NO THOUGHT OF GIVING UP THE CITIZENS' MOVEMENT

Cortland Semi-Weekly Standard, Friday, February 14, 1896.

DEPARTMENT OF GOOD GOVERNMENT.

NO THOUGHT OF GIVING UP THE CITIZENS' MOVEMENT.

   About two months ago, two or three gentlemen who had favored the citizens’ ticket last year began to express the opinion that such had been the change in the feelings of some of the Republican leaders that a good government Republican ticket could now be nominated and elected. For these weeks these gentlemen have most earnestly advocated that course and declared there would be no citizens’ ticket this year. A few days ago several good government Republicans got together to consider whether the course of these gentlemen had forestalled a citizens’ ticket, and if indeed there was a disposition to favor a party ticket. At this meeting Mr. C. P. Walrad, president of the Good Government, most strongly and unequivocally advocated a citizens’ ticket, as did all the rest present. This meeting, however, was entirely informal and did not assume to decide anything or work out any course of action.

   The meeting last night was called by the citizens’ village committee for the purpose of getting the views of representative good government men of all parties as to a citizens’ ticket and calling the caucuses. There were present twenty-six persons, manufacturers, merchants, physicians, professors and shop men of all political parties. Every man expressed his views. Every man was pronounced in his opinion that the good government movement for the enforcement of law can and must go on, and that it is the popular demand that a citizens’ ticket be nominated again this year. If there was any exception to this view it was that expressed by Rev. Mr. Pearce, who thought it might be well not to put up a citizens’ ticket if a party ticket should be named with well-known good government men as candidates for president and trustees, and if such a ticket should be elected and the officers thus elected should fail to do their best to continue the enforcement of law against gambling, prostitution and the illegal sale of liquor, then next year put up a citizens’ ticket and again sweep the field, and hold it till the reform is secure. But being entirely alone in this sentiment, Mr. Pearce united with the rest to make unanimous the sentiment of the meeting to put a citizens’ ticket in the field. There was a feeling expressed that if a party ticket should be early nominated containing the names of men of undoubted good government sentiments as nominees for president and trustees, it would be well to endorse such nominees in the citizens’ ticket.

   This meeting was unanimous, among other things, in the following views:

That municipal interests and moral reform should not be made subjects of political party strife; that in these local and most important affairs all good citizens of all parties should unite; that the citizens’ movement has accomplished in one year more than was expected by its friends; that public sentiment demands the prosecution of this work; that the men who are trying to “side track,” this movement are, with a few honorable exceptions, the same men who for years have been the friends of the saloons and were last year the open enemies of the citizens’ movement; that wherever there has been made a strong appeal to our people in behalf of law or order, good citizens have been found to be in the vast majority, and that to hand this half accomplished reform over to a political party, or to a faction of a political party, would be to shut out from the movement all who do not happen to belong to that political party.

LIGHT BREAKING IN.

   It is now coming to light that, in the desperate effort to get our best citizens into the movement to rescue the saloons by nominating a candidate to run against Mr. J. W. Keese, men were put on the list of “thirty” who refused to let these names go on that list, and were not present at the meeting, some of whom are going to vote for Mr. Keese. We know two of whom this is true. This shows the animus of the whole rescue movement. Such methods must react upon the heads of the men who employ them. Our better citizens must sooner or later see through these devices and awake to the fact that saloonism is playing a bold game to entrap good people. Mr. Hudson is a good man. But what does he stand for? Not for no-license, for already just as good a man was in nomination pledged to that sentiment. Not for high license, for the excise commissioners cannot change the law on that point. Not for reducing the number of saloons to a few, for the great body of saloonkeepers and their friends would fight him in that case and, with the temperance people and the majority of the liquor men against him he would certainly fail of election overwhelmingly. He is too wise a man to stand up and be knocked down in that way. Plainly, whether he sees it or not, he stands for license in the old style that prevailed here a few years ago, with all its direful results.

THE SEARCH FOR A CANDIDATE.

   We sincerely hope that some such man as Mr. G. P. Walrad or Mr. H. F. Benton can be induced to accept the nomination for president of the village on the Republican ticket. We feel sure, however, that neither of these men will accept. We ask every friend of law and order to scan carefully the movement in bringing such men up. If they were suggested and urged mainly by Republicans who have known sympathies with law enforcement it would be a hopeful sign, but we greatly fear that the most determined and persistent enemies of the reform movement are at the bottom of this effort to put good men forward, and that for no good purpose. If, however, two trustees of right views should be put on that ticket, we should feel far more hopeful that our cause would not suffer.

   As Mr. Benton has said, it is most important that there be elected the right kind of trustees. To give us a good president and a village board unwilling to push the good government work would be a disaster.

Mr. Benton Declines.

CORTLAND, N. Y., Feb. 13, 1896.

   To the Editor of the Standard:

   Sir—From an item in your paper of Feb. 11, I think the people are getting the impression that I would accept the nomination for president of the village.

