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Show ITS SHAMELESS HYPOCRISY. "It is to laugh." Tho chief church organ on Thursday evening look occasion occa-sion to dcclaro its position anew both on politics and on prohibition. It doc3 not consider that it ha3 any business with prohibition as a political issue, since prohibition is now considered by it a3 simply a moral quostion. and it ro-news ro-news its hypocritical affirmation that it is not in politics. Inasmuch as the prohibition pro-hibition question "was reduced to a kind of party 'shibboleth,' " the News declines lo havo anything further to do wiin iu ii, tiia not rclusc, however, to have anything to do with it two years ago when it was a Republican party 'shibboleth," and the News was lo all intents and purposes a Republican party organ. It is only now when it is a Democratic "shibboleth" that the church organ drops it. The position of tho church organ on this question is simply another evidence of its lack of intelligence, its lack of honest purpose, and its boundless hypocrisy. hypo-crisy. Tt finds ilmf n c;in i.:k itory laws crimo persists much the same ns1 before. Murders are committed. Lynchings arc frequent. Prohibitory laws against immorality arc openly defied. de-fied. It might be supposed, if tho Nows were an organ of any kind of do-cency do-cency or morality, that this last reference refer-ence would bo to tho defianco of the laws against polygamy and unlawful cohabitation. Unhappily, however, the News is tho organ of that form of immorality, im-morality, and it simply denounces the rival form which it does not approve. It approves sexual looseness among men but not among women, and that is tho difference botweon the form of immorality im-morality which it professes and defends as contrasted with the other form that it occasionally opposes. Tn defenso of -ita desertion of the cause of prohibition, which it was so hot for a short timo ago, the church organ now cites Iho case of the Stato of Maine, saying that It is well known that it has for years been the battlefield between the two opposing op-posing forces. In spite of prohibit Ion It has hud Its scnndalous record for drunkenness drunk-enness Stranpcrs havo carried awnv the atory of drunkenness and disregard for law and have warned their States acainst adoplliifr the dangerous policy. Iifvcstl-patinpr Iifvcstl-patinpr committees have been sent there by liquor dealers and others and have wired back reports of blind pigs, kilehen bars, and pockut peddlers, and when tho battle was on ncralnst saloons In tho States of the South, a sheriff from Maine went at tho call of the brewera to hold !'P.,na '.l dcl,ision and a snare the prohibition prohi-bition law as a warning for (he States that wore struggling from freedom. Tt proceeds to set forth the same old whine that "the failuro in Mnino was not due to the law itself but to tho failuro lo enforce it." Sapient onel Tho difficulties of enforcing it having been fully stated by the organ when it spoke of blind pigs, kitchen bars, and pocket peddlers, it wobbles to the other extreme endeavoring to keep on both sides of the fence at the samo time. Tho best it can do is to jump tho fence occasionally and appear for prohibition a little while and then against on tho other side. It, now shows that prohibition prohibi-tion does not prohibit, whereas it was but recently shouting the reverse. The significance of all this is not in the hypocritical and sneaking turncoat-ing turncoat-ing of the News but in tho fact that it is never in earnost in any proposition of this kind, but advocates ono thing or another precisely as the exigencies of tho church cause for its claim of supremacy su-premacy as a temporal government may dictate. Just now in this Stato the Democratic party has adopted the prohibition pro-hibition slogan. Statewide prohibition is its cry. This was the News's cry two years ago, while tho News was a Republican organ. The only change that the News has ever refused to make is lo change from being a Republican organ to the Democratic side. It will never nerve tho cuuse of Democracy, but always tho causo of Republicanism, and since prohibition .this year is Democracy De-mocracy in Utah tho News drops prohibition prohi-bition like a hot pokor, and yells that prohibitory laws cannot bo enforced. There is nothing remarkable in all this, of course, mnec the News's elusivo changes of front are well known to those who havo followed its crooked and slimy course. The only object herein is simply to make a record' of tho events of the time, and to show just whero the church organ stands now, as contrasted with whero it stood on this great "moral issuo" (as it now phrases it) such a Bbort while ago. It now claims that tho prohibition question ques-tion is a moral question, and not political, polit-ical, which is self-condemnatory of its course, but still, what can you expect from a shifty humbug that has to chango its position and present ils weathercock front to every wind that blows. |
