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Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole —^- signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film^s i des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est filmd A partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droits, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n^cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ■/^.-J^"--.. Hon. John B. Finch, R. W. G. T. / THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC THE GREAT SPEECHES OF HON. JOHN B. FINCH. TWENTY-THIRD EDITION. Second Canadian Edition. ' Once to every man and ni'ition comes the moment to dociiie, In the strife of Trtith wit)i Falsehood, for the good or evil side ; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight. Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right. And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light." TORONTO: CITIZEN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 8 KINO STREET EAST. 1885. ^mm^^^^W!^ ALL KINDS OF TEMPERANCE LITERATURE Of the very best character, at the very lowest possible prices, may be obtained at the office of TUB CITIZEN PUBLISHING CO., 8 KING ST. EAST, TORONTO. .SPECIALTY.— Campaign Supplies, both Legal Forms and Suit- able Literature. CONTENTS I'AOK Introduction vii I. A^Stat£ment OF THE Cask , . . . . 9 II. Why the Indictment is Pressed 34 III. An Examination of the Issues 67 IV. Examination of the Issues and Defence 87 V. The Defence Reviewed 116 VI. The Questions Asked by the Jury Answered . . . 143 VII. The Practicability of the Movement Proved by its Success 167 VIII. What, Why, AND How ? '. . .192 IX. Compensation 218 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND CANADIAN EDITION. TiiKOurni the kindness and liberality of the Right Worthy (trand Lodge of the Independent Order of Good Templare, this book is placed before the Canadian public in a fonn and at a price that, it is hoped, will ensure for it such a circulation as it merits, and will thereby largely l)enefit our great Canadian Prohibition movement. Hon. John B. Finch needs no introduction to the teni- })erance workers of any land. He is the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Prohibition Party of the United States, and the chief officer of that world- encircling temperance organization, the I. O. G. T. The lectures that makes up this book were delivered by him in his own country, and this, at different times and places ; they, therefore, discuss the Prohibition question from an Ameri- can standpoint, and most of them have a local coloring and character. It has been thought best to reproduce them as they stood, as thereby the speaker's scope and aims will be better apprehended, the details of incident and illustra- tion being merely accessory to the convincing and un- answerable argument with which they are interwoven. The liquor traffic is the same terrible curse, and produces the same appalling results, in every country in which it is vin INTRODUCTION. carried on, and the crusade against it is no sectional agita- tion, but the spontaneous uprising against a tyrannical and merciless selfishness of the better thought and feeling of our race. The warfare goes on everywhere on the same general lines, and every sentence of Mr. Finch's powerful speeches has a direct bearing upon the great struggle that is going on in Canada to-day. The subjoined letter was lately received from the esteemed President of the Ontario Branch of the Dominion Alliance. From no source could there come a statement of personal opinion of more value or weight, and it is cause for thank- fulness that the Good Templars have generously provided for the fulfilment of the desire therein expressed. " My Dear Siil, " I have read through ' The People vs. The Liquor Traffic,' as presented in the arguments of the Hon. John B. Finch. I think the addresses are most admirable. I know of no book that woul^ do us more good in the Temperance Campaign in the Dominion of Canada, than this. The facts and arguments adduced seem to meet exactly the phases of the liquor question and traffic, which are to-day being pre- sented to our people. I wish that we could have a cheap edition of the work in Canada, so that it might be in the hands of every minister and temperance lecturer in our land. " Faithfully yours, "S. H. BLAKE. "Toronto, Feb. 13th, 1885." THE PROPERTY OF SCAR BO RO PUBLIC LI3RARY. THE PEOPLE VEitstrs THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I. A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. Stknooraphic Report of an Address Delivered hefore the North- Western Convocation ok Temperance Workers AT Lake Bluff, Illinois, Ad(just 27, 1881. Ladies and Gentlemen : Some months since I re- ceived a letter from our mutual friend, Dr. Jutkins, in which he requested me to deliver an address at this Convocation. I replied that I should attend the Con- vocation, but preferred to remain silent, as a learner at the feet of older men. Another letter gave me to understand that no excuse would be accepted, therefore an address was prepared for this occasion ; but, since coming upon the grounds, I have heard much which leads me to think it better to leave the manuscript, and talk to you as one worker to other workers, on the present aspects of the reform. I shall talk to you plainly, positively ; and if I bore you, charge it to Dr. Jutkins, for he alone is responsible for my appearing before you. TFT 10 THE PEOPLE U8. THE LK^^OU TUAFFIC. In discussing the question of temperance, one fact more than all others I would impress on your minds at the commencement ; that is, that the question of the existence of the drink traffic and drink habit must be settled in this country. It cannot be laughed down, sneered down, jeered down or blackguarded down, and, there is not money enough in the blood-stained coffers of the liquor power of this nation, to buy enough votes to long prevent the entire defeat of the liquor oli- garchy at the hands of this people. This statement may be considered over-sanguine, and yet, ladies and gentlemen, it seems to me that the man or woman who insists that this great movement is caused by mere temporary excitement, must be a careless student of social problems. From the day the temperance movement started in this country it has never gone backwards. A few months since, curiosity prompted me to write to state officers in difl'erent states whose Legislatures were in session last winter, asking them for the record of legislative sessions ten years ago, and also the record of the sessions held during the last winter — and I found this to be true, — that, of the Legislatures of ten years ago, there was not one which discussed the question of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, while the Legis- latures of the past winter, without a single exception, devoted a large part of their time to the discussion of this question. The St. Louis Globe Democrat (and, by the way, the Globe Democrat is not noted as a very strong temper- ance paper, the history of both its former and present managers proving that they sympathize largely with the whiskey and beer traffic) in the month of April last, contained an editorial nearly a column in length, in which it was asserted that the temperance question was THE religio-politico question of this age, and the editor went on to say that the man who thought this movement was an agitation by a few idle visionarieti A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 11 or old women, wna dreaming on the crater of a social volcano. Then, after explaining and giving fully his reasons for such conclusions, the editor said that the Legislature of the State of Missouri would no more dare, at its next session, to refuse to submit the ques- tion of the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors to the voters of that state, than it would dare commit any other kind of political suicide.* In my state, the frontier State of Nebraska, ten years ago, a member of the Legislature who did not drink liquor was an exception ; to-day a member who does is an exception. To-day a man could not bo elected in Nebraska, on any party ticket, if it was known he was a tippler. The Legislature met last winter, and during the entire session I saw no member under the inHuence of liquor. I understood there was a member drunk, but his friends said he was suffering with brain fever, and kept him out of sight until he became sober. Ten years ago, those who called on the ladies in Omaha, who kept op6n house on New Year's, found wine on nearly every table ; for the past three years (and I have means of knowing the truth of what I affirm) not a family in Omaha, nor in the city of Lin- coln, has placed wine before its guests on that day. Even our German friends have, to a great extent, banished it from their homes in obedience to the de- mands of- educated public opinion. As I look over the rapid advance that has been, and is being, made in this country, I have no doubt that the temperance question will come up in every spring election, every town election, every city election, every county election, every state election and every national * The amendment to the State Constitution passed the Assembly of Missouri, but was defeated in the Senate, at the session of the Legislature mentioned in this speech. The liquor dealers went to party politicians, and told them that if they allowed the amendment to pass, the liquor interest would defeat their parties. This was one eause of the formation of tho Prohibition party in the States^ 12 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. election until it is settled; each year it will come with louder knocks, and each year with more urgent de- mands. Politicians and party leaders will be taught that they cannot trifle with this question, that home interests and moral principles are dearer to honest men than party fealty or party success. This truth leads to another one, viz. : "A question is never settled until it is settled right." Put the two together : it must be settled, it must be settled right, and we can proceed to an intelligent discussion of the issues. My friends, whether you believe in the use of alco- holic liquor or not, the issues in this case must be investigated, and you must make up your minds to meet them and settle them like thinking men and women. Compromise, upon a question of principle, is always a victory for the devil. If you know you are right ; if your conscience, your reason, tells you you are right, and then for the sake of temporary peace, you make concessions to the side that you know to be wrong, you will find sooner or later that you have in- volved yourself in greater trouble, and probably in a worse light, one that will not be settled until you retrace the wrong steps which you have taken. Tell one lie and you will find it necessary to tell others to prevent detection of the first. The history of the world is simply recorded demonstrations of these truths. After the American colonies were settled, the Par- liament of Great Britain insisted that the right was vested in the King, by and with the consent of Parlia- ment, to levy taxes upon the people of the colonies : the colonists at once demurred, and insisted that if Parliament, or the King, by and with consent of Par- liament, had the right to levy taxes, then the colonies must be represented in the Parliament which gave the consent. The Parliament of Great Britain levied heavy taxes on the colonies. The result was inevitable. A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 18 Parliament was seeking to establish what the majority of the colonies believed to bo a false principle of gov- ernment To resist such tyrannical action, Clubs of Liberty were organized throughout the colonies. The English Premier saw the storm his action had raised, and wished to allay it if possible ; the result was the repeal of all the heavy taxes and the concession that the taxes levied should only be upon commerce, and should be applied to the use of the colony where they were levied. By this act. Parliament conceded every- thing but the principle — a small tax levied by Parlia- ment to be applied to the use of the colony where the tax was laid. But the agitation did not cease. A leading American was asked in Boston, "Would you plunge the colonies in war for a few pence on a pound of tea?" The answer was, " It is not the amount of the tax, but the accursed principb upon which Par- liament bases the claim of right to levy any tax, that we are fighting." It was fought out on that line, and King George lost one of the brightest jewels in his crown. This principle has also been demonstrated at a much later date. The representatives of the United States, assembled for the first time as a congress of an inde- pendent nation, declared : "We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty and the pur- suit of happiness." Jefferson, in his orii^inal draft of the Declaration of Independence, emphasized the words "All men," by this charge : " He (the king) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of 14 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Great Britain. Determined to open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his nejjative, for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with the crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." Slavery existed in the colonies. The representatives, fearing the people, would not ratify the Declaration, the clause which Jefferson had written was stricken out, and the general term, "All men," was left unde- fined and unemphasized. The long years of mental and physical struggle for freedom during the Revolu- tionary War extended the mental horizon of American statesmen, and they began to perceive that "All men" might possibly include Africans, and thus the question which statesmen thought they had settled by the compromise made at the time of adopting the Declara- tion, forced itself into the convention which met to amend the defective Articles of Confederation. There the wrong of slavery was not denied, but the feelings of the delegates were expressed by one who said: "We have a wolf by the ears, and we dare not hold on nor let go !" To do right seemed to endanger a national form of Government, and another compromise followed. The word slavery was so obnoxious to men emerging from a long and bloody war for their own liberti* > that they would not allow it to appear in the Constitu- tion of the United States. They allowed it to exist in the States as a thing to be passed by rather than noticed, and, although slavery has gone from the land it has never been necessary to change a word in the original Constitution. "Regulate and restrain" was the policy adopted. A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 15 Madison, speaking of this compromise half apologeti- cally, said : " It were doubtless to be wished that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the'year 1808, or rather, that it had been suffered to have immediate operation, but it is not diflScult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be consid- ered a great point gained in favor of humanity that a period of twenty years may terminate forever within these States a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period it will receive a considerable discourage- ment from the general government, and may be totally abolished by the concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic." The delegates labored under the delusion that their action had placed the question where it would settle itself ; but soon prostituted principle woke from the slumber of exhaustion to hear the ringing words of Johir Randolph, like a fire-bell in the night: " 1 know there are gentlemen, not only from the Northern but from the Southern States, who think this unhappy question — for such it is — of Negro slavery, which the Constitution has vainly tried to blink by not using the term, should never be brought to public notice, more especially that of Congress, and most especially here. Sir, with every duo respect to the gentlemen who think so, I differ from them toto codo. Sir, it is a thing which cannot be hid ; it is not a dry-rot which you can cover with a carpet until the house tumbles about your ears ; you mi^ht as well try to hide a volcano in lull operation ; it cannot be hid ; it is a cancer in your face, and must be treated secun- dum artem ; it must not be tampered with by quacks who never saw the disease or the patient." Brave, prophetic words. The volcano of an awaken- ing public conscience could not, indeed, be suppressed. 16 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Compromise followed compromise, the old ulcer on the body politic grew deeper, the moral pulse of the nation grew feebler, but God was not asleep ; the cry of the bondman had reached His ear, the stench of human blood had offended His nostril. To-day, along the mountains, plains and valleys of the sunny Southland, the cold sod is heavy over the forms of the grandest, bravest men of the nation, men who wore the blue, men who wore the gray, whose blood was poured out as a libation upon the nation's altar to atone for an accursed compromise, which might, at one time, have been stricken out with a pen. In the reddest of American blood it is written : " A question is NEVER SETTLED UNTIL IT IS SETTLED RIGHT." Ladies and gentlemen, with these truths as a start- ing point we are ready to continue the investigation. This is not a personal matter between the drunkard- maker and temperance advocate. Whether the drunk- ard-maker is a scoundrel or a gentleman weighs not an atom in settling the merits of the case. For the purposes of this investigation, it matters not whether he is a devil or an angel of light. If he is an angel he cannot make a devilish principle a good one ; if he is a devil he cannot make a God-given principle a bad one. The question to be considered is, the cause of, and remedy for, the evils of intemperance. If the whole brood of drunkard-makers could be drow^ned in Lake Michigan to-morrow, another brood would spring up in three months, equally as bad as the one destroyed, un- less we could destroy the accursed system that produced them ; sear the neck of the license hydra, with public opinion in the hands of prohibition lolaus. Some cry, " Attack the liquor seller ! " When asked why, they answer, " He is a mean man." What if he is ? The meaner and viler the drunkard-maker, the better he represents his mean, vile business; and I prefer a man should be a good representative of his trade. The American people must enter upon the A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 17 investigation of this question, determined to examine fully all of its phases, to weigh carefully the arguments advanced by both sides, investigate the alleged facts produced by advocates who represent the home and the grog shop, and then, on the weight of evidence presented, base their verdict. Anything less would not be reasonable, anything else would not be honest. In trying such issues, blackguardism, sneers and reck- less statements are out of place. I have been often impressed, when listening to those who represent the drunkard-makers, that a blackguard is as much out of place in the field of honest, manly discussion as a mon- key would be in the tabernacle of the Lord. A man engaged in either intellectual or physical combat should never throw mud when he has rocks at hand, and when individuals stoop to use the mud of epithets in a discussion of this kind, it is prima facie evidence that they have nothing else to use. The copious use of epithets like " Fanatic," " Zealot," " Fool," and "Vision- ary," is n'^ gument, but rather an indication of a cerebral vacuum in the head of the talker. When you see a man standing on the street corner, sticking his thumb in his vest pocket and calling temperance people vile names, just remember it does not require a high order of brains to abuse people. A parrot can black- guard. " If you have no case, abuse the opposing attorney," is the motto of pettifoggers the world over. Temperance advocates have no use for the style of argument used by the drunkard-makers and their apologists. Temperance men believe they are advocat- ing correct principles, and that the facts and arguments upon which they base their claims are so nearly self- evident, that a presentation in a fair, candid way will convince thinking, intelligent people that prohibition is the only remedy for the drink curse. They believe the people are intelligent, and fully capable of passing judgment upon any question of governmental policy ; that the people are the court of last resort, and that all 18 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. questions must be determined by them. In accordance with this idea they go to the people as to a jury pre- senting an indictment against the drink traffic, and ask that the traffic be tried, and a verdict rendered in accordance with the evidence. The object and purpose of the work they have never concealed. From the day the temperance reform started in this country, the prohibitionists have declared from platform and pulpit their purpose, and that purpose is to bury the liquor traffic in the way the old Welsh woman said she would bury the devil : " With face down, so that should he ever come to life, the more he digs the deeper he will get." Ladies and gentlemen, such is the purpose of the temperance men of this country — a calm, deliberate, dispassionate purpose — formed after a full investigation of all the facts in the case. You say at once, " This involves social changes, legal changes, changes in the very structure of this government." I answer, " Yes." You ask, " On what charges do you base the demands for this change ? " Let me write the answer ; dip my finger in the blood of some man killed by beer or whiskev, and write it on this wall. 1st. From the day the liquor traffic was allowed to come into this country from the despotisms of Europe it has existed as a bitter, blighting, damning curse on everything decent, virtuous and pure. Its history proves it the enemy of law, order, morality, Christianity and civilization. 2nd. The American dram-shop is the cause of more than six-sevenths of the pauperism and four-fifths of the crime in the nation. It is the hot-bed where out- laws germinate ; the cradle where vice is rocked. 3rd. Liquor drinking makes the slums of great cities, and is responsible for the horrible condition of mankind in the slums. The temperance leaders stand before the people of the world, present the indictment, and say to the A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 19 liquor interest: "Come into the court of the people and plead." It does not matter whether the temperance advocate is a scoundrel or a gentleman, Mr. Beer-seller. The only question the liquor interest of this country must meet is the question raised by this indictment. If the charges are false, the temperance men are liars, slanderers, maligners, and the people should put them on a rail, ride them out of the toWns, and dump them into the lake. If the charges are true, no man can justify the license of the damnable traffic guilty of such social crime. It is simply a question of fact. Do the tem- perance men lie or do they tell the truth ? They have always proclaimed and pressed the charges. They have stood upon the public platforms and said to the keepers of the dram-shops : " Dare you come before the people and deny these charges?" How do the liquor dealers meet the charges ? Supposing a young man living in Lake Bluff should steal a horse, and start to go to Wisconsin. He is arrested this side of the Wisconsin line, brought back and put in the county jail. Jhe grand jury meet and find an indictment charging him with felony. The young man is brought into court to make his plea. The people prefer he should be acquitted. I believe it is a fact that the American people always sympa- thize with the criminal ; in other words, they prefer that the man should be innocent, rather than that he should be guilty. You see a man led into a court-room, charged with the crime of murder, and the people hope that the charge is not true. The boy is brought in, the clerk reads the indicftment, and asks the simple question: "Are you guilty or not guilty?" It is a question of fact between him and the people ; he is ex- pected to do one of two things, either plead guilty and accept the punishment of outraged law, or not guilty, thereby challenging the allegations of the people, and forcing their attorney to produce the proof. The indictment is read, he is asked for his plea. 20 THE PEOPLE V8, THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I ! li " Guilty or not guilty ?" but instead of making it he draws back, begiijs to whimper, and says : "If I had not stolen the horse some other man would !" The court would say : " That has nothing to do with the question ; it is a question involving your character, reputation and liberty, a simple question of fact ; are you guilty or not guilty ? " The prisoner continues to whimper, and says : " Peo- ple have always stolen horses, and they will always steal horses, and it is not fair to pitch into me." No court would accept such a plea. I can imagine the indignation of the court when for the third time he asks, "Are you guilty or not guilty ?" The prisoner, drawing back among a crowd of roughs, answers, "And if I am guilty, what are you going to do about it ? All prohibitory laws for the suppression of stealing have failed. Persons steal in ever}'- section of this land. You cannot stop it. Prohibition is a failure. Let me tell you what I will do. If you will let me go and continue stealing, I will give you half the money I received for the horse." • If the judge, in face of such a threat, should accept the bribe and release the prisoner, how quickly the people would move to impeach such a judge and depose him for corrupt practices. The temperance leaders draw the indictment on which the liquor business is brought into the court of the people. They insist and demand that the traffic shall plead; not sneak into its dens of infamy, not crouch with the bludgeon in the hands of drunken assassins, not bull-doze and intimidate law-abiding citizens ; but, like any other criminal, come and plead to the indict- ment before the people. Bring the traffic, in