Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 7

But, who is the government? We are told that in the early history of this country, a country magistrate rode horseback from Maryland to Was.h.i.+ngton to consult the government. Going to the White House he was informed the government was not there. At the Capitol he was informed the people are the government. He returned home, called the voters of his county to a meeting in the courthouse and said: "Gentlemen, I have a very important question I want to present to the government." So I desire to talk to the government, you voters who are to decide the policy of this republic regarding the liquor traffic.

An Irishman brought before the court for an a.s.sault upon a saloon keeper was questioned by the judge, who said: "Mr. Dolan, what have you to say; are you guilty or innocent of the charge made against you?"

The Irishman replied: "By me soul, judge, I couldn't tell ye. I was blind, stavin' drunk on the manest whiskey ye iver tasted, yer honor."

"I do not use whiskey of any kind," said the judge.

"Ye don't. Thin I don't think ye are doin' yer duty by such const.i.tuents as meself. Ye license men to sell the stuff; ye ought to taste the stuff ye license men to sell, thin ye would know how it makes a gintlemen behave himself."

The judge rapped for order in the court and repeated the question, "Are you guilty or innocent of the charge?"

"Judge, I'll state the case and let yer honor decide for me, which ye are hired to do anyway. I was standin' by the corner of the strate on me way home from work, when I spied the bottles in the window of the saloon. The sight of thim bottles made me thirsty, so I wint in and took a drink. Jist thin three other thirsty ones came in and I took a drink with thim; thin they took a drink with me and we kept on drinkin' till we thought we were back in auld Ireland at Donnybrook Fair. Whenever we saw a head we struck it and I suppose this gintlemin's head came my way. Now here's the case, judge. If I hadn't taken the whiskey, I wouldn't a been in the row, for I'm always paceable whin sober; if the saloon hadn't been there I wouldn't have taken the whiskey; and if the Court hadn't licensed the saloon it wouldn't have been there. Ye can take the case, sir."

What makes the drunkard? The drink. What supplies the drink? The saloon. What makes the saloon? The law. Who makes the law? The legislator. Who makes the legislator? The voter. It's the "House that Jack built," only I will change the verbage a little. Intemperance is the fire the devil built. Strong drink is the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. Distilleries, breweries and saloons are the axes that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. License laws are molds that cast the axes, that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. License voters and legislators are the patentees who invented the molds that cast the axes that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built. Prohibition ballots are the sledge hammers destined to destroy the molds that cast the axes that cut the fuel that feeds the fire the devil built.

There is a chain of responsibility running through the drink question which many good men fail to recognize. You know a chain is made up of links welded together. The drunkard is only one link; he is not a chain. When you link him to the drink then you begin the chain; the drunkard comes from the drink. That is not all of the chain however; the drink is linked to the saloon. If you have the saloon, you have the drink, you have the drunkard. This is not all of the chain; you have the license law. If you have the license law, you have the saloon, you have the drink, you have the drunkard. There is yet another link; the license law is linked to the license voter. The drunkard comes from the drink, the drink comes from the saloon, the saloon from the law, and law from the license voter. Who are the license voters? Many of them are Christian men on their way to heaven; but the trouble with them is the other end of the chain is going another road. "No drunkard can enter the kingdom of heaven."

I know it is a common remark that this is a free country, and if a man chooses to drink, let him do so and take the consequences. If one could take alone the consequences of his sin there might be some claim to personal liberty. But when a man's liberty involves another life the scene changes. A young man may commit a sin in social life and by reform be forgiven, but when that other life involved in his sin, is seen in after years, walking the streets in painted shame, reproducing the consequences of that man's sin, memory and conscience will combine to give him waking hours while the world sleeps. A man may never enter a saloon, never take a drink of intoxicating liquor, but if he votes for the saloon his life becomes involved in the consequences of the saloon. What are the consequences? Here is a sample. After a three days' blizzard in one of our large cities a reformer visited a morgue and seeing a large clothes-hamper full of dead babies he said: "What does this mean?"

