The Oklahoma Badge

The Governor of Oklahoma and Prohibition

     The liquor men and their friends resort to some desperate expedients to prevent the enforcement of the prohibition law in Oklahoma.  At Sapulpa, which is one of the most important railroad junctions in the state, an enforcement officer was arrested and fined by the city authorities for carrying "a gun" while in the performance of duty.  Governor Cruce immediately pardoned the officer, and then sent a stinging message to the Sapulpa officials. 

     "While I am governor of the state,"he said, " the bootleggers and lawless element will not be permitted to run the affairs of government.  They may be able as they have in some places, to elect men who are in sympathy with their ideas of government and will not undertake to enforce the law, but every power that is given into my hands, by the most liberal construction of the law, will be exercised to see that law and order prevails in every section of this state.  Any man appointed as a deputy enforcement officer in Oklahoma during my term of office who, in the discharge of his duty, is arrested by any other officer in the state and imprisoned and fined will be pardoned as quickly as the matter is brought to my attention.

     "It seems that it is very easy for the local officials in your county to arrest a man acting under a commission issued by the special enforcement officer of the state, but the gambler, the bootlegger and the jointist is each permitted to ply his trade, wreck homes, destroy youth, and make a laughing stock of the laws of this state with impunity.

     "There have been more than two hundred special deputies appointed under the recent act of the legislature and I say to you, her and now, that if it is necessary in order to enforce prohibition in this state, I will see that one hundred thousand good men are appointed in Oklahoma if they will agree to accept commissions.  The people of Oklahoma have spoken on this question and the bootlegger and the jointist and those in sympathy with them had just as well understand that they must obey the law until people change that law."   (The Advance, August 31, 1911)

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