the person of its representatives, into court. Read the indictment. Mr. Liquor-dealer, what is your plea ? The liquor-dealer commences to whimper, and says : " These temperance people are all hypocrites." " Come, now, brace up and be a man : true or false?" I A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 21 He says, " If I don't sell, some other fellows will." " What has the question of another individual's guilt to do with the question of the guilt of the whole traffic? The question is simply, Is your business guilty ? That is all. If it is not guilty, the business will go on all the stronger ; if it is guilty, it must die. Guilty or not guilty ? " " The people have always drank ; they always will drink, and it is not fair to pitch into me." " Guilty or not guilty, Mr. Liquor-seller ? That is all." He draws back, and says : " Well, if I am, what are you going to do about it ? If you say I shall not sell, I will sell in defiance of law. You never have stopped the sale, and never can stop it. When you say I shall not do it, I will hoist the flag of rebellion on the head of a beer keg, and defy you to stop me. Let me tell you what I will do : If you will permit me to sell, despite the social results of my traffic, I will give you $500 out of the money I get out of the business. And the people of Chicago and the people of this country reach out their hands and say : "Pass over a part of the crime-tainted proceeds; divide the blood-money with us, and we will license you and swear you are respectable." See again how the liquor dealers meet the charges. They dare not meet them like honest men. In Kansas I had the pleasure of visiting the state to help in the struggle for prohibition. I went down into the Democratic part of the state. Strange as it may seem to some of you, my political opinions lead me to support that party. I did not stand on a platform during the campaign that I did not ask the liquor men to come to the platform and discuss the question. I said : " If temperance men are wrong, get your ablest men and bring them here upon the platform, prove us in the wrong, and you have beaten us." Did they come ? Never. \mi 22 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I was one day returning to my home in Lincoln, from Atchison, Kansas, when a gentleman from Chi- cago by the name of Hass came and sat down beside me. After shaking hands, he said : " Veil, Finch, vat are you down here for ? " I said I had been doing a little work. " Vat kind of vork ? " "Persuading the people to pass the prohibition amendment." " You dink you bass him ? " " No ; I Jo not think so." " Vat you mean ? " " I know it will be passed." He looked at me, and said : " Veil, Finch, you vas a pretty smart fellow about some dings, but you vas a dam vool about that." After he had finished laughing at his own wit, I said to him : " Well, now, Mr. Hass, you think I am a friend of yours, and I think 1 am in some respects ; let me advise you as a friend, if you have any money now, put it where you can keep it ; for in less than twenty years the temperance men will have abolished the liquor traffic in every state north of Mason and Dixon's line." He laughed and said : " You can't bass dot ament- ment." I said : " Why ? " He answered: "We haf cot $150,000 to put in dis fight." I said : " Bless the Lord." " Vat you mean ? " he asked. " I am glad you are going to make a square fight." " Vat you mean by a square fight ? " "You say we are fools and what we are talking about is nonsense. Do you think the people of this state are fools ? " He said, " No." " You would be perfeotly willing to let them try a •ase in which you had money involved ? " A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 23 " Yee." "If we are wrong, why do you not hire the ablest lawyers and ministers, the best and purest women in this land, put them on the platform with us, and let them convince the people that we are wrong, let them show the people we are fools ? Do this, and you have dug a grave for this temperance nonsense so deep that a grave robber would not waste time in hunting for it. Send a man to meet me to-morrow night, and send a good one." " No," he said, in language I will not imitate ; " we know a better way than that. The people up in the frontier counties are starving. We have money enough to divide up and put $10,000 in every frontier county in Kansas ? Do you think you can talk against such [arguments?" He said that — the old criminal. His only defence upon the trial of the case before bhe jury of the people was his power to corrupt men [and buy them when they were starving. He did not I dare to meet the charges. He did not dare to make an honest fight; but simply boasted of his power to I corrupt and debase men. Last spring a convention of liquor dealers was called I to meet at Lincoln, Neb. They met, and a committee I was appointed to formulate a plan of organization, i During the time the committee was deliberating, a member moved that the organization be called the Liquor Dealers' Alliance of Nebraska. One liquor [dealer said, "Such a name would kill it." The matter was referred to the committee, and the [committee reported in favor of calling it the "Mer- chants* and Traders' Union," — ashamed to own its true character, or, rather, wishing at least that the child should come out with decent clothes, although its name would make it illegitimate. So at the present time in Nebraska we have no liquor association — we have the Merchants' and Traders' Union. Printersr 24 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. farmers organize farmers' organize printers* unions clubs. All decent trades organize unt w If 28 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. religion of Jesus Christ does make men honest. If a professing Christian is not honest, it is good evidence that he is a religious fraud. A town could afford, for the sake of business alone, to run a revival once a year. But, Mr. Clergyman, you are not living for to-day, for to-morrow, for next week, for next year; will you come up here now, and defend your work ? We do not want you to defend it by young converts or by middle-aged Christians ; we want 3'ou to come here by the death-bed of the Christian and tell us, sir, if you wjU defend your faith there. He would come and say, " That is the test I want. I do not want you to try Christianity by the sunshine Christians, who work for the Lord on Sunday and the devil the rest of the week, nor by the people who are in the Church as an insurance society, to keep them from burning after they get on the other side ; but I desire that Chris- tianity shall be judged by the record and life-work of people who have loved God and kept His command- ments. By that test I am willing the religion of the Master shall be judged." My friends, it matters not how far we may have drifted upon the sea of doubt and unbelief, we must accept such a test, and say to the man of God : " Any person whose teachings make men more honest, develop intelligence and morality, and smooth the pathway to the grave, thereby light- ing up the dark future, is entitled to a world's grati- tude. You earn your money, stand aside." We want to examine another profession, and we call the school teacher. " What do you give the people for what you receive ? They pay you and they expect that you will return value received. What do you give back ? " The teacher would come, and calling up the educated merchant, doctor, lawyer and tradesman, would say, " This is the result of my work." " Uni- versal education is the foundation of liberty." Then reaching his hand to the teacher of morals — the min- ister — would say : " Educated conscientiousness and A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 29 educated intellect — a dual unit — is the only safe foun- dation for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Let me say to you, if I may say it in a temperance talk, that I believe, in this country, any system of education that does not develop the morals as well as the intellect, is a fraud and a failure. Come with me to the frontier, and I will show you men who are the graduates of Eastern colleges, who have fled there to avoid the eflfect of crimes committed in their former homes. They are vile and devilish. To make a symmetrical man or woman, the moral nature must be developed, side by side with the intel- lectual, or the student becomes an intellectual mon- strosity. Therefore we say to the teacher, " Take your place with the world's workers, who fairly earn the compen- sation they receive." We want to test another trade, and we shout out to the blacksmith. We say : " You get money, come up here, and bring specimens of your work." He would come, and, holding up a horse-shoe, would say : " Here is my work. Every time I put a shoe on a horse the owner is better off*, and I am better off", if he pays me.". Placing him beside the minister and teacher, and we call a milliner to represent the ladies, and say to her : "You get money, and it is an important question to us married men what you give back." She comes up, [and holding a finished hat or bonnet, says: "I made [that — is it not well done?" Although men make sport of hats and bonnets, yet we are free to confess that our wives look prettier when they have them on, land when we take the thing and look at it, almost [trembling, fearful lest we crush it, we realize that we [can earn the money to buy it in a day, and with our jlumsy fingers we could never make it ; so we make ip our minds it is a necessity, and give the milliner a )lace with the others who render fair return for the loney they receive. 30 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC, Now having tested these, we want to test the keeper of the dram-shop in this state by the same standards. ''' Come up, sir. You said a minute ago the minister was as good as the liquor seller, if he behaved himself as well. If the minister is your equal you must get into the same scales of political economy in which we have weighed him. Do not plead the baby act, but come. You dare not come ? Do you hesitate ? You toil not, neither do you spin, yet you make more money with less brains and capital than any other tradesman. Few workmen can wear such clothes as you do. What are you giving in return for what you get ? Come up here, sir ; bring a finished specimen of your work ; hold it up here for the crowd to see, and show us its fine points T' Would he come? You could not drive him up here if you put a shot gun behind him. What should he bring ? What does the dram-shop manufacture ? What has it always manu- factured ? It has manufactured drunkards, first, last, and all the time. A dram-shop keeper is as distinctly a drunkard -maker as a man that makes shoes is a shoemaker. That is all he ever did make, that is all he ever will make. * Show us a first-class sample of dram-shop work. Do not show us a specimen of raw material of which you make your finished product. Wo know where and how it was raised. We know hciw the father gave the best years of his life and the mother her girlhood bloom to develop the bright, brave boy. We know how he entered your trap with good muscle, nerve, brain, character. Do not bring such a specimen, bring a finished job and show us how you have im- proved the raw material. Could you induce a liquor dealer to come up here and hold up the specimen ? What is the drunkard-maker's defence ? You say to him, "You make drunkards." His very first defence is, " I do not sell liquor to drunkards ; I do not have them hanging around me." If it is a good thing to A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 81 make a drunkard, a drunkard must be a good thing after he is made. Suppose, ladies and gentlemen, the minister should come here and give you as a reason why his church should be^ endorsed, that he did not have any old Christians hanging around his prayer- meetings. Suppose he should say to the young men : "Follow Christ; attend church, Sunday-school, and prayer-meeting regularly for thirty years. By that time it will have made you such a wretch that we will kick you out when you come to church." Would not that be a good advertisement for the Christian reli- gion ? I recently saw by the papers that at Des Plains, Illi- nois, camp-meeting they called together on the plat- form all the old men and women w^ho had been in Christian work fifty years, and there was a crowd gathered in the auditorium to hear their testimony; the papers stated that as these old veterans in the ser- vice of Christ gave in their testimony of the wonderful love and goodness of God, the feeling pervading the meeting was wonderful. Why do not the drunkard- makers come here and call up a number of their vet- erans — a number of men they have worked on for ten, fifteen and twenty years, with red noses, bleared eyes, racrged clothes, worn-out shoes? Bring them up here and exhibit them to prove the beautiful effects of liquor drinking on the individual, and through the individual upon the state of which the individual is a unit. Let the liquor seller now act as interlocutor — open the Bible and read : "No drunkard shall inherit the king- I dom of heaven," and then call on them to testify. Upon their evidence we would be willing to rest the whole case against the vile trafl[ic. Why will not the drunk- ard-makers do it? Is their business so mean, so low, so devilish, that when they have finished their work [with a man who has stood by them through thick and thin, giving them his mqpey, character — everything, they kick him out and say: "He is a dirty, drunken 1 1 J 1 ■ ; t ; i 'I ii ■ .J, 1 ;h il'll li i iy liHi^ U,-'ii,: : 1,1,,; 1,1 ;: ^li. II ij jl ii i ; i 1 iiiil*:; : 1 i i1|f' 8 iiin-v-!i-^ 1 »»"■:> ., 1 ■if 32 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. dead-beat." "We do not want any old drunkards around us!" The representatives of the business are ashamed of its results. Such is the evidence in the case. Go down the street; a new waggon is standing by the curb; you stop to admire it, and at last say: "I wonder who made it." "I did, sir," answers the waggon- maker. " Will you please examine the waggon closely, becpuse we challenge examination of our work." Look at the man. He is dressed in poor clothes, but see how proud he is as he contemplates his finished work. Last year while visiting a country fair, together with a friend, I was standing by one of the stock pens, looking at a calf. "Wonder who raised the calf?" said my friend. "I did," answered a farmer standing near by. As the farmer spoke, he straightened up as much as to say, "I am proud of my work." As you pass along the streets of our cities you frequently see other work nearly finished sitting on the curb or wallowing in the gutter. Stop and ask: "Whose job is this?" Will the drunkard-maker run out of his factory and say: "I did that work?" Look at that nose, face and mouth. That man once had a face like yours but I fixed him. The reason why the drunkard-makers will not defend their work is, it is indefensible. Can you separate a workman from his chips? If the liquor business is respectable, its products must be respectable. The liquor business has its own record and social crimes to meet and defend ; this much, no more. These crimes have not been committed in moments of sudden anger and passion, but coolly, deliberately and wilfully. The cost has been counted, the profits estimated and the sanction of government bought by men who know right from wrong, men who are responsible for their acts. They must now receive justice. The advocates of the home will continue to press the charges against the traffic, and labor to perfect their plan of prosecution against such a wilful, malicious, cold-blooded, social criminal.* The object of the pro- A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. ss secution is to protect the home, the wife, the baby against a traffic conducted by men who spare neither age, sect, nor condition. If the people find a verdict of guilty it will save drunkards and prevent drunkenness. The civilized people believe in reaching down into the depths of debauchery and getting hold of the vic- tims of this traffic. Reaching with tears and prayers, and lifting and holding them up, but after they have helped them out, they believe in closing the drunkard- factory so other men will not be tempted to ruin. Save the drunkard and prevent drunkenness. Such, ladies and gentlemen, is the indictment against the liquor traffic, and the methods of the prosecution and defence. Firm in the belief in the righteousness of their cause, the home advocates will move for a ver- dict of guilty, and demand that sentence be passed on this old hoary-headed criminal; and then, when the people have settled the question, and settled it right, we can say in reality, as we now say in theory, "Vox populi, vox Dei." '1'!' -':l ii II. WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. Stenographic Report of an Address Delivered in the Opera House at Waukesha, Wisconsin, Thursday, Oct. 13, 1882. Ladies and Oentlemen : Early in September, while visiting in the city of Madison, I received an invita- tion from temperance friends to visit the state, and talk on the subject of the prohibition of the alcoholic liquor traffic. I was willing to accept this invitation for two reasons. 1st. I was in your state four years ago, and when I returned to my western home I carried with me the memory of many pleasant places, which I had a sincere desire to revisit that I might meet old friends. 2nd. I wished to know if the people of this state were keeping pace with other states in the great work of outlawing the drunkard-makers of this country. Although the newspapers almost always tell the truth, yet sometimes you cannot depend upon their telling the whole truth about the prohibition movement, and I thought if T wanted to know the whole truth, the best way would be for me to come here and see you, and talk with you. I am not here to deliver any lecture or set address. I was not asked to do that. I was asked to come here and talk to you, and that is what I intend to do — talk to you upon a question that involves your interests as much as it does mine, that should interest you as much as it does me — a question that you must desire to see settled as earnestly as I do — although you and I may diflfer in regard to the best methods of settlement. WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 85 I always wish, when I am discussing this question before an audience, that I could call up every man and woman and swear them on the Bible as a jury, to render an honest verdict on all the facts in the case. A great business — a great traffic — is on trial for its life before a jury of American citizens. The temper- ance men of this country have indicted the traffic as a social criminal. The counts of the indictment are as positive and p*lain as the counts of an indictment against any criminal, and the people are the jury who are to determine the truth or falsity of the counts t)f this indictment. Therefore, I always feel that what I may say will do.no good unless it shall lead the people to act — perhaps first to think, and then to act. When I leave the platform to-night I shall be no better temperance man than I am now. If I accom- plish any good it will be because I appeal to your reason and your judgment; thus leading you to act up to the full measure of your convictions. If I could, by any trick of sophistry, or any power of personal magnetism, lead every man and woman in this house to shout for prohibition, I would not do it, unless your judgment, reason and intelligence told you to shout. The battle is to death; no compromise will be accepted. Christian civilization will abolish the liquor traffic, or the liquor traffic will abolish Christian civili- zation. We are not in this conflict for a day, we are not in it for a week, we are not in it for a year, but we have enlisted in this campaign to stay until the close of the war. Jhe purpose of the temperance men of this country has been for years well defined, and they have not changed it, and will not change it until victory shall come. They demand the complete outlawry of drunk- ard-making, and they will accept no compromise that allows it to exist in any form. There is no doubt about the object of the temper- ance movement. The temperance men intend to 1 1 ' '1^ ■li 36 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I!" I nl'itH'! destroy the drunkard-making system of America, root and branch. There is no such thing as compromise upon the issue. In the end, the liquor traffip of this country will abolish temperance, or temperance will abolish the liquor traffic. The issue is squarely made and squarely joined before the people, so I say, J, would not lead any man into the temperance ranks unless he comes because he believes it is right, and comes to stay. I would have you take the facts to your home, to your office, to your store or place of business, and when you are alone, and away from all exciting influences, sit down calmly and honestly, and, after having examined the liquor side of the question, and the temperance side of the question, make up your verdict in accordance with your honest judgment. If I should succeed in convincing you that I am right, if your judgment, reason, intelligence tells you that I am right, and then you refuse to work up to the full measure of your c6nvictions, you are guilty of injus- tice, or cowardice, of which I would not believe you capable. The whole issue involved is simply a question of fact. If the dram-shop of this country is a blessing ; if it makes honest voters, honest citizens, kind hus- bands and loving fathers ; if it leads to an observance of the Christian Sabbath ; if it leads to morality, manhood and intelligence ; if it discourages crime, vice, pauperism, illegal voting and false swearing, then, there can be but one position for you and me to take on the question. If the liquor traffic is a blessing, every patriotic American, every man who loves his country, owes it to his citizenship, to his own sense of honor, to stand by that traffic, talk for it, work for it, vote for it ; if he is a praying man, pray for it ; if he is a preacher, he is a humbug if he will not preach for it. If the reverse is true — if the liquor traffic of this country makes drunkards, cruel husbands and unkind WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PUESSED. 87 fathers ; if it breaks women's hearts and degrades children ; if it fills our penitentiaries, our almshouses and our jails ; if it stimulates riot in our great cities ; if it stands and laughs at the stuffing of the ballot- box ; if it causes men to swear falsely on the witness stand or in the jury-box ; in other words, if it is an enemy to this government ; if it is an enemy of law, and order, and civilization, then will you give me a single reason why you, as an honest man, or I, as an honest man, should vote not guilty and sustain it with such a record. We are not to settle this question as individuals. The institution is a public one. If it is destroyed, it will be destroyed by the state and national govern- ments. The part that you will take, the part that I shall take, in destroying it, must be the part of citizens of the state and of the republic. The question then is, not how it will affect me individually, but " What is for the best good of the whole state ? " You should weigh honestly every argument that liquor men may bring, before making up your verdict. You should weigh just as honestly the arguments of the temperance men. A man asked me some time ago : " Would you advise a temperance man to read whiskey papers ? " I answered : " I would not give much for a temper- ance man if he would not do it. You are not to settle this question as an individual. You are a citizen of the state, and when you vote on this question, your vote does not alone affect yourself, but affects the whole state. You must forget your individuality, and remember your position as the patriot and citizen. If there are any arguments in favor of the liquor traffic, you owe it to your honor, manhood and truth to weigh carefully every argument the liquor men may bring to influence you in making up your verdict. Take the liquor traffic and all the good it has done, and put it in one side of your scales of judgment. Do not leave 4' m I '■'■'1 m m I 38 THE PEOPLE V8, THE LIQUOK TUAFFI(>\ t I I! Ill '*! i' ' : niiik i\ ii'i "iii,, m 1 out anything. If there is any doubt give the criminal the benefit of it. That is the rule of law we want applied in this case. After putting all the good it has done into one side of the scale, put all the evil it has done into the other side. Take its record in this country, weigh it honestly and well, and if you believe, after an investigation of this kind, that the liquor traffic has done more good than it has done injury ; that it is a blessing to the country ; that it tends to perpetuate the government, then it is your duty, be- yond all question, to stand by and support the traffic. If the dram-shop of this country is an enemy to the state, an enemy of our institutions, I cannot see how any honest man dare stand and defend it — defend an institution that is an enemy to the highest interests of his country. A man who will give aid or comfort to an enemy of his country, and thereby help the enemy to injure his country, is a traitor." Let us now examine the case. Every person who reads must be satisfied that this question must be settled in this country. The question, " What shall the government do with the alcoholic liquor traffic ? " is one that must be heard. As surely as this American people are a nation of freemen who govern themselves, just so surely they will render a verdict in this case, even though that verdict destroys every political ' party that has an existence in this country. Go home to-night, and when you reach there you find your boy in bed ; he has been indisposed for several days ; you see he is sick ; you put your hand on his head ; it is burning hot ; put your fingers on his pulse ; you find it running above a hundred ; speak to him ; he answers in broken sentences. You at once send for the physician. When he comes you ask : " What is the matter with Willie ? " The physician makes an examination of the boy's body, asks how he has been feeling for the past few days, and tells you that Willie has the