I have before me his temperance scrap-book, beginning with the proposed amendment to the State Constitution, March 8, 1879, and coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly treatment of the great question, and sending a trumpet-call to the honest, brave, and sincere temperance workers, both men and women, urging them to greater vigilance and closer compact.  These, with numerous short and pithy articles, added to all his sermons and lectures on the subject, occupying a much larger space and far more time, will give an idea of the labor of heart and brain bestowed upon this one question, during this one decade.  We have room in this chapter for only one short article from his pen, as an example of the many, indicating how he felt, thought, and wrote during those stirring years.  The title of the article is, “The Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic, The Constitutional Amendment in Kansas.”  He says: 

This is, perhaps, the first case in which any government in the world has incorporated into its constitution a clause prohibiting forever the sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage.  This is a struggle in which the churches, the preachers, and the Sunday-schools are arrayed in mortal antagonism to the saloons and saloon-keepers.  Both parties are instinctively conscious that this is a contest in which the issue is to kill or be killed.  No truce or peace is possible.  ’I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed.’  The people are drawn into one or the other of these parties by a sort of elective affinity.  One class goes with the churches and the Sunday-schools; another gravitates to the drinking-house.  The one class are swayed and controlled by the law of love—­“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;” the other by the principle that governed Cain—­“Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Who cares?” “Let every man look out for himself?” “If a man chooses to make a beast of himself, it is none of my business.”

One of the peculiar things connected with this movement is the fact that by far the most determined and effective opposition to this law comes from foreign-born and naturalized citizens.  They have, so to speak, monopolized the liquor traffic; they are bound together by a kind of free masonry, and with small regard to whom they vote with, Democrats or Republicans, they give the whole weight of their political influence in favor of free liquor.

With here and there a notable exception, the Roman Catholic Church throws its influence on the same side; hence its church fairs are carnivals of drunkenness.