The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation [62]
bribery, boodle
and official corruption, from the highest to the lowest. The rum traffic
is the principal factor in demoralizing and destroying the dignity, honor
and integrity of civic life. It is the insidious foe that is hatching and
nursing crime. Startling complication of statistics, obtained from the
replies of over 1,000 prison governors in the United States to a circular
letter addressed to them, and a summary shows that the general average
of 909 replies received from the license states, gives the proportion of
crime due to drink at no less than seventy-two per cent; the average
from 108 officials in Prohibition states giving the per centage at thirty-
seven. A considerable number of the latter were "boot-leggers" in jail
for selling whiskey. Out of the 1,017 jailers, only 181 placed their estimate
below twenty-five per cent, and fifty-five of these were from empty
jails in prohibition territory. The relation of drink to pauperism is much
the same as that of drink to crime. Of 73,045 paupers in all the alms-
houses of the country, 37,254 are there through drink.
According to official statistics as gathered by Commissioner Carroll
D. Wright, of the Bureau of Labor, there are 140 cities in the country
having a population of 30,000 and upwards.
In these cities there were in 1898, 294,820 people arrested for drunkeness,
almost ten times as many as now comprise our army in the Philippines.
If this great army of drunkards were marshalled for a parade, marching
twenty abreast, it would require four and one-half days, marching
ten hours a day, for them to pass a given point. And these 295,000
drunks do not include the arrests for "disorderly conduct," "assault" and
a dozen other offences which grow out of the licensed rum business. The
total arrests for all causes in these cities was 915,167. Counting the
moderate
estimate of three-fourths of these as being the victims of the lawful saloons,
it would require more than a week's marching twenty abreast,
for the great procession to stagger past a reviewing stand, and the rum
product of only 140 cities heard from.
These appalling statistics are the common property of every citizen,
and any political party pretending to financial improvement that ignores
the sixteen hundred million dollars worse than squandered in liquor and
tobacco annually in the United states, is untrue to itself and false to the
nation. Gambrinus, the god Bacchus, the Rum Power, this Moloch of
perdition, must be destroyed. Prohibition is the only remedy. Kansas
is to be the battle ground. Her constitutional prohibitory law and statutory
enactments are all right, properly administered. But in the hands
of a republican whiskey "machine" with the governor belonging to the
Elks, a liquor fraternity; a confessed defaulter as state treasurer; a
United states senator under indictment for bribery; officials from the
state house to every county in complicity with the whiskey rebels, it
will not be enforced. The liquor men and joint keepers subscribe large
sums to campaigns with the tacit, implied or open understanding of
immunity from prosecution and punishment on the part of candidates
and officials. This has been going from bad to worse for twenty years.
Yet the law is so plain that he who runs may read. How many ever saw
it in print. The revised statutes of Kansas, 1901, Article 14, Section 2462,
reads: "It shall be the duty of all sheriffs, police officers, constables,
mayors, marshals, police judges and police officers of any city or town,
having notice or knowledge of any violation of the provisions of this
act to notify the county attorney of the fact of such violation and to
furnish him names of witnesses within his knowledge by which such
violation can be proven. If any such officer shall fail to comply with the
provisions of this section, he shall, upon conviction, be fined in any sum
not less than $100 or more than $500, and such conviction shall be a
forfeiture
of the office held by such person, and the court before whom such
conviction
and official corruption, from the highest to the lowest. The rum traffic
is the principal factor in demoralizing and destroying the dignity, honor
and integrity of civic life. It is the insidious foe that is hatching and
nursing crime. Startling complication of statistics, obtained from the
replies of over 1,000 prison governors in the United States to a circular
letter addressed to them, and a summary shows that the general average
of 909 replies received from the license states, gives the proportion of
crime due to drink at no less than seventy-two per cent; the average
from 108 officials in Prohibition states giving the per centage at thirty-
seven. A considerable number of the latter were "boot-leggers" in jail
for selling whiskey. Out of the 1,017 jailers, only 181 placed their estimate
below twenty-five per cent, and fifty-five of these were from empty
jails in prohibition territory. The relation of drink to pauperism is much
the same as that of drink to crime. Of 73,045 paupers in all the alms-
houses of the country, 37,254 are there through drink.
According to official statistics as gathered by Commissioner Carroll
D. Wright, of the Bureau of Labor, there are 140 cities in the country
having a population of 30,000 and upwards.
In these cities there were in 1898, 294,820 people arrested for drunkeness,
almost ten times as many as now comprise our army in the Philippines.
If this great army of drunkards were marshalled for a parade, marching
twenty abreast, it would require four and one-half days, marching
ten hours a day, for them to pass a given point. And these 295,000
drunks do not include the arrests for "disorderly conduct," "assault" and
a dozen other offences which grow out of the licensed rum business. The
total arrests for all causes in these cities was 915,167. Counting the
moderate
estimate of three-fourths of these as being the victims of the lawful saloons,
it would require more than a week's marching twenty abreast,
for the great procession to stagger past a reviewing stand, and the rum
product of only 140 cities heard from.
These appalling statistics are the common property of every citizen,
and any political party pretending to financial improvement that ignores
the sixteen hundred million dollars worse than squandered in liquor and
tobacco annually in the United states, is untrue to itself and false to the
nation. Gambrinus, the god Bacchus, the Rum Power, this Moloch of
perdition, must be destroyed. Prohibition is the only remedy. Kansas
is to be the battle ground. Her constitutional prohibitory law and statutory
enactments are all right, properly administered. But in the hands
of a republican whiskey "machine" with the governor belonging to the
Elks, a liquor fraternity; a confessed defaulter as state treasurer; a
United states senator under indictment for bribery; officials from the
state house to every county in complicity with the whiskey rebels, it
will not be enforced. The liquor men and joint keepers subscribe large
sums to campaigns with the tacit, implied or open understanding of
immunity from prosecution and punishment on the part of candidates
and officials. This has been going from bad to worse for twenty years.
Yet the law is so plain that he who runs may read. How many ever saw
it in print. The revised statutes of Kansas, 1901, Article 14, Section 2462,
reads: "It shall be the duty of all sheriffs, police officers, constables,
mayors, marshals, police judges and police officers of any city or town,
having notice or knowledge of any violation of the provisions of this
act to notify the county attorney of the fact of such violation and to
furnish him names of witnesses within his knowledge by which such
violation can be proven. If any such officer shall fail to comply with the
provisions of this section, he shall, upon conviction, be fined in any sum
not less than $100 or more than $500, and such conviction shall be a
forfeiture
of the office held by such person, and the court before whom such
conviction