The reply came: "They were gathered from the drunkards' hovels of the city this morning."

The visitor tells us: "Their bodies were frozen, and several arms were sticking up out of the basket as if reaching out after life and love."

The streets of our city slums are rivers along whose sh.o.r.es at midnight can be heard the death gurgle of helpless little ones, while poverty's row is full of children cursed by inheritance, who are not living but merely existing by sc.r.a.ping the moss of bare subsistence from empty buckets in wells of poverty; and the air is freighted with oaths and obscenities from demonized men and demi-monde women who pour the poison of their blood into the social life of city slums.

I was both grieved and amazed when I read from the pen of a brilliant Kentucky editor an editorial denouncing as tyrannical a sumptuary law that "denies to a citizen the right to order his home, his meat, his drink, his clothing, according to his conscience." I wonder if the great editor ever considered the sumptuary law of the saloon. Every woman who fills the holy office of wife and mother has a right to a home. The sumptuary law of the saloon says to hundreds of thousands of such women: "You shall not have a home; you shall live in a hovel. You shall not order your home, your food, your drink, your clothing, according to your conscience, but according to the best interest of the saloon these comforts shall be ordered. You shall work all day in the harness of oppression and when night comes instead of restful sleep, you shall watch the stars out and wait the return of husband and sons." What about this inhuman denial of the right to order meat, drink, clothing and home life? Such is the sumptuary law of the saloon.

Every child in this country has a right to an education and a chance in the world. The saloons say to hosts of children: "You shall have neither education nor opportunity. You shall go to the streets and sweat-shops to earn bread. You shall live in ignorance and mid evil environment that we may gather in the wages of your fathers." How does this sumptuary law of the saloon compare with a sumptuary law that forbids the sale of what is of no earthly or eternal benefit to any one who uses it.

The same distinguished editor said: "When women gather around voting booths on election days with sandwiches and coffee, they present an indecent spectacle to the public." The man who goes with gun in hand and shoots down another in defense of his country is a hero. The mother lion or bear that defies the hunter's bullets and dies in defense of her young we can but respect; but when woman, who has suffered so long in silence, goes near where the welfare of her home is at stake and out of the sore, sad sorrow of her heart appeals to men for protection to her home from the ravages of the saloon, she is not paid the respect given to a mother hen or bird or bear by the advocate of the liquor traffic. When the niece of Cardinal Richelieu was demanded by a licentious king, the Cardinal said: "Around her form I draw the awful circle of our kingly church; set a foot within and on thy head, aye, though it wear a crown, shall fall the curse of Rome."

Shall the crown of gold on the distiller's and brewer's brow hush into silence the lion-hearted manhood of our republic when its sons and daughters are demanded to feed the maw of the liquor traffic?

One of the famous pictures of the masters is of a woman bound fast to a pillar within the tide-mark of the ocean. The waves are curling about her feet. A s.h.i.+p is pa.s.sing under full sail but no one seems to see or heed the woman in peril. Birds of prey hover above her, but she sees neither bird, nor s.h.i.+p, nor sea; knowing her doom is sealed, she lifts her eyes to heaven and prays. This picture represents thousands of women tied fast to their doom within the tide-waves of the ocean of intemperance. The s.h.i.+p of state pa.s.ses by, bearing its share of the ill-gotten gains of the liquor traffic, but heeds not the moans and cries of struggling, strangling, dying woman. Oliver Cromwell said: "It is relative misgovernment that lashes nations into fury." The long suffering in silence by the womanhood of this country from the misgovernment that has heaped upon woman the woes of strong drink by the licensed saloon, whether a tribute to the patience of woman or not, is to the eternal shame of man, whose inhumanity to woman through the liquor traffic is making "countless millions mourn."

To this misgovernment is due the unrest among women and the impetus behind the equal suffrage movement today. There needs to be a saving influence brought into our political life, and I have faith to believe that woman's ballot will provide that influence. Having proved her dignity in every new field of activity she has entered, I believe the same flowers of refinement will adorn the ballot box when she holds in her hand the sacred trust of franchise. Her life-long habit of house-cleaning will be carried to the dirty pool of politics, where the saloon is entrenched, and the demagogue and demijohn will be carted away to the garbage pile of discarded rubbish.

