PROHIBITION IN KANSAS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXIII, Issue 1182, 5 March 1897, Page 3

PROHIBITION IN KANSAS.

(Lecture by Mr Patterson, a Kansas fanner.)

[Cokclttdbd.]

The law prescribed penalties and appointed officers to carry out the law When the law cane round'the*respectable publicans (we found that there were respectable publicans — as decent as you or I) cleaned out their places, refurnished their houses, and did such & tremendous business that they required to extend their premises, and since that time one of them has built a brick hotel costing 75,000 dollars, with 100 rooms in it, and it is doing more business and making more money than the proprietor made when he was selling whiskey. In that hotel I met with my relations and family two days before I left. That former publican, whereas he could not set his foot in any of the farmers houses fief ore Prohibition, was gladly received when he gave up the selling of intoxicants. His wife, no matter how little she deserved it, when she went down the streets with her fine clothes would have poor women pointing the finger of of scorn at her as the relations of the latter, by their degradation weics assisting in the purchase of the former's fine clothes. Mind you, that woman might be as good is any, but she was placed in & false position. When they had the whiskyless hotel we received them joyfully, and that publican's wife now occupies her proper position in society, and her family is welcomed to homes where they were not welcomed before. Beside these respectable publicans there was .another class of men, and we made some great discoveries after Prohibition was carried. We found that the criminal publicans were determined to sell on the -sly. Th*»y secured the services of a lawyer, and the owners of the properties backed them up, and here these unscrupulous people started to defy the law. Then we had some fun. By the time we had got done with them the lawyer had v all the money the publican had possessed and a good whack of the publican's property, sometimes all of it, and then when he had got all the property and had lost his character, he would have to leave the state, because the man that fights against the law is regarded as a criminal in Kansas. The people in the United States ars a law abiding people, and all will try to enforce the law, The result was that these lawyers

who championed the cause of the disreputable publicans, together with the owners of the houses, all came to grief together. We always investigated the pedigree of a lawyer who took up a case and endeavored to thwart the law, and vre found these lawyers (I am talking of Kansas lawyers) were not a creditable class. A lawyer of this class was usually born on a farm, and as he grew up his poor mother would often go late at night to his bedroom to see if he was there, and would find him still absent, and she could not tell at what time ho would come home. He hated farm work and would not plough at all. The parents came to the conclusion that if he was kept at home he would not reform, and to save him they resolved to send him to a col' hge and make a minister of him They thought that if be was a minister his end would perhaps ba a good one. Bat after a while they found it was very expensive because he was always wanting new books, arid very nearly every week there was an imperative demand for money, to get books or he would never become a minister. When his mother visited him she found he was without books, and he said he would not be a minister. His mother then wanted him to become a doctor, for then he would be of some use in the world, but his evil genius had control of him and was determined to make a total wreck of hjm, for he said that he would be nothing but a lawyer. The mother was very much cast down when she heard this, but she hoped at any rate he might become a judge. When his time was up he came into town, and hired a painter to paint his name in bold letters on the window, and he called himself a solicitor. Now it is the case with criminals that when they are in danger they employ a * criminal lawyer.' Being a * greeny 'he would not be employed for months. Once he did get a client he f skinned ' him clean. If a man stole a cow and the man that lost it hired the lawyer to prosecute he would do so, but if the thief got to the lawyer first and paid the money, the lawyer would prosecute the man who lost the cow. These were the kind of lawyers they had in Kansas. The moment that the liquor law went into force in Kansas all the respectable publicans put their houses in order, but others remained crooked. You see the lawyers and publicans joined together, and then we found out a lot of things. After some years we found that when a man was robbed in a public house it was the disreputable publican who was the wicked orie. The publican might have a bill to meet, and if he saw the money in a man's pocket he would see that be got drunk enough to have his pockets turned inside put in the morning. No one suspected the licensee. These fellows in Kansas were smarter than they are here, When a publican tried here to lamb a man down, the robbed ;one wanted the money back *ad sued the publican and got judgment, and when the fellow went away to another public ■ house and got roaring dfijok there, fcf! fad pot |ot very far

