Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink

by T. S. Arthur

CHAPTER XV.

TEMPERANCE COFFEE-HOUSES AND FRIENDLY INNS.

The cure of a drunkard is always attended with peculiar difficulties. The cost is often great. Sometimes cure is found to be impossible. A hundred may be protected from the ravages of intemperance at the cost of saving one who has fallen a victim to the terrible malady. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

While so much is being done to reform and save the drunkard, the work of prevention has not been forgotten. Great good has been accomplished in this direction through the spread of total-abstinence principles. In this the various temperance organizations have done much, and especially with the rising generation. But, so long as men are licensed by the State to sell intoxicating drinks, the net of the tempter is spread on every hand, and thousands of the weak and unwary are yearly drawn therein and betrayed to their ruin. In our great cities large number of men who have to do business at points remote from their dwellings, are exposed to special temptations. The down-town lunch-room and dining-room have, in most cases, their drinking bars; or, if no bar is visible, the bill of fare offers in too many cases, any kind of intoxicating beverage that may be desired. Thousands of men are, in consequence, yearly led away from sobriety.

Seeing this, efforts have been made during the past few years to establish, cheap temperance coffee-houses, where workingmen and others may get a good noonday lunch, or a morning and evening meal at a trifling cost. In all cases, these have been found of great service to the cause of temperance. A pint mug of excellent coffee, with sugar and milk, and a large, sweet roll, costing five cents, are found to make a far better and healthier lunch than the highly-seasoned hashes and scraps called "free lunches," which must be washed down by a, five or ten-cent glass of liquor.

THE EXPERIMENT IN PHILADELPHIA.

The success which has attended the establishment of cheap temperance coffee-houses in this city (Philadelphia), is quite remarkable. In the fall of 1874, Joshua L. Baily, one of our active, clear-headed merchants, who had been for many years an earnest temperance man, determined to give the cheap coffee-house experiment a fair trial, cost what it might; for he saw that if it could be made successful, it would be a powerful agency in the work of prevention. He began in a modest way, taking a small store at the corner of Market and Fifteenth Streets, and fitting it up in a neat and attractive manner. With a few pounds of coffee, and a few dozens of rolls, the place was opened, the single attendant, a woman, acting the double part of cook and waiter. For five cents a pint mug of the best Java coffee, with milk and sugar, and a good-sized roll, were furnished.

From the very start "The Workingmen's Central Coffee-House," as Mr. Baily called it, was successful. In the immediate neighborhood five hundred workmen were employed on the city buildings, and opposite stood the Pennsylvania Railroad freight depot, to which came daily about the same number of men—draymen, teamsters and others. It took but a few days to so crowd the new coffee-room at the usual lunching time as to require an additional assistant. From day to day the business went on increasing, until more help and larger accommodations became necessary. Soon a complete kitchen had to be built in the basement, and the adjoining store added, in order to meet the steadily-enlarging demands upon the new establishment. The fame of the good coffee, which was better than most people found at home, spread far and near, and larger and larger numbers of clerks, workingmen and others, turned their steps daily, at lunch time, towards the Central Coffee-House. It was so much better than the poor stuff served in most of the eating-houses; and, with the sweet roll added, so much better than the free lunch and glass of beer or whisky with which too many had been accustomed to regale themselves.

SIGNAL SUCCESS.

Steadily swelled the tide of custom. Within a year a third store, adjoining, was added. But the enlarged premises soon proved inadequate to the accommodation of the still-increasing crowd.