fever. WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 39 You might ask your physician, " What is fever ? " He would reply : " The child has taken, through the nose and lungs, malarial poison. The fever and the increjise of pulse is simply nature's ettbrt to expel the poison and save the child's life. This increased activ- ity of the vital forces is simply nature defending herself against the poison which would destroy the organism unless expelled." You ask : " What shall we do for Willie ? " The medical man will answer : " I will leave medicine to help nature to do its work, and will tell you how to nurse him. Willie will get well." Then you ask : " Doctor, how long before he will get well ? " The doctor will answer you : " Never, until the poison, the cause of the heat, the cause of the increased pulsation, is driven out of the system." He will tell you that you can do nothing more than to help nature expel the poison, and when the poison is gone, the heat of the body will become normal, the pulse will go down? and the child will live. To-day the political pulse is feverish. Men are talking, women are working and praying. Organiza- tions are being formed, conventions are being held. What is the cause of this unrest ? It is the poison of the liquor traffic in the political system. The temper- ance movement is a social power which will cease when the poison is expelled. Until that time there is no hope of political or social health. In past ages governments born of a higher civiliza- tion developed rapidly for a few years and then died, thereby destroying the hopes of the people. Such governments sickened and died because social poison in their political systems was not expelled by rational treatment. This is the history of the world, and the only hope for long life of the American government is the destruction of false notions of treatment of social, political disease. The hope that this government will ,\ i'\ ill m 1 : r. r\ 40 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. III .l! r i live longer than other governments have lived, is based upon the increasing intelligence of the masses in regard to matters of government. When a man says. Americans should follow any- custom, because people follow it in another land, he talks nonsense. Take the history of the world, and you find that, after a few years, or at most a few centuries, governments created with every prospect of success have died of diseases generated in their own systems by neglect of the ordinary rules of political hygiene. They have become things of the past, because they have allowed the poison of social and political vices to remain in their organisms. The only hope for this government is, that the statesmen who have charge of the life and health of the Republic shall profit by the lessons of past ages. One thing I fear is the tendency to cling to customs and habits of other lands. The attempt to develop here the customs and practices that have destroyed liberty in other lands will be national suicide. This government is largely like the people ; it is widely different from most European governments. FOfSten this thought in your minds, and keep it there. I have never heard a gentleman talking against prohi- bition and defending the liquor traffic in this country who used .this word "government" in its American Liquor men always use the old or despotic sense. sense of the word. Daylight and midnight are not more opposite. In this country the government is made by the people ; in Europe it is made for the people. Here it comes up fi'om the people ; there it comes doiosi from the king. Here it is the people's power delegated to official representatives ; there it is divine (?) power delegated to the ruler. Here it is in- ^telligent common-sense ; there a superstitious clinging to old forms. ' Once, while I was speaking in Iowa, a gentleman interrupted me, saying : " Mr. Finch, if this government should pass a prohibitory liquor law, it would become a tyranny." WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 41 I said to him, " Please say that again, and say it slowly so I can catch it." He repeated it : " If the government passes a prohi- bitory liquor law the government will become a tyranny." I asked, " Sir, who is the government ? " He answered, " The people." " The government being the people, if a prohibitory liquor law is passed by the government, it must be either an organic law passed by a direct vote of the people, or a statutory or functional law, passed by the people through their delegated representatives ? " " Yes, sir." " If the operation of such a law is tyrannical, then the people are the tyrants ? " " Who are the people going to tyrannize over ? " " The people." I asked him if that would not be a good deal like a man sitting down on himself. It is the grossest kind of ignorance in this country, where all political power is inherent in the people, to say that any despotism can ever exist until the people place themselves in a position where they cannot govern themselves. When a man talks about the will of the people, in a government of the people, being tyranny, he talks nonsense. In this country the government is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It should be the fact, whether it is or not. Consequently, the people are the units of government. In a brick building, or a stone building, the unit of the building is the single brick or stone in the wall. If I ask upon what the strength of this opera-house depends, you would answer me, that its shape has something to do with it ; that the work upon it has something to do with it ; but its strength primarily depends upon the stone in the wall. If the stone is •I I ll I i if ' i- i.r 'M I'! rt^l vli ** 42 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Hi- J it!*: •; ! i i^ : ^'V H Mt rotten, I care not how good the work, I care not how good the plan, the building will be unstable — it will not be strong. The strength of the building is the combination of the strength of the units of the struc- ture. In this government the unit is the man, the woman, the child. Each man and each woman who sits before me is a part of the American Republic. The strength of the government may depend somewhat on its form, somewhat upon the constitution, yet primarily the strength of this government depends upon the character of the individual citizen. Anything that debauches the citizen will injure the government. Anything that elevates the citizen will elevate the government. To ruin a republic is simply to ruin its citizens. To strengthen a republic, you simply have to build up the intelligence, morality and character of its citizens. As the government partakes of the nature of its citizens, so it is subject to disease, like the citizens who compose it. Whenever you see a moral, social or poli- tical fever sweep over the country — when the political pulse runs up, every thinking man must perceive that somewhere in the organism of the government there is a poison to cause the fever. Especially is this true if the fever is not temporary. Let us examine this tem- perance fever. It is as well marked a type of social or political fever as any country ever had. It commenced almost with the birth of the Republic. It swept over the States, increasing in force until about 1856, when suddenly in the political organism another fever broke out. It was an acute one, and yet the strange fact in regard to these two national diseases is that inherited poison is the cause of both of them. The poison of slavery was transmitted to the child from the parent, and for long years it caused local irritation ; caused a breaking out in certain limbs of the body, until in 1856 it assumed an acute form. In 1860 the question was fairly raised, " Shall the government die or live ? " WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 43 As soon as that .question was raised, the temperance men and religious men of the nation said, " This ques- tion of the continuance of the nation's life must be settled at once. If the government is killed, then our reform will die with it. Let us save the nation's life." But no sooner was that fever broken up ; no sooner was the poison which caused it, eliminated from the body of the government, and risk of its return avoided by the adoption of the amendments to the constitution of the United States, than from the north to the south, from the east to the west of this nation, the temper- ance fever broke out anew, until to-day you can hardly ride upon a railroad train but you hear people talking about it ; in the post-olHce they are discussing it ; the newspapers are full of it ; in the churches the ministers preach about it ; in the prayer-meetings the Christians pray about it ; in political conventions the politicians swear about it. There is not a section of this land where it is not felt to-day. What does it tell you ? No matter whether you drink liquor or abstain, what does it tellr you ? I must tell you that somewhere in the political organism of this nation there is a cause. It will not do to say that this excitement is caused by a few fanatics and a few old women. To say that, is to say the American people are fools. If the American people, for more than seventy years, have been excited and nervous over the stories of fanatics and old women, the American people are bigger fools than anybody ever supposed them to be. You know that the best men of to-day are talking about this question. You know that there is some- thing, somewhere in the political organization of this country, that causes this fever. You ask me how long before it will cease. I answer, as the physician answered in regard to your boy, " Never, until the grog-shop poison, the cause of this unrest, is forever eliminated from the political organism of this country." You must settle this question. You cannot nominate I, V- i f:|M M\ ;■ ri 44 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. ^»:'r Pll!;- I a man for congress ; you cannot nominate a man for the legislature, — from this time forward — you will never nominate a man for president even, where this issue will not be forced upon him. The liquor oligarchy crack the whip of political cor- ruption over the political parties of this country, and cry, " Do our bidding or perish." You may talk about postponing it, but the drunkard-makers demand of every candidate for office that he get down in the dirt of political subserviency. If he wants a nomination he must come into convention with the marks of his own defilement on him, so that the delegates who are tools of the grog-shops may smell it. If he will not do that, he must keep his mouth closed and keep his principles to himself. When the temperance agitation started in this country, there were two classes of men, just as there is now. One class said, " If the liquor traffic is a good thing, let it go free ; — do not hamper it with law ; do not shackle it ; give it a fair chance for existence ; do not put any more chains on it than you would on a grocery or a dry goods store. If the liquor business is a friend of the Republic, the Republic ought to be a friend to the liquor business and ought to leave it free and unfettered. On the contrary, if it tends to loosen the bands of the young Republic, and break down our institutions, kill \i, and kill it at once." The other class of men said, " Hold on ; that will not do ; the people are not educated up to prohibition." — Did you ever hear anybody say " the people are not educated njp to prohibition?" I always feel like thanking a liquor man when he uses the expression. You never heard him say " the people are not educated down to prohibition." By his own language he admits that prohibition is on a higher moral, social and politi- cal level than the license compromise with evil. — This other class of men went on to say, " There is no use in passing a law until the people are educated up to the ftii.^ I whV the indictment is pressed. 45 point of obeying it." And when they said that, they said God Almighty made a mistake. You ask me what I mean ? I mean this : That if God had never passed His prohibitory commandments until the people were educated up to the point of obeying them, He never would have passed them. He said, " Thou shalt not steal." They were stealing then in the wilderness, and there is stealing in America to-day. He said, " Thou shalt not bear false witness." I presume they were doing it then, and are certainly doing it to-day. If you do not think so, indict a liquor seller, and bring him into court, and bring some of his customers to swear against him. While God amid the thunders of the mountains was saying, " Thou shalt have no other God," His high-priest, at the foot of the mountain was setting up a calf for the people to worship. There is a class of men, and we have a great many of them, who claim to be leaders of public opinion, who are incessantly preaching that there is no use in passing a law until the people are educated up to the point of obeying it, while they know, if they know anything of the principles of government and law, that it is the thinnest twaddle ever used by demagogues to catch fools. Law is not passed for men who obey law, — it is passed for the men who are not educated up to the point of obeying it. If all the people of this country were educated up to the point where they would not steal, would you want any law against stealing? If they were educated up to the point where they would not murder, would you want any law against murder ? What do you want any law against stealing for ? Not for the men who are educated up to the point where they will not steal. You want a law against stealing for those who are not educated up to the belief that it is particularly wrong to take your horse. You do not want a law against murder for men who are educated up to the point where they will not kill, but you want hi- ■11 n •■i .! U h HI I 1 : i I ■ i i id,. i, ( I ii 46 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Hi' '!' HI a law against murder for men who are not educated up to the point of regarding human life as sacred. The whole theory of law is, to deal with the law- breaker, and not the man who obeys law. It is for the men on a degraded plane, and not for the men on a civilized plane. Law is the educator. This is true all throughout God's universe. Go home to-night and take your baby boy in your arms. Baby knows n 'th>.. ; about law. He can say a few words — nouns, the names of things with which he is familiar. If you tell him 'to say law, he will say it, but he does not know the difference between law and a turnip or a cabbage. . Th -^re as an educator, and baby will not be as apt to put his fingers out iti that way again. A mother goes upstairs with her little one. There is a chair by the window and the window is open. The mother is busy ; baby creeps to the chair and climbs upon it — tumbles out of the window and breaks his neck. What killed him ? The law of gravitation ; yet baby did not know of the law. The law was passed upon correct principles, and it has existed in nature since the foundation of the universe. You gray-haired men can almost re- member the time when Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravitation. Before that, there was not a man in the world who could tell why he fell down. They did not know why they did not fall off the earth instead of on it. To-day, every step that science takes, every step that the medical profession takes, is simply digging out laws that have existed since the earth existed. God said it is wrong to steal : " Thou shalt not.* The law lay along the principle. God said it was WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 47 wrong to bear false witness : " Thou shalt not." The law lay along the principle. God said it was wrong to kill : " Thou shalt not." The law lay along the prin- ciple. That is God's plan. I presume that we have men in this country, who, if God had invited them into the Garden of Eden, would have told Him He was making blunders, and advised Him to change His . plans. In my own state, in the cattle counties, for several years, the law against murder was practically a dead letter. Public sentiment was very low. It was really considered a mark of honor to have killed a man. If a man told another he lied, a revolver would be drawn, and he died. The people said: "Served him right." A man going along the street was pointed out as hav- ing killed two men. Several times I have been touched on the shoulder by a friend who said : " That man has killed a man." Public sentiment justified it. For a long time it was impossible to indict a man for murder and convict him on trial. Perhaps there was not a man on the jury but had c jmmitted a murder himself. The result was "not guilty," or "killed the man in self-defence." But the government did not pass laws on the level with the moral sense of the people. The government did not say: "We cannot prohibit j'ou from shooting, so we will pass a license law and license you to shoot, if you will give us $500 ; we will keep the penalties down until you are educated up to the point of thinking it is wrong to kill." The govern- ment said, " It was wrong to kill," and it held the law over these counties, till the people came up, up, UP to the law, and to-day there is no portion of the United States where the law is better enforced. It is better enforced in the counties of Nebraska than in the cities of Chicago and Milwaukee. The state acted on the correct principle : the law was used as an educator. The talk of the license men is that the government shall pass a law on the level of the worst element of \i:^\ {H u 48 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LiQUOR TRAFFIC. t: 'I n 1 1 J, lii i;i « ■■■ . the people, and then educate the people up through the law and above it. Utter nonsense. The license idea has heretofore prevailed. License laws have been passed. More than seventy years, in this country, we have been trying to regulate and restrain the liquor business with license laws, and what has been the . result ? A gentleman said to me the other day: ** Prohibition does not prohibit." I said : " That is not the question. The question for you as a license man to answer is, 'Does regulation regulate?'" When prohibition has been tried as long as license has been, backed by the state and national govern- ment, if prohibition is as big a fizzle as license now is, we will consent to the adoption of a new plan. We are not particular about the plan ; it is simply the result we wish to achieve. For more than seventy years we have tried this license system. The liquor business was weak when the license plan was adopted ; but under the fostering care of this accursed fraud it has become the autocrat of politics ; and you know this to be the fact. That license laws are a dead letter, no man will dare to deny. In your own state the law says the dram- shops shall not sell liquor to minors. They do sell to minors. The law says they shall not sell liquor to drunkards. They do sell to drunkards. The law says they shall not sell liquor on Sunday. They do sell on Sunday. The law says they shall not sell adulterated liquors. They do sell poisoned liquors. For more than seventy years in different states in this Union the people have tried to make this old license fizzle work. The temperance people during this time have done all that they could to secure obedience to the law, and to save men from the pernicious influence of the licensed liquor traffic. * They have used the pledge. They have gone down into the gutter and lifted out WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 49 the victims of this devilish system. And when they have lifted them out of the pitfall, the license men vote to keep the pitfall open, so that other men may fall in ; and temperance men have a job on hand all the time. Temperance workers have established temperance lodges. They have built Friendly inns. They have built coffee houses. They have established reading rooms, and put lecturers on the platform and paid them. They have circulated books and arguments ; and they have gone into towns and cities and organized leagues to enforce this law and try to make it work. Now, after seventy years of earnest trial, after seventy years of tears and prayer and hard work, and money-giving and struggling, I stand here to say, what no man dares challenge, that this work has demonstrated the license system of this country to be the most unmitigated humbug that was ever invented by bad men to fool an ignorant people. But the license man springs up, ready to raise an objection : " You have laws enough now, if you would only en- force them." "Sir, we have tried to enforce them, though they are not laws of our making. We have no faith in them ; have you ?" " Yes," he answers. " You are in favor of license ?" " Yes." " You voted for license ?" " Yes." " You believe it will work ?" « Yes." " Why do you not make it work ? If you are a license man, are you not ashamed to come and ask the prohibitionist, * Why do you not enforce our law ? ' Why do you not enforce it yourselves ? We do not believe in the system. We have worked for its en- forcement, because it was the best thing we could do. We never believed in it." i \ m f I -*! % '. k\ i 50 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Before the high license law was passed in Nebraska two years ago, I was talking with a gentleman, a member of the state senate. He asked : " What are you going to do about this high license law ? " I answered, " Nothing." " Are you in favor of it ? " " No, sir." " Why not ? " " I believe if whiskey selling is a good thing, the poor man has as much right to sell as the rich man. If it is a good thing, let every man sell. li it is a curse, LET NO man sell it." He said : " That is theory." I replied : " It is fact." He said : " A prohibitory law cannot be passed, and could not be enforced if it was passed." " Yes, a prohibitory law could be enforced." " But who will do it ? " "The prohibitionists. Give them the law, and if they do not make it operate then repeal it." He said : " This license law will be enforced." I answered : " You know, and every man in this country knows, that a license law never was enforced and never will be enforced. License law means, let the liquor man pay so much money for license ; then let him do as he pleases. You support license because it is as near free whiskey as you can get. If this license law is passed it will be a dead letter because your men will not do anything, and the prohibitionists do not believe in it." Said he : " If it is passed, it will be enforced." " Who is to see that it will be enforced ? " " The license men." The law was passed. When it came into effect last June it was universally disobeyed over the state. The liquor men would not even pay the license. The prohibitionists waited to see what the license men WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 51 would do. They wanted to see if men who talked and voted license were honest. The license men did not lift a finger! At last an editor, in a long article, declared that I was the leader of the strongest politi- cal temperance organization in the country, and that it was my duty to enforce that law ! The same man had been in the legislature and had voted for the law. A few days after I met him, and he inquired : " Did you see that editorial of mine ? " " Yes ; " and I laughed. "Why did you laugh?" " To think what a fool you are." " What do you mean ? " I asked : " Whose law is it ; your law or my law ? " " It is our law." " You believe in it ; I do not. You voted for it ; I did not. You say regulation will regulate ; I say it will not. Is not such the fact ?" " Yes." " Thenj take care of your own babies, please. Do not come around to me to have me take care of them." In not a single instance in the state did the license men lift a finger to enforce the law ; and when at last the rebellion had become general, the prohibitionists of Nebraska stepped out to say : " Drunkard-makers, you must pay this license." And after one of the bitterest fights ever made in our state, they were com- pelled to pay over the money, in all sections of the state, though the law was and is a dead letter in all other respects. As well try to regulate a rattlesnake by holding it by the tail as to permit and then attempt to regulate saloons. The way to ^pgulate a rattlesnake is to kill it, smash its head — its tail may live until sundown, but it cannot bite. The way to regulate the liquor business is to kill its head, the licensed grog-shop, the school of vice, crime and political corruption. Its tail may live in cellars and dark places during the twilight 1 :•■:(♦ I m Ui ! 52 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. of ignorance and superstition, but when its head is destroyed it is powerless to resist — to bull-doze officers or breed assassins. In the city ot* Omaha, Neb., there was living, a little more than a year ago, a gentleman by the name of Watson B. Smith, clerk of the United States court, one of the finest gentlemen ever in the state — a lead- ing politician, an earnest Chiistian, a prominent lay- man in the Baptist Church ; a man who had done as much for Nebraska Sabbath-schools and Nebraska civilization as any other man. Mr. Smith was an honest man. He said : " The liquor sellers must obey the law in this state." Some business men rallied round him. They tried to make the liquor sellers take out licenses in accordance with the laws of the state. They commenced their prosecutions in July, and in October Col. Watson B. Smith, at the hour of midnight, was shot down at his office door, in the United- States government building, by assassins, for no other reason than that he was working to make liquor cut-throats obey law. In all parts of this land the liquor business to-day is an outlaw, and there is nothing too vile or too mean for it to do. When a man says, " I am a license man," the only thing I desire to ask of him is to be an honest license man ; that is, to try to enforce the law in which he believes. •If you believe license ever was, or ever can be made to work, suppose you try it to-morrow morning. Go down and swear out warrants against liquor dealers who are selling liquors to minors; arrest those who are selling adulterated liquors; keep it up for six months, and if at the end of that time you are not a prohibitionist, I will buy you the best suit of clothes to be found in this town. You know, my friends — I care not how much you talk in favor of license — that you do not try to make license work. You know that if you did, the liquor men would endeavor to injure is WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRKSSED. 