"Judge, I'll state the case and let yer honor decide for me, which ye are hired to do anyway. I was standin' by the corner of the strate on me way home from work, when I spied the bottles in the window of the saloon. The sight of thim bottles made me thirsty, so I wint in and took a drink. Jist thin three other thirsty ones came in and I took a drink with thim; thin they took a drink with me and we kept on drinkin' till we thought we were back in auld Ireland at Donnybrook Fair. Whenever we saw a head we struck it and I suppose this gintlemin's head came my way. Now here's the case, judge. If I hadn't taken the whiskey, I wouldn't a been in the row, for I'm always paceable whin sober; if the saloon hadn't been there I wouldn't have taken the whiskey; and if the Court hadn't licensed the saloon it wouldn't have been there. Ye can take the case, sir."
What makes the drunkard? The drink. What supplies the drink? The saloon. What makes the saloon? The law. Who makes the law? The legislator. Who makes the legislator? The voter. It's the "House that Jack built," only I will change the verbage a little. Intemperance is the fire the devil built. Strong drink is the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. Distilleries, breweries and saloons are the axes that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. License laws are molds that cast the axes, that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. License voters and legislators are the patentees who invented the molds that cast the axes that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. Prohibition ballots are the sledge hammers destined to destroy the molds that cast the axes that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built.
There is a chain of responsibility running through the drink question which many good men fail to recognize. You know a chain is made up of links welded together. The drunkard is only one link; he is not a chain. When you link him to the drink then you begin the chain; the drunkard comes from the drink. That is not all of the chain however; the drink is linked to the saloon. If you have the saloon, you have the drink, you have the drunkard. This is not all of the chain; you have the license law. If you have the license law, you have the saloon, you have the drink, you have the drunkard. There is yet another link; the license law is linked to the license voter. The drunkard comes from the drink, the drink comes from the saloon, the saloon from the law, and law from the license voter. Who are the license voters? Many of them are Christian men on their way to heaven; but the trouble with them is the other end of the chain is going another road. "No drunkard can enter the kingdom of heaven."
I know it is a common remark that this is a free country, and if a man chooses to drink, let him do so and take the consequences. If one could take alone the consequences of his sin there might be some claim to personal liberty. But when a man's liberty involves another life the scene changes. A young man may commit a sin in social life and by reform be forgiven, but when that other life involved in his sin, is seen in after years, walking the streets in painted shame, reproducing the consequences of that man's sin, memory and conscience will combine to give him waking hours while the world sleeps. A man may never enter a saloon, never take a drink of intoxicating liquor, but if he votes for the saloon his life becomes involved in the consequences of the saloon. What are the consequences? Here is a sample. After a three days' blizzard in one of our large cities a reformer visited a morgue and seeing a large clothes-hamper full of dead babies he said: "What does this mean?"
The reply came: "They were gathered from the drunkards' hovels of the city this morning."
The visitor tells us: "Their bodies were frozen, and several arms were sticking up out of the basket as if reaching out after life and love."
The streets of our city slums are rivers along whose shores at midnight can be heard the death gurgle of helpless little ones, while poverty's row is full of children cursed by inheritance, who are not living but merely existing by scraping the moss of bare subsistence from empty buckets in wells of poverty; and the air is freighted with oaths and obscenities from demonized men and demi-monde women who pour the poison of their blood into the social life of city slums.
I was both grieved and amazed when I read from the pen of a brilliant Kentucky editor an editorial denouncing as tyrannical a sumptuary law that "denies to a citizen the right to order his home, his meat, his drink, his clothing, according to his conscience." I wonder if the great editor ever considered the sumptuary law of the saloon. Every woman who fills the holy office of wife and mother has a right to a home. The sumptuary law of the saloon says to hundreds of thousands of such women: "You shall not have a home; you shall live in a hovel. You shall not order your home, your food, your drink, your clothing, according to your conscience, but according to the best interest of the saloon these comforts shall be ordered. You shall work all day in the harness of oppression and when night comes instead of restful sleep, you shall watch the stars out and wait the return of husband and sons." What about this inhuman denial of the right to order meat, drink, clothing and home life? Such is the sumptuary law of the saloon.
Every child in this country has a right to an education and a chance in the world. The saloons say to hosts of children: "You shall have neither education nor opportunity. You shall go to the streets and sweat-shops to earn bread. You shall live in ignorance and mid evil environment that we may gather in the wages of your fathers." How does this sumptuary law of the saloon compare with a sumptuary law that forbids the sale of what is of no earthly or eternal benefit to any one who uses it.