before he found he was having his ears cut off. This isa .very dreadful thing. I can tell you this, that if that man without the ears was in the United States, and in any state where Prohibition was being fought, the temperance organisations would secure his services as a bitiod-curling example of the shocking atrocity of the liquor demon, especially as he had no ears. The effect of these things is Very wonderful, and I have no doubt before the election takes place more victims will be sacrificed to the craving for drink. A man when drunk fell between the wharf and a ship at Auckland ; two lines were put in the paper. With us when a man met his death when drunk we thought it one of the most dreadful things possible. 1 think that it arises from this fact, that we have a decoration day, when all people of the United States give up work and go and gather flowers to decorate the graves of the 'illustrious dead. Of course before we got prohibition vre lost six men every day through drink. Here you have only three every day, but t think this is a terrible number when you look at the cases individually. A young man, a compositor in the office of the Evening Post, Wellington, where he had been working eight years died. At the inquest it was found that he had gone from hotel to hotel until 1 o'clock on Sunday morning. He met a man named Murphj , and they sat down on a doorstep and finished a bottle of whiskey between them, and Henkins (the compositor) was not able to get up. He was got into a cab and was driven round to his fine residence in Ouba street, where his brother and sister were waiting, but when the cabman was getting him out he said he either was in a fit or dead. The latter was the case. This was a dreadful affair.

Up at Manaia we have a woman the daughter of a clergyman, and she is a splendid pianist. She is a magnificent teacher. Young women have been learning to play who have made no progress, have gone to this woman and have been finished off in no time. She is highly intelligent. Going along the road one day, I found her lying in the gutter j it had been raining and the water was within an inch of her mouth. I tried to get her out and asked a passerby to help me, but he refused. He said the more you do for her the worse she will get. I got the woman out and in company with the local clergyman I visited her next day. We commenced talking about various matters, and I mentioned to her about Kansas having prohibition, but the moment we came near the question at all she said, * I know what you have come here for, but you don't know a thing about it. I wish yon had my head this morning. Tf you want my man or myself to become a sober man or woman you must keep the horrid stuft out of the country.' Here is another victim. A man, the junior partner of a firm in Glasgow, was given to intemperance. He was engaged to a girl who told him that he must keep sober for one year. So he came to New Zealand to k«ep sober. He was not long here before he got on the • booze ' and he was turned out by his friends. They built him a whare and he is nowsplitting firewood. Whenever he gets the money he gets on the spree. He then takes the pledge and cri^s like a child. He often says that if we had prohibition he would be able to act like a man. He said ♦ You never knew a man to stop drinking once he started. No one will be happier thnn I when the drink is abolished.' At Parihaka I stopped at the hotel on this side of that pah. It is strange to find the white men in New Zealand raising money and giving it to the Maoris. We don't do that in the United States. Wo make the Indians do their own work. Ifc seems stupid to find white men working for the Maoris, A Mr Fisher the Government Agent pays the Maoris at Parihaka and the result is that round the hotel on pay days are a hundred Maoris. At midnight those who were sober enough to go, went home, and the rest were scattered about the yard dead drunk. Their crimes and beastly orgies and debauchery are terrible and a disgrace to New Zealand. In New Plymouth I saw a lot of young men standing about three Maori women who were helplessly drunk. I was in company with a J.P., and when we approached the crowd the J.P. gave come of them a kicking and took the women before the bench. The Magistrate was going to fine the woman the usual ss, when the J.P. indignantly declared ' not a penny,' and said that the man who supplied the woman with the liquor deserved to be hanged. That is the sentiment in New Zealand. It is a clear case to me that you cannot regulate the liquor traffic. We tried it for a whole generation. It has been tried everywhere, and there is no more possibility of regulating the drink traffic than there is regulating the slave trade. There were clergymen who defended the slave trade. Horace Greely was a great Abolitionist and he owned the most powerful paper in the States. Whenever anybody saw arguments in the papers in favor of slavery they cut them out /and sent them to Greely to answer. But he said it would be a nice thing answering all these lies, so he got a stamp on which were engraved the words 'This is a He/ and whenever argqtaents w favor

of slavery were sent to him he branded them with this stamp. Every argument that is made on behalf of an evil is a He. Now when we succeeded in getting Prohibition some significant