53 your business and smirch your character ; that they would hire bullies to come up behind you and cluo you on the head. In Milwaukee, simply because some of the citizens asked that the law mij^ht be enforced so far as closing disreputable places on Sunday, the liquor men organized and boycotted every man who dared ask the enforcement of law. After seventy years' trial every man must be con- vinced that to talk regulation, to talk license, is to talk the most contemptible nonsense. The question which comes up as we proceed to look for a remedy is : What is the nature of the dram-shop — what is its relation to the government ? I said a few moments ago, — and I wish to repeat it, because it is the turning-point of this discussion — that this government is not like European governments. That men drink liquor in Germany and Russia is no reason why the liquor traffic should be authorized by Ameri- can governments. On the contrary, it is the reverse of a reason. The difference in the forms of government must be remembered. Suppose the people of Russia become drunken, debauched, riotous and violent, who will control them? " The government." Who is the government ? " The Czar with his army." He can control them, because the government is distinct from, and independent of the subject, in his empire. There is an immense standing army at the command of the Czar ready to suppress any uprising of a drunken, an ignorant, and a riotous populace. Suppose the people of this coun- try become drunken, debauched, and riotous — who is going to control them ? " The government." Who is the government ? " The people." Then the people are to govern the people ? " Yes." But the people being the rioters, and at the same time being the governing power, the government becomes anarchy. You see the difference at once. The only safety of this country is the intelligence V ■'■[■. I 1 I. p. ?• I I ■1 il ■ ■ ; ! !• 54 I THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFb'IC. t It of its voters ; intelligence on the farms and in the workshops ; intelligence so widely diffused, that high and low, rich and poor alike, shall be educated. To say that, because an institution can safely exist where there is a standing army to control it, it can exist without danger in a republic, where the citizen is the controlling power, is foolish. Ever since I have lived in Nebraska, men have come to me and said, " Your taxes amount to so many dollars." "For what?" " In part for school purposes." Why do they tax me ? I have no child old enough to go to school. Why do they require me to pay for schools ? Because the very basis of this government is the intelligence of its citizens. When you educate the boys you strengthen the government, and by strengthening the government you insure your property, because property can -only exist while government exists. There can be no property without law, and law is the child of government. I never paid a cent in my life into a school fund that I did not regard as just so much insurance on my life and property. It costs less money to educate a boy and make a man of him, than to let him go to the bad, and take care of him afterwards. Take the instance of the James boys. The twenty thousand dollars that Governor Crittenden gave to have Jesse James assassinated would have educated twenty boys in the path of manhood. But those boys at an early age were thrown into the society of bush- whackers and renegades, and grew up in that terrible school of outlawry and crime. For twenty years the State of Missouri trembled in their power. Their education with cut-throat bands made them criminals. It is cheaper for the government to educate the chil- dren than to take care of the criminals. The foundation of this government rests on four things : the Church — and I do not spea of any par- ticular Church, but of the Church universal — the school, WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 55 the press, and the home. Take these four institutions from America, drive them out so they will not come back, and you can dig the grave of this Republic, and the corpse will soon be ready. When the people tax me to maintain schools, on the theory that the intelligence and virtue of the people are the only true safeguards of a republic, I have a right to ask, " Does the liquor traffic develop oi; destroy intelligence and virtue ? " You say that the common school has a wonderful influence. What influence has the dram-shop ? It must have some kind of influence. Four years ago I received a challenge from Judge Isaac S. Haskell, of Omaha, to come to that city and discuss with him the question of prohibition. The judge was a license man, and I very gladly accepted the invitation to meet him. I thought he would de- fend tho liquor traffic, and I prosecute it ; consequently I desired to get the evidence against his old client in the town where the discussion was to take place. I went to Omaha after facts. The first place I visited was the office of the superintendent of city schools. I asked t>^' superintendent, "How many schools have 7- .xiere?" He answered, " Seven : six ward schools and a high school ; also, a college and some private schools." " How many teachers have you in tho city institu- tions ? " " Eighty-four." " How many graduated last year ? " " One hundred and eight." I then went to look up the record of the other schools, the dram-shops. I went to their superintendent, the police judge, and asked him : " How are your schools getting along ? " He said, "Are you drunk ? " I said, " You should not think I am drunk because roost of the men brought here are." He inquired what I meant, I explained. He laughed , ;i ii m 56 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I;; " So you think I am the superintendent of the grog- shops." " Are you not ? " " Well," said he, " I do not know but I might be called so." " Well, judge," said I, " how many schools of this kind have you in the city ? " " One hundred and fifty-five licensed ones." " How many teachers in those schools ? " " Including cappers, bar-tenders and owners, about four hundred." " How many scholars did you have up for graduation during the year ? " Opening his commitment book, he rapidly separated the criminal entries into classes, and after adding said, " I gave diplomas to the rockpile, county jail, and fined about twelve hundred. Some graduated three or four times over ; but it is perfectly safe to assume that there were six hundred different graduates." Now, my friends, as thinking people, I want to ask you if the social effect of this system of education is not a question of importance. You say that these free schools with seven buildings, eighty-four teachers, and one hundred and eight graduates, have a wonderful in- fluence — what kind of an influence have the dram- shops ? There are seven schools to one hundred and fifty-five drinking-places, eighty-four teachers to four hundred cappers, bar-tenders and owners ; one hundred and eight graduates in learning, against six hundred graduates in crime. Now I submit that it is a question that every man who loves his country must ask him- self, " What is the nature of the educational influence of the grog-shops on our voters and people ? " If the dram-shop education is good, then take the dram-shop and place it beside the school, and we shall have the home, the church, the school, the newspaper and the dram-shop as the bulwark of our liberties. If dram- shop education is bad, if it tears down the work of the ^ WHY THE , INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 57 other institutions, then let the dram-shop be abolished. What sense is there in educating a boy until he is twenty-one years of age, and then opening a drinking- hell to send him to a drunkard's grave, to prison, or to the gallows ? What sense is there in running these two systems of education ? The dram-shop destroys the work your common schools are doing, debauches and rots the very foundations of this government, by corrupting the individual character of the men and women who compose the government. You may ask what is the influence of the liquor traffic. I do not need to insult your intelligence by going into details to show you. You all know. Sup- pose you open twenty-five drinking-places in Waukesha for the first time in the history of this town. Suppose you never had them here before. When you have opened them and they are in good running order, what other building will you have to erect in this town ? Suppose you open twenty-five dry goods stores; they would take care of themselves. Twenty-five grocery stores ; yes ; but with twenty-five grog-shops you must have a prison. You can no more run a grog-shop with- out a prison as a tail, and officers as strings, than you can fly a kite without the same requisites. Why do you need a police force in a city like this ? How often are your policemen called upon to go to a church and arrest old Christians coming from prayer-meeting under the influence of Christ's spirit, to keep them from fighting ? How many knock-down fights did you ever know to occur in this town under the intoxicating in- fluence of- pork and beans bought in a grocery store? How many men did you ever know in this town to go home at nijjht under the influence of new boots boujjht m p boot store and kick their wives out in the snow ? How many assaults and batteries and riots were ever caused in this town by the stimulating effect of beef- steak bought in a butcher shop ? What other institu- is there that necessitates officers to wor: 11 tip n in h\\ M 5 M 68 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. D ■ . arrest its products, and prisons in which to lock them up? I was in Illinois city last winter when a gentleman asked me to ride through the city with him. In riding through the city I was astonished to see how their dram-shops were located; three in a bunch, the bunches being in diflferent parts of the city. I said to the gentleman, "These liquor dealers must be fools; why do they open their grog-shops so near each other?" He said, "We compel them to locate together, or we will not license them." "Why so?" He answered, "If three of them are together one policeman can watch the three. If they were scattered all over town we should require a larger police force." Speaking with the chief of police of one of the largest cities of this country, a man who drinks liquor and who is a license man, I asked, "If you abolish every drinking-place in this city, how many policemen would be required?" He replied, "Five hundred night watch- men could do our work." They have at the present time more than twenty-five hundred armed, disciplined and uniformed policemen. No honest man can doubt that the liquor shops of this country are primary schools of crime. At a fair, sometime since, I addressed a very large audience in the forenoon; in the afternoon I was walk- ing about the grounds looking at the exhibition, when a man came to me and said: "Are you the man who talked temperance this fore- noon?" "Prohibition or temperance, yes." He said, "Well, it all means the same thing." I told him some people thought so. "Now," said he, "I do not want to insult you." I felt it was exceedingly fortunate both for him and for me, — it might save unpleasantness. He said, "I am a liquor dealer, and the managers of WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 59 this fair did a dirty mean thing to get you here. This fair represents all industries, and mine is a legitimate business. For them to get anybody here, at a public fair, to bring into disrepute one of the industries of the country, is mean." I said, "It does look as though there was reason for your complaint. My friend, I believe you have been insulted, and, if I was in your place, I would go over to the president's office, and kick up the biggest row they ever had on this ground. You say this is for all the industries of the country." I took out of my pocket a premium list, and said, " Here is a premium for the nicest horses, the nicest cows, the best calves ; for chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese; for all kinds of ladies' work; for cheese and butter. The managers of this fair seem to have offered a premium to encourage every industry but yours. Now I would raise a row." He asked, "What do you mean?" I roplied, "You do a legitimate business. You are manufacturing and turning out your products all the time. They ought to offer a premium on some of your finished jobs. They ought to put down $25 for the best specimen of a bummer made in a grog-shop in this country; $15 for the next, and $10 for the next, and a red ribbon for the fourth. If you will go with me to the president we will ask his reasons for not doing it." The liquor dealer straightened up, and said I was an infernal fool. Drunkard-makers say temperance men talk gush and nonsense. But, I answer, the liquor business can no longer plead the baby act in this country. It must stand on the same plane of political economy with every other trade. It must be judged by its results. In the west, since I have lived here — and I have lived here some years — I have heard some men say that in New York city the Democrats stuffed the ballot- boxes and hired repeaters to vote " early and often." .^ ;i i-i 60 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. i.i You ask me if they did this. Undoubtedly they did* Up and down the land we have heard men talking about the purity of the ballot-box. People say, "Does not corruption exist in New York?" Of course it does. If it exists, what is the cause of it? Did you ever stop to think? There is no such corruption in the country districts. You can not corrupt the farmers, you can not corrupt the sober men. If corruption exists at the ballot-box there must be a cause for it. What is the cause ? There stands a workman ; he does not drink ; he has money in his pocket; he has a good job; his brain is clear; his wife and family are happy. For the first time he goes to a drinking-place and drinks. During four or live years he goes down and down, and by- and-bye he gets reckless, loses his business, and his family have to beg. He is an outcast on the street. On an election morning, there this man stands, on a street corner, ragged, dirty, sick ; craving for something to drink ; such a craving for the poison that he would sell his soul for a drink of liquor. The only thing that man possesses which will bring money is his vote. Do you suppose that man, with morals gone, reputation gone — starving, ragged and hungry, will vote like an American citizen, according to his convictions, if he can get money for voting otherwise ? No. The dram-shop is the cause of most of the corruption in our great centres of population. Talk about puri- fying the ballot-box in our great cities ! The ballot- box never will be purified until the voters are purified. You may pass election laws and fence around the ballot-box, but the only hope of a pure ballot-box is a pure citizenship. What is true of New York is true of every great city. The debauchery of the voter, the corruption of the ballot-box is an effect ; and the cause is the Ameri- can dram-shop. The tendency of the liquor interest in this country is to degrade men ; to debauch men ; WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED 61 to stuff* ballot-boxes ; elect men to office, and, in every sense of the word, to tear down and ruin American institutions; consequently it is a question in this country whether the American system of government shall live, or whether this curse shall destroy it. Now, as to the remedies. One man asks, " Has the government the right to destroy this business ? " A friend interrupted me once to say : " I have a natural right to sell liquor." " What do you mean by natural right ? " He did not answer. " I suppose you mean, if you mean anything, that in a state of nature you had a right to sell it ; that is, when you were a wild man you had a right to sell it ? And who would you sell whiskey to, in a state of nature ? You can not sell whiskey unless you have somebody to sell it to, and that would be a state of association. You could not trade unless men come together to trade, and that would be the formation of society. All trade is the child of society. If trade is the child of society, society has the same right as any parent. If trade will not behave itself, society may take it across its knee. If that will not do, it may do more." Suppose a man comes here with a club to kill me ; probably under the laws of this state I would be com- pelled to retire as far as I could with safety, but when the issue is between his life and my life he must die, be- cause every man has the right to defend himself. I am a man, I have a right to be a man. I exist, I have a right to exist, and the right to exist takes with it the right to defend that existence. This is the founda- tion of social and political ethics. A story is told of a muscular preacher who believed in using all the powers the Lord had given him, fists as well as tongue. Some of his flock thought he was too much inclined to use his fists, so they sent him this text : " If a man smite thee on thy right cheek, HI' ill W Tia, u m ii 'i;l i A 62 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. turn to him the other also." They thought they would puzzle the old man to harmonize the text with his conduct. He said he would preach from it the next Sabbath, and he did. He opened with the usual services, took his text, and went ahead. He went on to say that the Bible was distinguished from all other books by appealing to the God-man and not to the brute-man, by teaching man to use reason and judg- ment, not passion or lust "If a man should strike you on the right cheek he might do it through mis- take, or might do it through a feeling of mischief, and if you turned around without asking any questions and struck him back, that would be acting like a brute. You should use your reason and judgment; be certain before you act. You should turn the other cheek. If he strikes you on that, you know that he meant it ; then go for him." That may not be very good Bible interpretation, but it is a very good interpretation of the law of this country. The right that is inherent in every individual, the right of vself-defence, is the state of which the indi- vidual forms a part. The government has a right to defend its own life, and we have seen in this country to what extent it may defend it. You remember, and so do I, when more troops were necessary and a con- scription act was passed to draft men into the army, how many men fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Why was the draft ordered ? On this same principle, the right of the government to defend its own existence. That right is so sacred that the government can take men from their homes, dress them in its army blue, put guns in their hands and place them on battle-fields to be shot to death to save its life. The right of the government to defend its own life must remain as it is, or the government is good for nothing. The govern- ment has the right to destroy any business, any custom, or any trade that tends to destroy the government by WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 63 debauching the character of the citizens who compose the government. The highest courts of the nation have again and again affirmed this right and power. A government which has the right to take its free citi- zens from their homes against their will, and place them on a battle-field to save its life, certainly has the right to kill a vile drunkard-factory that is threatening its existence. The government has the right, through its police power, to protect its own life. If the government has the right, the question is how to use it. As I have said, this government is not like European governments. They do not recognize the fact that the civilization evolves, develops. This government does recognize that fact. I do not know when I have laughed as much as I did the other day, as I read a Democratic platform adopted in one of the states. The reason I laughed was because I used to be a Democrat myself, and used to believe such foolish- ness. What they said was, " We are in favor of returning to the primitive government of our fore- fathers." That was their declaration. I laughed. You ask me why, and I tell you. Since the sunrise of creation's morning humanity has mov 1 on, on — up the hill of progress. There have been jddies in the great tide or current that have made it seem almost as though humanity was moving backward ; but I stand here unhesitatingly to affirm that, as a whole, humanity has never retrograded. As humanity has advanced, government has advanced. First, the patriarchal form. As the people advanced other forms were adopted. Fifty years ago, in the days of our forefathers, we did not need any government to look after railroads, because then there were no railroads. As mankind went forward, inventive genius developed railroads. As soon as they ,were developed, the government had to meet the railroad problem ; and to-day, in that question, this government ha^ as mighty a problem n. .; ■; I *♦ I f 64 THE PEOPLE V8, THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. of government as our forefathers ever had to deal with. Fifty years ago we did not need a government to look after the telegraph wires ; to-day we do. Ten years ago we did not need a government to look after telephones ; to-day we do. Thirty years from this time the civilization will be far in advance of to-day. New social problems are constantly arising. New social problems are forcing themselves to the front, and the government must meet them and solve them, or die. In Europe they have never provided for this growth. There, the governments are like iron bands. Take Russia to-day ; it is a despotism because the govern- ment has no provision for development. The people have developed until the government holds them like bands. The people have tried to break one with the dagger, with the bomb, and by social revolution, but they have not succeeded. But as sure as God's people go up to the point He has ordained they should go, just so sure that government will go to pieces and let the people advance. There can be no doubt about it. In much of Europe the only pathway for mankind's advance is the pathway of bloodshed. Every advance made has been with the bayonet or the dagger. The men who laid the foundations of this govern- ment laid wiser than that. They said, " This nation will grow." The prudent mother who has a little girl who is growing very rapidly, when she buys a dress of durable material, puts in tucks, so that when the child grows the dress can be let out to fit her. The wisest thing ever said by an American states- man was, " Unless we provide for the peaceable future development of the people, some day they will develop through bloodshed and assassination. . The founders of the nation gave us a constitution under which the people can develop without fighting and without m WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 65 revolution. In the constitution of every state they put an adjustable line, providing that the people may, when they wish, amend their organic law and develop their government, without riot, without revolution, and without bloodshed. In other words, it" there was a revolution, it should be a revolution by votes, not by bayonets. The temperance men say the remedy for this evil of intemperance is simply that the government shall develop. For years, long years, in the state of Wiscon- sin they have gone, with tears in their eyes, to the legislature of this state and said, " Grant us — the people, in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the right to govern ourselves. Give us the privilege of amending our organic law. Not YOUR organic law, Mr. Legislator, but our law. Give us, the people, — the right that belongs to us, to govern ourselves." They have gone up there in thou- sands, by their names, and have begged the party machines in this state to recognize one of the first principles of this government, by submitting an amend- ment to the constitution in accordance with the genius of American institutions. But the liquor men have said, " If you submit it, the people will pass it. You must not submit it ; if you do, we will beat your party." And the party men, whipped down by the liquor sellers, said it would not do to submit it. You say Russia is a despotism. Why ? Because the Czar says, " You shall not make a constitution for yourselves." In Wisconsin the party machine sits on the neck of the people and says, " You shall not make a constitution for yourselves." Can you tell me the difference between the despotism of the Czar and a despotism of political demagogues ? You say in Wisconsin you have a government of the people and for the people, and you know that for years and years the statement has been made a lie by the political machines of this state. The people •ii; I .' ' 1 • i !' I t' r I ^^hi 'orjrf THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. for the right to vote on a primary principle of govern- ment, but, because some men feared it would knock a cog off the wheel of the old party machine, they denied the right of the people to govern themselves. Thus, ladies and gentlemen, under the license system the liquor oligarchy has grown until it impudently defies law and seeks to overturn the very foundations of the government. Its character as a political assas- sin is so well known that politicians ask — not what will the people do — but what do the liquor men want ? how will the dram-sellers regard our action ? In view of all the facts, it seems to be the plain duty of every patriot and every citizen to rally to the defence of American liberties, and by crushing the grog-shop oligarchy, strengthen the foundations of our civil and political institutions. I have faith to believe that the jury of America's voters will condemn the traffic, and that the Republic will execute the sentence. Then, indeed, may the patriot poet sing : Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The queen of the world and the child of the skies ! Thy genius commands thee ; with rapture behold, While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. Thy reign is the last and the noblest of time, Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime. Let the crimes .of the east ne'er encrimson thy name; Befreedomj and science^ and virtue^ thy fame. If;!