THE DEFEAT OF THE NATION'S DRAGON.
Joseph Cook said in one of his Boston lectures: "Whenever the temperance cause has attempted to fly with one wing, whether moral suasion or legal suasion, its course has been a spiral one. It will never accomplish its mission in this world, until it strikes the air with equal vans, each wing keeping time with the other, both together winnowing the earth of the tempter and the tempted."
I congratulate the friends of temperance upon the progress both wings have made since the beginning of their flight.
The first temperance pledge we have any record of ran thus: "I solemnly promise upon my word of honor I will abstain from everything that will intoxicate, except at public dinners, on public holidays and other important occasions." The first prohibitory law was a local law in a village on Long Island and ran thus: "Any man engaged in the sale of intoxicating liquors, who sells more than one quart of rum, whiskey or brandy to four boys at one time shall be fined one dollar and two pence."
A sideboard without brandy or rum was an exception, while the jug was imperative at every log-raising and in the harvest field. It was said of even a Puritan community,
"Their only wish and only prayer,
In the present world or world to come,
Is a string of Eels and a jug of rum."
When Doctor Leonard Bacon was installed pastor of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, Conn., in 1825, free drinks were ordered at the bar of the hotel, for all visiting members, to be paid for by the church. Today all protestant churches declare against the drink habit and the drink sale. Pulpits are thundering away against the saloon. Children are studying the effects of alcohol upon the human system in nearly every state in the Union. Train loads of literature are pouring into the homes of the people. A mighty army of as godly women as ever espoused a cause is battling for the home, against the saloon. The business world is demanding total-abstainers, and fifty millions of people in the United States are living under prohibitory laws.
Not only in this but in every civilized land the cause of temperance is growing. Recently in France it was found there were more deaths than births, which meant France was dying. A commission was appointed to look into the causes. When the report was made, alcohol headed the list. Now by order of the government linen posters are put up in public buildings, and on these in blood red letters are these warnings: "Alcohol dangerous; alcohol chronic poison; alcohol leads to the following diseases; alcohol is the enemy of labor; alcohol disrupts the home!"
Who would have thought an Emperor of Germany would ever "go back" on beer? Emperor William in an address to the sailors recommended total-abstinence and forbid under penalty the giving of liquor to soldiers in the world's greatest war. The Czar of Russia has put an end to the government's connection with the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, and our Secretary of the Navy has banished it from the ships and navy yards. The New York Sun says: "The business world is getting to be one great temperance league." For many years it was confined to the realm of morals, but today it is recognized as a great economic question and the business world is joining the church world in solving the liquor problem.
While the temperance cause has been going up in character, the drink has been going down in quality. The old time distiller used to select his site along some crystal stream, that had its fountain-head in the mountains and ran over beds of limestone. With sound grain and pure water, he made several hundred barrels of whiskey a year, and after five to ten years of ripening, it was sent out with the makers' brand upon it. Now the North American of Philadelphia, one of our leading dailies says, rectifiers (and I would prefix one letter and make it w-r-e-c-k-t-i-f-i-e-r-s) take one barrel from the distillery and by a pernicious, poisonous process, make one hundred barrels from one barrel.
It is true the sting of the adder and the bite of the serpent were in the old-time whiskey, but it was as pure as it could be made. Doctor Wiley, Ex-Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says: "Eighty-five per cent. of all the whiskey sold in the saloons, hotels and club-rooms is not whiskey at all but a cheap base imitation." In the different concoctions made are found aconite, acquiamonia, angelica root, arsenic, alum, benzine, belladonna, beet-root juice, bitter almond, coculus-indicus, sulphuric acid, prussic acid, wood alcohol, boot soles and tobacco stems. No wonder we have more murders in this republic than in any civilized land beneath the sky in proportion to population.
Along with this adulteration of the drink has gone the degeneracy of the saloon and the seller. The day was when officers in churches could sell liquor and retain their membership. Today the saloonkeeper is barred from the protestant churches, barred from Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Woodmen, Maccabees and nearly every other fraternal organization of the world.
