Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 16

For such men as Sylvester Long, Roland A. Nichols, Robert Parker Miles and Bishop Robert McIntyre to tell me my lectures helped to shape their lives, fills my soul with joy as I face the setting sun.

Chance, the noted English engineer, built a thousand sea-lights, sh.o.r.e-lights and harbor-lights. When in old age he lay dying, a wild storm on the sea seemed to revive him by its a.s.sociation with his life-work. He said to the watchers: "Lift me up and let me see once more the ocean in a storm."

As he looked out, the red lightning ripped open the black wardrobe of the firmament, and he saw the salted sea driven by the fury of the hurricane into great billows of foam. Sinking back upon his pillows his last words were: "Thank G.o.d, I have been a lighthouse builder, and though the light of my life is fast fading, the beams of my lighthouse are brightening the darkness of many a sailor's night."

When my life-work closes, and my platform experiences are ended, I would ask no better name than that of an humble lighthouse builder, who here and there from the sh.o.r.e-points of life's ocean, has sent out a friendly beam, to brighten the darkness of some brother's night.

VII

THE DEFEAT OF THE NATION'S DRAGON.

Joseph Cook said in one of his Boston lectures: "Whenever the temperance cause has attempted to fly with one wing, whether moral suasion or legal suasion, its course has been a spiral one. It will never accomplish its mission in this world, until it strikes the air with equal vans, each wing keeping time with the other, both together winnowing the earth of the tempter and the tempted."

I congratulate the friends of temperance upon the progress both wings have made since the beginning of their flight.

The first temperance pledge we have any record of ran thus: "I solemnly promise upon my word of honor I will abstain from everything that will intoxicate, except at public dinners, on public holidays and other important occasions." The first prohibitory law was a local law in a village on Long Island and ran thus: "Any man engaged in the sale of intoxicating liquors, who sells more than one quart of rum, whiskey or brandy to four boys at one time shall be fined one dollar and two pence."

A sideboard without brandy or rum was an exception, while the jug was imperative at every log-raising and in the harvest field. It was said of even a Puritan community,

"Their only wish and only prayer, In the present world or world to come, Is a string of Eels and a jug of rum."

When Doctor Leonard Bacon was installed pastor of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, Conn., in 1825, free drinks were ordered at the bar of the hotel, for all visiting members, to be paid for by the church. Today all protestant churches declare against the drink habit and the drink sale. Pulpits are thundering away against the saloon. Children are studying the effects of alcohol upon the human system in nearly every state in the Union. Train loads of literature are pouring into the homes of the people. A mighty army of as G.o.dly women as ever espoused a cause is battling for the home, against the saloon. The business world is demanding total-abstainers, and fifty millions of people in the United States are living under prohibitory laws.

Not only in this but in every civilized land the cause of temperance is growing. Recently in France it was found there were more deaths than births, which meant France was dying. A commission was appointed to look into the causes. When the report was made, alcohol headed the list. Now by order of the government linen posters are put up in public buildings, and on these in blood red letters are these warnings: "Alcohol dangerous; alcohol chronic poison; alcohol leads to the following diseases; alcohol is the enemy of labor; alcohol disrupts the home!"

Who would have thought an Emperor of Germany would ever "go back" on beer? Emperor William in an address to the sailors recommended total-abstinence and forbid under penalty the giving of liquor to soldiers in the world's greatest war. The Czar of Russia has put an end to the government's connection with the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, and our Secretary of the Navy has banished it from the s.h.i.+ps and navy yards. The New York Sun says: "The business world is getting to be one great temperance league." For many years it was confined to the realm of morals, but today it is recognized as a great economic question and the business world is joining the church world in solving the liquor problem.

While the temperance cause has been going up in character, the drink has been going down in quality. The old time distiller used to select his site along some crystal stream, that had its fountain-head in the mountains and ran over beds of limestone. With sound grain and pure water, he made several hundred barrels of whiskey a year, and after five to ten years of ripening, it was sent out with the makers' brand upon it. Now the North American of Philadelphia, one of our leading dailies says, rectifiers (and I would prefix one letter and make it w-r-e-c-k-t-i-f-i-e-r-s) take one barrel from the distillery and by a pernicious, poisonous process, make one hundred barrels from one barrel.