- I III. AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. A Stenographic Report of an Address Delivered at Lewis' Opera House, Des Moines, Iowa, April 22, 1882. Ladies and Oentlemen : I have come to your state, by request of the Grand Lodge of Good Templars, to discuss the necessity, feasibility and practicabilityof the prohibition or inhibition of the alcoholic liquor traffic. This traffic having been indicted by the legislative grand jury, is now in the court, to be tried by the grandest jury of a republic — the people.* Your legis- lators have indicted the alcoholic liquor traffic for social crime ; the case is in your hands to investigate, examine and determine. The law-making power being the one to pass on the question, the issue involved is not one of law, but of fact. I enter this investigation with misgivings in regard to my own abilities to ma- terially assist you. I come as an assistant, not as a teacher, and hope I may, if I do anything, assist you to reach a just, righteous verdict. In view of the great interests involved, I would not, as an American citizen, laie mislead you, but deem it my duty to counsel the lullest, fairest and most complete investigation of all the facts in this case. The advocates who are defending the criminal have, and probably will continue to exhaust every quibble before they will go to trial on the real issue. A cele- * Th< gislature the previous winter had submitted a prohibitory amend' t to the state constitution. The amendment was to be voted «t a special election the following June. fi P V I , !•- itAi i 1 : h ■ 1 il i" ■t y . 1 i !' I' i 68 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFrit. brated lawyer once said to a graduating class, " If you have a client who is guilty, and who has no defence, never let him be tried." " How will you prevent it V asked one of the students. " If they force you into court, try the opposing attorney, try the witnesses, try the judge, and if nothing else will win, try the jury, but never try your client." This advice has been and will be adopted by the defence, and it may be best for us at the commencement of this investigation to deter- mine by whom and how the case is to be tried, and what issues are, and what issues are not, involved in the case. This question is to be tried by you voters, not as Germans, Irishmen, Englishmen, Scotchmen, New Yorkers, or Illinoisans, but as citizen voters of Iowa, bound by your honor as voters to do what in your honest judgment is best for the state. It is to be de- precated that the advocates defending the liquor traffic have thought it necessary to appeal to class, clan and national prejudices, thereby disintegrating society for selfish ends. Although such demagoguery will not influence sensible men, it show\s how utterly reckless and unscrupulous are the advocates on the other side." See what interests they jeopardize to secure an ac- quittal. A republic must be homogeneous if it hopes to live and prosper. An individual cannot take into his stomach pine-knots, sticks, stones, tacks and nails, and allow them to remain there unassimilated and un- digested, and live ; and Iowa cannot take into her political organism New Yorkers, Illinoisans, Germans, Irishmen, and persons from other nations and states, allow them to remain in the political organism banded together as clans and nationalities, unassimilated and undigested, and politically or socially prosper. Any- thing that prevents the assimilation or digestion of food in the physical organism is an enemy of the body. Any man or class of men who try to induce Germans AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 69 to band together in this country as Germans, or Irish- men as Irishmen, is a traitor to the government and its liberties. All such work and talk is unrepublican, undemocratic and un-American, as well as an insult to the nationality thus sought to be used as tools. The term " German vote," which, during the last few years, has become a power in certain political circles, originated in this vile demegoguery. All voters in this country are Americans., native and foreign born. No man has a right to vote in Iowa as a New Yorker or German. If he votes, it is as a citizen of Iowa. Any man who does not love Iowa better than any other country had better emigrate. American know-noth- ingism was a curse to this country, because it acted as a disintegrating force on society. German know- nothingism, as now developed by tricksters and liquor sellers, is of the same class of political heresies. If it continues it will undoubtedly develop American know- nothingism as its antidote, when the Germans who have been led into this movement will be the ones to suifer, as five American votes will count more than one German vote. But it is to be hoped that this accursed political trickery may die before such a remedy will be necessary. No greater insult could be offered to the German-American ♦voters of Iowa than to i.isinuate that they are controlled by their stomachs instead of their brains, and that with a swill-pail full of beer they can be led up to the polls and voted either way. The grass on southern battle-fields, growing green over the graves of noble Americans born in Germany who died for this country, hurls the lie in the teeth of the men who claim that Germans are controlled by appetite and by liquor demagogues, not by principle. These men, who appeal to German ideas, theories and practices, do so to subserve selfish interests, and I submit that such practices are enough to cast doubt on the merit of their defence. Anything that excites race-feeling instead of intelligence, appetite instead of ■ \ \i '\ l\l i j 70 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. # rti : reason, passion instead of conscience, self-interest in- stead of duty, should be shut out of a case involving grave questions of the functions and duties of govern- ment. The voters should investigate the arguments and facts brought forward by both sides, and on these facts and arguments, as explained by their own experience and observation, render their verdict. Among the issues not involved in this case at present is that of political partisanship. 1 stand before you to-night a^emocrat, with my reason and intelligence endorsing the principles of American democracy, not as represented in some of the state platforms written by political tricksters to catch political traitors (I have no sympathy with this gerrymandering of political platforms to catch soreheads from other parties, believ- ing, as I do, that a man who leaves his own party for spite and votes with another party for revenge is an unsafe and unreliable man, and not worth purchasing at such a price) — but believing in the principles as laid down when the party passed seven prohibitory laws in as many different states. My friend Senator Kimball is a tried, true Repub- lican. On the conclusions to be deduced from certain political data we differ broadly, but on this issue we agree. Love of home, country, civilization and liberty are equally dear to the Democratic as well as the Re- publican father, and if these mutual interests are endangered by the liquor traffic, partizanship is for- gotten in the struggle with the common enemy. " For home and native land " is the war-cry that makes us brothers. Neither is the issue of the use, nor abstinence from the use of alcoholic liquors involved in this campaign. The prohibitory constitutional amendment no more prohibits the USE of intoxicating liquors than section 4035 of the Statutes of Iowa prohibits the use of adulterated foods. That section reads : " // any person AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 71 knowingly sell any kind of diseased or corrupted or unwholesome provisions, whether for meat or drink, without making the same fully known to the buyer, he shall he punished by imprisonment in the county jail not more than thirty days, or by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars." The section does not prohibit the use. If you want to eat diseased meat you injure yourself and, indirectly, society ; but if you sell the meat, the sale is a social act, you injure another, and society interferes to protect its units from imposition and injury. This section deals with the traffic, not >vith the use. Trade being a social institution, society has a right to destroy it if its effects are deleterious. Use is an individual matter over which society has no control as long as the individual does not injure society by the use. Section 4041 of Iowa statu te<» reads : " If any per- son throw, or cause to be thrown, any dead animal into any river, ivell, spring, cistern, reservoir, stream, or pond, he shall he punished by imprisonment in the county jail not less than ten nor more than thirty days, or by fine not less than five nor more than one hundred dollars." This deals with the public act of poisoning the water, not with the individual use of the poisoneu water It does not say you shall not drink the water. It says a man shall not poison the water. The one act directly affects society, the other affects the indi- vidual directly and society indirectly, and society prohibits the first. Society will never undertake to say that an indi- vidual shall not read obscene literature, but it does say individuals shall not print and circulate such litera- ture, to corrupt the elements of which society is composed, thereby endangering the life, prosperity and usefulness of society. Self-preservation is the first law of life, of states as well as individuals. Trade, traffic, business depends largely upon society — the ■ i Hkl K it I < i H-ti 72 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. state — for its existence. Anything that affects dele- teriously the public health, public morality, public order, public peace, public safety, the state must, as far as in its power, destroy, to preserve its own life. The state must guard against those social diseases that tend to break down its system, or it will die. The thing which every trade and traffic must show is that it strengthens and builds up the health of society. If it fails to show this ; if it generates disease in the political system ; if it acts as an ulcer on the body politic, society — the state — must, to preserve its own existence, destroy the offending traffic ; and no rights are violated thereby, the traffic having forfeited all right to demand protection from the state by its in- direct attacks on the life, prosperity and order of the state. The friends of the amendment, recognizing the fact that society is made up of individuals, and that the health and character of the unit of society, the indi- vidual, affects to a very large degree the health, prosperity and usefulness of the political system, believe it to be for the best interest of society, in short, its duty, to make everything as favorable as possible for the development of those traits and characteristics of the race which tend to build up and strengthen its power for good, and to destroy as far as possible all institutions, customs and practices which tend to develop those viler characteristics of the race, which endanger its life, and weaken its power to bless the people. In short, they believe with the great English statesman that it is the duty of government to make it as easy as possible for the ndividual to do right, and as difficult as possible for him to do wrong. The anti-amendment advocates claim, on the con- trary, that it is the duty of society to take into its system those institutions which generate corruption and disease of the elements of its own life in order to test what elements can stand the strain and be stronger AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 73 by it. In other words, that an individual had better take corruption or poison, in order to generate a fever to purify his sj^stem. Would not the learned materia- nieS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC, There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth ; There was manhood's brow serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar ? Bright jewels of the mine ? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war ? — They sougiit a faiths pure shrine ! Ay, call it holy ground, The soil whore first they trod ; They have left unstained what there they found, — Freedom to worship God. " Such was their cominf^, and such the motives which led them to leave the Old. World and its comforts for the unknown New. By stru<^gle and toil, through disease and suffering, they developed the land and planted the ideas of liberty in their descendants. Their theories of liberty and morals were developed by their children. Who died at Lexington ? Whose blood wet the ground at Bunker Hill ? Whose breast was in front of British bullets at Brandywine and Germantown ? Who starved at Valley Forge ? Throuixh blood the land was made free. What was then done ? Did Americans close the doors of the Republic and say, " We are free ; let the world take care of itself." No ! They welcomed the down-trod- den of all nations. Immigrants have not been asked to come as alien paupers. They have been received as brothers and made members of the family. After all this for these refugees from the despotisms of Europe to attenjpt to destroy American customs by traducing American dead is disgraceful. If they came here to be Americans they are welcome ; but if they prefer European ideas and customs, and the governments which those ideas and customs have produced, a ticket from New York to Europe will cost little more than a ticket from Europe to New York, and they are free to go. Americans are satisfied with American institutions and American liberties. AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. HI This government is the child of tliat morality, that theory of religious liberty, that theory of govern- mental life which was taught by the men who settled and developed the colonies ; while, on the contrary, the German despotism of to-day is the legitimate child of the German social life and German social customs. Whenever the people in this country destroy American socio,l c^istoms and American social life ; whenever the people drift away from the rocks on which their fore- fathers founded this government, into the seas where despotisms have lloated ; whenever American customs cease and the customs of despotic Europe take their place, this government had better order its grave- clothes, and invite in the mourners. America, as a republic, can only live while the customs that made it a republic live. This theory of government can only continue while the social life that developed it con- tinues. When a different form of social life, a difi'er- ent form of social thought, a different form of social teaching, a different form of moral training comes in, I have no hope for the government. ^ Suppose 1 could to-night take a hundred thousand native-born Americans, and, with a motion of the hand, plant them over in the German empire, would not Von Bismarck have a lively time governing them ? Why ? Because their training in their mothers' arms, their training in the cradle, their training in the primary school, in the graded school, in the academy, in the university, has all developed a different line of thought, a different theory of government, a different theory of responsibility, from that developed by the German social life, the German social customs, and the German schools. The idea that because customs have lived in another country, been developed in an- other form of government, that they must of right be allowed to continue here, is an utterly fallacious one. Suppose before the missionaries went to the Fiji islands, a man from that island had drifted over and - I' i' • I ( •1 •T r. >\ !•■ I' u 'It' ' \><\> .ili. i ' i. 82 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TH.^FFIC. J located in the city of Des Moines. (You recollect that the Fiji islander.s were cannibals.) Suppose this Fiji islander had come. Now, he is a different man from the American. His teeth are different, his head is especially different. He has different passions, different appetites, different ideas. For a time he restrains his inclinations, but at last, the old appetite in him being aroused, he makes a raid on your home, catches your fat baby boy, kills him, dresses him, cooks him, and puts him on the tablj for a meal. You get your shotgun and go up to interview him. Don't kill him on sight. When you see what he is doing, you say : " What have you done ? " "Why," he says, "nothing, only killed a boy." " But you have committed murder." He says, " ^ do not understand." "Why, y-.,:: have killed this child. You had no right to kill him. You have no right to do what you are doing." " I thought this was a free country ! " he exclaims. " Jt i.s a free country, but it is not a free country to commit murder in." " But," he says, " I used to eat babies over in the Fiji Islands. Have not I got the right to eat them here ? " What would be the answer ? " Sir, the government of the -United States is not the government of the Fiji Islands. Your social customs have developed your form of government, our social custoriis have developed our form of governm^^nt. When you leave that government you must leave every custom that is inimical to this jiovernment or destructive to its in- stitutions, for we have no desire to have introduced here the customs that propagated the governments of your native island." Suppose the ex- Khedive of Egypt, when he was deposed, instead of moving to Italy, had moved over here with his wives and children and gone to house- keeping in Des Moines. An officer takes him by the '■I A AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 83 shoulder and says, " Hold on, sir ! what are you doing ? " *■ I am keeping house." " You are my prisoner." " What for ? " " Bigamy." " What is bigamy ? " " Having more than one wife." " I thought this was a free country ! " " It is." ' " I used to have these wives in Egypt. Have not I the riiijht to have them here ?" What would you say to him ? " Sir, this govern- ment is a different government from the government of Egypt. This government is a product of our social institutions. Consequently when you come to this country you must leave every custom that would be injurious to the welfare of this country and the perpetuity of this government." The idea that Ameri- can freedom means universal license is the dangerous idea in this countrv. In my state a young woman recently from Europe was broufjht into a court charged with the mu* 'er of her infant child. When the indictment was read, and she was asked, through an interprets, to plead, her answer was : " I thought this was a free country." Th*^ idea that this country has no Ibrm, no castoms, no laws, no institutions, Vvhich immigrants are bound to respect ; that njen have the right to come here and follow any customs, any ideas, any theories, and any practices, is an idea utterly antagonistic to American institutions, and if carried out will ultimately build on the chaos of our liberties the worst despotism that the world ever saw. At the birth of this efovernment, the institutions ot the colonies were the institutions of a monarchy in a modi tied form. The men who settled at Plymouth Hock were men who had given up, in a measure, their '■ ; III I % m ' r I*^' " ^ B'iJ* ^# 84 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. II old ideas and theories, and a new social system had been slowly developing. This change ultimately de- veloped a social life that would not endure even the limited monarchy of Great Britain. When the United States came into existence as a nation, they were a long way from having republican instiCutions. The American leaders were not destructionists, they were reformers. The difference between the French and American revolutions was this — the Americans simply wished to tear down the building of a monarchy, to take out of it all the material they could use in another form of government, while the French endeavored to de- stroy and build wholly new. The work of American statesmen for the first hun- dred years of this republic has been the work of changing, adjusting, and trying. Look ! see what changes have been made. Examine the law ; you could hardly recognize it as the child of the law in existence when the colonies became free. The old theory was that the king received his authority from God, that he stood in the relation of God to the people ; with the destruction of that idea, the indi- vidual became the sovereign, and the ruler the repre- sentative of the people. The result of this was a change in the law in accordance with the change in ideas. The old theory of the divine right of kings to rule the people developed the theory of the divine right of the husband to rule the W:fe. The old mar- riage forms — every one of them — contained a clause stipulating that the wife should obey the husband. If I had been young at that time, and one of the ladies here had also been young, worth fifty thousand dollars in bonds, notes, and -real estate, and married me, by the act of marriage (unless her property had been entailed upon her and her children) every dollar would have become mine. I could have spent it or gambled it away, and she could not have pr<-vented m AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. «S5 me by other means than love or the broom-stick. The old law has been changed, and shaped, and polished until to-day, in my state, if I wanted my wife's money, the only way I could get it would be to per- suade her to give it to me. She can buy and sell property, and transact business in her own name ; and next November many of Nebraska's voters will sav that the women of the state have the same ri?:>"' ^*.^. t;^# \: i^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 1.0 I.I 1.25 1^ 1.4 IM IIM 1.6 ^ ^ V] <^ /} / ■m A s^^ ^% o 7 /A Photographic Sciences Corporation "1. V ^i^ ^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. I4S80 (716) 873-4503 ■ ^P MP i/.. 94 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. y Let us for a few moments examine the theory of state building, in order to fully understand the causes of city, state, and national prosperity. A king from Asia Minor was one time visiting a king of Sparta. In Asia, in the early days of the world, all cities were walled, as a defence against enemies. When this king came to Sparta, and dis- covered the absence of walls, he was astonished, and asked the king of Sparta, " Where are the walls of your cities ?" The Spartan king answered, *' I will show you to-morrow." The next day he ordered the armies of Sparta to pass before his guest in review. As these proud freemen marched by, the king, touching his visitor on the shoulder and pointing with pride to his soldiers, said, "There go the walls of Sparta; every man is a brick." Ladies and gentlemen, the morality, intelligence, and virtue ot* the people is the foundation of city, of county, of state, and of govern- ment building. The unit of society is the individual. If you wish good society you must build up the units of society, cultivate the institutions and customs whose influence and effects tend to improve and elevate the individual. If Iowa has only institutions that develop health, strength, morality, and intelligence, her future pros- perity is assured ; but if she sanctions and enters into partnership with institutions which debauch public morals, destroy public health, impair individual credit, stimulate vice and crime, the day will come when, with a political system destroyed by social debauchery, Iowa, as a republican state, will be a thing of the past. The laws of social and political health are fixed ; to violate them is to invite disease and death. " What constitutes a state ? