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Show ! PROHIBITION'S FAILURE. I . j A rampa ;gn lund ot $3S,.00, it is announced by Chairman Jones of the national committee of the Prohibition party, has already been raised to fur- I ther the cause of the Prohibition candidates in the j coming national campaign. Further than this, h ' --ays that .$3S,0M is more than twice as much as I was ever before received so early in a presidential I campaign, and Chairman -Jones predicts that "the I Prohibition party will cut a wider swath than ever I ! fore."' J -lust now. after a sirenuoiis agitation for local I opnon in many parts of the country, the result of '!) national vote on the question will be watched ! with interest. Will ihe people who vote for village, I township, county or state-wide prohibition also vote the national Prohibition ticket? We think not. I i There can be no question that ihe number of peo- I pi" who are aware of ihe devastation wrought by I intemperance and who see in the great American saloon the prime cause for intemperance is greater I today than over before, but it is doubtful if the I . majorily of these will join the political party known I ' ::s the Prohibition party. So that if the coming I election fails to show large gains for that party, it cannot be taken as an indication of waning in- terest in the cause. f Id 1J00, with Woolcy the standard-bearer, the' ! , Prohibitionists polled 20S.9H votes. Four years later, with Swallow the candidate for president, the total vote was 25;s53, an increase of nearly 50,000 votes, or about 25 per cent. At these elections a number of states did not put presidential electors in the field. In 1900 five states, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missis-sippi, Xeva-da, South Carolina and Wyoming, and in 1004 six. states, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Xevada, South Carolina and Utah, did not take part. It is probable that several of these states will put forward presidential electors this fall, and their vote will indicate a clear gain in the total vote of the nation. , With the records showing nearly a dozen stales voting dry where the question has been put to a popular vote, and with hardly a possibility of more than meager support for the national Prohibition candidates in those ''strongholds," it would seem that the Prohibitionists would awaken to the futility fu-tility of their efforts to carry the country and would devote their whole strength to securing local option laws and a wider spread of the local option sentiment. The possession of $3S,000 as a campaign fund by the chairman of the party does not indicate a possibility of victory. Indeed, the chairman does not claim victory for his cause; he only claims the party will cut a wider swath. But if the ratio of increase in 100S is maintained, the national Prohibition Pro-hibition candidates will poll in the neighborhood of 300,000 votes about a quarter of the number cast for John C. Fremont, the first candidate of the Republican party, in 1S5G. The efforts to elect a national Prohibition ticket are so plainly doomed to failure that many, indeed most, of the friends of temperance are inclined to smile at the seriousness of the leaders of the party. But it may be the national party serves to keep alive the agitation for local option, which has borne such rich fruit in the south, and in this way justifies its existence. It can hardly be said the national party will win even a small portion of what is already prohibition territory. |
