As soon as this became known to the Des Moines _Register_, its editors commenced a series of abusive articles against me, containing misrepresentations and insinuations, and for some reasons best known to the editors of that paper and of which I am not advised, they became very active in trying to promote the success of this prosecution against the distillery and to destroy the same. These articles of the State _Register_ created, of course, quite an inquiry among the friends of prohibition in the state, and they wrote a number of letters to Mrs. A. E. McMurray, secretary of the State Temperance League, making inquiry in regard to the matter of my employment. She accordingly wrote a letter to me upon the subject and I answered the same very fully, giving a history of the whole controversy, and particularly the motives of the men that were trying to destroy Kidd and his enterprise. Though the letter is somewhat in detail, yet, as it is a complete answer to all of the criticisms that have been made of my professional conduct in this matter, I give it here in full: DES MOINES, IOWA, MARCH 19, 1887. Mrs. E. A. McMurray, Secretary of Iowa State Temperance Alliance: I have your communication of the 17th inst., and appreciating the motives that have prompted it, I take pleasure in responding to your inquiries. The case of I. E. Pearson and S. J. Loughran against John S. Kidd, now pending upon appeal in the supreme court of the state, and in which I have been retained for the defendant, involves only the question as to the right of the defendant to manufacture alcohol in this state, under the permit granted him by the board of supervisors of Polk county, for the purpose of export. There is no pretense that Mr. Kidd, since the taking effect of our present statute, has ever sold any intoxicating liquors, or alcohol, within the state of Iowa, for any purpose whatever. The only evidence offered to sustain the petition is contained in the official reports of Mr. Kidd to the auditor of the county, by which it appears that he has manufactured alcohol and shipped it out of the state. The article manufactured by Mr. Kidd and put upon the market is not itself a beverage, and is not and cannot be used as such in the form in which he has produced and sold it. The case was first tried in the circuit court of Polk county, before Judges Given and Henderson, upon an application for a preliminary injunction. In December last those two judges delivered an opinion in the case, deciding that Mr. Kidd had not in any manner violated the prohibitory law, and they refused an injunction. At the present term of the district court Judge Conrad, our newly-elected district judge, put a different construction upon the law and held, that by the amendment made to the prohibitory law by the legislation of 1884 it was unlawful to manufacture alcohol in the state for