"We ought to cut out the cancer when gambling and crime reach the point of endangering our system of government," he said.[27]
"These gambling losses do not include the billions lost on the stock exchanges, and boards of trade.
"Your Octopus derives his blood soaked profits, from your poison habits, as follows:
"The saloon and liquor lounge is your poor man's heaviest burden. It not only takes away and robs him and his family of his meager earnings, but it wrecks his health and turns him into either a criminal or a drunkard. Every dime or dollar they extract from you means one nursing bottle less for your babies, less food and medicine for your families.
"Thus come need and destitution. The saloon is one of the chief causes of poverty and degeneracy, crime, insanity, and suicides. It is both directly and indirectly the cause of the killing and injury of many people.
"You may know from your own experience that after drinking a very small quantity of an alcoholic beverage, you have an obnoxious breath. Nature biologically did not intend alcohol for human consumption. It is an unhealthy digestive irritant, stimulant, and narcotic.
"Seemingly many people from top to the bottom of your social strata have fallen for the wiles of John Barleycorn and his side-kicks. At sumptuous social functions and at the parties of the poor, alcohol is freely consumed. It is served in the homes, cocktail lounges, night clubs, cafes, and the cheapest corner bars. No home of the well-to-do is fashionable unless it has the latest push wagon liquor service or a permanent, small, drinking mixing bar. Alcohol drinking seems to be the fad. The serving of alcoholic beverages is supposedly a sign of hospitality.
"Afternoon and early evening cocktail hours are an important event to patronize cocktail lounges and bars. Both sexes guzzle liquor and make new acquaintances. Women and men companions of all ages, mothers who are neglecting their children and homes, mothers with their daughters, youths, businessmen, brokers, politicians, and clubmen mingle with idlers, gamblers, bookmakers, policy operators, and narcotic distributors, and other human vultures. All are fashionably attired with assumed social graces and smooth voices. The smoky and noisy atmosphere is drowned by music.
"The same kinds of crowds frequent the night clubs with sensually contorted dancing and floor shows until early morning. That's where some of you take your daughters, sweethearts, and wives, and you think you are having a good time. That's where your daughters and sons from adolescence to maturity go with their dates or to pick up dates. They think it very smart. That's where they acquire pernicious habits.
"Look or walk into any of the great numbers of night clubs, high class hotel cocktail lounges, or neighborhood saloons and you will see daughters, sweethearts, wives, mothers, or sisters, of your friends and perchance your own, sitting on stools around the bar or in booths, close to known or unknown male companions. A man may take a girl out for just a little moonlight spin in his waiting automobile and even perhaps in a call house, a wayside cabin or in his bachelor apartment.