The saloon itself has become such a vicious resort, that when the police look for a murderer they go to the saloon. When any vile character is sought for, the saloon is searched. When anarchists meet to plan for a Hay-market murder in Chicago, they meet in the saloon. When an assassin plans to shoot down our President at an exposition, he goes from the saloon. When a fire breaks out in Chicago or Boston the first order is, close the saloons. Don't close any other business house, but close the saloon. If a mob threatens Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or Atlanta, close the saloons. If an earthquake strikes San Francisco, close the saloons. In our large cities gambling rooms are attached to the saloons with wine rooms above for women, and while our boys are being ruined downstairs, girls are destroyed upstairs.
There are many thousands of women in painted shame, who would now be safe inside life's Eden of purity but for the saloon. The South Side Club of Chicago said in 1914: "The back rooms of four hundred and forty-five saloons on only three streets of this city contribute to the delinquency of fourteen thousand girls every twenty-four hours." Is it any wonder the saloons hide behind green blinds or stained glass windows?
There is a fish in the sea known as the "Devil Fish." It lies on its back with open mouth and covers itself with sea moss. Over its open mouth is a bait. When an unsuspecting fish nibbles at the bait, with a quick snap it is caught and devoured. Do you see any analogy between this fish and a certain business that hides itself behind painted windows or green blinds and hangs out a bait of "free lunch" or "Turtle Soup"? A fish that sets a trap for its kind is called a "Devil Fish;" a business that does the like is recognized as a legitimate trade and permitted for the sake of revenue.
Every other recognized business has improved in quality with the years. The saloon has grown worse and worse, until it is bad and only bad; bad in the beginning, bad in the middle, bad in the end, bad inside, outside, upside, downside. It is so bad, the liquor dealers are the only business men who are ashamed to put on exhibition their finished products. In great expositions other trades present finished wares. They do not display the tools used in making what they present for exhibition but the finished goods. Not so with the liquor dealers; they put on exhibition the tools with which they work, but not a single specimen of the finished product of their trade do they present for inspection.
"That's a fine fit of clothes you have, sir." "Yes," says the tailor, "I put up that job; glad you like my work."
"That's a fine building across the way." "Yes," says the architect, "that's my job and I am quite proud of it."
"That's a handsome bonnet you wear, madam." "Yes," says the milliner, "that's my creation of style and I am rather proud of my work."
Yonder is a man intoxicated. He staggers and falls; his head strikes the curb-stone; the blood besmears his face; the police lift him up and start with him to the station house. Did you hear a saloon keeper say: "That's my creation; I put up that job and I'm proud of my work."
Some one said recently in defense of the business: "The saloon keeper deserves more consideration." This writer should know that consideration has been the source of its undoing. Lord Chesterfield considered it and said: "Drink sellers are artists in human slaughter." Senator Morrill, of Maine, considered and pronounced it "the gigantic crime of all crimes." Senator Long, of Massachusetts considered it and called it "the dynamite of modern civilization." Henry W. Grady, our brilliant southerner, considered it and said: "It is the destroyer of men, the terror of women and the shadow on the face of childhood. It has dug more graves and sent more souls to judgment than all the pestilences since Egypt's plague, or all the wars since Joshua stood before the walls of Jericho." The New York Tribune considered it and said: "It's the clog upon the wheels of American progress." The Bible considered it and compares its influence to the bite of serpents, the sting of adders, the poison of asps, and heaps the woes of God's will upon it.
Sam Jones said: "When the Bible says woe, you better stop," and as certain as seed time brings harvest it will stop, not because of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, or the Anti-Saloon League, or the Prohibition Party, but because afar back in the blue haze of the past the seed of prohibition was planted in the soil of Divine truth.
Ever since God declared woe against the evils of mankind, the batteries of the holy Bible have been trained upon the "wine that gives its color in the cup," and the man who "giveth his neighbor drink and maketh him drunken also."
It will stop, because error cannot stand agitation. Whoever espouses the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic, tangle his tongue or pen with contradictions and wind up in confusion.
