In His Image

by William Jennings Bryan

But, what is worse, science has shown that alcohol is a poison that runs in the blood, so that the drinking of the father or mother may curse a child unborn and close the door of hope upon it before its eyes have opened to the light of day.

Business aided us also, as large corporations increasingly discriminated against those who drank.

Patriotism furnished the last impulse; war threw a ghastly light upon the evils of intemperance and upon the sordid greed of those engaged in the liquor business.

The reform will not turn back. Enforcement will become more strict in this country as its benefits are more clearly shown and prohibition will spread until the saloon will be abolished throughout the world. Although now past sixty-one I expect to live to see the day when there will not be an open saloon under the flag of any civilized nation.

We are now able to prevent typhoid fever, the individual being made immune by a treatment administered before he has been exposed to the disease. Total abstinence resembles this preventive; no total abstainer is in danger of alcoholism.

But we also have a preventive for yellow fever, namely, the destroying of the breeding place of the mosquito which carries the germ of the disease. Prohibition resembles this preventive. The saloon was found to be the breeding place of alcoholism and prohibition strikes at the source of the danger. These two, total abstinence and prohibition, will eliminate the drink evil as typhoid and yellow fever have been eliminated.

The fourth amendment adopted in recent years extended equal suffrage to women. Like the three to which I have referred, it was a long time coming and came at last by joint action of the two great parties. A majority of both parties in both Senate and House voted for the submission of this amendment and it required both Democratic and Republican states to ratify it. The opposition which the amendment met in the South was not due to lack of confidence in women, for nowhere in the world is woman more highly estimated or more fully trusted. Such local opposition as there was was due to the race question. Now that woman can express herself at the polls, her influence will be felt as much in the South as in other sections; it will throughout the United States seal the doom of the liquor traffic. The women will stand guard at the grave of John Barleycorn and make sure that he will never know a resurrection morn.

Drawing their inspiration from the Bible, even to a greater extent than the men do, the women will hasten the triumph of every righteous cause. They will throw their influence on the side of every moral reform. The adoption of the single standard of morals will be made possible by woman's advent into politics. Her ballot will make it easier to lift man to her level in the matter of chastity and to distribute more equitably than man has done, the punishments imposed for acts of immorality.

Woman has come into power in politics at a time when she can aid in the promotion of world peace by compelling the establishment of machinery which will substitute reason for force in the settlement of international disputes. Her first great triumph at the polls may be the fulfilling of the prophecy, spoken more than two thousand years ago, that swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and that nations shall learn war no more. She will be repaid for all her patience and her waiting if now, by her ballot, she can make it unnecessary for another mother's son to be offered upon the altar of Mars. That this nation is in a better position than ever before to lead the world in every good cause is due to the gifts that have come with American citizenship, only three of which I have had time to mention.

Every citizen should be honest with himself, examine his own heart and answer to his own conscience. What estimate does he place upon the education which he has received? What value does he put upon the religion that controls his heart? How highly does he prize the form of government under which he lives? Let him put his own appraisement upon these three great gifts; these sums added together will represent his acknowledged indebtedness to society; then let him resolve to pay so much of this incalculable debt as is within his power.