It is true the sting of the adder and the bite of the serpent were in the old-time whiskey, but it was as pure as it could be made. Doctor Wiley, Ex-Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says: "Eighty-five per cent. of all the whiskey sold in the saloons, hotels and club-rooms is not whiskey at all but a cheap base imitation." In the different concoctions made are found aconite, acquiamonia, angelica root, a.r.s.enic, alum, benzine, belladonna, beet-root juice, bitter almond, coculus-indicus, sulphuric acid, prussic acid, wood alcohol, boot soles and tobacco stems. No wonder we have more murders in this republic than in any civilized land beneath the sky in proportion to population.

Along with this adulteration of the drink has gone the degeneracy of the saloon and the seller. The day was when officers in churches could sell liquor and retain their members.h.i.+p. Today the saloonkeeper is barred from the protestant churches, barred from Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Woodmen, Maccabees and nearly every other fraternal organization of the world.

The saloon itself has become such a vicious resort, that when the police look for a murderer they go to the saloon. When any vile character is sought for, the saloon is searched. When anarchists meet to plan for a Hay-market murder in Chicago, they meet in the saloon.

When an a.s.sa.s.sin plans to shoot down our President at an exposition, he goes from the saloon. When a fire breaks out in Chicago or Boston the first order is, close the saloons. Don't close any other business house, but close the saloon. If a mob threatens Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or Atlanta, close the saloons. If an earthquake strikes San Francisco, close the saloons. In our large cities gambling rooms are attached to the saloons with wine rooms above for women, and while our boys are being ruined downstairs, girls are destroyed upstairs.

There are many thousands of women in painted shame, who would now be safe inside life's Eden of purity but for the saloon. The South Side Club of Chicago said in 1914: "The back rooms of four hundred and forty-five saloons on only three streets of this city contribute to the delinquency of fourteen thousand girls every twenty-four hours."

Is it any wonder the saloons hide behind green blinds or stained gla.s.s windows?

There is a fish in the sea known as the "Devil Fish." It lies on its back with open mouth and covers itself with sea moss. Over its open mouth is a bait. When an unsuspecting fish nibbles at the bait, with a quick snap it is caught and devoured. Do you see any a.n.a.logy between this fish and a certain business that hides itself behind painted windows or green blinds and hangs out a bait of "free lunch" or "Turtle Soup"? A fish that sets a trap for its kind is called a "Devil Fish;" a business that does the like is recognized as a legitimate trade and permitted for the sake of revenue.

Every other recognized business has improved in quality with the years. The saloon has grown worse and worse, until it is bad and only bad; bad in the beginning, bad in the middle, bad in the end, bad inside, outside, upside, downside. It is so bad, the liquor dealers are the only business men who are ashamed to put on exhibition their finished products. In great expositions other trades present finished wares. They do not display the tools used in making what they present for exhibition but the finished goods. Not so with the liquor dealers; they put on exhibition the tools with which they work, but not a single specimen of the finished product of their trade do they present for inspection.

"That's a fine fit of clothes you have, sir." "Yes," says the tailor, "I put up that job; glad you like my work."

"That's a fine building across the way." "Yes," says the architect, "that's my job and I am quite proud of it."

"That's a handsome bonnet you wear, madam." "Yes," says the milliner, "that's my creation of style and I am rather proud of my work."

Yonder is a man intoxicated. He staggers and falls; his head strikes the curb-stone; the blood besmears his face; the police lift him up and start with him to the station house. Did you hear a saloon keeper say: "That's my creation; I put up that job and I'm proud of my work."

Some one said recently in defense of the business: "The saloon keeper deserves more consideration." This writer should know that consideration has been the source of its undoing. Lord Chesterfield considered it and said: "Drink sellers are artists in human slaughter." Senator Morrill, of Maine, considered and p.r.o.nounced it "the gigantic crime of all crimes." Senator Long, of Ma.s.sachusetts considered it and called it "the dynamite of modern civilization."

Henry W. Grady, our brilliant southerner, considered it and said: "It is the destroyer of men, the terror of women and the shadow on the face of childhood. It has dug more graves and sent more souls to judgment than all the pestilences since Egypt's plague, or all the wars since Joshua stood before the walls of Jericho." The New York Tribune considered it and said: "It's the clog upon the wheels of American progress." The Bible considered it and compares its influence to the bite of serpents, the sting of adders, the poison of asps, and heaps the woes of G.o.d's will upon it.

Sam Jones said: "When the Bible says _woe_, you better stop," and as certain as seed time brings harvest it will stop, not because of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, or the Anti-Saloon League, or the Prohibition Party, but because afar back in the blue haze of the past the seed of prohibition was planted in the soil of Divine truth.

