There Are Few Moderate Drinkers; It Is Seldom
Taken Except To Excess.
The great local question in the
Territory, and just now the great electoral issue, is drink or no
drink, and some of the papers are openly advocating a prohibitive
liquor law.
Some of the districts, such as Greeley, in which
liquor is prohibited, are without crime, and in several of the
stock-raising and agricultural regions through which I have
traveled where it is practically excluded the doors are never
locked, and the miners leave their silver bricks in their wagons
unprotected at night. People say that on coming from the Eastern
States they hardly realize at first the security in which they
live. There is no danger and no fear. But the truth of the
proverbial saying, "There is no God west of the Missouri" is
everywhere manifest. The "almighty dollar" is the true divinity,
and its worship is universal. "Smartness" is the quality thought
most of. The boy who "gets on" by cheating at his lessons is
praised for being a "smart boy," and his satisfied parents
foretell that he will make a "smart man." A man who overreaches
his neighbor, but who does it so cleverly that the law cannot
take hold of him, wins an envied reputation as a "smart man," and
stories of this species of smartness are told admiringly round
every stove. Smartness is but the initial stage of swindling,
and the clever swindler who evades or defines the weak and often
corruptly administered laws of the States excites unmeasured
admiration among the masses.[20]
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