Governor Patterson of Tennessee

              Covernor Matterson of Tennessee


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A DUNBAR ATTRACTION







THE most commanding figure and the most brilliant speaker now enlisted in the American anti-saloon campaign is Governor Patterson of Tennessee.  His own story of his part in the greatest crusade of modern times is so convincing, so reasonable, so eloquent, so effective that great audiences in the largest cities all over the Union, during the past six months have been swayed and carried as by a storm and have actually subscribed more than two millions of dollars in the form of a five year endowment for the anti-saloon league, and the liquor traffic is gradually retreating to its final destruction.  Yet Governor Patterson's manner and methods are not of violence or vituperation.  He loves the liquor dealer as a man, but hates his business.  His argument is economic, logical, reasonable, and his oratory sublime.  To use his own words:  
I opposed prohibition as a governmental policy while governor and vetoed a bill of that sort.  I believed in high license and regulation.  My views were unchanged until I embraced Christianity, when I saw for the first time that regulation was only a compromise with the evil and that annihilation of the liquor traffic was the only remedy which progressive government organized for service could or should offer as a cure.




In Boston, four thousand people crowded Tremont Temple to hear this brilliant southerner, and at a banquet of five hundred business men there, $60,000.00 was subscribed to fight the saloon in the nation at large—all this in the parish of Wendell Phillips, the home of William Lloyd Garrison and in the city where John B. Gough, forty years ago led the vanguard against the liquor traffic.




This has been repeated in scores of other cities, and newspapers have given columns to accounts of these great gatherings.




To hear Governor Patterson is to make glad the heart, to renew one's faith in the ultimate triumph of right and to inspire us to duty in the causes of humanity.






Scores of newspaper reports read like these—



Malcolm R. Patterson, former governor of Tennessee, addressed an audience that taxed the capacity of the house last night, nearly 1500 people hearing him.  Never has a greater speech been delivered to Johnson Citians.  We are mindful of the fact that Bryan, Clark, Hoss, Gailor, McDowell, Stuart, Taylor, Carmack, Taft and other speakers of national reputation have spoken here, but Malcolm R. Patterson's effort Sunday night, in our judgment, eclipsed anything we have ever heard, and we have heard them all.




His bearing was most kingly.  In the course of an hour and a half he did not hesitate, he did not falter, but made a speech that would have done honor to—well, if Hill, Yancey and Grady, with their tongues of gold, gave their auditors anything finer, the veracious chronicler failed to report it.  We believe only one man our American civilization has produced could have equaled it—and he is the late Robert G. Ingersoll.—


Johnson City (Tenn.) Staff.




Jackson audiences never heard a more eloquent speech than that delivered in the house of representatives chamber last night by Governor Patterson, in which he grandly and graphically told the story 
Why I Changed Front On the Liquor Question.
  It was a great speech.  No other word can properly describe it—a great speech, delivered by a great orator on a great subject.—


Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger.




The daily press of the cities in which Governor Patterson has spoken during the past four months in his tour under the auspices of the National Anti-Saloon League has contained the most extravagant and laudatory accounts of his addresses and the great city auditoriums and convention halls have been all too small to accommodate the crowds who have sought to hear this eloquent crusader.  In his warfare on the liquor traffic he is truly a flaming sword.






Governor Matterson of Tennessee






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