Ever since G.o.d declared woe against the evils of mankind, the batteries of the holy Bible have been trained upon the "wine that gives its color in the cup," and the man who "giveth his neighbor drink and maketh him drunken also."

It _will_ stop, because error cannot stand agitation. Whoever espouses the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic, tangle his tongue or pen with contradictions and wind up in confusion.

The able editor of the Courier Journal of Kentucky came to the defense of this error, and with all his brilliancy and culture, he resorted to personal abuse of temperance workers, _because he could not occupy a higher plane in defense of the saloon_. He made up what he called an "ominum gatherum," of "bigots," "hay-seed politicians," "fake philosophers," "cranks," "scamps," "professional sharps," "mad caps of destruction," "preachers who would sell corner lots in heaven," "a riff-raff of moral idiots and red-nosed angels."

I could hardly believe my own eyes when I read this frantic phillipic from one I had esteemed so highly for his intellect; one whose element is up where eagles soar, and not down where baser birds feast upon rotten spots in a world of beauty. Only a few days before I had read his beautiful tribute to Lincoln, delivered at the unveiling in Hodgenville, in which he said of the great emanc.i.p.ator: "He never lost his balance or tore a pa.s.sion to tatters," yet the finished orator who paid the tribute, when he espouses the cause of error, flies into a paroxysm of pa.s.sion and tears the dignity of his own self-control into shreds.

Knowing as I do the culture, refinement and polished manners of the great journalist, I wondered what aggravating force could have so unbalanced his mental scales and led him to so bitterly denounce those, whose only offense is, trying to do what Lincoln did, abolish an evil. If this resourceful writer were only converted to the truth on this question, what an "ominum gatherum" he could make from the work of the saloon curse.

The clergymen, called "canting, diabolical preachers," deserve more respectful consideration from one who well knows their sincerity. They are men of brains, heart and conscience; men who believe that righteousness rather than revenue exalts a nation, and that sin, no matter how much money invested in it, is a reproach to any people.

These ministers believe it to be morally wrong to convert G.o.d's golden grain into what debases mankind. They preach that what is morally wrong can never be made politically right. With them it is a matter of deep, permanent conviction. Such attacks are made to divert attention from the accused at the bar of public opinion.

It is the saloon that is on trial, not cranks, or moral idiots, or ministers. The saloon is charged with being the enemy of every virtue and ally of every vice, that it injures public health, public peace and public morals. The Supreme Court says: "No legislature has the right to barter away public health, public peace or the public morals; the people themselves cannot do so, much less their servants."

In face of this declaration of the Supreme Court, legislators do barter away public health, public peace and public morals to the organized liquor traffic. All along the cruel career of this enemy of peace, health and morals, it has been pampered and petted by politicians who have been as much charmed by its promise of votes, as was Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent's a.s.surance. Deceived by the serpent of the still, they have not only disregarded the decision of the Supreme Court but defied G.o.d's plan of dealing with sin. They have persisted in trying to regulate an irregularity in morals by licensing the greatest sin of the century, and have done so to their shame and failure in any regulation effort ever made. The only way to cure chills is to kill the malaria. The only way to cure the cursed liquor traffic is to cast it out of our civilization by a universal, everlasting prohibition of the manufacture, importation and sale of intoxicating liquor.

Rev. Howard Crosby, of New York, in advocating high license as a means of reducing the number of saloons, said in an address: "Suppose a tiger were to get loose in the city, would you not confine him to a few blocks rather than let him roam the city at large?" Some one in the audience answered aloud: "No Doctor, we would kill the tiger."

How does regulation regulate? Take the city of Louisville, Ky., where I resided a number of years, and where I observed the practical working of the license system. Go there any Monday morning and you will see from twenty to forty men and women in the cage next to the Police Court room. A marshal stands at the door of the cage and takes them out one at a time. You will hear the judge say: "ten dollars and cost," which means thirty days in the workhouse. Forty days pa.s.s and here is the same man in the Police Court: thirty days to serve his time, ten days to get a little money and then another drunk. Some do not know how many times they have been before the court. I was there one day when an Irishman was arraigned. The Judge said: "Pat, how many times have you been before this court?"

"Faith, and your books will tell ye," replied the Irishman. Judge Price, the police judge at the time, said to me: "There are a number of men, and several women I know in this city, who pa.s.s through the courtroom on their way to the workhouse so regularly, I can guess within a few days of the time they will appear." They pa.s.s like buckets at a fire, going up full and returning empty.

