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The simplest way to put prohibition into perspective is to say that
for more than a half century in Texas and the rest of the nation it
was the pro-choice/right-to-life controversy of its time.
In other words, both sides of the issue passionately believed they
were in the right. Often, they were willing to fight for their belief,
sometimes to the death.
For about the last quarter of the 19th century, and the first two
decades of the 20th century, being a "wet" or a "dry" defined a Texan
politically much more accurately than being Democrat or Republican.
Back when a newspaper could be founded with a George Washington press
and a shirttail full of type, as the saying went, some sheets were
started specifically to advocate one side or the other of the booze
issue.
That's what J.B. Cranfill was up to in 1882 when he started a newspaper
in Gatesville,
the Advance. At first, he did not let moral conviction get
in the way of good business - he happily accepted advertising from
the saloons. But after a fire started in a saloon nearly burned down
the town, he wrote an editorial connecting the fire (actually, there
had been two) to the saloon business.
When a saloon proprietor came to the newspaper office to withdraw
his advertising in protest, Cranfill happily obliged him. He also
wrote another editorial declaring that he would not publish any other
"wet" advertising either.
"My paper fought the saloons and the mobs," he later wrote, "and they
two were one." At the time, he recalled, Gatesville had a population
of 1,000. Ten saloons flourished in the little county seat town.
"One of them," Cranfill went on, "was kept by the worst man in that
part of Texas. I fought saloons in my paper all the time, and he hated
me very cordially. I dreaded to meet him, lest a duel would be precipitated
about some issue."
Fortunately for Cranfill, who left Gatesville in 1886 and went on
to become one of the state's best-known religious journalists as the
editor of the Baptist Standard, that meeting never came.
"One day he was killed," Cranfill wrote, "and the news of the tragedy
was quickly circulated about town. I ran down to the hotel, where
the saloon-keeper lay dead."
A killing was quite a sensation for such a small town. By the time
Cranfill got to the scene, a dozen or so others already crowded the
hotel's lobby.
Among those on hand was a man Cranfill recognized as the town's Methodist
minister. They were good friends.
The preacher had already been in to view the lately-departed. He waited
while Cranfill went in to take a look.
"Death always solemnizes me, no matter who has passed," Cranfill recalled.
"So when I saw this man, lying on his back with his gun in his hand,
and his face pale with that pallor that always attends dissolution
[a polite 19th century term for chronic alcoholism], I could not repress
a feeling of sadness."
Cranfill walked out, hoping for some words of comfort from the Methodist
clergyman. Perhaps "it was God's will." At minimum, the young prohibitionist
publisher who had been threatened by the man now lying dead expected
the preacher to say something like, "Great pity, wasn't it?"
Instead, the Methodist peered at Cranfill from beneath his black Stetson
and said: "Fine shot, wasn't it?"
July 2003
Published with author's permission |
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