incidents occurred, and I will tell you of one or two. In our town we had ahout 600 minere and they were paid monthly, and the pay roll came to about 50,000 dollars. On the first day after Prohibition it was amusing watching the miners wandering tip and down the street like lost sheep. They had their pockets full of money. One of them went to a furniture store to try and empty his pockets of some of the money as he was miserable with it. He bought a table, and when he had got the table on his head he told the man to put six chairs on the top of the table, and then be said put a couple of little chairs on as well for the little ones. He then paid the money. By this time a great" crowd had gathered round him and the moment he had got out of the door others entered to follow his example, and before night time all the furniture in both stores in the town were emptied. Why it would take the whole night to tell incidents that occurred. There were men there who bought clothing for their children — a thing they had. never done before — and they never knew their children were so good looking until they saw them well dressed. But when they came to dress up the old woman ! One man said to his wife, l Jenny, you look as well as the day before I married you,' This was said after she was dressed up in the clothes bought with the money, which would have gone to the public house before the advent of Prohibition. The poor body had li?ed all these years in- rags, and he was now astonished to find that she looked as well as she did the day before he married her. When the man himself got his new clothes on he could venture where he bad never dared venture before. And I have seen the respectable publicans who have large tents and they bring out these and other materials for the use of picnickers, and one of the most pleasing incidents at one of these picnics was, a poor woman who had often gone to the publican's door begging for her husband to come home, shaking hands with the publican's wife and telling her how changed a condition her's was, to which the publican's wife replied that she thought the same of her own position, But there were a thousand circumstances showing the improved condi-. tion of the people under Prohibition. Everywhere we went we were finding new proofs. A grocer whispered into our ear • I have got 120 dollars I had never expected to get,' because those men who are in debt could find nothing to give them greater pleasure than to pay their debts if they were able. I knew a grocer with L3OOO out, carrying an overdraft of L7OO. He sees men spending money in the pnblichouse instead of paying him, which fills him with disgust. This is a common case and everybody knows it. It is the same all over New Zealand. Instances were constantly cropping up, sometimes in the newspapers and sometimes told at public meetings, of the wonderfully changed and improved condition of the State under Prohibition. When you come to see me I will introduce you to some of the business men and you will find them the most determined men in Kansas against the liquor traffic coming back again. They are the men who have, made it hot for the sly grog-sellers. They just went for them with a determination beautiful to see. But in other directions benefits came in. Before Prohibition came in we had tried for years to do away with gambling. It became like a cancer. In looking beck at it I think that the more we preached at it the greater the evil grew. I believe it aroused curiosity and encouraged boys to gamble. If they happened to win, their doom was sealed. When we got Prohibition established we started with a vengeance to get rid of gambling, and we were going to clean it out. Everything we could think of had been tried. We had tried fire. There was a young women's secret society, and they would occasionally go and bum down the grand stand the night before the races md those favourable to racing had to have men posted round the grand stand for several days prior to the meeting, in order to protect the stand. We had started out to destroy gambling, and when we started out we could not find it for it was as clean gone as if a cyclone had swept it clean out of existence, for gambling cannot exist without thb public house. Gambling must have a headquarters and a place of resort, and you will always find a public house in the vicinity of a racecourse, and it is there the winners adjourn to have their * blow-outs.' In Kansas they would advertise cheap rates and fares and plenty of men would go there with a few pounds in their pockets, but they went away without their money. The professional gamblers made the money by -getting the farmers and others to go the race meetings and then 'skinning' them when they had got them there. , In fact we were polluted by the gamblers. We believe that the money spent in gambling used to equal that spent in whiskey. Ido not know how much is spent here. Some say one million, some say- two, but it does nob matter which. Gambling destroys the character as well as ruins the practitioner, and it does not -fttftor bjr specious devices they

