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BIGOTRYS AMAZING GROWTH Mcrse Henry Wattersons Sano Analysis of a Modern Peculiarity. In the charming personal and political reminiscence story "Looking Backward," by Henry Wat-terson, now being printed serially in the Saturday Evening Post, "Marse Henry" writes with a true and sane pen about the spamodic bigotry now so rampant as follows: "The challenge underlying prohibition is twofold: Does prohibition prohibit, and, if it does, may it not. generate evils peculiarly its own? "The question hinges on what are called sumptuary laws; that is, statutes regulating the food and drink, the habits and apparel of the individual citizen. This in turn harks back to the issue of paternal government. That, once admitted and established, becomes in time all-embracing. "Bigotry is a disease. The bigot pursuing his narrow round is like the bedridden possessed by his disordered fancy. It sees nothing but itself, which It mistakes for wisdom and virtue. But it also begets hypocrisy. When this spreads over a sufficient area and counts a voting majority It sends its agents abroad, and thus we acquire canting apostles and legislators at once corrupt and despotic. "They are now largely in evidence in the national capital and in the various state capitals, where the poor-dog, professional politicians most do congregate and disport themselves. "Tim worst of it is that there seems nowhere any popular realization scarcely any popular outcry. Do we grow degenerate? Are we willfully dense? In a nation of blind men, we are told, the one-eyed man is king. In a nation of undlscrimlnating voters the voice of the agitator Is apt to drown the voice of the statesman. Teaching everyobdy to read, nobody to think the rule of numbers the law of the land, partyism and populism in the saddle legislation, state and federal, becomes largely matter of riding to hounds aud horns." " ". ; : 1 T s 0 - s 1 - r . ? - ; a 0 v - a a
