Twice A Week Plain Dealer

The Moral Feature of the Liquor Prosecutions

In a recent issue of the Howard County Times, Mrs. Adams demonstrated to her satisfaction that liquor prosecutions were a source of financial profit to the county. So is horse stealing and burglarizing stores to the individual who pursues that vocation until found out and caught. Then it becomes a source of anxiety, mortification, sorrow, grief and humiliation.

The clergy of the county who have been mixed up in these disgraceful proceedings, and the temperance league by recent exposures have arrived at this stage and have not even the assurance of money therefrom, as a balm for their wounded and lacerated spirits.

It has been developed that a conspiracy to extort money was formed by the temperance league, and reports implicate Rev. Lynn of Lime Springs. Attorney Acres of Decorah and their hired witnesses imported from the slums of Minneapolis as parties to this unholy triple alliance of liars, knaves and hypocrites.

The man who was arrested and fined for being drunk and disorderly, was visited at the jail by Rev. Lynn and D. K. Jones and perhaps their attorney. He besought from them some $11 to pay the fine and costs adjudged against him that he might be released from jail. They declined to pay his fine and costs, and now an indictment is hanging over his head, procured by one of the Pharmacy board, with a fair prospect before him of reposing in the county bastile until the next term of court, when a fine probably awaits him, with more trouble ahead. With this gloomy prospect before him he divulged one of the money making schemes, which so gratifies Mrs. Adams.

These hired witnesses were to receive, each, four dollars a day and expenses if convictions were procured, if not, only their expenses, the portion of the fine going to the informant to be divided equally between this man of God (?) and this mercenary attorney.

Was there ever a more villainous, corrupt and diabolical scheme concocted than this for robbing Dr. Connolly, J. G. Love and Fred B. Lowry, through the subornation of witnesses procured for the special purpose of these suits?

And of the informant in the proceedings against Dr. Clemmer, not a much better record of moral character can be written. Several years since his wife was sent to the Insane Asylum at Independence for treatment where she died. He was telegraphed the sad news and asked what disposition should be made of the remains. He replied by telegram to bury her there, he remaining here and refusing to allow his son to go to see his dead mother, whose bones repose in an unmarked grave in the potters field.

Circumstances might exist to justify such a course, for instance the poverty of the party whose wife had thus died. In this case no such palliating circumstances existed. This member of the temperance league then owned and now owns a fine home in Cresco and a farm of 160 acres within a mile and a half of the corporate limits worth from $40 to $50 per acre.

This is a faithful portraiture of this professed christian (?) and worker in reforming the morals of the community and softening their hearts toward the relief of suffering humanity.

The temperance league and its co-adjutors are entitled to all the glory and to all the odium of the distinguished associates we have mentioned.

During more than sixty years of life we have been a close observer of reforms and reformers of the class described and have never seen any good results from their work. Moral reforms that rest solely upon criminal law for the correction of evils growing out of human conduct, as an agency in the development of the higher attributes of a noble manhood has universally resulted in failure and evil, while appeals in the language of persuasion and conviction have been potent factors in every great reform throughout the world.

No greater calamity can befall a country than what these people seek to establish—a system of spies and informers, with courts organized to convict. With the system fully established no man's life, liberty or property is secure.