try to continue horse racing. Your race horses would not be worth a penny in Kansas. I find that people, when they hear that a man has a race horse say that he -will soon be ruined. It was the same with us. We have got agricultural shows and we offer good] handsome prizes for the boy who vrii raise a good team for the wagon \ he will got a prize for that and bo on. Wp raise tha kind of horses that suit the farm, but not the swindling kind. Take ray word for it, as soon as you get rid of public houses gambling is gone. There was another thing we were terribly worried about. Our taxes were constantly increasing and we were always growling. They, bad to enlarge the poor house and the prison until it became intolerable. We had tried economy and had thrown old man out and tried new but it was of no use. The taxes would increase and we required more accommodation for the lunatics, and machinery for poverty and crime. When we got Prohibition the enormous amount of money spent in drinking and gambling was brought back into the legitimate channels of trade. People were leaving the poor house. Poverty is the parent of vice, arid vice is the parent of crime, but now that the people had plenty of money they do not need to commit crime. In a civilized country you will find that when a man and his wife are well paid for their labor, and are well clothed and housed and fed, they won't become burglars and thieves. The way to clothe and feed them well is not to have the money of the people spent on drinking and gamblii.g, and then you will have good houses and a well-fed people with no tendency to poverty and crime. We found it so all over the State, and when the last Governor retired he enumerated the benefits derived from Prohibition, and be declared that more than half the gaols were empty and many of them were rented by farmers as uraneries. There are 105 counties in Kansas and each has its poor-house. Tho poor-house is put to its proper use now, and we are going to change the name of it as it is now used by the aged poor people only. The Governor declared that more than half of the gaols were empty and the poorhouses were rented to the fanners to live in. You hear about Prohibition not being enforced in Kansas, but that is a lie. I will tell you what the actual condition of things is. By the way the law is constituted it is impossible to v olate it. In my county there are 25,000 people. It is a sample. We have a county attorney and a sheriff, and we elect our policemen, and they arepaid by the •piece.' Our Judges are paid by piecp, and so are sheriffs, who are paid by fees and mileage. The county attorney is paid L 25 for every conviction he get 3, and where a man is found selling liquor jiispjace is seized to pay for the costs of the prosecution, so a man in Kansas will not allow a building of his to be occupied by anyone unless he is well acquainted with him, and knows that he will not attempt the sale of liquor in that building, and if he does rent it to a stranger it is only on receiving a bond to guard himself against, loss in case the "occupant does break the law by the sale of liquor. If there is any man here who thinks he can sell whisky in Kansas I would advise him to try. The county commissioners lately begrudged paying the gaoler his salary as there had been no prisoners for two months, and they passed a resolution that his office should be suspended until he got a prisoner. If a man tried to sell whiskey in Kansas ho might strike one or two people, after a lot of trouble, who would like some whiskey, but these people of Kansas are not starving for whiskey, and if he comes along with a bottle under his arm he may find that he has made a mistake. He does not go far before he does make a mistake, and he is ' collared ' and made a prisoner by some farmer or laborers who are paid mileage and fees for running him in. The constable does the same, and then when the sheriff gets the prisoner he enters up the matter and puts in all his fees, and the gaoler is glad because he is gaping to have a job, and the county attorney gets 25. dollars for every count against that man. Consider that man's predicament and you will see plainly that when a man tries to spII liquor under these conditions he is an idiot. It is the same in the other counties. I will only mention once more the remarkable difference that I perceive between the. moral susceptibility of the Kansas and New Zealand people in regard to a man dying when he is drunk. It is a very dreadful thing, but I don't think your responsibility for the deaths taking place at present is so great, because the matter has hot been brought before you, but this having now been done you are responsible if you do not do what you can to do away with this evil. No matter what a man is, I have found no man in New Zealand to deny that he is his brother's keeper. The Knights of Labor declare that an injury to one is the concern of all, and a whole lot of secret organizations are permeated with the same feeling, and I find that every man and woman acknowledges that they are their brothers' and their sisters' keeper. They only want an opportunity of demonstrating and exercising the fact by looking ajter, these helpless people,

