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

suasion or legal suasion, its course has been a spiral one. It will never accomplish its mission in this world, until it strikes

ce upon the progress both wings have m

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 eng

e the jug was imperative at every log-raising and in the

wish and o

nt world or

of Eels and

are 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

ission 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 thes

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 ships and navy yards. The New York Sun says: "The business world is

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

ey 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, arsenic, alum, benzine, belladonna, beet-root juic

rches could sell liquor and retain their membership. Today the saloonkeeper is barred from the protestant churches, barred from

hen an assassin 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, Cinc

ub 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 deli

ait, with a quick snap it is caught and devoured. Do you see any analogy between this fish and a certain business that hides itself behind painted windows or green blinds and hangs out a bait of "

e. 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 t

e, sir." "Yes," says the tailor, "I p

y." "Yes," says the architect, "that'

"Yes," says the milliner, "that's my creatio

od besmears his face; the police lift him up and start with him to the station house. Did yo

f all crimes." Senator Long, of Massachusetts 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 pestilenc

op, not because of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, or the Anti-Saloon League, or the Prohibition Party, b

he holy Bible have been trained upon the "wine that gives its color in the c

the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic,

ers, 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 philosophe

otten 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 emancipator: "He never lost his ba

d 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 r

r 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 God's golden grain into what debases mankind.

e and ally of every vice, that it injures public health, public peace and public morals. The Supreme Court says: "No legislature has th

tes, as was Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent's assurance. Deceived by the serpent of the still, they have not only disregarded the decision of the Supreme Court but defied God's plan of dealing with sin. They have persisted in trying to regulate an irregularity in morals by licensing the greatest sin of the centur

an address: "Suppose a tiger were to get loose in the city, would you not confine him to a few blocks rather tha

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 pass and here is the same man in the Police Court: thirty d

number of men, and several women I know in this city, who pass through the courtroom on their way to the workhouse so regularly,

ing 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

cation 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

ibition 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, accord

dent of the Model License League to the business men of the country, that unless the tide of

ons 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

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

oes that are illustrated by the story told of an I

id you

edral. She had a baby in her arms, and I

handkerchief and came to have me b

et the baby christened and bring me the change.' She went,

, "I don't see any thre

the baby's soul, and didn't I get rid of a ten dollar cou

ity. It dries woman's tears, saves human souls, gets rid

et shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-g

traffic that statewide prohibition means the destruction

the cry against reforms or changes in civil

th every slave set free to beg at the white man's gate, crushes every vestige of hope, and five hundred ye

o the United States from a diminished consumption of ardent spirits, she wil

is not only a great moral question b

t for abuse, the existence of brewerie

of service, the saloon keeper has no cl

lling liquor to their fellowmen are leaches on the

r to the country is in harmony with the assertion that war is a

egan. It has added to the death of the body the eternal death of the soul and then the sum of its ravages is not complete until is added more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, desolate homes, more misery and shame than fr

hristian republic, claiming the noblest civilization of the earth, is found turning the dogs of appetite and avarice loose upon the home life of the republic that gold may clink i

r be abolished. At that time the prospect for the overthrow of slavery was far less than the prospect of national prohibition today. I own I was among those who said

soldier come to take me and he will never take another Kentuckian." Then my mother was alarmed. She knew how brave her boy was. A few days later I met a squad

mouth to me, he said: "Maybe you have changed your mind." I had, and that supper was ready with several minutes to spare. We can, and we will stop the liquor business. I am amazed, however, to find so many intelligent men of the North advocating the same policy on this li

, until a slave in the South reached about the price of a saloon license now in the North. Then the conscience of the South quieted and slavery was justified by press, politics and pulpit. There is a remarkable analogy between the effect of a thousand dollar slave upon the conscience of South Carolina and a thousand dollar saloon upon the conscience of Massachusetts. The South paid t

uld cease in twenty years. Did that settle it? Next came the Missouri compromise, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." Politicians said: "Now it's settled." But a fanatic in Boston name Garrison said: "It is not settled." Daniel Webster, as intellectual as some of our high license advocates of today said to Lloyd Garrison: "Stop the agitation of

Abraham Lincoln seized his pen and signed the proclamation, "Universal Emancipation." Then the whole world said: "It's forever settled." So the liquor question wi

ou will have the effect. If you have the positive you will have the superlative: Positive drink, comparative drinking,

sells it. Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till he

nation-wide prohibitory law and behind the law a political p

nd ideas had waited for public sentiment, we would still be back in the realm of the dark ages, instead of in the light of our present civilization; back in the dim twilight of the tallow-dip instead of the brightness of the electric lig

below in ho

rd of the

s up the bus

o his coun

rable minority." My reply was: "Are minorities always wrong or hopeless? How would you have enjoyed being

Eden when the devil stood for license, "go eat," and God stood for prohibition, "thou shalt not." That is the question today

ople drink as much or more than ever." My answer is: how muc

r after hour the pumping goes on, with changing hands at the pumps, and hour after hour the captain says: "You are doing well; she can't go down at thirty inches. Hold it there and we'll make the harbor." Twenty hours and the captain shouts: "Thirty inches; and land is in

um slavery means ruin to body and soul. Men, women and children ran to the pumps, and thank God, state after state is going dry. Soon we'll see the land of pr

er seeing the sky clear of distillery smoke above old Bourbon county, a name on more barrels and bottles, on more bar-room windows, and on the memories of more drunkards in ruin than any other county in the

me from a mob, and once my wife placed herself between my body and a desperate mountaineer. Those were perilous times for an advocate of temperance in my native state. Now out of one hundred and twenty counties, o

made Milwa

foam in

lid in ol

nor Folk'

tillers and

may

n is pani

South's

ll-side by t

cky will

take thei

ripples o

l grow u

cease

hall

th's go

om a curse that has soaked its social life in more blood and tears than all other sources of sorrow; a land where liberty will no longer be shorn of its locks of strength by licensed Delilahs; where manhood will no more be stripped of its possibiliti

consciences of your hearers on this question. I appeal to the

press with t

usic this me

work of dest

ed land of this

s brightness, the

he ballot the ru

earth as the wi

the axe at the r