Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 23, 1882

Temperance.

Prohibition in Kansas.

A worker in Michigan wrote to Gov. St. John, of Kansas, concerning the report that the prohibitory law of that State was ineffectual to prevent the traffic in liquors and drunkenness. We find a report of the Governor's reply in The Lever, of Detroit, from which we take the following extracts:—

“If Gov. Robinson, before stating that ‘drinking is more common now in Kansas than ever before’ had examined the records of the police courts in the city of Lawrence, near which he resides, he would have found that the last five months under the old license system furnished 214 cases to that tribunal, against only 109 the first five months under prohibition. The city of Newton, in Harvey County, containing about 3,000 population, had not a single case of drunkenness in the police court from the first of May (being the date that the prohibitory law took effect) until the first day of October; and the district court that convened there about that time, for the first time in the history of the county, found not a single criminal case upon the docket. * I have before me a statement signed by all the city officers of the city of Platte in Johnson County, setting forth that under prohibition (which has really been in force there since January 1, 1878) the financial and moral condition of the city has greatly improved; the streets and sidewalks are in much better condition; trade has greatly increased, and that, with a population of at least 2,500, the city has no policemen and needs none; the city marshall alone performing all the police duty, which does not require half his time; that there is rarely a case in the police court, and that the calaboose is without inmates. Any proposition looking to a return to the old system of licensing dram-shops would be defeated by a vote of at least two to one. This statement of the city officers is endorsed by all the ministers and a large majority of the business men of this city, and the county attorney adds that ‘What is said of the success of prohibition in the city of Platte holds good throughout the county of Johnson.’ At Salina a rum-seller was convicted in the district court on thirty-three charges, the fines amounting in the aggregate to $3,500 and costs, and thirty days' imprisonment in the county jail. Do you think that man considers prohibition a failure? He says they are receiving an excellent immigration and the State was never more prosperous than it is to-day. For every saloon-keeper that has left Kansas on account of prohibition, we have received a sufficient number of sober, industrious, law-abiding citizens to build a school-house, and Kansas can afford to exchange saloons for school-houses.”