The able editor of the Courier Journal of Kentucky came to the defense of this error, and with all his brilliancy and culture, he resorted to personal abuse of temperance workers, because he could not occupy a higher plane in defense of the saloon. He made up what he called an "ominum gatherum," of "bigots," "hay-seed politicians," "fake philosophers," "cranks," "scamps," "professional sharps," "mad caps of destruction," "preachers who would sell corner lots in heaven," "a riff-raff of moral idiots and red-nosed angels."
I could hardly believe my own eyes when I read this frantic phillipic from one I had esteemed so highly for his intellect; one whose element is up where eagles soar, and not down where baser birds feast upon rotten spots in a world of beauty. Only a few days before I had read his beautiful tribute to Lincoln, delivered at the unveiling in Hodgenville, in which he said of the great emancipator: "He never lost his balance or tore a passion to tatters," yet the finished orator who paid the tribute, when he espouses the cause of error, flies into a paroxysm of passion and tears the dignity of his own self-control into shreds.
Knowing as I do the culture, refinement and polished manners of the great journalist, I wondered what aggravating force could have so unbalanced his mental scales and led him to so bitterly denounce those, whose only offense is, trying to do what Lincoln did, abolish an evil. If this resourceful writer were only converted to the truth on this question, what an "ominum gatherum" he could make from the work of the saloon curse.
The clergymen, called "canting, diabolical preachers," deserve more respectful consideration from one who well knows their sincerity. They are men of brains, heart and conscience; men who believe that righteousness rather than revenue exalts a nation, and that sin, no matter how much money invested in it, is a reproach to any people. These ministers believe it to be morally wrong to convert God's golden grain into what debases mankind. They preach that what is morally wrong can never be made politically right. With them it is a matter of deep, permanent conviction. Such attacks are made to divert attention from the accused at the bar of public opinion.
It is the saloon that is on trial, not cranks, or moral idiots, or ministers. The saloon is charged with being the enemy of every virtue and ally of every vice, that it injures public health, public peace and public morals. The Supreme Court says: "No legislature has the right to barter away public health, public peace or the public morals; the people themselves cannot do so, much less their servants."
In face of this declaration of the Supreme Court, legislators do barter away public health, public peace and public morals to the organized liquor traffic. All along the cruel career of this enemy of peace, health and morals, it has been pampered and petted by politicians who have been as much charmed by its promise of votes, as was Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent's assurance. Deceived by the serpent of the still, they have not only disregarded the decision of the Supreme Court but defied God's plan of dealing with sin. They have persisted in trying to regulate an irregularity in morals by licensing the greatest sin of the century, and have done so to their shame and failure in any regulation effort ever made. The only way to cure chills is to kill the malaria. The only way to cure the cursed liquor traffic is to cast it out of our civilization by a universal, everlasting prohibition of the manufacture, importation and sale of intoxicating liquor.
Rev. Howard Crosby, of New York, in advocating high license as a means of reducing the number of saloons, said in an address: "Suppose a tiger were to get loose in the city, would you not confine him to a few blocks rather than let him roam the city at large?" Some one in the audience answered aloud: "No Doctor, we would kill the tiger."
How does regulation regulate? Take the city of Louisville, Ky., where I resided a number of years, and where I observed the practical working of the license system. Go there any Monday morning and you will see from twenty to forty men and women in the cage next to the Police Court room. A marshal stands at the door of the cage and takes them out one at a time. You will hear the judge say: "ten dollars and cost," which means thirty days in the workhouse. Forty days pass and here is the same man in the Police Court: thirty days to serve his time, ten days to get a little money and then another drunk. Some do not know how many times they have been before the court. I was there one day when an Irishman was arraigned. The Judge said: "Pat, how many times have you been before this court?"
"Faith, and your books will tell ye," replied the Irishman. Judge Price, the police judge at the time, said to me: "There are a number of men, and several women I know in this city, who pass through the courtroom on their way to the workhouse so regularly, I can guess within a few days of the time they will appear." They pass like buckets at a fire, going up full and returning empty.