   While I am grateful for the expressed confidence manifested yet my business is such that I must positively refuse to accept the nomination to such a position for the coming year.

   Respectively yours,

   H. F. BENTON.

"Jan." is a misprint.

PAGE FOUR—EDITORIALS.

The Excise Commissionership.

   Before any voter of the town of Cortlandville decides as to where he will cast his vote for commissioner of excise next Tuesday, there are several facts which he should carefully consider.

   1st. The excise board now stands solidly no-license, every one of its three members having been elected on this issue.

   2d. The election of a commissioner favoring license could therefore have no possible effect upon the granting of licenses in this village for the coming year, even if the office of commissioner of excise should be continued.

   3d. There is every human probability that the Raines bill now before the legislature will pass and receive the governor’s signature. If this bill becomes a law, excise boards will be abolished, the people of the town will vote direct on the question of whether liquor shall be sold within its limits, and if the vote is favorable to selling, the [business] concerns which sell will be compelled to pay a heavy tax, and violations of the law will be prosecuted with a rigor never before known, and at the public expense.

   Under these circumstances it might be asked why either the friends or the enemies of license in this town should nominate a candidate for excise commissioner, so long as there is no promise that the election would have the slightest effect so far as the present granting of licenses is concerned. As to the nomination of Mr. Keese by the no license caucus, it may be said that he is the commissioner whose term is about to expire, that he has been faithful to his pledges, has made an excellent officer and has commanded the confidence and respect of the entire community—of those who agree with him in his opinions as to license as well as those who oppose him. He has deserved the endorsement of a renomination and has received it.

   But more than this and far more important, Mr. Keese stands as a representative of the law prohibiting the sale of liquor in this community, a law which has been and still is being shamefully and defiantly violated. Violations of the Sunday liquor laws even in the city of New York have not been so flagrant and constant as have the unlawful sales of liquor in this village—and every man, woman and child in Cortland knows it. When the town was under license the law was far less respected even than now. Those who had no-license sold just as freely and just as unmolested as those who had, and many, if not all, of those who had license paid no attention whatever to the restrictions of the law, The state of affairs grew to be so scandalous that the people declared emphatically for no-license, and have done so at every town election for the last three years, and last year a village citizens’ ticket was elected on the sole issue of enforcing the laws against the sale of liquor. A determined effort has been made during the past year to enforce these laws, and with greater success than has ever attended any previous efforts—a success which we are free to confess we did not anticipate. Twice before we had seen the people roused to attack the unlawful liquor traffic, and twice, in spite of earnest and conscientious effort, the conclusion had been lame and impotent and the state of affairs had grown steadily worse. But the last year has shown tangible results—over $1,400 turned into the village treasury eight or ten saloons closed, three ex-saloonkeepers working together in one shop, one defiant liquor seller sent to the penitentiary on conviction of a second offense, the sale of liquor materially lessened, and violators of the liquor law generally put in terror lest they should suffer imprisonment as well as fines. These prosecutions, though carried on partially under village authority, have been largely conducted, and the heavy expenses connected with them paid by private individuals, both members of the Good Government club and non-members as well.

   The nomination of Mr. Keese has been made by the men who have been engaged in this honorable, public-spirited and unselfish attempt to enforce the law against a great and insolent, public wrong. He represents in his candidacy this effort more than anything else. His election would not mean simply or chiefly that the residents of this town and village favor no-license, but it would mean that they favor the maintenance and enforcement of righteous, though insulted law; that they believe that the fairly declared will of the people as to the prohibition of the sale of liquor should be respected; that they endorse the action of the men who have contributed time, money and effort, and sacrificed business interests to uphold the cause of good citizenship and good government, This is the appeal which Mr. Keese’s candidacy makes to the citizens of this town, and it is an appeal which ought not to be made to any man in vain—whether an advocate of license or no-license—who believes that, law as law, is entitled to respect and obedience.

   Mr. Keese’s defeat would be regarded by every illegal liquor seller and by every sympathizer with the violation of law as a rebuke to the Good Government movement of the past year, as a declaration by the people that they are sick of the attempt to suppress the evil which at three successive town meetings they have condemned, that they are willing the law, which they themselves have set up, shall be trampled on under their very eyes, and that they are willing this village should return to its former condition, when every one who wanted to sell whisky sold it, and when no one said any one nay.

   The personality of the license and no-license candidates does not enter into this matter in any way, nor does it signify anything that both have respectable and well-meaning citizens among their supporters. The issue is clearly and sharply made, and if the candidates themselves desired ever so earnestly to change it they could not. The force of the situation, the logic of events, make the question for each voter to settle, when he comes to decide as to his vote for excise commissioner, simply this: Shall I cast in my lot with those who believe in upholding, and are striving to uphold, the majesty of the law, or shall I vote with the consciousness that, while some good men are acting with me, I have also as associates every dealer who has violated the liquor law during the past year, every citizen who has sympathized with the violation, and every voter who believes that it is an inalienable right of all mankind to make drink and sell whisky without [law] or hindrance.