Now and then I am asked: "What will become of the men who are engaged in the liquor business if the country goes dry? What will become of their families?" I answer by asking: What becomes of the men the saloons put out of business? What becomes of their families? When prohibition puts a man out of business, it leaves him his brain, blood, bone, muscle, nerves and whatever manhood he has left in store, while his long rest from active toil has given him a reserve force for active, useful business. When the saloon puts a man out of business, he goes out with shattered nerves, weak will, poisoned blood and so unfitted for service no place is open for him to earn a living.

Recently a man put out of business by prohibition said to me: "This town went dry seven years ago, and going out of the saloon business has been such a benefit to me and to my family, I shall work and vote to put all other saloon-keepers in this state out of business for their own good."

On the other hand, I have in mind a man who once chained the Congress of the United States by his eloquence. Clients clamored for his service, and prosperity crowned his practice in the courts. In drinking saloons he lost his clientage and in penniless poverty he died--unwept, unhonored, unsung. The ex-saloon-keeper to whom I referred is city marshall and very popular, while the man put out of business by the saloon has no chance:

"Where he goes and how he fares, n.o.body knows and n.o.body cares."

Along with the question of what will become of the men put out of business by prohibition, comes the question, what will the farmers do with their corn if distilleries are closed? Less consumption of whiskey means more consumption of cornbread and that means more corn.

Less consumption of whiskey means greater consumption of bacon, and more bacon means more corn to feed hogs. When a liquor advocate said to an audience of farmers: "If this state goes dry what will you farmers do with your corn," an old, level-headed farmer shouted: "We'll raise more hogs and less h.e.l.l."

Prohibition means more of everything good, and less of everything bad; more manhood, less meanness; more gain, less groans; more bread, less brawls; more clothing, less cussedness; less heartaches and more happiness. Turn saloons into bake shops and butcher stalls, distilleries into food factories, breweries into stock pens, and the country will be a thousandfold better off than feeding its finances by starving its morality.

This question lifts itself head and shoulders above every other question touching practical politics today. You nowhere read of a nation going to destruction because of too much gold or too little silver, too much tariff or too little tariff, but always because of the vices of its people. The nation that bases perpetuity upon moral character will endure with the stars, while walls thick and high as Babylon's will not save a drunken republic.

"Vain mightiest fleets of iron found, Vain all her conquering guns, Unless Columbia keeps unstained The true hearts of her sons."

Beautiful Constance of France was dressing for a court ball. While standing before a mirror, clasping a necklace of pearls, a spark from the fireplace caught in the folds of her gown. Absorbed in her attire, she did not detect the danger until a blaze started. Soon, rolling on the floor in flames, she burned to death. When the news reached the ballroom the music hushed, the dance halted, and "Poor Constance! Poor Constance!" went from lip to lip, but soon the music started and the dance went on. While I am talking now the youth, beauty and sweetness of American life is in peril from the flames that are kindled by the licensed saloon. From an inward fire men are being consumed and homes destroyed. Will we say, "Poor Columbia!" and keep step to the _mocker's_ march to the nation's death; or will we put out every distillery and brewery fire and make this in reality "the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

In the name of all that is pure and true and vital in national life, I plead with every lover of home and country to come to the help of the cause that must succeed if this republic is to live. I plead with Christians in the name of the church, bleeding at every pore because of the curse of drink. If everyone whose name is on a church roll would step out in line of duty on this question, very soon G.o.d would stretch out His arm and save this republic from the liquor traffic.

G.o.d has been ready a long time; His people have not been ready to do their part. Too many Christians are like the horse Sam Jones used to tell of.

He said: "We have a horse in my neighborhood in Georgia, which if hitched to a load of stone or cotton balks and won't go a step; but in light harness in the shafts of a race cart he will pace a mile in two-thirty. We have too many Christians who are like this horse; they trot out to church Sunday morning, but hitch them to a prayer meeting and they won't pull a pound."