There is an asylum in this country where, I am told, they test a man's insanity in this way. They have a trough which holds one hundred gallons of water. Above is an open tap through which the water pours constantly, and of course the trough keeps on running over. The patient is brought to the trough, given a bucket and told to dip out the water. If he dips all day and has not mind enough to turn off the tap, he is considered a very serious case. If this test were put to our license lawmakers, I fear they would have to go to the incurable ward. They have for many years been picking up drunkards from the gutters and opening taps for them to keep on pouring into the streets. Under this system the saloon keepers are playing ten-pins. You know in playing ten-pins there is a long alley, at one end of which stand the pins, while at the other stands the player with a ball in his hand. He rolls the ball down the alley and knocks down the pins. Some one sets them up, and to that some one, who is often a boy, the player will toss a dime and say: "set them up quick." Does he let them stand? No! he rolls the ball down the alley and down go the pins. The saloon keeper has the ball of law in his hands. No matter whether a high or low license ball, he paid the price for the use of the ball. When temperance workers set up drunkards and they get a little money in their pockets away goes the ball and they are down again. When a church revival picks up a few drunkards the saloon keeper will say: "Here's a dollar to help in your meeting." Then in his mind he says: "Set up the drunkards who are out of employment and money, get them positions, and when they can earn money again, again I'll bowl them down." Under the license system the saloon is playing ten-pins with temperance associations, ten-pins with the church and ten-pins with society. I have faith to believe the time is drawing near when the balls will be confiscated and the pins can stand when we do set them up.
I know many have not this faith because they believe prohibitory laws are failures. They base their belief on the violation of the law. By that rule everything is a failure. Married life is a failure; its laws are grossly violated. Home life is a failure; there are many miserable homes. The school is a failure; many a father has put thousands of dollars into the education of his son and found it wasted in riotous living. The church is a failure; many of its members are Christians only in name and not a few are hypocrites. But we know by the loyal, loving husbands and wives of every community that married life is not a failure. We know by the happy homes about us, with sweetest of household ties binding the family circle, that home life is not a failure. We know by the education that has refined our civilization, that the school is not a failure. We know by the redeemed of earth and saved in heaven the church is not a failure, and we are convinced by the organized opposition to prohibitory laws by distillers, brewers, saloon keepers, gamblers and harlots that prohibition is not a failure.
If prohibition is a failure in Kansas as license advocates charge, then governors, ex-governors, attorney generals, jailers, mayors and judges of Kansas are falsifiers. If prohibition is a failure in Kansas why has the state grown to be the richest per capita in the Union, why are so many jails empty, so many counties without a pauper and why, according to the brewers' year book of 1910, was the consumption of liquor in Kansas one dollar and sixty cent per capita and in a neighbor license state twenty-two dollars per capita?
Along with the absurd statement that prohibition is a failure, comes the warning of the president of the Model License League to the business men of the country, that unless the tide of prohibition is arrested it will "kill our cities." "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."
In a local option contest a prominent business man said to me: "I do not use liquor but I am in doubt about how I should vote on the question." When I asked; "What's your trouble?" he answered: "We have six saloons in this little city and the license fee is one thousand dollars; how are we to run the city without the six thousand dollars?" When I informed him that the six saloons took from the people eighty thousand dollars a year, he agreed it was a reasonable estimate. I said: "Don't you know those who spend their money for drink, if they did not spend it over the saloon bars, would spend it over the counters of merchants who sell clothing, food, fuel and furniture?" If you merchants could take in eighty thousand dollars, couldn't you pay out six thousand and not get hurt? If you can't see that you are no better business man than was Horace Greeley a farmer. He purchased a pig for one dollar, kept it two years, fed it forty dollars worth of corn and sold it for nine dollars. He said: "I lost money on the corn but made money on the hog." So, many business men see the revenue from the license fee but can't see the cost.
Suppose on one side of a street the business houses are all bad, in that they consume money and give worse than nothing in return; and on the other side they are all good, in that they give an honest equivalent for the money they receive; can't you see if the bad side is closed, the money that went to the bad side goes to the good, and can you not see only good can come of such a change?
There are three things prohibition of the saloon does that are illustrated by the story told of an Irishman who said: "I did three good things today."
"What did you do, Pat?"
"I saw a woman crying in front of a cathedral. She had a baby in her arms, and I said: 'Madam, what are you crying about?'
"She said: 'I had two dollars in me handkerchief and came to have me baby christened but I lost the money.'
"I said: 'Don't cry, Madam, here is a ten dollar bill; go get the baby christened and bring me the change.' She went, and soon after returned and handed me eight silver dollars."
"Well," said the friend, "I don't see any three good things in that."
"Ye don't! Didn't I dry the woman's tears, didn't I save the baby's soul, and didn't I get rid of a ten dollar counterfeit bill and get eight good silver dollars in return?"
That is what prohibition of the saloon does for a community. It dries woman's tears, saves human souls, gets rid of a counterfeit business and puts good business instead.
Is it a counterfeit business? It has been well said, "Go into the butcher stall and you get meat for money, into the shoe store and you get shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-gotten gains on one side, mis-spent wages on the other, a mess of pottage on one side and the birthright of some mother's boy on the other."
A great wail is going up from the advocates of the liquor traffic that statewide prohibition means the destruction of immense vested interests and dire results will follow.
"This our craft is in danger," has ever been the cry against reforms or changes in civilization since the "Shrine Makers of Ephesus."
When slavery was abolished it was said: "This means ruin to the South! Such a confiscation of property, with every slave set free to beg at the white man's gate, crushes every vestige of hope, and five hundred years will not bring relief." Only fifty years have passed and the South is richer than ever in her history.
Justice Grier of the Supreme Court said: "If loss of revenue should accrue to the United States from a diminished consumption of ardent spirits, she will be the gainer a thousandfold in health, wealth and happiness of the people."
If this is true, then this question is not only a great moral question but also a tremendous economic problem.
If production should be for use and not for abuse, the existence of breweries and distilleries are without excuse.
If one should be rewarded on the basis of service, the saloon keeper has no claim for even tolerance, much less reward.
If labor is the basis of value, men who live by selling liquor to their fellowmen are leaches on the body politic, and Ishmaels in the commercial world.
The claim that the liquor business is a benefit to a community or to the country is in harmony with the assertion that war is a "biological necessity" and a "stimulating source of development."
General Sherman said: "War is hell." Certainly the one now raging between the leading nations of the old world is a hell of carnage. And yet intemperance has destroyed more lives than all the wars of the world since time began. It has added to the death of the body the eternal death of the soul and then the sum of its ravages is not complete until is added more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, desolate homes, more misery and shame than from any source of evil in the world. If what Sherman said of war is true, and the liquor curse is worse than war, how can this government hope to escape punishment for raising revenue from a business so abominable and wicked?
A heathen emperor when appealed to for a tax on opium as a source of revenue said: "I will not consent to raise the revenue of my country upon the vices of its people." Yet this Christian republic, claiming the noblest civilization of the earth, is found turning the dogs of appetite and avarice loose upon the home life of the republic that gold may clink in its treasury. The politician's excuse for this compromise with earth's greatest destroyer is, it can never be prohibited and therefore regulation and revenue is the best policy.
I can well remember when the same was said of slavery. With billions of dollars invested in slaves, with a united South behind it and the North divided, it could never be abolished. At that time the prospect for the overthrow of slavery was far less than the prospect of national prohibition today. I own I was among those who said "slavery cannot be destroyed." Now I am one of the reconstructed. I'm like the pig I used to read of, "When I lived I lived in clover, and when I died I died all over."
During the Civil War Union soldiers arrested several of my neighbors and took them to a northern prison. My southern blood was aroused. I said: "Let a Yankee soldier come to take me and he will never take another Kentuckian." Then my mother was alarmed. She knew how brave her boy was. A few days later I met a squad of Yankee cavalry on the road near our home. They said "Halt!" and I halted. They said "Surrender!" I did so, and mother did not hear of any blood being shed.