There is an asylum in this country where, I am told, they test a man's insanity in this way. They have a trough which holds one hundred gallons of water. Above is an open tap through which the water pours constantly, and of course the trough keeps on running over. The patient is brought to the trough, given a bucket and told to dip out the water. If he dips all day and has not mind enough to turn off the tap, he is considered a very serious case. If this test were put to our license lawmakers, I fear they would have to go to the incurable ward. They have for many years been picking up drunkards from the gutters and opening taps for them to keep on pouring into the streets.

Under this system the saloon keepers are playing ten-pins. You know in playing ten-pins there is a long alley, at one end of which stand the pins, while at the other stands the player with a ball in his hand. He rolls the ball down the alley and knocks down the pins. Some one sets them up, and to that some one, who is often a boy, the player will toss a dime and say: "set them up quick." Does he let them stand? No!

he rolls the ball down the alley and down go the pins. The saloon keeper has the ball of law in his hands. No matter whether a high or low license ball, he paid the price for the use of the ball. When temperance workers set up drunkards and they get a little money in their pockets away goes the ball and they are down again. When a church revival picks up a few drunkards the saloon keeper will say: "Here's a dollar to help in your meeting." Then in his mind he says: "Set up the drunkards who are out of employment and money, get them positions, and when they can earn money again, again I'll bowl them down." Under the license system the saloon is playing ten-pins with temperance a.s.sociations, ten-pins with the church and ten-pins with society. I have faith to believe the time is drawing near when the b.a.l.l.s will be confiscated and the pins can stand when we do set them up.

I know many have not this faith because they believe prohibitory laws are failures. They base their belief on the violation of the law. By that rule everything is a failure. Married life is a failure; its laws are grossly violated. Home life is a failure; there are many miserable homes. The school is a failure; many a father has put thousands of dollars into the education of his son and found it wasted in riotous living. The church is a failure; many of its members are Christians only in name and not a few are hypocrites. But we know by the loyal, loving husbands and wives of every community that married life is not a failure. We know by the happy homes about us, with sweetest of household ties binding the family circle, that home life is not a failure. We know by the education that has refined our civilization, that the school is not a failure. We know by the redeemed of earth and saved in heaven the church is not a failure, and we are convinced by the organized opposition to prohibitory laws by distillers, brewers, saloon keepers, gamblers and harlots that prohibition is not a failure.

If prohibition is a failure in Kansas as license advocates charge, then governors, ex-governors, attorney generals, jailers, mayors and judges of Kansas are falsifiers. If prohibition is a failure in Kansas why has the state grown to be the richest per capita in the Union, why are so many jails empty, so many counties without a pauper and why, according to the brewers' year book of 1910, was the consumption of liquor in Kansas one dollar and sixty cent per capita and in a neighbor license state twenty-two dollars per capita?

Along with the absurd statement that prohibition is a failure, comes the warning of the president of the Model License League to the business men of the country, that unless the tide of prohibition is arrested it will "kill our cities." "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."

In a local option contest a prominent business man said to me: "I do not use liquor but I am in doubt about how I should vote on the question." When I asked; "What's your trouble?" he answered: "We have six saloons in this little city and the license fee is one thousand dollars; how are we to run the city without the six thousand dollars?"

When I informed him that the six saloons took from the people eighty thousand dollars a year, he agreed it was a reasonable estimate. I said: "Don't you know those who spend their money for drink, if they did not spend it over the saloon bars, would spend it over the counters of merchants who sell clothing, food, fuel and furniture?" If you merchants could take in eighty thousand dollars, couldn't you pay out six thousand and not get hurt? If you can't see that you are no better business man than was Horace Greeley a farmer. He purchased a pig for one dollar, kept it two years, fed it forty dollars worth of corn and sold it for nine dollars. He said: "I lost money on the corn but made money on the hog." So, many business men see the revenue from the license fee but can't see the cost.

Suppose on one side of a street the business houses are all bad, in that they consume money and give worse than nothing in return; and on the other side they are all good, in that they give an honest equivalent for the money they receive; can't you see if the bad side is closed, the money that went to the bad side goes to the good, and can you not see only good can come of such a change?

There are three things prohibition of the saloon does that are ill.u.s.trated by the story told of an Irishman who said: "I did three good things today."