A still more startling comparison is afforded by the statistics of the saloon business of Leavenworth. There are, it is reported, 230 saloons in that city, or one for every 127 of its 29,268 inhabitants. To meet the expenses of these saloons, estimating them at an average of only $15 per day each, requires receipts aggregating $3,450 per day, or $1,259,250 per annum—$422,250 more than is received by all the druggists of Kansas for all the liquors they sell. A like ratio for the whole State would give Kansas 11,811 saloons, whose daily expenses, at $15 per day, would aggregate the enormous sum of $177,165 per day, or $64,665,225 per year—just $63,828,225 more than the sales by the druggists now aggregate.
DEMOCRATIC SLANDERS OF HONORABLE MEN.
I want to add, too, that in my judgment, the assertions sometimes made, that the drug stores of Kansas have all been transformed into saloons, are absolutely false. I am acquainted with many of the druggists of this State, and know them to be honorable, law-respecting, conscientious citizens, who would not only scorn to do an illegal act for pecuniary profit, but who are far above and beyond the meanness of selling liquors as a beverage. There is no class of business men in the State who stand higher in the esteem and respect of all good citizens than do our druggists, and the attempt on the part of the Democratic party and its allies to degrade their business to the low level of the saloons, and to blacken and stain their reputation as honorable and law-respecting citizens, is unspeakably outrageous. It is true, no doubt, that there are men engaged in the drug business who disgrace it by violating the Constitution and laws, and who, for pecuniary profit, sell liquors for other than the excepted purposes of the Constitution. But these men are the exception, and not the rule, among the druggists of Kansas, and sooner or later the law will reach and punish them, and drive them out of the business they degrade. Those, however, who place druggists generally in this class, are either stupid or malicious slanderers of men who, as a class, are honorable citizens, engaged in a reputable and legitimate business. The sale of liquor for certain purposes is expressly authorized by the Constitution and the laws, and sales for these purposes are far larger than most people suppose. Alcohol is sold for hundreds of mechanical and scientific uses, strictly within the permission of the Constitution, and all varieties of intoxicating liquors are prescribed by learned and reputable physicians, for medical use. The sales for these legitimate and lawful uses constitute, I have no doubt, a very large proportion of the sales made by the druggists of Kansas; so that the quantity of intoxicating liquors sold as a beverage is reduced to a very small amount, and this amount will grow smaller year after year.
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.
FATHERS, MOTHERS, WIVES, AND CHILDREN REJOICE.
And where is the father who does not rejoice over this prospect? The man does not live who is so degraded, so brutal, that he would wish his boy, or the husband of his daughter, to acquire the drinking habit. Where, then, is the man who is not willing to give his voice and his vote to sustain the party which, respecting and obeying the formally expressed will of the people, proposes to abolish the saloon, and the frightful crime, poverty, wretchedness and vice of which it is the fruitful source? Suppose that not another drop of liquor should ever be sold as a beverage in Kansas, would any human being in the State thereby suffer harm? If every saloon in Kansas should be closed to-morrow, and never reopened, would any man, woman or child within the limits of the State be injured? Has whisky, since the first drop was distilled, ever benefited any man who drank it, or made the life of any wife, mother or sister any happier, or brought joy to the heart or smiles to the lips of a little child? Has any good ever come out of the saloon? Has any human being been hurt or harmed, in any town or city of this State, by the closing of the saloons? Not one—not a single one. In hundreds of Kansas towns whence the saloons have been banished, there are thousands of homes where wives and children wear better clothes, and sit down every day to better meals, than they had provided for them before the saloons were banished. Is there a home anywhere in the State that is less peaceful, prosperous and happy, or a child that is clothed in rags, or a wife whose love and happiness have been blighted, because the saloons have been closed? Not one—not a single one.
THE SALOON, THE SCHOOL HOUSE AND RECRUITING STATION OF THE ANARCHISTS.
Another, and if possible, more urgent reason why the saloon must go, has recently been brought home to the people of this country with convincing force. Americans have believed that this was the freest, happiest land under the sun, and it is. Its government is the perfection of human wisdom. It is, as the greatest of our Presidents has said, “a government of the people, for the people, by the people.” No limitations or restrictions are placed on the rights or liberty of any citizen, except such as are necessary to protect the rights and liberty of all other citizens. The humblest man in the land may aspire to the highest official place, and it is a fact that a vast majority of those citizens who have attained the loftiest honors sprang from the humblest walks in life. Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Blaine, Logan, and thousands of others who might be named, are conspicuous illustrations of this truth. Ours is a government of liberty, regulated by law. Its delegated and reserved powers embody the ripest fruits of man’s experience with and knowledge of man’s weakness and strength, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and justice—embody, in fact, the experience of thirty centuries of human progress. Only a few brief years ago, the people gladly and proudly sacrificed 500,000 lives, and billions of treasure, in order to preserve, for themselves and their children, this heritage of free government.
But within the past decade there has been spawned upon our hospitable shores a school of depraved and vicious foreigners, who are poisoning and polluting the very atmosphere they breathe. Incapable of comprehending the difference between absolute despotism and republican freedom, confounding liberty with license, regarding all restraints of law as tyranny, and denouncing all government as oppression, these apostles of anarchy are sedulously sowing the seeds of discord, envy, hate, rapacity, and murder. And where do these miscreants find the most willing converts to their atrocious theories? Where do they assemble to plot, to declaim, to conspire, and to argue? Read the reports of the trial of the anarchists in Chicago, and you will ascertain. Read, in the journals of any of our large cities, reports of anarchist and socialist assemblies. Follow Most, and Schwab, and Spies, and Fielden, and Parsons, to their favorite haunts. Do this, and you will find that the saloon is always and everywhere the assembly room, the school house, the tabernacle of these wild, vicious and dangerous apostles of lawlessness. There they teach their ferocious doctrine, “burn, and murder, and plunder, in order to live.” There they find the ignorant and brutalized human beings whose besotted minds and deadened consciences make them ready converts to the monstrous theories that property is robbery, that law is oppression, that government is tyranny, that religion is a cheat, and that everything mankind has been taught to revere should be proscribed and destroyed.