged our patriot father 137 years ago, for the nation’s independence, “Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. And for it, invoke the support of all patriot citizens everywhere.” THE SOUTH’S PROMINENT PART AWE’LL LICK YOU AGAIN.” John Carrigan, Jr., the genial and popular Washington correspondent of The Atlanta Con stitution sent to his paper the following story ot the day: “Georgia had a prominent part in the notable demonstration for national prohibition in Wash ington today. Mrs Mary Harris Armor, the ‘Georgia Whirlwind’ was one of the speakers at the Capitol and among other striking things she said: “ ‘l’ll tell you right now there is no govern mental excuse for debauching ‘dry’ territory, and if you folks up North don’t quit shipping liquor into territory that we have voteo io be free from liquor we Southern folks are going to secede and I'ick you again.’ ” As the exercises concluded William D. Up shaw, who was standing on the portico with the speakers, advanced to the front and waved his crutch over the cheering crowd, declaring in ringing tones: “Hurrah for a saloonless nation —the stars and stripes without a liquor stain!” Rev. Sam W. Small former brilliant news paper man and present evangelist and prohi bition orator also took a prominent part. “GREATEST COMMITTEE THAT EVER CLIMBED CAPITOL HILL.” William D. Upshaw, the Georgia editor and prohibition orator, who is one of the vice presi dents of the Anti-Saloon League of America, in speaking to The Constitution representa- amendment to the States of the Union. THE GOLDEN AGE FOR WEEK OF DEC. 18, 1913 tive of the great prohibition demonstration, said: “The sanest reform movement in America made deathless history today. It is my de liberate conviction that the “committee of one thousand” which gathered from all points of the nation to memorialize Congress in behalf of the national prohibition of the liquor traffic was the very greatest committee of patriots that ever climbed the steps of the national cap itol, where Presidents have been inaugurated through all the varying forms of our nation’s progress, was inaugurated a movement which holds within its compass the mightiest issues of citizen-building as well as the most elemen tal problems in our civic and economic life.” “This memorial,” declared the Georgia re former, with a desperate sort of a smile, “sim ply means that it is high time for a nation that looks after cow-ticks and boll weevils in behalf of cattle and crops, that guards the fish of the streams and the trees of the forest—the government that wisely -counts it its duty to enact and enforce pure food laws to protect its citizens—it is high time, we declare, for such a government to stop the most gigantic poison manufactory that has ever debauched citizenship, made cowards of politicians and degraded our national ideals; and the fact that the ablest statesmen in both branches of Congress are back of this movement argues a vigorous legislative campaign and, I believe, a speedy submission of this constitutional “I was especially proud of the South’s part in that wonderful demonstration at the Cap itol. Os the six speakers, in addition to the introductory words of the national superinten dent of the Anti-Saloon League, Dr. P. A. Bak er, four were famous Southerners—Senator Morris Sheppard, “the little giant of Texas,” the recently redeemed and superbly eloquent Governor Patterson, of Tennessee; the spot less hero-statesman, Congressman Richmond P. Hobson, of Alabama, who is regarded as the most inspiring prohibition orator in Con gress, and our own Mrs. Mary Harris Armor, who is recognized, North as well as South, as the greatest woman orator in America. I was proud of Mrs. Armor’s tribute to Georgia and Georgia’s increasing prosperity since she be came the pioneer prohibition state of the South. She paid eloquent tribute to Governor John M. Slaton’s clear-headed loyalty during his recent business trip to New York when he showed by facts and figures that Georgia is the most all-around prosperous state today in the Union. She showed by incontestable sta tistics that Georgia has prospered more dur ing the five years since she banished legalized bar-rooms than she ever prospered during any other five years of her history, and then Mrs. Armor declared, with ringing eloquence: * And I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that anything that is good for Georgia, the Empire State of the South, will produce universal prosperity and moral uplift in the greatest nation in the world. ’ ’ 5