Autobiography of Charles Clinton Nourse / Prepared for use of Members of the Family

by Charles Clinton Nourse

CHAPTER XIX

About Prohibition

In the month of November, 1889, the democratic party of the state of Iowa, for the first time since the election of Governor Grimes in 1854, succeeded in electing their candidate for governor; to-wit, Horace Boies. This was brought about by a singular combination between the railroad and the saloon interests of the state. I have already given some account of the effect upon the question of prohibition of the foolish policy pursued by the pretended friends of temperance in securing from the supreme court of the state a decision against the right to manufacture alcohol within the limits of the state for the purpose of export, and also the foolishness and wickedness of certain pretended friends of prohibition in instituting fraudulent prosecutions with a view to making costs and fees for their own personal profit. During the administration of Governor Larrabee the railroads of the state had become very restive under the control exercised by the Railroad Commissioners of the state under the law of 1888. In the month of August, 1888, some thirty suits were commenced in the district court of Polk county against the Rock Island, Northwestern, and "Q" railroads for penalties incurred in failure to make their reports to the Commissioners as required by the statute. The railroads of Iowa had become a very potent political power. We had five railroads extending from the Mississippi to the Missouri river, and in every county of the state in which these roads were located the railroads had one or more active attorneys to look after their interests, and under such captaincy as Blythe, of Burlington, and Hubbard, of Cedar Rapids, they exercised a very important influence over the politics of the state, controlling to a large extent the nomination of supreme judges and district judges and other state officers. The people of the state had become restive under the domination of this power. The open and shameless peddling of railroad passes to the members of the general assembly had begun to lose its power as against the rising indignation of the people. In the counties of Lee, Des Moines, Muscatine, Scott, and Dubuque on the Mississippi river, and such interior counties as Johnson and Crawford, with their foreign population, the saloon power of the state, uniting with the railroads, was sufficient to cause a successful revolt against the party in power. Horace Boies, the democratic candidate for governor, openly and shamelessly declared the prohibitory law to be cruel and unjust in its provisions, and his utterances in this behalf encouraged the violators of the law to believe what they afterwards realized, that though the courts might assess penalties, yet an executive who believed the penalty to be unjust could easily be persuaded to exercise pardoning power in their remission, and such was the result. For four years during the administration of Horace Boies the effort to enforce the prohibitory law was almost paralyzed. After incurring all the expense and trouble incident to the conviction of any one violating the prohibitory law, the people had the mortification of seeing the judgments of the courts rendered nugatory by the wrongful exercise of the pardoning power, vested by the constitution in the governor for wise and proper purposes, prostituted by an unscrupulous politician for his own political advancement and that of his party.

Another cause of this successful revolution in the politics of the state arose from the absolute cowardice of the leading republicans of the state in not defending the legislation for which they were responsible. During the candidacy of Boies for his second term, a gentleman who was a candidate on the state ticket for a state office applied to me and asked my consent to publicly discuss the question of prohibition with Mr. Boies in case the state central committee of the party would arrange for such discussion. I gave my consent to such an arrangement, provided the committee would agree to the same, but he afterwards reported to me that the committee did not think it advisable. On the part of the public speakers in behalf of the republican cause the only discussion of the question of prohibition was an apology for the enactment of the law. They did not attempt to discuss the question of right or wrong, but only that the law was enacted because the people by their vote upon the constitutional amendment had signified their approval of prohibition. The result of this cowardice and the four years' domination of the democratic party had its result in the platform adopted by the republican state convention in the year 1893. Only the year before this the republican state convention had adopted a resolution promising the people of the state that the party would take no backward step on the subject of prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, and at this convention in 1893 they adopted the following resolution:

Resolved, That prohibition is not a test of republicanism. The general assembly has given to the state a prohibitory law as strong as any that has been enacted in any country. Like any other criminal statute, its retention, mitigation or repeal must be determined by the general assembly, elected by and in sympathy with the people and to it is relegated the subject, to take such action as they may deem best in the matter, maintaining the present law in those portions of the state where it is now or can be made efficient, and giving to other localities such methods of controlling and regulating the liquor traffic as will best serve the cause of temperance and morality.

Under this platform, which merely meant the return of the open licensed saloon to Iowa in such localities in which the people would tolerate them, Mr. A. B. Cummins and his followers were all received back with open arms as prodigal sons and became at once important leaders politically in the republican party. The friends of prohibition were shocked and alarmed at this result and at once the prominent and more courageous prohibitionists of the state joined in a call for an independent republican convention favorable to prohibition. At the solicitation of a number of prohibitionists in the city of Des Moines I prepared the following address and call for a state convention, which address was adopted by a public meeting, held in the city of Des Moines:

When, through the machinations of men who, in their desire for success, have lost sight of principle, causes dear to humanity are about to be sacrificed, it becomes the duty of patriotic citizens to make an organized effort to rescue their imperiled rights.

As republicans we assert our unqualified devotion to the doctrines and principles of the republican party as heretofore set forth in our national platform, and as declared by republican state conventions and put in practical effect in the state of Iowa by republican legislators prior to the meeting of the republican state convention, held at Des Moines on the sixteenth inst. We declare that through the patriotic efforts of the republican party of Iowa prohibition had become the settled policy of the state, and that any attempt on the part of the politicians to induce the party to take a backward step on that question is to repudiate a past honorable record and to uselessly endanger future success by a base imitation of a hitherto despised opposition.

More than forty years ago the people of Iowa without distinction of party declared through the enactment of their general assembly, that the "people of this state would hereafter take no part in the profits of the retail of intoxicating liquors." This principle was again approved by the people of the state in the adoption of the act of 1855, approved by Governor Grimes, and more recently the people again endorsed the principle by adopting a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors for the purpose of a beverage. The people of the state of Iowa have never indicated any desire for a change of policy on this question, but on the contrary through the action of their representatives expressly elected upon this issue, they have constantly and consistently adhered to our present law.