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall, or moated gate ; Not cities proud with spires and turrels crowned ; EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 95 Not bays and broad-armed ports, Whme, lau>;hin^ at the storm, rich navies ride ; Not stairetl and spangled courts, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No : MEN, high-minded men, With p >wers as far above dull brutes endued In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude, — M''n, who their duties know, — But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long-aimed blow. And cru-th the tyrant, while they rend the chain ; These constitute a state ; And sovereign law, that state's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill." The defendants in this case have only to prove that the liquor traffic builds up the state by building up the men who constitute the state. If it build up its patrons socially, financially, intellectually and morally, the case of the people afjainst the traffic must fail. If, on the contrary, they fail to show that their business benefits directly their customers, then their business must go. Let us see if it doe^. Our Greenback friends, during the past four years, have told us a great many things that are true. One of the principles of political economy which they have been teaching persistently, or rather developing, is that there can be but two types of men in our social oigan- ism, — the first the producing class — those who, by their work, add to the material wealth of the state, or at least produce enough to take care of themselves. That class have a right to a place as long as their production does not injuriously affect the society in which they live ; consequently they are dismissed from consider- ation. The other class, the non-producers, are the men who must show to the satisfaction of society that they are entitled to a place outside the almshouse. All political economists group this second class into two sub- classes — assistant producers, and parasitic non* producers. a t il . • ■i ' I': if 96 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. ' I ; ■!' Let me illustrate. Call up here a merchant and a doctor; two of one class. Place here a saloon-keeper and a thief; two of the other class. Do not say I am making my point too strong; this is the teaching of every man whoever wrote a work on political economy, and 1 am simply stating what has been stated by men who advocate and believe in license. I yviU show you the difference between these classes. I turn to the merchant and say to him: "You receive money from the producers of this country. You must show what you do for society, and what you do for the producer for the money you receive. What do you give in re- turn for the producer's money ?" He answers: "lam simply the agent of producers. I act as their hired man, to a certain extent. The producers manu- facture or grow certain commodities ; in another country other producers provide other commodities. I take the commodities which these men produce, ship to other producers, and bring their products back for these producers." Although our farmers tried to abolish the merchant a few years ago, they learned that the science of commerce, is a science, and that *he men who were novices in the matter were illy fitteu to carry it on. When we have examined the merchant, we find he returns equal value for the money he gets. We turn to the doctor and say: "Doctor, you receive money from the producers while you produce nothing yourself. Tell us what return you make for the money received?" He answers : " The produceis of this country do not take care of themselves. In the first place, many of them do not understand the laws of hygiene. They becoirie sick, and I am simply the one who repairs the machinery." One time, on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. P«ul Railroad, I was talking with an honored friend, Mr. Quick, and I asked him : " What is your business?" He said: "I am pump-doctor." He was the hydraulic engineer. He was the man who had charge of the sick pumps of this road. When a pump would not work, EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 97 he doctored it. Now, the physician stands in the same relation to society that that man stands to the railroad ; he is the one who repairs the physical machinery of the producers. When we have examined him closely in regard to the money he has received, and the work he has ione; when we think how we have seen him standing by the sick-bed of loved ones, as hope was dying out, and the only ray of light was the thought that God gave and God was taking away, and heard him saying, to comfort the breaking heart: " While there is life there is hope." When the loved one came back to health and strength we took the money from our pocket and willingly paid the bill for services rendered. The physician assists the producer for the money he receives. Next, examine the others. "Mr. Liquor-dealer, you get the money, what do you give back for it?" " Whiskey and beer." " Well, sir, let me put a hypothetical ques- tion to you. Suppose a man comes into your saloon to-morrow and drinks. During the next week, the next month, the next year, he patronizes you. For ten* years he is your best customer, giving you the larger part of his earnings and the greater part of his time. At the end of the time what will you have done for the man in return for the money he has given you ?" If the liquor-seller is honest he will have to answer : " He would have been better off if he had never come into my place. I have not only taken his money, but 1 have cursed him in the taking." Try it again. "Mr. Liquor-dealer, suppose a man with a family comes into your place and becomes your patron. At the end of live or six years he dies in front of your bar under the influence of liquor. What will you have done for his wife and babies in return for the money you have received from him?" Again the answer must be: "It would have been better for that wife and child if he had never traded with me." Do you see the difference? The merchant says: "I benefit i i 'I 41 , m 'M i 98 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. him, and you see the benefit." The drink-vendor has to admit that he curses him, and everybody sees the effect of the curse. If I put the same question to the thief. "I give peace of mind." What do you mean? "If a man has money he worries for fear it will be stolen; after I steal it he soon stops worrying — I do not injure his brain, nerves or muscle." Suppose four farmers come into Des Moines, each with fifty dollars in his pocket. One goes to a dry- goods store, one to a hardware store, one to a boot and shoe store, and the other to a dram-shop, and spends his money in that place. After two weeks, I come to you and say ; "Let us go and see those producers; see what they received for the money they gave those* non-producers." We drive to the home of the man who spent his money at the dry- goods store. " What did you get?" "Do j'^ou see that dress which Nellie is wearing and that coat that Tom has on ? Well, I gave the merchant fifty dollars, and fie gave me in exchange these things. He is better off; we are better off." Exchange of values ; both are bene- fited. We go to the man who traded at the hardware store, and we say: "What did you receive?" "Do you see the stove, and the axe, and these kettles?" "Yes." " Well, I gave him fifty dollars; he gave me these. We are better off; he is better off." We go to the man who spent his money at the boot and shoe store. What did you receive for the money you paid?" "You see these boots which I am wearing, and the shoes Nellie has on, and the boots that Tom, Dick and Harry and the rest are wearing? I gave f^zt merchant fifty dollars for them. We needed the boots and shoes, he needed the money, and we traded." An exchange of values; both are benefited. , Now we go to the man who spent the fifty dollars in the dram-shop, and say to him: "Sir, you paid that EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 99 non-producer fifty dollars. What did you get back ?" "Come here and I will show you." Will he say that ? No; he will hang his head and say: "I got this nose, these eyes, and have been sick ever since." " My farmer friend, would you not have been better otf if you had put the fifty dollars in the lamp and burned it, and never have gone to the drinking-place at all? Yes ; because you would have had a clear head, hard muscles, and could have gone to work at once and produced more wealth to take the place of that de- stroyed. The liquor- dealer took your money and unfitted your brain and muscles for the production of more wealth." In the southern states you will see, in diff*er§nt places, clinging to the trees, the plant known to botan- ists as the mistletoe. You will say it is a beautiful plant, and yet the botanist will tell you that is a base plant. You ask why ? Climb up the tree and see. What will you find? The plant putting its roots down into the earth to suck its life from inorganic matter ? No. It is thrusting its rootlets into the bark of the tree, sucking its life from other life, living by the destruction of organic life. Botanists call it a parasite. Auiong insects you have the same class. Go out along the old California trail in my own state or in Wyoming, any- where between the Missouri river and the coast, stop in one of tlie old sod ranches and tell the keeper of it that you want a bed. Stipulate that it shall be unoccu- pied, and labor under the delusion that you will be given such a bed. When the time comes, you disrobe, retire, and start for dreamland. You will have to start pretty quick to get there. Just as .you are passing over the border, something starts from your foot along up the leg. It stops, and you know where it stops. You have a very urgent desire to put your hand down and interview it. By the time you reach down, there is something on your back and something on your side. You roll, and kick, and strike ; — it will be fortunate 'M. *■ :1' . frfS tl mI 1^ !K' 100 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC, I 1 -^ for you if you said your prayers before you went to bed; it may keep you from saying something worse before you get up. At last you can endure it no longer; you spring out, light a lamp, and throw down the cover- ing. See them run ! the flat-headed cowards ! Oh, how humanity loathes them ! The whole family — mos(iuitoes, gnats, jiggers, cockroaches, bed-bugs ; ugh ! Come up higher, to the highest order God created on earth, and you have the same type. Every gam- bler in this country is a parasite on social and business life. He is a man who, through the meshes of his games, entraps other men, and grows rich by the ruin of his victims. A man who takes value without re- turning an equivalent. Every dram-shop in this country bears the same relation to society. The liquor-seller comes into your town, locates, commences his business, and sells his wares. What is the result ? As the shingles go on his house, they tumble off the houses of his patrons. As he wears broadcloth, his victims wear rags. As he drives up the street with his nice team, his victims plod, ""/ith hodj on their shoulders, earning money to buy the liquor-man another team. As you meet the liquor-seller's wife, with her silks and satins, tripping down the street, you meet the victim s wife, scantily clad, carrying a basket of clothes she has washed to earn money to buy food for her baljies. You meet the liquor-dealer's boy flying his kite, while his victim's boy meets you with : " Mister, won't you give me just one penny to buy bread ? I am starving." The license man objects, " But the liquor-dealers do not get rich, or their wives wear silks or satins." True : the picture is what would really be the condi- tion of the liquor-seller's family, but for the fact that blood-money always curses the " receiver. Money made from the sale of liquor is like money made from EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 101 gambling — hard to keep. But, my license friend, is not my point strengthened by your objection, for, it being true, the liquor-traffic curses even the families of those who engage in it ? It is a universal curse, without a redeeming trait. The liquor-seller lives by ruining his customers. The dram-shop of this country, worse than the devil- fish of Victor Hugo, not only wraps its arms around its victim directly, but thrusts those insatiate arms into their homes, taking the carpets, pictures, books — everything that makes home pleasant for wife and children, and drawing into its maw the very element that civilizes and christianizes the country. Suppose that I could take all the money which the producing community of the state of Iowa could make — I am not speaking of the money you could borrow in the eastern states — but all the money you can make in a year. Pile it here on the table. This money must build the homes and fences ; lay down the carpets and buy the books ; it must run the stores, run the manufactories, carry on the newspapers, and build up all other kinds of trade. It is the lil'e-blood of commerce. When you have it piled up here, the lawyers, doctors, ministers, merchants, newspaper men, and manufacturers gather around. Five thousand liquor-sellers step forward and say, " More than nine million of that money is ours." You say, "No;" but they say, "Gentlemen, we bought the privilege of the tiist grab at it, and that grab we are going to have." My friend, are you in business in Des Moines i Do you not know this to be true ? If a farmer who drinks liquor comes into this city with one dollar in his pocket he will spend it for grog, and ask you to trust him for a dress for his wife. Do you not know that the saloons of this city and other cities are located on your principal business .streets, and that they sell their liquors for cash, while you trust for the fl'l 102 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. i m necessaries of life ? Do you sell jewellery ? If you do, do you sell the best of your jewellery to the man who spends his money in grog-shops ? Do you sell nice clothing ? How much do you sell to the man who spends the greater part of his money in a drink- ing-place ? Do you sell silk dresses, my friend ? Are the patrons of the dram-shop your customers ? Do you not know, business men, as a matter of fact, that the dram-shop unfits its patrons for you, and takes the money which would buy nice things to beautify the home — buy nice clothes and good food, — leaving the home without these blessings ? " But," says one, " the liquor-dealer buys these things." " Oh, yes, gentlemen ; but he is one' where his patrons are a hundred. Where you sell him one suit of clothes you lose the sale of a hundred suits to his customers. Where you sell him one picture to go into his home to beautify it, you fail to sell his cus- tomers a hundred pictures to make their homes plea- sant for their children and families." Take a leech ; press all the blood out of it. Now I will show you a trick of license economy. I take a lancet, draw a scratch on my arm, and say to the leech, " Suck." It does. Just look at it. It is grow- ing respectable — it is getting sleek, and smooth, and fat. When it is full it will let go. There is this difference between insect leeches and human leeches : An insect leech ceases sucking when he is full, while a human leech will continue to suck as long as there is any money in the pockets of the victims or until he is choked oft. I want to show you the statesmanship of license advocates. I take the leech and squeeze it ; two or three drops of blood come from its mouth and I swallow them, and say I have gained so much blood. Some boy in this house cries out, " You are foolish. Every drop of that blood was in your body — the leech sucked it out EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFEVcE. 103 ?s : ile ire til ise of you. You have only pot part of it back, and that part in a way that will do you more injury than good." Liquor men come into your state, and the law draws a scratch on your business life and sticks them on, and says, " Suck." See them change their clothes ! See them grow fat as they live on the business life of the city and the country ! When the year rolls around, the city council inverts them, and squeezes out of them five hundred, one thousand, or fifteen hundred dollars, and says, " Ha ! ha ! we have saved so much money to the city." But where did the liquor-dealer get the money ? He did not have it when he came here. He came into our state, and without giving a single thing of value — without building up society, without helping society, he has sucked from it thousands of dollars. He kecDs the largest part, and gives you a pittance to be allowed to continue. You take it, and congratulate yourselves that you are dividing up with the spoiler of your homes, your prosperity, and your civilization. Build up a city, gentlemen ? Just as well build up a man by putting lice on his head as to hope to build up the material interests of a city by opening dram- shops ? In every business relation the liquor-traffic of the country is an institution which receives value without returning it. It lives on society as parasites live on other bodies. I suppose I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I never like to compare things unfavorably. I do not like to drag anything into a position where it ought not to be, and 1 feel at this point like apologizing — to the bed-bug. You ask what I mean ? I will tell you. I never knew one bed-bug to eat another bed- bug, or one louse to eat another louse. It remains for the last and highest order, which God created in His own image, to develop the type which will live on their own kind and off their own species ;. who will fasten the fangs of parasitic avarice in the pulsating '-t.' I • Ni 4 ■J »!'^ • .-II 104 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. flesh of their own kin, their own blood, their own sex, and their own race ; and grow rich, not by the destruction of other species, not by the destruction of other orders, but by the destruction of indivicJuals who feel the same, who enjoy the same, as they do. It is unfair to an order of parasitic life that lives on other forms of life to compare it with a class low enoufjjh, vile enough, to live on its own kind without a feeling of svmpathy, without a pulsation of regret. Recently a lady said to me, " I wish you would not use such horrid comparisons." 1 did not ask her how she knew they were horrid. I simply said, *' My dear madam, if I should catch a bed-bug, an ant, and a bee, and place them here with microscopes over them, you would come and look at them, would you not ?" " Yes." " Well, I submit the bed-bug is prettier than the ant — prettier bodjT, head, legs. If I had men- tioned the ant, yotf would not have objected ?" " No." " Then why object to my mentioning the better-looking insect? it is simply the way it makes its living that makes you loathe it." Ladies and gentlemen, you would admire a louse as much as you do a honey-bee if it lived in the same way. It is not the anatomy of the insect, for some of the parasites are among the most beautiful of insects. It is the way they live — by sucking their life out of other life — that raises the feeling of disgust and leads to their destruction. It is not a liquor-seller's clothes or looks which lead to this trial : it is the way he wills to live in society — a mere parasite on business- life. As the shingles go on his house they full off the house of his customer ; as he and his family live easily, in idleness, his customer and his customers family suffer in rags. For this crime of parasitism he is on trial. Again, the liquor-traffic is the enemy of home life. The keystone to American civilization is the American home. I would I could take you to the frontier — to t h d s h EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 105 the cattle and mining towns of this country, where home life is comparatively unknown, and by ocular demonstration impress this fact upon your minds — show you how the words " mother " and " home " , have the pov/er to awaken the latent manhood in, and lead out to a prander and better life, men seemingly lost to all influences for good. You, especially you business men, know how great this influence is on public life. The opposition you meet, the trickery and fraud you see practised, make vou hard, un- charitable, cynical, and, when gone iiom home for months, bitter and selfish. You return to your home, and, in the presence of wife and children, hatred, sL'lfishness, bitterness, cynicism vanish like the cold, clammy, poisonous March fog before the morning sun. Home life and love is the sun which fructifies all the nobler impulses of man's nature. Few men go from home with the kiss of wife upon their lips, and the soft touch of baby fingers lingering in pleasunt memo- ries on their neck, but feel more charity for their fellow-men. more love for humanity, and a renewed desire to build themselves up in all that pertains to true manhood. Home is the moral and political con- servator of the nation, the antidote of communism, socialism, riot, vice, and bloodshed. A man who goes from home with the softening influences of woman- hoods homage and childhood's love lingering about him, seldom goes to murder, rob, or excite riot. Into this garden of American hope the breath of the liquor traflfic comes like the hot winds of the desert. By the use of the things sold in the dram- shop, all the finer feelings of the husband and father are injured and his passions stimulated, and from buing the head — the life of the home — he soon be- comes a despot and a terror. 1'he money which should be used to buy pictures, books carpets, and other things to make home pleasant, is spent to still further lower and degrade him. A drunkard's home I 8 ;<< 1 I. > ifti 106 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Can there be any greater mockery of the word home ? Any institution or custom which causes such results is a terrible enemy to American liberty and civiliza- tion. Again, the liquor traffic is the enemy of an honest ballot and a fair count. The effect of the dram-shop is to destroy the intellectual force and moral character of its patrons, as well as to reduce them financially, often to beggary. The high moral sense which should govern every voter is lost when a diseased craving for stimulants controls a man. In such a condition he is open to corrupt influences, and comes to regard his vote as a merchantable commodity which ought to bring enough in the markets of corruption to minister to his appetite and supply his wants. The threat of the brewers in their late convention was based upon the knowledge that the traffic had placed thousands of men in such a moral, physical, and financial condi- t on that they could be corrupted. The liquor men have always boasted of their political power obtained in this way ; and many a candidate has felt it neces- sary t6 leave money with the liquor-seller to influence the bummer vote. Look at Chicago, New York, and other cities. An honest vote in some parts of those cities is impossible. " In what parts ? " Those where the dram-shops are most plentiful. Unless the liquor traffic of the country is destroyed, it will do for the whole nation what it has done for the great centres of population ; and as the life of this government de- pends largely on the purity of the ballot-box, which canonly be guaranteed by the moraJity and intelli- gence of the individual voter, the government must destroy the dram-shops or they will destroy the government. This is, in part, the case for the people. The issue raised is one of simple fact. * Guilty or not guilty ? The traffic must plead to the indictment. If the charges made are false, the amendment should be EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 107 issue jilty ? k the Id be defeated. If they are true, it must, for the good of the whole country, be carried. Standing on the street corners, blowing or bulldozing, does not meet the counts in the indictment against this villainous social criminal. Does regulation regulate ? These charges are made against licensed dram-shops. If the charges are true, license is a failure. The license system of grog-shops is on trial, and it will not benefit liquor-sellers to cry out " Stop thief !" with the idea of turning public attention from the real issue. Is the licensed traffic guilty of the crimes and misdemeanors alleged ? If it is, then license is a failure. The conditions of things cannot be worse. The defendants must meet the in- dictment and show its counts false, and that dram- shops are a blessing, that license is a success, that they obey law, that the liquor traffic purifies the ballot-box, discourages corruption, builds up society, and promotes law and order. If they can show this, their business is safe. Liquor men, the voters of Iowa are waiting for you to meet the facts. Will you do it, or dodge and cry, " Keep it out of politics ;" " Prohibition is a failure;" "Beer is a temperance beverage;" "Moral suasion is the way to work ?" These issues are NOT INVOLVED in the campaign. The license system of grog-shops is being tried by its record, and you must confine yourselves to the question ; any evasion, or failure to meet the charges fairly, honestly, and man- fully will be a confession of guilt, and will be so regarded by the people. But, ladies and gentlemen, the drunkard-makers cannot, and will not try to explain away, or justify the record they themselves have made. Every charge made by the amendment advocates is true, and the defence, as outlined by the brewers of Iowa, is in keep- ing with the nature and character of the traffic, not only in Iowa, but elsewhere. A telegram from Dayton, Ohio, received to-day says ; " The Dayton Journal is 108 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I V «j;t ! being boycotted by members of the liquor associations on account of its stand on the Pond and Smith bills." The record of the liquor business, the creed of the brewers, the admissions of their advocates, show con- clusively that the dram-shop is a bulldozer, a rebel, a defiant outlaw, which assassinates business, character, or life, as it may deem best, to intimidate opposition, and prevent investigation of its record and effects. These cowards are universal bulldozers. I never knew the liquor business to do a manly thing in the world. I never knew it to make a manly fight. I never knew it to stand squarely on an issue. Its whole defence is a show of defiance, a show of bravado, a show of bull- dozing, a show of braggadocio ; and when these fail, the defence is private, cowardly assassination. What is the first argument brought against the amendment in this state ? " You cannot prohibit the sale of liquor." What does that mean ? Rebellion ! If prohibition will not prohibit, what is the cause of its failure ? The women will obey the law, the decent men \vill obey the law, and if it fails it will be because the liquor outlaws refuse to obey the will of the people. They are self-confessed traitors to good gov- ernment. I tell the liquor men of this country that if they think they are greater than this government, the same thought has been entertained by other men. There is one thing more certain than that — this government is greater than any class of rebels, that it can enforce any law which a majority of this people, through their legislature, say shall be the supreme law of this state. This must be taken for granted — that the state of Iowa can enforce any law that may be passed by a majority in its legislature. If the votes of the major- ity of citizens expressed in the statutes of Iowa cannot be enforced; if five thousand saloon-keepers could bulldoze and intimidate the government of this com- monwealth, then the sooner your government goes into EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 109 bankruptcy and you get one which is good for some- thinof, the better it will be for humanity, civilization, and liberty. Through the canvass in Kansas the same thing was said. They did not say that the charges made against the dram-shop were false. They said : " If you pass the amendment you cannot enforce it;" and, armed with bottled beer, they tried to bulldoze the state. What was the result ? Coming from Topeka recently, to Kansas City, I was sitting in the seat just behind the leader of the anti- prohibitionists of that state — I had the pleasure of meeting him on the public platform during the can- vass and discussing the question with him — we were talking about other questions for a time. At last he turned to me, and, drawing his face down as long as Job's wlien struck by boils, went on to say, " Finch, all I predicted \i Bismarck Grove in regard to this accursed law ha^ come true." " Well, what is it ? " "Why," he said, "it is killing Kansas. Germans are leaving the state by hundreds. It is driving men out, and immigration will not come. The state is dead." I said to him : " You have this consolation ; if the prohibitory law has killed your state, if it has driven large numbers out of your state ; if your state is not to be renowned for the number of its people, it will be renowned for the sobriety, intelligence, and the moral- ity of those who remain." Hold (m," said the gentleman ; " there is more whiskey and beer sold in Kansas to-day than there ever was^ before. You can get it everywhere." Looking closely at him, I asked, " For what are those men leaving Kansas ? " He saw he was caught, and abandoned the conversation. If I pick up a copy of one daily paper published in Chicago, or another from St. Louis, I frequently see an « !