This wonderful exhibition of mechanical skill, of cunning workmanship, and of the fruits of the earth, is but the evidence of the existence and character of the people that have produced them. The great ultimate fact that America would demonstrate is the existence of a people capable of attaining and preserving a superior civilization, with a government self-imposed, self-administered, and self-perpetuated. In this, her centennial year, America can exhibit nothing to the world of mankind more wonderful or more glorious than her new states--young empires, born of her own enterprise, and tutored at her own political hearthstone. Well may she say to the monarchies of the old world, who look for evidences of her regal grandeur and state, "Behold, these are my jewels." And may she never blush to add: "This one in the _center_ of the diadem is called IOWA." CHAPTER IX TEMPERANCE AND PROHIBITION In giving a further account of the activities of subsequent years it will be almost impossible to preserve anything like a chronological order of events, and it will be necessary to take up certain subjects or topics that employed much of my time and energies, and probably as important as any other part of my life was my connection with the subject of temperance and prohibition. The code of Iowa enacted in 1850 took effect July 1, 1851. Under the head of "Intoxicating Liquors" it enacted as follows: "The people of Iowa will hereafter take no part in the profits of the sale of intoxicating liquors." It then provided that the establishment of any place for the sale of intoxicating liquors to be drank on or about the premises should constitute a public nuisance, and enacted penalties against the sale of intoxicating liquors to be drank on or about the premises, and provided for the abatement of such nuisances and the punishment of all persons violating the provisions of this statute. This code was very excellent in the principle upon which the law was based; to-wit, that the people and government ought not to be a party to or share the profits of the sale of that which was the cause of so much poverty and crime, and the statute aimed at the destruction of the places of resort where the habit of drinking such liquors was contracted and promoted; but in its practical operation the law itself and its provisions were a failure. The words, "To be drank on or about the premises," involved two uncertainties--first, as to the meaning of the words "on or about," and secondly, as to the guilty knowledge or intent of the vendor of the liquors when he made his sale, as to the manner and where the purchaser intended to drink. Courts and juries gave very different and very liberal interpretation in the application of this law to different cases, and many of our judges and justices were not well educated in the idea that the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage was really a crime against the community and