Wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry and story woven into eight popular lectures

by George W. Bain

The same distinguished editor said: "When women gather around voting booths on election days with sandwiches and coffee, they present an indecent spectacle to the public." The man who goes with gun in hand and shoots down another in defense of his country is a hero. The mother lion or bear that defies the hunter's bullets and dies in defense of her young we can but respect; but when woman, who has suffered so long in silence, goes near where the welfare of her home is at stake and out of the sore, sad sorrow of her heart appeals to men for protection to her home from the ravages of the saloon, she is not paid the respect given to a mother hen or bird or bear by the advocate of the liquor traffic. When the niece of Cardinal Richelieu was demanded by a licentious king, the Cardinal said: "Around her form I draw the awful circle of our kingly church; set a foot within and on thy head, aye, though it wear a crown, shall fall the curse of Rome." Shall the crown of gold on the distiller's and brewer's brow hush into silence the lion-hearted manhood of our republic when its sons and daughters are demanded to feed the maw of the liquor traffic?

One of the famous pictures of the masters is of a woman bound fast to a pillar within the tide-mark of the ocean. The waves are curling about her feet. A ship is passing under full sail but no one seems to see or heed the woman in peril. Birds of prey hover above her, but she sees neither bird, nor ship, nor sea; knowing her doom is sealed, she lifts her eyes to heaven and prays. This picture represents thousands of women tied fast to their doom within the tide-waves of the ocean of intemperance. The ship of state passes by, bearing its share of the ill-gotten gains of the liquor traffic, but heeds not the moans and cries of struggling, strangling, dying woman. Oliver Cromwell said: "It is relative misgovernment that lashes nations into fury." The long suffering in silence by the womanhood of this country from the misgovernment that has heaped upon woman the woes of strong drink by the licensed saloon, whether a tribute to the patience of woman or not, is to the eternal shame of man, whose inhumanity to woman through the liquor traffic is making "countless millions mourn."

To this misgovernment is due the unrest among women and the impetus behind the equal suffrage movement today. There needs to be a saving influence brought into our political life, and I have faith to believe that woman's ballot will provide that influence. Having proved her dignity in every new field of activity she has entered, I believe the same flowers of refinement will adorn the ballot box when she holds in her hand the sacred trust of franchise. Her life-long habit of house-cleaning will be carried to the dirty pool of politics, where the saloon is entrenched, and the demagogue and demijohn will be carted away to the garbage pile of discarded rubbish.

Now and then I am asked: "What will become of the men who are engaged in the liquor business if the country goes dry? What will become of their families?" I answer by asking: What becomes of the men the saloons put out of business? What becomes of their families? When prohibition puts a man out of business, it leaves him his brain, blood, bone, muscle, nerves and whatever manhood he has left in store, while his long rest from active toil has given him a reserve force for active, useful business. When the saloon puts a man out of business, he goes out with shattered nerves, weak will, poisoned blood and so unfitted for service no place is open for him to earn a living. Recently a man put out of business by prohibition said to me: "This town went dry seven years ago, and going out of the saloon business has been such a benefit to me and to my family, I shall work and vote to put all other saloon-keepers in this state out of business for their own good."

On the other hand, I have in mind a man who once chained the Congress of the United States by his eloquence. Clients clamored for his service, and prosperity crowned his practice in the courts. In drinking saloons he lost his clientage and in penniless poverty he died—unwept, unhonored, unsung. The ex-saloon-keeper to whom I referred is city marshall and very popular, while the man put out of business by the saloon has no chance:

"Where he goes and how he fares,

Nobody knows and nobody cares."

Along with the question of what will become of the men put out of business by prohibition, comes the question, what will the farmers do with their corn if distilleries are closed? Less consumption of whiskey means more consumption of cornbread and that means more corn. Less consumption of whiskey means greater consumption of bacon, and more bacon means more corn to feed hogs. When a liquor advocate said to an audience of farmers: "If this state goes dry what will you farmers do with your corn," an old, level-headed farmer shouted: "We'll raise more hogs and less hell."

Prohibition means more of everything good, and less of everything bad; more manhood, less meanness; more gain, less groans; more bread, less brawls; more clothing, less cussedness; less heartaches and more happiness. Turn saloons into bake shops and butcher stalls, distilleries into food factories, breweries into stock pens, and the country will be a thousandfold better off than feeding its finances by starving its morality.