Democrats And Prohibition

The Register hasstudiously refrained 'rom mentioning any party in connecion with the local option campaign, because properly this is a non-partisan movemeni. Those who have endeavored to drag in party feeling and feare nto this campaign have souls too small o get into a thimble, and do it to help he saloo-a more than party. It hae been etated,- we cannot vouch for its orrectness,- that a so-called Democrat ïas gone into one or two townshipe cracking the party lash over the citiens of Democratie persuasión to induce hem to vote for the saloon. Now, if we c&red to discuss the quesion, we think we could show that the Democratie party, as a party, has quite as much at Btake in getting this prohijition question settled as any other party. We don't care to discuss it, however. Any person who goes about calling the ocal option law a " Republican dodge" s working in theinterests of his whisky nd not of the Democratie party. That s plain. Many of the best Democratie citizens have and will support prohibition. We ould name scores of them throughout he county. Judge O'Hara's recent remarkable addrees on prohibition to his ellow citizens in Berrien county is a ampie of Democratie thought on this question. The judge hits right from the houlder. He begs his fellow Demócrata o join in forever extinguishing the raffle. He eays: "I, myself, have a brother whom I oved and nowlove; love him perhaps nore than my other brothers because ie was bom a cripple. That brother a mere boy, was week after week supplied with liquor, although I begged that it e not sold to him. That was in Berrien ?prings; and althongh I have reason to o believe that the local dealers did not directly sell to him after they had been xpressly ordered not to do so, this vaunted license system afforded unretrained facilities for the continued purhase by him of liquors, and those now begging for mercy at the hands of the lectors of this county, indirectly, if not iirectly, for the sake of his little earnngs, made him a dronk ard and cacsed litn to leave this county in temporary difgrace, and return to the home of my arents. A bright, loving, honest, am)itious boy when he left home, he reurned, three yearg later, a drunken cripple." Re6pecting soine of the miserable ar;uments used, the judge says: " Prohibition is a success even though here be a thousand so-called 'irresponsible dealers.' And as to the great bugaboo of responsibility for damages béng secured by our present laws, teil me, pray, bow many dollars have been so collected in Berrien county ï On the other hand, how many deaths, how mach misery, how many gons and daughters sent to prison and to heil The miserable bribe offered you in the way of taxes- is there a man in Berrien county who does not know that for every half thns realized the saloons cost the taxpayers more than a full dollar? " An appeal will be made in Niles, St. Joseph and other villages to merchante mecbames, laborera and others to vnti against prohibition on the ground that it will enlarge the business (?) of such places- that the trade of Cass county and of onr own county will be diverted from ü8 unless we have whisky. "There may be a few merchants influenced by this, and perhaps they may satisfy God that their children needed the few paltry dollars they expected in return for tbeir vote, bút, mechanics and workingmen, if on the 28th day of this month there shall stand at any polling place in this county a man asking you to vote for whisky, ask him nat the 6aloon-keeper has ever done for you ; remember that it has been the curse of Ireland; that in your own village poor women and children, American, Germán, English, and Irish, have been widowed and orphaned by it- that once honest boys and virluons girls your playmates, now either languish in pnson or walk the slreets because of a parent's drunken cruelty - remember, perhaps, that it has hlightwl your own home- think of all this, think of your manhood, your wife- of your children, think of the wives and little ones living in Casa, and of the interest they, too, have in the ' Cass county trade.' Think of all this, and epurn the man asking yon to vote against prohibition - spurn him as you would a dog." Judge O'Hara makes very grave charges against the saloon-keepers of his vicinity, claiming that they asked him to perjure himself to help some saloon-keepers who had voted for him. The Demócrata of Washtenaw who vote for prohibition will have good examples in their party.