图书图片
PDF
ePub

If we beneath its power should fall,

"Twill prove a cruel master,
Around us throw its iron thrall
And bind the captive faster.

Then come, a war we'll nobly wage
With all that would degrade us;
The foe may meet us in his rage,
But God will surely aid us.
No tyrant habit e'er shall sit

Enthroned and crowned within us;
True life these things but ill befit,
'Tis love divine shall win us.

LIQUOR OR LIBERTY?

WHA

REV. WILBUR F. CRAFTS.

HAT will you have, my countrymen, liquor or liberty? You can not have both. You say: Don't bring the liquor question into politics. Is it not in already, and not the liquor question only, but the liquor also? What else runs the "machine? Our object is to get liquor out of politics. The present battle between liquor and liberty is the latest engagement in the conflict of the ages between darkness and light, between wrong and right. As the darkness of approaching night slowly but surely crowds out the light, so liquor will crowd out liberty unless the friends of liberty drive out liquor instead. Either liquor or liberty must go. As the question of liquor or liberty is nothing less than the old question of right and wrong in its newest dress, there is no room for neutrality upon it. Neutrality is usually a less odorous name for cowardice, but neutrality in questions of right and wrong is impossible. Refusing to aid the right is aiding the wrong. When Pilate was called upon to decide between right and wrong he tried to dodge. Seven times he

acquitted Christ, and then permitted, that is, licensed His crucifixion, washing his hands of responsibility for the crime of the mob. But all great Neptune's ocean can not wash the guilt of Christ's death from his hands, and in all ages and nations the infamy of this would-be neutral is perpetuated by Christians who say, "He suffered under Pontius Pilate!" So does the cause of Christ, the cause of right, suffer for every would-be neutral.

The only remedy that has ever checked the disease of intemperance is prohibition. Only novices in temperance work advocate high license. The argument for prohibition may be stated in four propositions, the four strands of the halter with which the rum traffic is to be hanged:

First, the business interests of our country demand the suppression of their worst foe, the saloon.

Second, the interests of American homes demand the suppression of their worst foe, the saloon.

Third, the political liberty of our country demands the suppression of its worst foe, the saloon.

Fourth, the conscience of the country demands that the attitude of government toward the foe of business, home and liberty, as toward other foes of the public good, should be one of uncompromising hostility.

In every large city the python is loose and destroying property, homes, liberty. Municipal reformers should learn that it is not by a change in the Mayor's office but by a change in the saloon that city politics are to be purified.

Not only in most of our large cities but also in half of our States, liquor has destroyed liberty. The government of the people, for the people, and by the people has already perished in the seventeen States whose legislatures, at the dictation of the saloons, have refused to allow the people to exercise their constitutional right to vote on prohibition. * * *

As the war of which Gettysburg was a part left not one slave in all our land, so our new conflict must not leave one saloon-keeper. For God and home and humanity we will first prohibit and then pulverize the liquor traffic, for it is

not an evil that can only be restrained, but rather an evil that can be annihilated when public conscience joins Omnipotence for its overthrow.

THE DRAMSHOP OR THE REPUBLIC.

E

MRS. MARY T. LATHRAP.

VER since that whirlwind of the Lord called the Women's Crusade, the advocates of the temperance cause have consistently and earnestly been striving to bring the question to the exact point at which it has now arrived— to make it a political issue. Every movement that has sprung up, every organization that has been formed, has had the ballot as its eventual object and hope.

Away back in Maine, some years ago, lived a brother and sister who were of exactly opposite dispositions and temperaments. The brother was slow, sleepy, and easy-going, and very hard to get started; the sister was energetic, spry and ambitious. For a long time the sister had been urging the necessity of putting up a barn on the place. The brother said, "Yes, dear," but never took a step. At last she became impatient, ordered a load of lumber, and, taking saw, hammer and nails, began operations. A neighbor coming along stopped and asked what she was doing.

"I am going to put up a barn," she answered.

"A barn! Don't you know that you can't build a barn?” "Yes," said she, "I know very well I can't build a barn, but I can make such an almighty racket that those who can build one will be glad to do it."

We women advocates of temperance are in a like quandary and we are applying a like remedy. We began some time ago making a racket, and now we can see signs of the barn going up.

For the second time in this United States face a mighty evil, it and stamp it out of existence.

century the people of the with resolution to conquer There were many sober,

honest and good people who told us that we were too late with our antislavery agitation, for the evil had been born in the flesh and could not be rooted out. But we stood with the Red Sea mountains on either side of us and the old order of things behind us. The question then, as we saw it, was the life of the slaveholder or the life of the Republic, and we decided for the life of the Republic. We are now in the presence of the second great question of the century. Again we are told that we are too late, but again we stand with the Red Sea mountains on either side of us and the old order of things behind us. The alternative now is, as we see it, the life of the dramshop or the life of the Republic. We choose again for the life of the Republic.

We are here by the will of God, not as fanatics. It was Wendell Phillips who said that no moral question ever will lie still until it is settled and that no moral question can be settled without the power of God. The hour has been born,

I believe, when the door of the last dramshop shall be closed. I don't mean to say that the reformation of the last drunkard at this coming hour is to be within our accomplishment. As long as degraded appetite gnaws in men, they will find some means of satisfying it, some den in which to grovel. What prohibition does propose to do is to change the attitude of the Government toward the liquor traffic. To-day the Government fosters and protects it; to-morrow it shall prohibit it. "Whom the Lord chooses reigns." I pray you may determine to choose with God.

REASON OFF DUTY.

E. S. LOOMIS.

Slave of a habit, freedom all gone;

off unstrung;

Hungry and homeless-oh, could I be
Back where I once was, strong, well and free!

Reason off duty, manhood all gone;
Down in the gutter, sick and undone;
Fruits of first tippling, cider and beer-

Young man, take warning, do not come here.

Bound with a fetter stronger than chain;
Reason off duty, branded like Cain;
Lying in prison, waiting my fate—
Young man, stop drinking ere 'tis too late!

THE FALLACY OF HIGH LICENSE.

OF

FRANCES E. WILLARD.

F all the monopolies that disgrace civilization a monopoly in sin is most to be dreaded and deplored. High license entails that monopoly, and along with it the power to gild the hook of iniquity with dazzling, tempting bait. Elegant surroundings and "high-toned" social standing are the devil's most coveted allurements, and high license assures them to the saloon as no other method can. With concentration always comes power, and the political influence of the liquor traffic, now boastfully predominant in this republic where the side always wins that gets most votes, will reach the height of an autocracy under high license.

Shall we never get to the end of this high license fallacy? Shall we never learn that not the accessories to the sin of selling poisonous drink, but the sin itself is what Prohibition strenuously opposes and sets itself to master? Suppose we apply the high-license sophistry to gambling-houses. Would anyone propose to license these that they may be made to pay the public costs that they entail? Sacramento tried it and there came a hissing throughout the Golden State. The next winter a law against such license was enacted. But the saloon is the home of gambling-its natural habitat and the greater evil includes the less. Do improved surroundings lessen the gambling sin? Has the rattle of dice a different

« 上一页继续 »