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Show "TUE "FAMILY SKELETON. B Judging from the rather humiliating experience en- B countered by the Progressives at their banquet on tho B :fi2ih inst., it would appear that "reading a man out of tths party" has its disadvantages. Wo hold no brief f or B "Representative Raleigh, but we do admire his frankness B ,-ana liis disposition to tell the truth. In fact, about the B -worst thing can be said about him is that he got mixed up B "an "bad company. B , It may be that Mr. Raleigh broke the strict letter of tho platform pledge when he voted against the prohibition V rbill. On tho other hand, and irrespective of the merits tot the prohibition question itself, it may also be the case tfiiat somebody was playing double. At least, to all ap- , clearances the prohibitionists have had a skeleton con- B 'Bk BBB 'r'BBBBBBB coaled in the family closet, and the gentleman from Salt Lake kicked it out in self defense. When the resolution was submitted before the conference, confer-ence, purporting to read him out of the party, Mr. Raleigh had the following to say: I "You have the right to read me out of the party, but before you adopt the resolution I am going to tell you why I voted against the prohibition bill. In the first place your leaders came to me, to be plain, to round up the brewery and saloon vote. You made certain promises prom-ises which you did not keep, but which I kept. I not only went to the saloons in Salt Lake, but went to Midvale, Sandy and Bingham, and did workk for the Progressives. "Put me on the pedestal as the goat of the operations of the party, and shoot me full of holes if you like. The leaders of this party asked me to round up the saloon vote on certain promises. I went out and collected money from the saloons, and I. got more than 100 automobiles which are owned by the saloon men of this county to work for you for four days. You spent the money and you used the automobiles. I can call the men here by name who made the promises to the saloon men of this county. "You may go back on your promises, but I stood by mv friends and voted against the state-wide prohibition bill, and would do it again. There is another time coming, and you can't get around the fact that you used the automobiles auto-mobiles and the money, and then double-crossed the men who stood by you." Although the resolution was finally adopted, the charges preferred by Representative Raleigh have not been refuted. This being the case, we would suggest that the proper thing to do would be to read the above statement state-ment into the legislative record, in justice to the man who had the courage to stand by his given word regardless of personal consequences. Moreover, it might serve to inform in-form future generations just what sort of a double-dealing outfit it was that succeeded in finally writing the prohibition prohi-bition law into the statutes. But, after all, the information that Mr. Raleigh furnishes furn-ishes is not at all surprising. A similar situation arose two years ago, only it had a different angle. At that time the Progressives were pledged by their platform to support a prohibition measure. But certain of their leaders, lead-ers, for some reason or other, bent every effort to retard the progress of the measure before the legislature and delay.its passage to the latest possible date. They were fairly successful in their undertaking, as the records will show. And yet these same individuasl were a party to the scheme the other day to read a man out of the party, whose only offense was that he chose to keep faith with a certain element of the electorate, whose support made possible his election. Goodwin's Weekly. o |