The Fort Dodge Messenger: Aug. 14, 1905

Asks M’Cash to Sign Petition

Brewery Petition Solicitor Breaks Into Anti-saloon Offices

Manages to Escape Crowd

Laugh Went Up From League Officers – No Doubt in Mind of Brewery Representative Who Fell Into Wrong Crowd.

An unsuspecting brewery petition solicitor was steered into the office of I.N. McCash yesterday without realizing what he was up against until the head of the anti-saloon league started in on him with a temperance lecture. He then managed to escape amid the uproarous (sic) laughter of some of the office men of the Iowa Loan and Trust building, who were in the hallway and the adjoining room watching the course of their joke. The solicitor would not even stop to buy the beer for the crowd he was in such a hurry to get away.

Just who the man was with the petition no one seems to know. He was circulating on the fourth floor or the Iowa Loan and Trust building next door to the office of the anti-saloon league without knowing he was so near to the camp of the enemy.

“No, I don’t want to sign,” said the man next door, “but there’s a fellow in the next office whose (sic) a hard drinker, better see him,” pointing to the room where Dr. McCash forms plots against the brewery.

The solicitor was as eager as a book agent to secure names and without reading the black faced type on the office door he bolted in, petition in hand. He inquired of hte young woman in the front room if the man in the other office was in and he was ushered through. The saloon fighter was dictating to his stenographer when the brewery agent came in and he did not look up immediately. As he turned in his chair he saw the man with the petition in his hand and took in the situation before the solicitor did.

Face is Familiar

The man with the petition had not been attending temperance lectures and is not a member of the University Place Church of Christ.

He did not know McCash from a bartender.

“I was told you wished to sign the brewery petition,” began the man.

“What?” said McCash. But he didn’t wait for the solicitor to answer.

“No sir!” he exclaimed with such force that a gleam of enlightenment is said to have shot across the brewery man’s face.

“I’ve been fighting that thing night and day and do not think” but by the time he had delivered himself of these words he was talking to the side of the wall for the solicitor had made his getaway.

Up and down the corridors of the hall sounded uproarous (sic) laughter that must have rung in the brewery man’s ears even after he had reached the exit of the passenger elevator on the lower floor and taken a bracer at a neighboring bar.

Tags: 1905, McCash