I count, and 165,000 have lost their appetites and have become muttering, bleary-eyed drunkards, wallowing in their own excrement, and I say, "What is it I hear, a funeral dirge?" What is that procession? A funeral procession 3,000 miles long and 110,000 hearses in the procession. One hundred and ten thousand men die drunkards in the land of the free and home of the brave. Listen! In an hour twelve men die drunkards, 300 a day and 110,000 a year. One man will leap in front of a train, another will plunge from the dock into a lake, another will throw his hands to his head and life will end. Another will cry, "Mother," and his life will go out like a burnt match.
I stand in front of the jails and count the whisky criminals. They say, "Yes, Bill, I fired the bullet." "Yes, I backed my wife into the corner and beat her life out. I am waiting for the scaffold; I am waiting." "I am waiting," says another, "to slip into hell." On, on, it goes. Say, let me summon the wifehood, and the motherhood, and the childhood and see the tears rain down the upturned faces. People, tears are too weak for that hellish business. Tears are only salty backwater that well up at the bidding of an occult power, and I will tell you there are 865,000 whisky orphan children in the United States, enough in the world to belt the globe three times around, punctured at every fifth point by a drunkard's widow.
Like Hamilcar of old, who swore young Hannibal to eternal enmity against Rome, so I propose to perpetuate this feud against the liquor traffic until the white-winged dove of temperance builds her nest on the dome of the Capitol of Washington and spreads her wings of peace, sobriety and joy over our land which I love with all my heart.
What Will a Dollar Buy?
I hold a silver dollar in my hand. Come on, we are going to a saloon. We will go into a saloon and spend that dollar for a quart. It takes twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky and a dollar will buy a quart. You say to the saloon-keeper, "Give me a quart." I will show you, if you wait a minute, how she is burned up. Here I am John, an old drunken bum, with a wife and six kids. (Thank God, it's all a lie.) Come on, I will go down to a saloon and throw down my dollar. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky. A nickel will make a quart. My dollar will buy a quart of booze. Who gets the nickel? The farmer, for corn and apples. Who gets the ninety-five cents? The United States government, the big distillers, the big corporations. I am John, a drunken bum, and I will spend my dollar. I have worked a week and got my pay. I go into a grog-shop and throw down my dollar. The saloon-keeper gets my dollar and I get a quart of booze. Come home with me. I stagger, and reel, and spew in my wife's presence, and she says:
"Hello, John, what did you bring home?"
"A quart."
What will a quart do? It will burn up my happiness and my home and fill my home with squalor and want. So there is the dollar. The saloon-keeper has it. Here is my quart. There you get the whisky end of it. Here you get the workingman's end of the saloon.
But come on; I will go to a store and spend the dollar for a pair of shoes. I want them for my son, and he puts them on his feet, and with the shoes to protect his feet he goes out and earns another dollar, and my dollar becomes a silver thread in the woof and warp of happiness and joy, and the man that owns the building gets some, and the clerk that sold the shoes gets some, and the merchant, and the traveling man, and the wholesale house gets some, and the factory, and the man that made the shoes, and the man that tanned the hide, and the butcher that bought the calf, and the little colored fellow that shined the shoes, and my dollar spread itself and nobody is made worse for spending the money.
I join the Booster Club for business and prosperity. A man said, "I will tell you what is the matter with the country: it's over-production." You lie, it is underconsumption.