Prohibition in Georgia.
By J. W. Lee
THE summary way the people of Georgia have of disposing of the whisky question, which so disturbs and perplexes other parts of our country, is refreshing. In many of our sister States it is a most complex and delicate question. So entangled has it become with party issues, so blended with political measures and promises, that many of our best men see no way of settling it than by letting it alone. Among our people it is a very simple question. We have not permitted the politicians to complicate it with Democracy or Republicanism, or with the measures of any party. It stands here upon its own merits. So related is it to the interests of the whole people, and so intimately bound up with their present and future welfare is it, that any political party which should essay a monopoly of it would be thought guilty of seeking to make private and peculiar an issue equally dear to all parties. It is a pity that anywhere this most important social and moral question should be tacked on to a political party. It is too vitally related to the moral and spiritual interests of the people, irrespective of parties, to be forced to suffer on account of political sins. It should not be taken up by any party, either to make amends for past offences or to commend it to the favor of temperance people. Its triumph should be achieved upon its own merits, its defeat not secured nor prevented by the failure or success of a political party. Thus its success would be the measure of temperance sentiment and conviction among the people. Identified with a successful party, its prominence might be out of all proportion to temperance conviction. In that event it had better fail than succeed; for temperance law, unbacked by temperance sentiment, is a dead letter. It tends to bring the whole question into disrepute. On the other hand, if associated with a defeated party, its failure might be no expression of its hold upon the people. Thus discouragement might be brought to its friends with, perhaps, the elements of success all about them, if organized and applied on their own merits. This question must be settled, then, outside of political parties. The friends of prohibition should keep this question so completely out of the realm of politics as that men of all political affiliations and creeds could unite without compromise upon it. In no State should a Republican be compelled to embrace Democracy in order to get at prohibition; nor should a Democrat be forced to take Republicanism in order to be a prohibitionist. In Georgia there are ninety counties out of one hundred and thirty-six with partial or entire prohibition; but the question has never got into politics. No party can claim the credit of the work. We have accomplished it as citizens. Nor do we expect to cease our efforts till the sale of whisky is prohibited in every county in the State. The success of the movement has been so great here, so helpful to trade, to morals, to education, that it is hardly necessary to make an argument in favor of it in places where liquor is sold. Concrete arguments in favor of it are so numerous and commanding about us that we have only to point to those counties where it has been in operation a few years—their factories, their better schools, their improved farms, their increased trade—to settle it. There are counties in the State that, ten years ago, were noted for their ignorance and thriftlessness, which have absolutely been revolutionized in tone, in business, in appearance, by the influence of prohibition. Whenever prohibition is established in a town, first-class men are elected to the positions of mayor and aldermen. Loafers and “dead beats” either move away or go to work. The capital and labor utilized in the whisky business are applied in more profitable and healthy lines of trade. There is no longer any question among our people as to whether prohibition prohibits. We know that it does prohibit, not whisky simply, but vice, idleness, ignorance, and all other evils which go along with the liquor traffic.—Rev. J. W. Lee, in New York Independent.