Again a half-drunk Union soldier rode up to our gate and said: "Who lives here?" When I answered, he asked: "Can your mother get supper for fourteen soldiers in thirty minutes?" "No, sir, she cannot," I replied. Drawing a pistol, the mouth of which looked like a cannon's mouth to me, he said: "Maybe you have changed your mind." I had, and that supper was ready with several minutes to spare. We can, and we will stop the liquor business. I am amazed, however, to find so many intelligent men of the North advocating the same policy on this liquor problem the South adopted on the slavery question, which cost her so severely. I find the same effect revenue in slaves had upon the consciences of the tax-payers of the South, high-license revenue from saloons is having upon the consciences of tax-payers in the North.
In the early days of slavery, when wealth in the institution was very limited, the conscience of the South was against slavery. Old Virginia, when a colony, appealed to King George to remove the threatening danger from her borders. It was the voice of a General Lee of Virginia that was lifted against slavery in the House of Burgesses. But with the passing of time slaves grew in value, until a slave in the South reached about the price of a saloon license now in the North. Then the conscience of the South quieted and slavery was justified by press, politics and pulpit. There is a remarkable analogy between the effect of a thousand dollar slave upon the conscience of South Carolina and a thousand dollar saloon upon the conscience of Massachusetts. The South paid the penalty of her mistaken policy; the North will reap its reward in retribution, if it persists in making the price of a saloon in the North the same as the price of a slave in the South. When the value of a world is profitless compared with the worth of a soul then even if every saloon were a Klondyke of gold this republic could not afford to legalize the liquor business for revenue.
I believe my northern friends will permit me to press home a little further the lesson of southern slavery. The phase I would impress is that any question that has a great moral principle involved is never settled until it is settled right. We tried to regulate slavery but it wouldn't regulate. First it was decided that the importation of slaves should cease in twenty years. Did that settle it? Next came the Missouri compromise, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." Politicians said: "Now it's settled." But a fanatic in Boston name Garrison said: "It is not settled." Daniel Webster, as intellectual as some of our high license advocates of today said to Lloyd Garrison: "Stop the agitation of this question or you will bring trouble on the country; the compromise is made and the question is settled." Lloyd Garrison replied: "I don't care what compromise you've made; you may pull down my office, pitch my type into the sea, and hound me through the streets of Boston, but you will never settle the slavery question until you settle it right."
It kept breaking out despite all legislative restrictions. At last Columbia with one hand on her head, and the other on her heart, began to reel on her throne, and Abraham Lincoln seized his pen and signed the proclamation, "Universal Emancipation." Then the whole world said: "It's forever settled." So the liquor question will be settled as was the slavery question, by the universal, everlasting abolition of the manufacture, sale and importation of intoxicating liquor in this country.
High license is another Missouri Compromise. If you have the drink you'll have the drunkenness. If you have the cause you will have the effect. If you have the positive you will have the superlative: Positive drink, comparative drinking, superlative drunkenness. You may try high-tax and low-tax but all the time you will have sin-tax and more sin than tax.
You do not change the nature of the drink by the price of a license, the kind of a place in which it is sold or the character of the man who sells it. Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till he's grown and he'll be a hog. You don't change the nature of the pig by the elegant surroundings; you may change the condition of the parlor.
There is but one solution of the liquor problem and that is a nation-wide prohibitory law and behind the law a political power in sympathy with the law and pledged to its enforcement.
Many admit the principle is correct but insist we should wait until public sentiment is powerful enough to enforce the law. If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment Moses would never have given the commandments to the world. If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment, we would still be back in the realm of the dark ages, instead of in the light of our present civilization; back in the dim twilight of the tallow-dip instead of the brightness of the electric light; back with the ox team instead of the speed of the steam engine, automobile and aeroplane; and on the temperance question back to where a liquor dealer could advertise his business on gravestones. On a tomb in England are these words:
"Here lies below in hope of Zion,
The landlord of the Golden Lion,
His son keeps up the business still,
Obedient to his country's will."
Years ago a friend said to me: "I admire your zeal, but I wonder at your faith when you are in such a miserable minority." My reply was: "Are minorities always wrong or hopeless? How would you have enjoyed being with the majority at the time of the flood? It seems to me you would have been safer with Noah in the ark."
