THE SOBER, LAW-RESPECTING STATE.
My fellow-citizens, those who assert that the drug stores have been transformed into saloons, or that drinking and drunkenness have increased in Kansas, ought to know that they are not telling the truth. There is not an intelligent, observing man in Kansas who does not know that drinking and drunkenness have been enormously diminished in this State during the past five years. It is no doubt true that liquor is sold in many places, in violation of law. But no intelligent, truthful man, who knows what the condition of affairs was six or eight years ago, and is to-day, will deny that a great reform has already been accomplished. I have traveled over the State a great deal during the past two years. I have attended public meetings in a hundred different towns and cities—political meetings, soldiers’ reunions, fairs and other gatherings, at which from 3,000 to 50,000 people were assembled—and it is one of the rarest of things to see a single person under the influence of liquor. I have heard hundreds of people speak of this remarkable fact, and always with satisfaction and pride. Wherever the saloon has been banished, nineteen-twentieths of all the drinking and drunkenness prevailing have been abolished with it. The social feature of the drinking habit goes with the saloon, and this social feature—the American habit of treating—is responsible for nine-tenths of all the drinking and drunkenness in America. The loafing-place the saloon afforded, with its crowd of hangers-on, has gone with the saloon. The bad example set before young boys, the allurements of good-fellowship which tempted so many, the appetite developed and nurtured by treating—all these have gone with the saloon. And yet, not to-day, nor next year, nor for a decade to come, will all the good results of this abolition of the saloon be realized. The old generation of drinkers will, many of them, probably continue to get liquor in some way—but their boys, our boys, all the happy, hopeful, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked young fellows who are growing up on the prairies of Kansas, will grow to manhood untempted by the social allurements of the saloon, soberer, healthier, happier men than their fathers were.