OCR Text |
Show ! OUR POSITION ON PROHIBITION. A horrible rumor last week reached the ears of the manager of The Intermountain Catholic that l our paper must be a warm friend of the saloon, ' since it had not one word to say in support of "Pro- - hibition," when the resolution in its favor was up 1; for discussion in the Legislature. We are emphatically em-phatically opposed to prohibition; to vote for it is - to vote for a dream. We honestly believe that ' fanaticism oil the question of temperance is a i sure sign of failure. Particularly when this fanat icism is partially assumed to convince our neigh-i neigh-i hours how strictly we observe the ten command ments and the "hoi ier than thou." It is an ob- j : noxious phase of that form of spurious enthusi-; enthusi-; asm which induces some of us to indulge, at times, in a kind of spread-eagle patriotism. There are well-meaning people whose rendering of the Com-1 Com-1 mandments is "Hate whiskey and love the Ameri- f fan eagle' This is a mood. It will pass in time ; . . nd lead to a more reasonable frame of mind. j j Our position on 1 lie liquor question is this: I J We are in favor of High License, the higher the s better; of granting a saloon license only to a man f pood standing in the community and whose ap-- ap-- plication for a license is signed by ten educated and j respectable rate-payers; of making the saloon decent de-cent by putting it under the control of decent men. I , . Many of our saloon proprietors are as clean, decent and respectable as any class of men in the State of Utah. But iherc are others who ought to be in the penitentiaries. These are the men who have no consciences; a disreputable and degraded t'lass whose unclean lives and repeated violations of civic ordinances, have made the saloon a re- ' proach and prohibition a dismal necessity. Be tween the members of the City Council who permit per-mit these men to dishonor the liquor trade and the scoundrels themselves the line of decent separa-iion separa-iion is 'almost obliterated. The honest and self- :- respecting licensed victualler holds these violators ' of the law, these keepers of low groggeries and dives, in as great contempt as do doctors and clergymen the wretched derelicts who disgrace the i medical profession, the priesthood and the ministry. Again, wc arc in favor of reducing the number of saloons in 'our city, of establishing a board of license commissioners composed of three independ ent and honorable men. and of appointing an inspector in-spector Tho should report lo the commissioners hviec a month. The by-laws of this city and Ogden framed for the regulation of the liquor traffic are not enforced ; they were not intended to be enforced. They are I i mockery, a delusion and a snare. What assur- j - 1 ; - -v ' :. ance have we that prohibition will be effective i We contend that bartenders should be licensed, for bar-lenders bar-lenders frequently break the laws without the consent con-sent or knowledge of the proprietor, who suffers for his bartender's rascality. (ood liquor, like good tea and coffee, is a gift of God. It may be used or abused. If a human creature is so little of a man that he must abuse it, if he uses it at all, let him strive to make himself him-self more of a man. The sin lies in the action of the mans will, not in the liquor. We understand that this is well enough in theory; the-ory; but it is cold comfort to the mother who suffers suf-fers from the brutality of a drunken husband, to the children who feel the scorn of the world upon them, to the sisters who suffer pangs worse than death from the vice and selfishness of a besotted brother. Nevertheless, the theory is true. Any law which, in conformance with public opinion, makes for high license and tends to lessen the temptation temp-tation to drunkenness by decreasing the number of saloons will meet with our co-operation and support. sup-port. But prohibition is only a form of abortive fanaticism, a delusion of volatile enthusiasts who: '"Condone the sins they feel inclined to. By damning those they have no mind to." There are three deadly sins in the moral theology the-ology of the prohibitionists, particularly the female fe-male prohibitionists: Card playing, drinking and Sabbath breaking. Our Lord tells us, as recorded in the fifteenth chapter of St. Mathew, the things that defile man or woman, and in the commission of these sins the American people stand pre-eminently guilty. Protestant ministers, fearing to give offence of-fence to their listeners, carefully avoid referring to ihe fifteenth chapter of St. Mat hew and the shameful sins denounced by Our Lord and to which Americans, young and old, arc abandoning themselves. them-selves. We have no sympathy with that form of fanaticism fanat-icism which drinks strong coffee, claret and champagne cham-pagne at its own table, but raises its voice and wails over the unhappy miner, or laborer, or drudge, who uses coarser stimulants. We have lived in countries where sumptuary laws were passed ! against all forms of innocent amusement on Sundays Sun-days and, returning to the same lands many years afterwards, these laws were indeed still unrepealed, but ball-playing, horse-racing and prize-fighting had supplanted the innocent Sunday amusements and the law was as dead as a corpse. A .law that is not or cannot be enforced, or that casts out one devil and opens the door to 6tvcn other devils more wicked than the first, is not a law framed by experience, unimpassioncd judgment or common sense. |