Dr. McLeod, the stalwart Scotch preacher, on his way to a session of his church had with him a small hunch-back member of his church, a dwarf in size but an earnest worker. Crossing a certain stream a storm struck the boat and the waves were sending it toward the rocks. A boatman at one end said:

"Let the big preacher pray for us."

The helmsman at the other end said: "No, let that little fellow pray and the big one take an oar."

Oliver Cromwell, going through a cathedral, came upon twelve silver statues. Turning to the guide he said: "Who are these?"

The guide replied: "Those are the twelve apostles, life-size and solid silver."

Cromwell said: "What good are they doing as silver apostles? Melt them down into money and let them be of some service to the country."

We have too many silver statue church members who need melting down and sending out to help save our republic from the fate of other nations that have perished through their vices. We need more men with moral courage to voice and vote their convictions. When the slavery question was agitating the country Henry Clay stood for a compromise he believed would help to solve the question. Many of his friends in the South censured him, and sent him letters calling him a traitor. He arose in the Senate to speak, it is said, looking pale from the effect of the censure he was then receiving day by day. Addressing the Senate he said: "I suppose what I shall say in this address will cost me many dear friends." A reporter said: "He hesitated as if choked with emotion at the thought of losing his friends." Then with the majesty of greatness and magnetism of manner he proceeded, saying: "I am charged with being ambitious. If I had listened to the soft whisperings of ambition I would have stood still, gazed upon the raging storm and let the s.h.i.+p of state drift on with the winds. I seek no office at the cost of courage or conviction. Pa.s.s this bill.

Restore affection to the states of this Union and I will go back to my Ashland home; there in its groves, on its lawns, 'mid my flocks and herds, and in the bosom of my family, I will find a sincerity I have not found in the public walks of life. Yes, I am ambitious, but my ambition is that I may become the humble instrument in the hands of G.o.d, in restoring harmony to a distracted nation, and behold the glorious spectacle of a true, united happy and prosperous people."

There is a grandeur in the mountain that lifts itself above the hamlets at its base, and bearing its brow to the threatening storm clouds says to the forked lightning, "Strike me!" but grander is the man who can stand 'mid the allurements of the world's honors and say: "I would rather be right than President." Dare to do right and what you do will have its reward.

"Shamgar, what's that in thy hand?"

"Only an ox-goad."

"Come dedicate it to G.o.d, and go slay those Philistines."

"David, what's that in thy hand?"

"Only a sling and a little stone from the brook."

"Come dedicate them to G.o.d, and go kill the giant."

"My little lad, what's that you have?"

"Only five loaves and two little fishes."

"Come, dedicate them to G.o.d; they'll feed thousands and you will have baskets full left."

My brother, what's that in thy hand? Only a little American ballot.

Come dedicate it to G.o.d and home and native land, go cast it against the licensed liquor traffic and your life will bear fruit which the angels will gather when you have "finished your course" and "kept the faith."

You are soon to have the local option test in your county. If I could do one thing I could make the victory for the home overwhelming. You know if the saloons continue they will have their victims in the future as they have had in the past. You know too their victims will come from the youth of your county. Those who are victims now will soon be dead bodies, or "dead broke." The men in the saloon business do not look to men who are drunkards now, for future use nor do they intend to use horses or cattle or dogs, but _boys_. If I could announce that on the evening before the vote is to be taken I would present to the public the future victims of the saloons in this county. If I had a prophet's eye and could select these victims, how many homes I would enter where I would not only be an unwelcome but an unexpected visitor. When the hour would arrive for the exhibition, what an audience I would have! Nothing like it ever gathered in this county; from every corner of it parents would come. When placed in line on an elevated platform so all could see, I would speak through a megaphone saying: "I present to you the future victims of the liquor traffic in your county; here are the boys who will be your future drunkards and here are the girls who will be the wives of drunkards."

I imagine some father, who thinks regulation the best policy, would exclaim: