Is It a Victory? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 13, 1901

Is It a Victory?

By Editor

—Is the anti-canteen law a victory? We wish most earnestly that it may prove to be; that the action of Congress might prove to be more than a spasm of righteousness. The Union Signal has this to say: “A feature of the anti-canteen victory which is a chief cause for rejoicing is the proof it gives that our nation recognizes the supreme authority of righteousness. On the side of the liquor traffic in this contest was almost unlimited wealth, controlling hundreds of thousands of votes. On the other side were multitudes of earnest men and women, who, as it now appears, made known their wishes in a manner so peremptory that legislators felt forced to comply with them. So long as righteousness can wield such power in this nation against the organized powers of evil, we need not fear that we have entered upon our national decay.”

But many of the congressmen fear to lose votes. As one of them remarked in 1893, when the Sunday question was up, “They will knife you at the polls,” that is, if one refused to vote for Sunday-closing. Many feel the same way over the canteen question. Fear of defeat at the polls has a tremendous effect on the average congressman in the cause of either good or evil. If for a good cause, his conversion is short-lived. But the anti-canteen law does not seem to be a victory if the following, from the same page of the Union Signal, is true:—

“Mida’s Criterion [liquor organ] boasts of the successful nullification of the anti-canteen law by Attorney-General Griggs, and continues: ‘An equally ingenious lawyer could get around the new provision.

There is no penalty for violating this law. It is not self-operative, but calls for action by the Secretary of War, before it becomes effective. Neither does it cover giving away liquor or bartering it, as ordinary liquor laws do.’ These utterances are suggestive of the evasions of which the liquor power and its emissaries are capable.”

Of what good is such a law? And how does it prove anything better for the country?