“Mr.—— owns all the property on that side of the street. He is now teaching a Sunday-school class while boys are in his building drinking. This thing’s repeated every Sunday. It’s headquarters for young men.”
When our leading men of business, our wealthy citizens, men of influence, men who stand high in the commercial world, are renting their property to persons who, for the money they make, are ruining hundreds of young lives, what can we expect?
We need an era of enforcement of law, less of pretense, more of purpose. Whether the laws be good or bad, is not a question. If they are good, they should be enforced for the welfare of the community and the vindication of the State. If they are bad, they should be enforced so that their injustice may prove sufficiently oppressive to lead to their appeal.
The saloons will always be with us, and so long as the State, and the city receive the price for their existence, and grant them recognition and endorsement, they should be protected in accordance with the laws governing their business, but beyond all this, there is a law, a moral law, a law of decency, of respect, for the welfare and happiness of mankind, that should appeal to every man engaged in the selling of liquors.
Five men, of our acquaintance, engaged in the saloon business, have for many years mutually agreed to do certain things. They do not open their places of business on Sunday. They do not admit a minor into their saloons for any cause. They will not sell liquor to a man who shows the least sign of being intoxicated.
If every man engaged in the saloon business would follow to the letter these few simple rules, thousands of good wives, and innocent children would be happy, and the influence for good could not be estimated. Our Sunday-closing laws should be enforced.
The lives of a majority of men, hard-working men, are dreary enough for six days of the week without having all of the desolation compressed into the seventh and drilled into them through the avarice of selfish men who aim to take advantage of a man under the influence of liquor, and take from him his last cent and then throw him into the street.
We are learning to regard the majority of youthful offenders, especially in our large cities, as the victims of environment, sufferers from lack of opportunity for good. In nine cases out of ten, boys who are found in saloons come from well-to-do families, and are permitted to be there through neglect and carelessness of their parents.