You must take it for granted that drunkenness is a disease, and the drunkards are they who want Prohibition more than anybody Hsp. The men who don't want Prohibition are generally lazy men, those who have not a strong intellect, and who have some kind of ah idea that if they could not get whiskey, they would get the cramps. That was an idea that many of our people had before we got Prohibition. Theae were people who in every other respect were quite sensible, and a fpw days after the whiskoy was gone tfiey began to think they felt cramps. A happy circumstance then occurred. This was that the only way they could get whiskey was in an unlawful manner, and these illegal suppliers that we had at the first, disappeared very soon after because that they furnished the most horrible stuff under the sun. The suppliers thought that any stuff would do. One of my neighbours got some on the sly and made a terrible noise about it, and he asked me if I knew sulphuric acid when I saw it. Another man killed a cnlf of his by giving it a dose of this stuff to cure it of some complaint. It was so bad that it got the name of 'rot-gut.' It was horrible stuff and completely weaned the Kansas people from the use of liquor. 1 think that the use of this stuff was one of the most providential things that happened. When you are trying to reform an evil many circumstances will assist you and an incident that happened in Hawera, if it had happened in the United States, would have produced a profound sensation. After the groat civil war in the United States all the people everywhere were rejoicing to think that the carnage had ceased and those now alive would be safe, and they were being welcomed home, when Abraham Lincoln was slain in Ford's thsatre by an assassin. The news so filled the people with consternation that everything was stopped and all work suspended. Everyone put on mourning and nothing would satisfy them but that the body of the great President should be carried throughout United States for the people to see. For twenty years, notwithstanding all the infamy of the Republican party, the people voted steadily for that party on account of the impression made upon them by the viewing of the body of their beloved President. For twenty years, they voted against the Democratic party that contained his murderer. There is a friend up in Hawera, and I was telling him that there were no barmaids in the United States, all this class of work being done by men. He said that a woman was ns safe behind a bar as anywhere. I told him that I did not know whether she was safe or not, but I would not like a relation of mine to bo there. Some days afterwards I read a letter in the paper, and that letter was writteu by a highly educated person — a young lady of 22 — and was addressed to her grandmother. It appeared on enquiry that her mother had been a widow and had married again, which was probably the reason that she had made her grandmothet her confidant. In this letter which w&s written, and which was produced at the inquest, it was shown that she bad tried to pioson herself two days before. One young woman passing through the room when the letter was being written saw the bottle on the table at her right hand. It is a terrible thing to think of that young woman with the poison at her right hand, with which she intends to destroy herself, and that she had the stuff in her possession for two days, and then to read that one sentence, c Hotels were my ruin.' I was terribly chocked when I saw that letter, and I went to my friend and said ' I thought you told me that all young women in hotels were safe.' We went up to see the body. It was the second dead person that I had ever seen, and I do not remember to have ever seen a living woman who looked so beautiful as that dead young woman. I tell you what it is : If that dead young woman's body was carried from end to end of the colony here as Abraham Lincoln was in my country with the above sentence printed on the coffin, I don't think that there is a woman in New Zealand who would vote against Prohibition. But there are many men also, for I think the men of New Zealand are as chivalrous as any men on the face of the earth. One sign I see here that we had in Kansas, and I think that is a pretty good sign. Before wp came to the final tight the Democrats denounced the Republicans as a parcel of thieves and plunderers, but when the Republicans came round they told the opposite tale. Since I cames hore I found Mr Duthie and Captain Russell and another man with a handle to his name, and they came round, and I heard them saying that this Government of New Zealand was the corruptest Government on earth, and that they were a lot of plunderers. I thought it was very dreadful when I heard all this, but when 1 he^rd the other side speaking they said that their opponents were a lot of liars. I thought myself that the truth n<ij;ht He somewhere about the middle. What happened in Kansas was that near the close of the campaign both stories were believed by the people, and then the politicians on both sides got alarmed beyond measure, and were afraid that the people would believe both of them, and then ta& payfciea would be. to

blame, and the consequence was that they began to make all kinds of professions, and each promised reform from within their own party. It happened that there was an old woman who kept chickens 1 ; slie could make them lay when no one else could. She came to a meeting one night. We were astonished to see her on the platform with two eggs in her hand. She said that ono was a Democratic egg and the other was a Republican one. We have here a, lot of reform promised. She hpra hroke the Republican pgry when there was an awful smell. She said {Do you think you could reform that party from within.' When she got the other egg up she said it was the Democratic egg, and when she broke that one I discovered that you could smell two distinct and separate stinks at the same time. She then said 'Do you think you could reform that party from within. If you want genuine reform you must vote the Prohibition ticket straight, and get a fresh egg, and then you will be allright.'