The saloon keeper preacher, however, lacks one advantage possessed by his more fortunate compeer of the church pulpit, for, where a member of the saloon congregation has a perfect right to answer back and correct misstatements, slanders and unjust vituperation, the friend of the common people who happens into the fashionable city church service must bite his lips and remain silent while the name of Jesus, the revolutionist, the poor man's friend, is used to strengthen vile calumny against His brave modern apostles who are fighting to realize practically in government the principles represented by the cross.
Therefore, one of the most promising fields for the social reformer, for the man who drinks beer and the man who drinks water, for the man who smokes cigars and the man who washes his teeth before every meal with charcoal powder and lives on vegetables, is the liquor saloon. It is always open and you can go in without buying. You can take a seat free of charge and you can talk. You have as much right to talk as the bartender, and even if opposed to your principles, good business judgment, if no other motive, prompts the average saloon keeper to be tolerant. He cannot afford to drive away any large percentage of his customers. You have a right, and even in the Republican saloons you can get permission to declare the gospel of monopoly's downfall in the back room, in the hall upstairs or in the main saloon, once a week, without paying anything for heat, light or hall rent. These are already furnished for the people who now go there. You do not need to advertise the meeting, for there is always a crowd about the saloon. After you have held two or three meetings they will grow in size and draw the frequenters from other resorts.
The average saloon crowd is as open to conviction and as ready to be taught concerning the moralizing of government and the establishment of justice in the world as the average church congregation, and they will treat you as civilly and listen as attentively even though every man present disagrees with you.
Let the hundreds of saloons throughout our great cities be selected as a mission field for the new gospel of manliness and brotherhood. Christ went among publicans and wine-bibbers. We can afford to go among wine-bibbers, even when they are Republicans. Our crowd may be small at times but the kind of work that moves the world and builds up civilization is work that is regular and continuous.
Let the Volunteers organize by twos, and the one, two or three evenings a week that they can give to the cause, let those who choose this work go to a saloon and tell the fellows there that under a proper social system, each one of them can afford to have a home as sociable and homelike and comfortable as a saloon; that, after they declare their independence of the party whip, and, instead of obeying parties, command them to do their bidding, they can soon have such opportunities that they won't have to drink to forget their troubles, because they will have no troubles; that they won't have to drink in order to imagine that they are happy, because they will have real happiness; that after the gold standard and monopoly are overthrown, there will be a hundred different pleasures and opportunities opened to them, that these will produce intoxication just as delicious as that produced by wine and beer, and that every poor man who wants to drink will be allowed to drink, not slops and refuse, but the same fluids that now give the gout and dropsy to die millionaire.
The way to get up a saloon meeting is to see the proprietor, tell him you are a Democrat, not a fraudulent, makebelieve hypocrite, using the Democratic name to defeat Democratic principles, not an agent of the gold bugs trying to corrupt the Democratic party, not an attorney for monopoly attempting to pervert the Democratic organization to help millionaires rob Democratic voters, but that you are a real dyed-in-the-wool, anti-monopoly, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Bryan Democrat, standing with all fours on the Chicago platform, the enemy of its enemies, the foe of its traducers, and the opponent, uncompromising and implacable of every man who upholds the infamous British Rothschild gold standard of money. Tell him that you would like to talk to his customers and a few others in his place every week, and show them how, by united political action in the Democratic party, they can be made just as happy as if they were drunk seven days each week.
He will let you come, and if you talk straight from the shoulder, you will have a larger crowd at the second meeting than at the first. If you keep the work up a year continuously, you will not only have your name enrolled in the book of heroes, kept by the Democratic leaders, but also in the book kept by the Divinity who guides the Nations. You will be rewarded in this world for your sacrificing labor if you live until the people crush monopoly, and if not, you will at least have that consciousness of duty done which knows no time nor space.