"There is a remarkable decrease in the business and fees of sheriffs and criminal lawyers, as well as in the number of requisitions and extradition warrants issued. We have less paupers and less tramps in the State in proportion to our population than ever before. Breweries have been converted into oatmeal mills and canning factories, and are operated as such by their owners.... The poorer classes have better fare, better clothing, better schooling, and better houses.... It is safe to say that not one-tenth, and probably not one-twentieth, as much liquor is consumed in the State now as was five years ago." But even while Governor Larrabee wrote these words the knell of the new movement had been already sounded, and from 1890 the cause he advocated has been steadily losing ground in the State. His successor, Governor Boies, was notoriously opposed to prohibition, and threw the whole weight of his authority against efficient enforcement. He declared the suppression of the drink traffic to be an impossibility, and that to attempt it is "a cruel violation of one of the most valued of human rights". As though to make his own assertions come true, he pardoned by the wholesale persons convicted of unlawful selling. The result was what might be expected. In all communities where the authorities had been not over-warm about enforcement they now became slack, and everywhere the police said that it was useless to secure convictions merely for the Governor to make out pardons. In more than one town and county where the trade had long been kept under, it now again made its appearance, and soon the last state of Iowa was worse than the first. Most of the teetotalers seemed to lose heart and do nothing; while for the few who were active the dynamiter's bomb, the incendiary's torch and the murderer's revolver were ready to silence them into submission. But all the blame must not be laid on Governor Boies. He could not have assumed the attitude he did had he not been supported by a large proportion of the people. His conduct was approved by the State in general, as may be seen by the fact that in 1891 he was re-elected for the Governorship by a majority twice as large as that he had previously secured. Iowa had tired of its anti-liquor crusade. The condition of affairs in many parts in 1893 was a disgrace to the whole State. At Council Bluffs, a town of slightly over 20,000 inhabitants, no attempt was made to secure enforcement, and about seventy saloons were wide open. The city had made regulations of its own to deal with this and similar evils. Drink shops were allowed to do business undisturbed on paying the City Treasury 52 dollars 10 cents a month; gambling hells were required to pay 100 dollars a month; houses of ill-fame 12 dollars 10 cents a month, and the inmates of such places 8 dollars 10 cents each.