•■ ■ [ t -l' li tlili 110 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. editorial saying, in substance, that " Kansas is dead ; " " Immigration to Kansas has stopped ;" " The prohibi- tory law has killed Kansas." Perhaps the very next day I pick up a copy of the same paper, and I see an editorial, or an article by an anonymous correspond- ent, saying, " Whiskey is being sold in every town in Kansas just as free as water;" "There are more drunkards in Kansas than when the law was passed." If men will lie, they should be consistent liars. The liars who are fighting against prohibition lack intelli- gence, for their lies contradict each other. In Maine they have fought the prohibitory law by the same contradictory lying. If the battle had been between the liquor rebels of Kansas and the moral citizens of Kans§»s, there would not have been an open grog-shop in the state three months after the law passed. No sooner had the law been passed to enforce the amendment, than the com- bined liquor power of this nation stood behind the outlaws to encourage them and help them to defy the supreme law of that state ; and what is still meaner, men from other states went in to help the outlaws assassinate the morality and the character of Kansas. I remember reading in one of the great newspapers of Chicago a long article, saying that in the southern states the constitutional amendments were defied and the civil rights bill was a dead letter. The editor appealed to the solid north to rise en masse, and at the ballot-box crush out this rebellion against the consti- tution and the laws. It said: "When an article is in the constitution, when statutes have been passed to enforce it, men are rebels who defy it." And yet this same newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, is do^n in the mud before the liquor power of this nation, and has becom apologist for, and the sympathizer with, the liqt^or rebels of Kansas. It advises them to defy the supreme law of that state, and the statutes made to enforce it. Kansas' grand governor — St. John — it calls EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. Ill every mean name which it can find in the drunkard- maker's vocabulary. O ! if there is any one thing that would make every drop of blood in my veins grow hot with indignation, it is the way that the opposition meet this issue. I know John P. St. John, of Kansas. I have seen him with his family, standing, as he does, the grandest republi^^an governor of the country. The opposition have not met him like men; they have called him everything that was vile, attempted to assassinate his character, traduced him and continue to traduce him ; and men, who ought to be in a better business, have become tools of the liquor rebels to carry on this dirty work. Can the liquor business be stopped ? Men of Iowa, there is no need of asking that question here. When the saloon-men stand up and say prohibition will not prohibit, and that the traffic cannot be stopped, I answer, I know bettf^" The idea of five thousand liquor-dealers beinc _e to control this state is ab- surd. When I hear a man or see a newspaper whim- pering and crying, " It ought to be stopped, but we cannot stop it ; they will sell anyhow," I get dis- gusted, especially in this state, settled by old soldiers. Some of you men, a few years ago, left your state, your mothers, wives, and children, and went down to the southern land, and there, in the face of cannon — and you knew that behind those guns were brave men fighting for what they believed to be right, as you were fighting for what you believed to be right — in face of the sheeted fire and leaden hail, where death was on every breeze, you fought, suffered, and bled. For what ? Just simply to say this govern- ment was able to hold itself together, to enforce its laws, and to live. The idea that in this state, filled with men who wear the scars of honorable battle — scars which were obtained in strife that makes them honored through^ out the world — the idea of these men getting down i 1 V It M "■''iilir 112 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. to whimper and say, "The state cannot enforce the law!" A Union general was riding up to the rear of his forces at the battle of Antietam, when he saw from the front ranks a tall soldier start and, in double- quick tiiiie, make his way to the rear. The general was astonished, and, looking at him for a moment, said, " Halt, sir. Go back to your regiment." The fellow stopped, commenced to cry, and said, " General, I can't ; I am a coward, and I told them I was a coward when they drafted me into the army." " Well," said the General, ** if I was a coward I would not be a great baby. Go back, sir." " Well, I wish I was a baby, and a gal baby at that." Ridiculous ! Yes ; but is it half as ridiculous as for men, who are the commonwealth of Iowa, to go whimpering around, " It ought to be stopped, but we cannot stop it. They will sell anyhow." "Mr. Liquor- seller, you are in a mighty mean business — you are ruining homes — you are making criminals — you are filling jails — you are crowding almshouses — you are breaking the Sabbath — you are damning souls ; but we cannot stop you — you will sell anyhow. Please give us five hundred dollars with which to build side- walks in our cities." Ladies and gentlemen, this government is greater than any of its vices. When any of its vices become greater than the government, it will die. When any class of men are able to defy the government success- fully, then they become the government. If you grant that the liquor dealers of this state are greater than the government in the state, then you grant that Iowa has ceased to exist as a commonwealth, and has become an oligarchy of the liquor traffic. The supreme power of the state is the government, and if the dram-shops have power greater than the state, the state is merely an automaton in the hands of a vital, aggressive, and active force. The threat of the Iowa EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENCE. 113 brewers, the threat of tha Iowa distillers, is an open declaration that the state of Iowa is not able to con- trol them, and that they propose to control the state. The question, as it comes to you, is simply, " Will you be men ; will you assert your power to consider the question on its merits and settle it, or will you be bulldozed — will you be intimidated — will you be corrupted, and sell your birthright for a mess of pottajje ?" This, ladles and gentlemen, is the case as I wish to present it to you ; take it to your homes ; think over it fairly, fully, honestly ; and when you render your verdict, have these two things in mind : — 1st. Your obligations to your own homes — your own families. 2nd. Your obligations as citizens of a state, to pro- tect all homes, all families, all citizens. The temperance question was never so dear to me — the cause never seemed so much my own, although I always loved it — as it was after the little briffht-eved boy came into my home. When he comes and climbs on my knee, puts his chubby little arms around my neck and calls me " papa," the thought comes to me, will there ever be the time when my boy will reel along the street a drunkard, wear the chains of a criminal, or die in the almshouse, as the result of drink ? And so, if 1 could vote in your state in June, I should just ask what would be the relation of the grog-shop to that bov of mine. You may say, " I have no boys ; I have girls." A gentleman, some years ago, came into my office and said to me, " What are the divorce laws of this state ?" I said, " I hope you are not going to apply for a divorce. It is an exceedingly disagreeable kind of litigation." A couple of ladies had come in with him. I saw one was an old lady with gray hair, the other young, with care lines visible in her face, and a look of mental misery and suffering there. IS 114 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. " I have one girl," the man said, and he introduced me to her, " the light of our home ; and if she is here, I want to say to you she is just as good a girl as God ever gave a father. She was always kind to her mother. There never was a time when it was neces- sary to punish her in our home ; if she did wrong, she was ready to come and ask forgiveness. She married a man 1 thought was worthy of her. We did not know he drank, but he did. Five years ago, they were married. God has given them one child. The father drank more and more. My daughter did not tell me for a long time ; she would not let us know how she was suffering. One night her husband went home, and in a drunken rage knocked her down with a chair." The old man stepped forward, raised the hair from her forehead and showed the scar. " Struck her," continued the man, *•' struck her like a brute, the man who had sworn to love and honor her. He took her — the light of our home — from our arms, and then abused her like a dog." Gentlemen voters, such may be your story some day. The little girl who will come to you to-night with bright eyes and loving smile, who will run and bring the slippers to papa, may some day return to you with a broken heart, her life ruined by a man who has been wrecked in the saloons, if you vote to continue them. When you make up your verdict, take into considera- tion your home interests and heart interests. Gentlemen, there is one thing, important as are these interests, that is still higher ; the thought of how God would have you act. Dare you go to the polls on the 27th of June and cast a vote that you cannot ask God to bless ? My friends, as you go there and vote, think if you in the silence of your chamber can ask God to bless the vote. If you vote to continue the drunkard- factories, of course you are willing to pray God to prosper them, to ask that their customers may in- crease. EXAMIKATION OF THE tSSUES AND DEFENCE. 115 So, if I were on the jury I would take into con- sideration my home interests, the interests of my country, the approval of my God, and then, examining the facts, I would vote either to shut the saloons or tp continue them, as my judgment and conscience dic- tated. Gentlemen, when you have written your verdict on the 27th of June, it will either roll Iowa up to the plane of the civilization of Kansas and Maine, or allow her to remain down in the old darkness of compromise and partnership with wrong. God grant that Iowa may lead the way through which my state and the other states of this nation may follow, until in all the galaxy of American states there shall not be one that will license a business to ruin its citizens, to debauch its morality, or to break down its institutions. **■ The crisis is upon us ! face to face with us it stands, With solemn lips of questioning, like the Sphynx in Egypt sands. This day we fashion destiny, the web of life we spin, This day for all hereafter clioose we holiness or sin. Even now from misty Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown, Call we the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down.'' I I >; i 1-: V. THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. Stbnooraphio Report of an Address Delivered at the Opera House, Iowa City, Sunday Eveninq, May 7, 1882. "0 ' Ladies and Gentlemen: Never was a more fully and fairly defined issue submitted to any people than the one now pending in this state. The ca \ !';■ 'i>> m m 126 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. li Is- '■ ''ill fi ■ f "!fe. f the worst kind of demagoguery that will refuse Pat a nip and give the German all he wants. I am glad I have so many students around me as I take up this. beer issue, for a knowledge of history will help to impress the point. Saloon-men say that distilled spirits are the primary cause of drunkenness. This statement is best answered by the history of the evil. The process of distillation of alcohol was, in rude forms, undoubtedly known to the early alchemists, but it was first taught by Albucasis, an Arabian chemist or alchemist, who lived eleven hundred years after the beginning of the Christian era. Distilled liquors were not used as beverages until after the thirteenth century. Brandy, whiskey, gin, rum and other distilled liquors, have a history of less than eight hundred years. Standing before this audience of scholars and students, I wish to say, the worst forms of national drunkenness the world has ever seen existed before distilled bevetages existed or the pro- cess of making them was known. The use of fer- mented liquois then, as now, created a desire, a craving for stronger stimulants. Distilled spirits not existing, fermented liquors were drugged and became the strong liquors of history. The drunkenness of Rome, Greece, Babylon and other ancient empires was the drunken- ness caused by the use of fermented liquors, and the cravings which such liquors caused which led to the use of drugged liquors. History says : " The use of fermented liquors is the by-way which leads down into the valley of drunkenness." The brewer-drunkard- makers must destroy the history of experience if they \vv 't V> niaintain their second proposition. The grave- / Yd of lAcitions answers their foul lie. The third defence urged is : "It 5 an attempt to pass, or rather to create, a sumptuary law ; which has for its object the restraint of individual rights, and is, therefore, contrary to the principles of our republican institutions." THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 127 Webster defines sumptuary laws to be " such as restrain or limit the expenses of citizens in apparel, food, furniture, and the like." If laws prohibiting^ the manufacture and sale of liquors are sumptuary, then the laws prohibiting houses of prostitution, gambling hells, the sale of diseased meat, and quarantining small-pox and yellow-fever, are sumptuary. I have no patience with men who presume on the ignorance of the people. A person who will speak of a law prohibiting the traffic in intoxicants as sumptuary, is either an illiterate ass, a conceited idiot, or a political trickster. The fourth defence is : " It is an invasion of natural desires." There is no such thing as a natural desire to drink whiskey, because in nature such a thing as whiskey or beer is unknown. God never created alcoholic bever- ages. You may take corn and pile it up as high as heaven, and let it rot to earth — every hour of its decomposition test it with the most delicate chemical tests, and you will never find whiskoy in the process of rotting. Place grapes on your office table and let them remain until the blue mold has eaten them up, and alcoholic wine will not appear in the process of decay. God does not rot things that way. Alcohol comes in when mechanical force is used to break the starch cells and bring the starch in contact with the juice. You must have the starch in connection with the juice when this unnatural kind of fermentation takes place. "But," objects one, "if God did not create alcoholic beverages. He did make the laws that cause the formation of alcohol." Granted. God made iron. He made the laws of cohesion and adhesion, but God did not make butcher-knives, and what would you think of the intJfeUigence of a man who would prate about a natural appetite for butcher-knives! God created the laws that govern the formation of gunpowder, but nowhere in God's universe can you 1^ m m 'I 128 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. II find gunpowder existing as the results of nature's own work. What would you think of a man who would prate about a natural appetite for gunpoivder ! A natural appetite for something that is unnatural is a thing that no man can understand ; hence, you see, the desire is not a natural one. Let us see what you mean by the terms natural appetite or desire. You say : " I have an appetite for liquor." Appetite is a demand .for supplies. In the school, in the store, in the office, you use a certain amount of muscular force ; then you become hungry. What is hunger ? A demand for supplies. The body asks you to supply it .something out of- which it may make force to take the place of the force you have used up. You go to the table, eat slowly, masticate the food thoroughly, and when you get up and go away, where is your appetite ? A demand for sup- plies, and when the supplies are furnished it is satis- fled. Enter a drunkery ; drink one glass. Do you not want the second, then the third, then fourth, each glass more than the one which preceded it ? My liquor friend, you grant me the proposition when you say, " I have will-i^owcr enough to stop ?" You do not use will-power to stop eating pork and beans when you have enough. The difference is this : When you give a natural appetite what it asks for, it is satisfied ; when you give a diseased craving what it asks for, it asks for more. If we follow out this thought it will meet another sophistry often urged by the liquor men, viz., that the liquor business of this country is governed by the same laws of political economy that govern the sale of the necessaries of life. You ask what they mean. They answer: "You must do away with the demand and the supply will cease. It is the demand which creates the supply." Did you ever hear this statement ! There is not a student before me but knows this statement of the law is not correct. The true rule of THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 129 ler the the of Ian. Ind ich it! lis o£ political economy is thij : In the case of absolute neces- saries the supply is sought after because of the deniand, but in the case of created luxuries the supply causes the demand, or changes a general inclination or desire into a demand for the specific luxury which is tempt- ing. Let me state it again. In the case of absolute necessaries, the supply is created by the demand, but in the case of created luxuries the supply creates the demand. There is a natural demand for food ; you must have it or die. I met a man in Fort McPherson who had travelled for four days and eaten nothing but a raw rattlesnake. The demand for food is natural and must be satisfied. Food being an absolute neces- sity, the supply is sought as the result of the demand. In this climate clothes are absolutely necessary to pro- tect the body from the inclemency of the weather. Demand for these creates the supply. You must have clothes of some kind, and if you fail to procure them, nature will supply them in part by causing hair to grow upon the body. Diamonds are not necessary to man's existence. They are a created luxury. A man goes to New York, purchases diamonds, and brings them home. Does he lock them up in a safe until you come around and tell him you want them ? No ; he locks them up during the night, and in the daytime places them in the show- case, where persons who enter his place may see them. Some young ladies enter who have no thought of diamonds, and see the rings, pins, brooches, and neck- laces. One exclaims, " Nell, come here ! Those gems are lovely." They admire their colors — " Wish I had them." What caused that wish ? The presence of the luxury. What are you thinking about ? Well, I am think- ing about watermelons. Now, they are not necessaries of life. They are luxuries. You will be down here next summer. You are not thinkingj of watermelons. You hear the musical cry, " Watermelons !" As soon * u \!m I' ! 130 THE PEOPLE Ve. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. \^i\ y N It t" 1 as you hear it there will be a demand for the melons. " 1 want one of those watermelons." The demand is created by the presence of the melons. Even in a case where necessaries are combined with luxuries, this is the rule to some extent. Hats of some kind are neces- sary in this country. Suppose a milliner has received some new spring hats. Would she place them in a closet and lock them up until some lady called and told her she wanted one ? Not much ; she would put them in the show-case where every lady would see them. Ladies are passing : " Is it not a beauty ?" " That's a jewel of a bonnet." " And the colors ! — my colors, — I wonder how I would look with it on. Let's go and see." They go in, and she puts it on and looks at herself ; and then she says, " Wish 1 had it !" What created the wish ? The presence of the bonnet. The liquor business of this country comes under the same rule. Alcoholic liquor is not an absolute neces- sity. Give it the best position you can, and it is a dangerous luxury. Then the presence of it creates the demand for it. You go down the street — you are not an abstainer, neither do you care lor a drink. A saloon-keeper has a big sign across the street, " Ice-cool lager." The presence of the sign, together with the knowledge that the beer is there leads you to go in and get it. If it was further away, you would not think of it. Said the general manager of the Union Pacific R. R. to a friend of mine : " By closing up the saloons near our workshops, drunkenness has diminished two-thirds among our men. When the men were passing the saloons on their way to and from work, they would get a drink. Now, when they have to go three or four blocks for it, they do not get it." The fifth defence is: *' If you shut up the saloons they will sell in the drug-stores and in holes." THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 131 a )ur [•ds the lid or bbe To meet this it will be necessary for us to examine the causes of drunkenness in this country. What makes drunkards ? A liquor man exclaims, " Treating." Yes, sir, that is one of the principal reasons. Boys go into a saloon to play billiards, — when they are with Romans, they must do as Romans do. After playing for a time they go up to the bar, turn glasses full, and standing there, clink their glasses and drink to each other's health. Poets and novelists of old times have thrown around the custom of drinking to each other's health a sheen of romance. Break up the saloon, and where is your treating ? Where will liquor be sold ? In a drug-store ? Notice a man treating in a drug-store. He looks up and down the street, and then sneaks in behind the prescription case to get a drink. Is not that romantic ? But they say it will be sold in cellars. Yes ! a man will sneak through an alley-way, down a back stair- way into a cellar where there is a keg of whiskey. He finds a tin-cup rusty with the saliva of other men who have drunk from it. Is not that a high-toned way of drinking ? Will it tempt and make drunkards of the boys ? Another says, "They will carry it in bottles." Yes ; but treating with bottles is not specially romantic. A wink of the eye leads one into a stall in a barn or around behind some building out of sight, where the bottle is drawn from the pocket and passed over to the friend He takes a drink and passes it back to the owner, who takes a suck off the same nose. Now, is not that tempting, especially if one drinker chews tobacco and the other does not ? No, gentlemen, when you have broken down the lighted bar, when you outlaw this trade, when you drive it into holes — old bummers may get it, but the boys of this country, bright and brave, and manly, will never sneak after something for which they have llTii ii 1! , ■: [ I- m mi r 132 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. not learned to care. Said a leading statesman of Maine to me, " Old bummers of Maine kept on drinking, but we have a generation of boys wlio have grown up since the Maine law, who know nothing of the use of liquor. Close the saloons, and treating is dead and the boys are safe. The sixth defence is : " It will destroy personal liberty." Liquor-dealers met in the city of Des Moines, and declared that they were the defenders of personal lib- erty in this country, and to-day the liquor interest is masquerading as the champion of liberty ; and a more ridiculous masquerade I never saw. Gentlemen, scholars, what is the foundation of lib- erty in this country ? Your schools, your churches, and your universities. The foundation of liberty is intelli- gence and morality. A drunken and debauched peo- ple can never maintain a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Liquor-dealers, before you step out as the champions of liberty, please tell us what you have done to perpetuate liberty in the land ? How many schools have you erected ? Where are your colleges ? How many churches have you built ? How many hospitals have you founded ? Show me a thing you have ever done to make this nation better, and grander, and truer. But they say : " We have paid taxes." How ? The nation wrung it out of you by police officers and inter- nal revenue officers. In South Carolina and Tennessee you shot them dead in their tracks, and you would do it in the North if you dared. Where has the Ameri- can Brewers' Congress ever built a college, or the Dis- tillers' Union founded a church ? When have they done a thing for liberty in the world ? And j-et these men, who have only made drunkards and debauched the people, step out and claim to be the defenders of liberty ! The Goddess of Liberty has always been a dear goddess to me. I used to read stories of the days THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 133 of chivalry. All boys and girls lovo to read such books. Recall your boyish ideas of the old heroes. Tall, well-formed, brave — such is the ideal knight. As I think of these new knights of liberty, the thought cotnes — how are the mighty fallen ! Thoy are not tall, but they make up for height by breadth. To-night, ladies, you are to go home with your loved ones. Suppose the " Goddess of Liberty " had been on the platform during the meeting. A beer wagon drives up in front of the hall, and a typical beer knight wad- dles up to the platform, and says : " If you (hie) please, you are (hie) to go home with me." Think of it. If liberty has fallen so low that her defenders are the class of men who debauch the manhood, and womanhood, and civilization of this country, God pity liberty. The idea of these men arrogating to them- selves the position of the special champions of the liberties of this people is absurd, ridiculous, and non- sensical. It makes me think of an illiterate church- member by the name of Walker, in southern Illinois. During a revival where his spiritual strength had been renewed, the idea came into his mind that he must preach. He called upon the officers of the church, and told them that he believed God had given him a special call. They expressed some doubts, promised to consider his case, and sent him away. A few days later he returned, still more fully impressed that it was his divine mission to defend the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to turn sinners from the path of death. The officers of the church asked him if he had received any evidences of a call. He responded : " I went home from this y'er meetin' troubled an' per- plexed, an' the nex' day I went ter visit neighbor Jones on the hill. Comin' back late in the evenin' 'cross the paster, the thought come to me that ef God had really called me, he ouffhter make it manifest to me thar. So I jest knelt down in a clump of bushes, raised up t!l? f . 