SUCCESS OF PROHIBITION IN KANSAS

Western Star, Issue 1349, 27 April 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUCCESS OF PROHIBITION IN KANSAS

AN EARTHLY PARADISE. In the inaugural address of the Governor of the State of Kansas last month, he stated that fully nine-tenths of.the drinking and drunkenness prevalent in Kansas eight years.ago have been abolished, and he affirmed with earnestness aud.emphasis that the State was to-day the most temperate, orderly, sober community of people in the civilised world. The abolition of the saloons had not only promoted the personal happiness and general prosperity of the citizens, but it had enormously diminished crime piled thousands of homes—where vice, and want, and wretchedness once prevailed—with peace, plenty, and contentment, and had materially increased the trade and business engaged in the sale of useful and wholesome articles of merchandise. Notwithstanding the fact that the population of the State was steadily increasing, the number of criminals confined in Penitentiary was steadily decreasing. Many, of the jails were empty, and all showed a marked falling off in the number of prisoners confined. The dockets of the Courts were no longer burdened with long lists of criminal cases in the capl itai district, containing a population iof nearly 60,000, not a single criminal case, was on the docket when the present teSh began. The business of the police courts of the larger cities has dwindled to onefourth of its former proportions, while in cities of the second and third class the occupation of police authorities was practically gone. These suggestive and con., viucing facts appealed alike to the reason and the conscience of the people. They had reconcUed those who doubted the success, and silenced those who opposed the policy of prohibiting the liquor traffic. [Some readers on this side of the Atlantic may not know that this does not apply to the City of Kansas, which is not in the State of Kansas, but on its border, and in he Stale of Missouri.]