Scores Old Parties

The National Prohibition convention meets in Columbus, Ohio, in which the temporary chairman, Robert. H. Patton, delivers a speech denouncing the old political parties and making the delegates “almost wild.”

Columbus, O., July 15 - with nearly 1300 of the 1519 delegates present, the national Prohibition convention was called to order in Memorial Hall. Robert H. Patton, of Springfield, Ill. was chosen temporary chairman, and David B. McCalmont, Franklin, Pa. temporary secretary. Temporary chairman Patton delivered a “keynote” speech that set the delegates almost wild. He shot he “rum demon” full of holes, mercilessly jumped upon the old political parties criticised “a public press almost universally against us,” and joyfully cried that “in spite of the fixed habits of appetite, greed and lust, we have by the help of God and the power of the right conquered over all, and re-met here with the shouts of victory upon our lips. We are face to face with the hour that gives assurance of complete triumph.” Mr. Patton put the Democratic and Republican parties on the grill. He said the plank in the Republican national platform “reaffirming our adherence to every Republican doctrine proclaimed since the birth of the party was a direct reaffirmation of a plank in the Republican platform of 1872 which declared against interfering with the rights of the people.” Mr. Patton denounced William H. Taft’s friendliness and cooperation with the “Brewer Boss Politician of Cincinnati - Boss Cox.” The speaker decried the alliance of the Democratic party with the saloon element and asked William J. Bryan to explain this plank in the Democratic platform: “We reaffirm our faith in and pledge our loyalty to the principles of our party,” which principles, declared Mr. Patton, included the famous anti-sumptuary plank in the Democratic platform of 1876. He continued: “From the fact that Mr. Bryan recently in a public interview confessed to voting and making speeches to defeat prohibition in his own state from the fact that in his campaign speeches in Oklahoma, he spoke for all of their constitution but the prohibito part; from the fact that he has recently in an interview tried to make this appear as a mere local issue and not a national one, what hope we have we that he and the Democratic party will give any aid to this cause. He advised the organization of the party on practical line and declared that the time had now come when the movement must go forward or backward. There is no middle ground.”...

“Scores Old Parties,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 11, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/654.