As to license and prohibition, that has always been the question since man was created. It was the question in the Garden of Eden when the devil stood for license, "go eat," and God stood for prohibition, "thou shalt not." That is the question today and I am quite sure God and the devil stand now as then, and while the Adams are divided, the Eves are nearly all on one side.
Another said: "After all the work done for temperance the people drink as much or more than ever." My answer is: how much more would they drink if we had not done what has been done?
Yonder on the ocean a vessel springs a leak and soon the water stands thirty inches deep in the hold. The captain says: "To the pumps!" and the sailors leap to their places. At the end of one hour the captain measures and says: "Thirty inches; you are holding it down." Hour after hour the pumping goes on, with changing hands at the pumps, and hour after hour the captain says: "You are doing well; she can't go down at thirty inches. Hold it there and we'll make the harbor." Twenty hours and the captain shouts: "Thirty inches; and land is in sight. Pump on, my boys, you'll save the ship." Suppose one of our croakers who says, "Prohibition won't prohibit," had been on board. He would have said: "Don't you see you are doing no good; there's just as much water as when you began." What would have become of the ship?
At the close of the Civil War intemperance was pouring in upon the Ship of State. Men returned from war enthralled in chains worse than African slavery, for rum slavery means ruin to body and soul. Men, women and children ran to the pumps, and thank God, state after state is going dry. Soon we'll see the land of promise, and the Ship of State will be saved from a leak as dangerous as ever sprung in a vessel, and from as cruel a crew of buccaneers as ever scuttled a ship.
When I began the work as a "Good Templar" forty years ago, Kentucky was soaked in rum. Bourbon county, where I was reared, had twenty-three distilleries, and a dead wall lifted itself against my hopes of ever seeing the sky clear of distillery smoke above old Bourbon county, a name on more barrels and bottles, on more bar-room windows, and on the memories of more drunkards in ruin than any other county in the world. Yet I have lived to see the last distillery fire go out, and Bourbon county dry. While I had faith in the ultimate triumph of the Cause I never dreamt it would come to Bourbon county in my lifetime.
When I began saloons were at almost every crossroads village, and the bottle on sideboards was the rule in thousands of leading homes. Time and again my life was threatened. On one occasion twelve armed men guarded me from a mob, and once my wife placed herself between my body and a desperate mountaineer. Those were perilous times for an advocate of temperance in my native state. Now out of one hundred and twenty counties, one hundred and seven are dry. In Georgia the licensed saloon is gone; in North Carolina the saloon is gone; in West Virginia, Old Virginia, Mississippi and Tennessee the saloon is gone, while Oklahoma was born sober.
"That which made Milwaukee famous
Doesn't foam in Tennessee;
The Sunday lid in old Missouri
Was Governor Folk's decree.
Brewers, distillers and their cronies
Well may sigh;
The saloon is panic-stricken,
And the South's going dry.
"Soon the hill-side by the rill-side
Of Kentucky will be still;
Men will take their toddies
From the ripples of the rill;
Boys will grow up sober,
Mothers cease to cry;
Glory hallelujah!
The South's going dry."
Already seventeen states are dry, and there are many arid spots in the wet states. While I cannot hope to live to see the final triumph, I have faith to believe my children and my children's children will live in a saloonless land, a land redeemed from a curse that has soaked its social life in more blood and tears than all other sources of sorrow; a land where liberty will no longer be shorn of its locks of strength by licensed Delilahs; where manhood will no more be stripped of its possibilities by the claws of the demon drink; where fore-doomed generations will not reach the dawning of life's morning, to be bound like Mazeppa to the wild, mad steed of passion and borne down the blood lines of inheritance to the awful abuse of drunkenness.
To this end I appeal to every minister of the gospel, stir the consciences of your hearers on this question. I appeal to the press, that potent power for the enlightenment of the people.
"Pulpit and press with tongue and pen,
Set to new music this message to men:
Let the great work of destruction begin,
And rid our loved land of this shelter to sin.
As before the sun's brightness, the darkness must fly,
So by power of the ballot the rum curse must die,
Then cover the earth as the wide waves the sea,
With the sound of the axe at the root of the tree!"