I then went to the Y. M. C. A., and found on the first floor, billiard tables, cigars and cigarettes; they also have a "smoking room." A poor mother wrote to a friend of mine in New Heaven to please use her influence to save the boys. That her boy wrote her that the brandy was so strong on the food that it made his head dizzy. One poor boy said that he did not wish such food but that he had no other to eat. Students are crying out against this outrage. While I was there a "Smoker" was advertised to be held by the law students. A student told me that a beer wagon was engaged by the Seniors of Sheffield School of Yale for their wrestling match procession. These Seniors upon application can get a tin cup and help themselves to this rotten slop that will destroy their willpower and make them slaves of the drink habit. What can be expected of Freshmen if Seniors set such an example? This will show what it leads to:
The demoralization of the students is talked of universally. They have what is called Freshman "Games", which are as follows: Upon appointed evenings they will meet at a select hotel (saloon). They take their places at the table, then, each one at the table, "sets them up" to all the rest. If there are twelve at the table each one gets twelve drinks. You can imagine the "games" after such a debauch. I saw some young men there from Kansas and I asked them: "Why do you come to Yale?" I would never send a boy of mine to Yale. If I had a hundred I would send them to a state, that made such things a crime. Here is a college that has received donations of millions lately, that young men may be prepared and fitted for stations of moral, mental and physical eminence and it is a school of vice to a great extent. The distillers and brewers dominate the republican party and they are the controlling party at Yale and will desolate and enslave our darling boys. I went to see the president of Yale, Professor Hadley, and I asked him about these things. He said he thought the intoxicants were "fruit juices". I spoke of the smoking. He said he used to think it was wrong but when he went to Germany he saw they smoked there. He was taught it was wrong in America but when he saw it in Germany he thought better of the vice and is now teaching it to our boys. People ought to demand another faculty or refuse to patronize such a school.
While I was at Harvard I saw Professors smoking cigarettes. Parents should demand that the teachers in these colleges and schools should be free from the practice of the vices of drinking intoxicating liquors and the use of tobacco. I hope we will have some generous hearted man who will donate to build a college in Kansas with the capacity of Yale. What a shame to have professors in our schools aping the vices of foreigners.
These same professors are the followers of Huxley and Herbert Spencer, who did far more to make the world ignorant than wise. Huxley saw in man only the elements of a weed. Herbert Spencer would have destroyed all family life. Such men as these degrade thought and see only the animal. "For after that in the wisdom of man, the world by wisdom knew not. Yet it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to confound the wise" (as a fool would determine wisdom).
The great controversy between Yale and Harvard now, is, which shall excel in brute force, and foot-ball seems to be the test. Colleges were founded for the purpose of educating the young, on moral, intellectual, and spiritual lines. The test of these is oratory, debate, intellectual contests. It used to be conceded, that the mind made the man, now the forces of the mule and ox are preferred.
Taft, of the noted 'Taft' Cigar has position of lecturer, and the inference is, there will be more vile cigars smoked than ever, under such patronage.
Oh, mothers and fathers! Rise in protest against these outrages, slaughter, bloody anarchy, and treason.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PROHIBITION OR ABOLITION.—WHAT IT MEANS.—THE FREE METHODISTS AND OTHER MINISTERS ENDORSE THE WORK.—A CATHOLIC PRIEST'S ENDORSEMENT.— MODERN DEBORAH.—JOHN P. ST. JOHN.
God is a politician; so is the devil. God's politics are to protect and defend mankind, bringing to them the highest good and finally heaven. The devil's politics are to deceive, degrade and to make miserable, finally ending in hell. The Bible fully explains this. The two kinds of seed started out from Abel and Cain, then Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob. There are but these two kinds of people. God's crowd and the Devil's crowd. The first law given and broken in Eden was a prohibition law. God said: "Thou shalt not." The devil tempted and persuaded the first pair to disobey. He did it by deceiving the woman. The fact of redemption now is to bring them back to the law of God. What is law? God says that sin is a transgression of law. Blackstone says: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Law is one, as truth is one. It is not possible to make a bad law. If it is bad, it is not a law. We have bad statutes. Law is always right. Nothing is wrong that is legal, and wrong may be licensed, but never legalized. I find lawyers who do not understand this. I often hear the term "legalized saloon". When I was passing the building of the supreme court in New York City, on Madison Avenue, I read an inscription on one of the marble statues representing a judge with a book on either side of the door: "Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the state." This is a false, misleading sentence for all law is wisdom. It might have read: "All statutes not based on wisdom, are a menace to the state." Then at the base of the statue of a soldier, on the other side of the entrance, was this statement: "We do not use force until good laws are defied." Which ought to read: "We do not use force until laws are defied." Such ideas as these are corrupting courts, and biasing the public mind, and the injury is more than apparent to the observer. If law is not a standard, what standard can we have? We must have one. We repeat again: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Any statute that does this is lawful. Any that does not, is anarchy.