4 t ,h i I 134 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. my voice in prayer, and asked God to show me my dooty clear. Jest as I was a-prayin', on the stillness broke an awful voice, say in': 'Go,W-a-alk-er, W-a-alk-er, Walker ! — Go, Pr-e-e^a-cher, Pr-e-e-a-cher,P-r-e-a-a-ch- e-r-r-r ! ' " The officers of the church examined the source of call, and found that it was a jackass, which, alarmed at his praying, had commenced to bray. For the life of me I cannot get rid of the thought that this call of the liquor-dealers, as the defenders of lib- erty, must have come from some such source. But wha,t is their cr3? ? They say, " personal liberty." In other words, they mean sensual or natural liberty. Lieber, the great political philosopher, says, in his celebrated work on political ethics, as revised by Theodore D. Woolsey (page 325) : "This untenable view is another misconception arising out of the primary error of a natural state of man and a natural liberty in which man is believed to be absolutely without any restraint, except his own conscience and understanding, which, however, it would appear, must yet be very weak. Civil liberty, there- fore, is judged by a negative standard. That is, it is believed the less you are required to give up of that original and perfect natural liberty, the greater the amount of civil liberty. The idea is radically wrong. Liberty, like everything else of a politi- cal character, necessary and natural to man, and to be striveii for, arises out of the development of society. Man, in that supposed state of natural liberty, which is nothing but a roving state, is, on the contrary, in a state of great submission. He is a slave and servant of the elements. Matter masters his mind. He is exposed to the wrongs of every enemy from without, and dependent upon his own unregulated mind. This is not liberty. It is plain barbarism. Liberty is materially of a civil character." Again on page 384 : '* Where men of whatsoever condition — rulers or ruled, those that toil or those that enjoy, individually, or by entire classes or nations — claim, maintain or establish rights without acknowledg- ing corresponding and parallel obligations, there is oppression, lawlessness and disorder, and the very ground on which the idea of all right must forever rest — the ground of mutuality or recipro3ity, whether considered in the light of ethics or natural law, must sink from under it. It is natural, therefore, that THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 135 roving He is mind. It, and Iberty. Icter." those ises or rledg- jssion, fch the lity or Utural that wherever there exists a greater knowledge of right or more in- tense attention to it than to concurrent and proportionate obligation, evil ensues. What may there be found a priori is pointed out by history as one of its gravest and greate^b morals. The very condition of right is obligation. The only reasfmable obligations consist in rights. Since, therefore, a greater degree of civil liberty implies the enjoyment of more extended acknowl- edged rights, man's obligations increase with man's liberty. Let us, then, call that freedom of action which is determined and limited by the acknowledgment of obliga'ion, liberty ; free- dom of action without limitation by obligation, licentiousness. The greater the liberty the morr, the duty." Unrestrained natural liberty is the enemy of civil ^ liberty. Let me illustrate : It was personal liberty that enabled Guiteau to send the bullet through the back of President Garfield. It was civil liberty which hanged him on the SOth of June. Do you see the difference ? It is personal liberty that would let me meet you on the street and knock your brains out with a club ; it is civil liberty that would punish me for the crime. It is personal or natural liberty which would let a tramp outrage your wife or daughter. It is organized or civil liberty which would hang him if he did. Civil liberty is developed by the restrictions of natural liberty and development of higher intellectual liberty amonjj intellectual men. Go amonj; the barbarian tribes on the frontier. One of the tribes which I visited a few years ago has very limited civil govern- ment. Their chief is elected on account of his brute strength. He has the force, and he is elected. Property is only held by the physical force of the man holding it. They have a marriage relation after a fashion. An Indian marries a squaw, and she becomes his absolute property. He may whip her, knock her down, or kill her. There is no punishment. I asked one of their chiefs, Running Elk, if there was no punishment for wife murder, and he answered, " No, unless her father or brother should take it upon-tiimself to avenge her death." " Do they ever do that ? " I asked. He i i' I s '^1, ''■ w- j Slnr! ; I 111 I i I ! 136 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. answered : " No : They might want to kill their wives, and their killing him would set a bad precedent." Come farther east, to some on the tribes of the Missouri river, and you will find that civilization and civil liberty have advanced by the restraint of personal liberty. These tribes have property. The marriage relation has taken more stability. The Indian may whip his wife, but to put her off must go through regular forms. If he kill her, he is punished by death or banishment from the tribe. Go south where the Cherokees control the territory. You will find a class of people nearly as intelligent as the people before me. Their property is permanent. Civilization has taken the brute Indian-^very nearly a brute — restrained his personal liberty, and compelled him to be a man. Civil liberty is developed by the restraint of personal liberty. The vulture that flies across our western plains is individually free to steal chickens. The coyote wolf is a type of individual liberty. The buc- caneer on the ocean is a representative of personal liberty. Jesse James, the Missouri outlaw, was the best type of the personal liberty asked by liquor men in this country. For twenty years he was personally free to rob trains. Finally he went down to death under the hand of civil government. It might have been a bad way to assassinate him, but out west the people are glad his personal liberty was destroyed. Personal liberty means individual or brute liberty. Civil liberty means the restraint of personal liberty. I have a legal right to fill my mouth with tobacco, and chew, and chew and spit. I do not believe I have the physical and moral right. I have a right to chew and spit this way, or chew and spit the other way — it is none of your business. You will not deny I have that right if I am alone on the prairie. I go into a crowd of men and exercise the right. I chew and spit, the spittle goes in one man's face, and in another man's ear. I would be knocked down in a minute. THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 137 As a man hits me on the ear, I exclaim, *' Is not this a free country ? " " Yes." " Have not I a right to spit ? " You would teach me that my right to spit ceased where your right not to be spit upon began. This arm is my arm and my wife's ; it is not yours. Up here I have a right to strike out with it as I please. I go over there with these gentlemen and swing my arm and exercise the natural right which you have granted ; I hit one man on the nose, another under the ear, and as I go down the stairs on my head, I cry out : " Is not this a free country ?" " Yes, sir." " Have not I a right to swing my arm ?" " Yes, but your right to swing your arm leaves oft* where my right not to have my nose struck begins." Here civil government comes in to prevent blood- shed, adjust rights and settle disputes. Ladies and gentlemen, the idea that any man in this community has a right to do wrong, would, if it be- came a controlling principle, destroy any government. When Alexander Selkirk was on the Island of Juan Fernandez, the poet made him sing : " I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute ; From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and tha brute." He could stand on his head, go without clothes — do as he pleased. If he had tried to do the same thing after he had returned to London he would have been in the police-station in ten minutes. Liquor-men say : " Governmenc has no right to say what I shall eat, drink or wear." Get up and forget to dress yourself some morning. How far would you get in this city before the government would tell you to put on clothes ? One of you ladies dress yourself in men's clothes. How long before the government will tell you to wear right apparel ? It is the duty of gpv- 10 . " I w m >|r 'it s !-f '': ii i [I J! J- i' 'M 138 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. ernment to restrain animal passions, and the cry of liquor-men for personal liberty is simply a cry of bar- barism. Let me show you the outcome of their doc- trines as enunciated by their great high-priest, the high-priest of personal liberty — John Stuart Mill. I read from his works, and I advise you to get them and read for yourself, and see what this damnable doctrine of the liquor interest of this country means. I read from page 58, of the English edition, published in London, by Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer : " Fornication, for example, must be tolerated ; and so must gambling ; but should a person be free to be a pimp or to keep a gambling house ? The case is one of those which lie on the exact boundary line between two principles, and it is not at once apparent to which of the two it properly belongs. There are arguments on both sides." Then for a whole page he discusses whether the government has a right to deal with these vices, and says : *' There is considerable force in these arguments ; I will not venture to decide." Think of a man whose system of morals does not enable him to determine whether government has the right to stop such things. Such is the doctrine of the liquor traffic. They would have the state become the procurer or agent to gratify the lusts and passions of its citizens, even though such gratification, by ruining them, would destroy its own life. Despots and devils would laugh at such a theory of governmental functions. If such a theory is adopted in this country, on the chaos of American institu- tions will arise the worst despotism the world has ever seen. The doctrine of personal sensual liberty is the doctrine of free-lovism, and means the re-instatement of lust, passion and brute force as the governing force of the world. The remainder of their defence is best answered by its absurdity. From their declaration I read : 1. " These laws have been tried and abandoned as ,51-'! !• THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. own s ever the ment force ^dby id as 189 failures in many of the states, and to-day, out of thirty-eight states they are in force in but six, and are actually enforced in none. 2. " Adopt this amendment and immigration will shun our state, as it is already shunning the state of Kansas. The rapid development of Iowa will receive a sudden check, as no immigrants will wish to live under such a tyranny as this amendment imposes." It is a failure — Liquor will be freely sold ! It will stop immigration because the immigrants cannot obtain liquor, and they will not submit to such an awful tyranny ! Again I read : 1 " We believe it is an established fact that the attempt of government to prohibit the sale or purchase of intoxicating drinks sharpens and excites the dis- position of men to obtain them. 2. " The fact that the adoption of this prohibitory amendment is an act of bad faith on the part of the brewing interests — that it practically confiscates our property, and makes us bankrupts, seems to have the least weight with the leaders in this fanatical and reckless crusade." It is going to bankrupt them because it sharpens men's appetites and excites the desire to obtain liquors ! Again I read : 1. "That experience in Maine and Kansas, under the prohibitory laws, shows that it does not decrease drunkenness nor drinking. 2. " If passed, it will confiscate a large amount of property which has been built up in the pursuit of a legitimate business, and provides for no compensation to the owners for the loss." Prohibition is a complete and entire failure ; yet, it destroys the breweries and distilleries ! Again I read : 1. " Wherever tried, prohibition has failed to pro- hibit. m !;'r>»1 w #■ 1 iiri*.i: ^1 E I 11 I f H 140 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 2. "If the amendment shall be voted into the con- stitution, a subsequent law, bristling all over with pains and penalties, will inevitably be passed to carry into full effect the intent of the amendment.'.' It will not prohibit ! It will prohibit ! These statements are taken from different parts of their platform, ard grouped. If I had a boy of ten years who w )ul«i iiake such contradictory statements, I would send him to the asylum for weak-minded children. Their last defence is bulldozing — rebellion. Citi- zens, I would not cvci'draw the picture. I read from the Des Moines aec'ti^icion cf the liquor-men: " Resolved, That wv v ill 'ise all honorable means to defeat said proposed am^^ri^lments at the polls; and if we are unsuc^essfvi, vill r •• :;. its unjust and oppres- sive provisions by every n.Tcn y' known to law. " Resolved, That we will never knowingly support for any office or place of trust any one who shall vote for this proposed outrage upon our property and rights, "Resolved, That the recent election in Ohio, which followed the passage of the Pond bill, is only a fore- runner of what will occur in this state, if the Repub- lican party adheres to its policy of fanaticism as against the liberal element." This declaration is fully explained by one of their ablest defenders among the press of this state, which says : " Prohibition is the first step in the direction of despotism. " If you want to check immigration, vote for the amendment. •' If you want to increase your taxes, vote for the amendment. " Personal liberty must and shall be maintained in impartial Iowa. " Imperial Iowa will kick this temperance tom- foolery into a cocked hat. THE DEFENCE REVIEWED. 141 as )n of the ir the id in toTn- " It' you want to be ruled and ruined by fools and fanatics, vote for the amendment. " The prohibition party is made up of grannies and gossips, who have never learned to* mind their own business. " The defeat of the amendment is demanded by common sense." — Sioux City Tribune. Yes; And its defeat is demanded by common honesty. If THE DOLTS AND DEMAGOGUES SUCCEED IN SECURING THE PASSAGE OF THAT SUM OF ABOMINATIONS KNOWN AS THE PROHIBITORY AMEND- MENT, THE FRIENDS AND DEFENDERS OF PERSONAL LIBERTY WILL DEFY THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE ENOR- MITY. MARK THAT ! I have not thought that such threats, intimidation, and bulldozing could influence you voters, and only mention the statements to show you the utter de- pravity of the liquor traffic and its defenders. The threat of political ostracism and assassination is the emptiest kind of buncomb. The dram-shop has no political power other than as agents to bribe its de- bauched victims. It is a political pimp and go-between of the vilest sort — ever ready to sell itself to the highest bidder. The threat of rebellion is the only one of any mo- ment, and it simply raises the issue whether less than five thousand bloated liquor-dealers govern this state, or whether the people govern it. This issue you must meet and settle. The man is a coward who does not meet the defiance of the liquor-men, and demonstrate the fact that the people govern Iowa. Who governs Iowa ? is the issue raised by the oppo- sition ; and in making up your verdict you are told, if you fail to place Iowa in the hands of grog-shops, I #1 i: i L'Nf Pl'i 'H >i 142 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. you shall politically die. " Are you men, and suffer such dishonor ?" No ! These men who live in the sores of the body politic, as parasites live in the neg- lected sores of the beggar, will be washed out by your votes on the 27th of June, and then — and not till then — can we hope for a healing of these loath- some social and political sores, and for sound political health and strength in the country. I! ■ iTHE PROPERTY OF SCARBORO PUBLIC LI3RARY. Vt. THE QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. Stexouraphic Report of an Address Delivered in the Opera House at Marsh alltown, Iowa, June 18, 1882. Ladies and Gentlemen : To-night, as I close the case of the people, I want to thank you for your earnest attention and evident desire to do justice. It is no small matter to change the organic law of a state. The verbal change may be small, but the results will affect its whole social and business life. Weigh the matter calmly, dispassionately. The people have the right to amend their organic law. The founders of the government provided for such governmental changes. I use the word people, because it is the common term, not because it is the correct one. This is not a govern- ment of the people. It is a government of male voters ; but, as the word people is commonly used, I shall continue to use it, and you will understand what I mean by it. Around the proposition to amend your organic law, the opposition have conjured a host of imaginary dangers to intimidate voters. They have told you that this amendment is a blow at the liberties of the people ; that it will take rights from the people. The exact reverse is the truth. It takes rights from the legis- lature, or rather, returns to the people rights which years ago they delegated to the government. The people have the right to recover any powers they have delegated. i ' li-' S'l n ^1' ■M m ; it •* 1 - f -1 144 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. m I: :t: A ji^reat writer has said : " Constitutions are the assemblage of those principles which are deemed fundamental to the government of a people. They refer either to the relation in which the citizen stands to the state at large — and consequently, to the govern- ment — or to the proper delineation of the various spheres of authority." This amendment is a change in the delineation of the spheres of authority. It proposes to take the authority and power to deal with a certain trade from a branch of the government, and return it to the people. The rule of construction of the powers of govern- ment in the United States courts is this : Congress may pass any law for which an express or implied warrant can be found in the written constitution of the United States. If an act is passed by Congress, and you wish to ascertain whether it is constitutional or not, you must take the constitution of the United States, and find in that instrument an express warrant or an implied warrant for its enactment. If you do not find it there, the law is unconstitutional. The constitution of the United States is a restriction on the powers of the general government. The rule of construction in state courts is exactly the reverse. If you wish to ascertain whether a law passed by the legislature of a state is constitutional, you must examine the constitution of that state and find if the legislature is prohibited from passing it. The constitution of the state simply guarantees to the people certain rights, and all rights that are not ex- pressly reserved to the people, in the constitution, are vested in the legislature and other branches of govern- ment of the several states. In past years the people of the state of Iowa, and most of the other states of this Union, have been will- ing to trust in the hands of the legislature the right to control the question of the alcoholic liquor trade. The people delegated their right to the legislative and QUESTIONS ASKKD BY THE .IlJIlY ANSWERED. H-'j it. the ex- are ern- executive de})artiiumts ut' the state. The ri^^lit to dujil with the traffic in your state is vested in the legislature composed of representatives elected hy the people. Years have passed since this grant was made. The people have tested the system of legislative control, and have become thoroughly satisfied that the legis- lature of the state is not the place where this power should be vested ; and now the proposition in this state is simply to revoke the power granted to the legis- lature, and re-invest it in the people. It is the people stepping out and saying to the legislature of the state, " Gentlemen, you have not dealt with this question as your constituents desired, and consequently we propose to take the power to deal with it out of your hands, and hold it in our own." The constitutional amend- ment, instead of taking a right from the people, takes a right from the legislature and vests it in the people. The people can at any time amend the constitution ; a legislature can never amend a constitution. That is the difference. You ask why the people of this state are not willing to leave this power in the hands of the legislature of the state ; why they demand that it shall be returned to them, that they alone may decide the question. In 1855, the legislature of your state — a Democratic legislature, by the way — thought it wise to submit to the voters of Iowa, the question whether a statutory enactment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages should become a law. The vote of the people was to decide the question whether the statute should exist. Of course the vote of the people had no effect, and the legislature knew it could not have when they passed the law. It was simply ask- ing a popular opinion whether it was best to enact this law. After a bitterly contested campaign, the people, by an emphatic majority, said that the statutory prohibition should be a law. In obedience to the decision of the people, the legislature passed a bill. .J i I I. '"* ^ * ! V ,-i-V^ H- ''< n- 14 1 146 THE PEOPLE 08. THE LigUOIl TKAFKIC. and it became law throughout Iowa. Hardly had this been done when the liquor men of this state went to the lejifislative Solons of Iowa, and said : "We want to come back into this state and sell wine and beer and lighter drinks." " But," said the men in the legislature, " the people have said you shall not come back." The licjuor men used arguments which were unfair and dishonest; they were not willing to allow the question to be re- submitted to the people for a new trial ; they induced the legislature to swindle the people out of the law after they had rendered their verdict. In accordance with a political coalition, unholy as any ever made in the depths of the bottomless pit, the traffic was re- admitted to this state by legislative enactment, in defiance of the people's verdict and vote. Therefore, the people of this state say to the legis- lature : " Gentlemen, we propose to take from you the power to unsettle the question at every session of your body. We will take the question wholly into our own hands. We will give prohibition a full, fair, and an honest trial ; and then, if we, the voters of this state, believe it to be a failure, we will repeal the constitu- tional enactment. But it shall remain until the voters see fit to repeal it." The constitutional change is in favor of the people. It is simply the people demanding their right to determine this question, instead of allowing it to be determined by a few men in legislative halls. The question of the guilt of the liquor traffic is now admitted. The liquor men do not attempt to justify or defend the drinking-places of the state. They admit its guilt. I hold in my hand a pamphlet on personal liberty, which is now being circulated by the anti-prohibitionists, and I read : Herein, the opponents and advocates of the prohibitory amend- ment and prohibitory laws agree : 1. "They agree that drunkenness is an old and great crime, • ^ « |ople. it to o be lend- jrinie, (^IIKSTIONS ASKEO BY THK JURY ANSWERED. 147 which brings with it other crimes — that it is the fruitful nource of puiii, inisury, puu^eriBni, and (liseaso. 2. " They ugroo that drunkenness, when it produces disorder, is neither an excuse nor apology for crime, and should be promptly punished by law. They agree that the adulteratoi*s of all liquors should be severely punished by law. 3. ** They agree that the law should punish all persons who keep drunken and disorderly resorts for drunkards, idlers, and criminals." Remember, this is written by a liquor man. For fear you should doubt, I will show you what a villain- ous liar he is, by reading from the last page of his book. He says : " The sincerity of the whole prohibitory movement nuiy bo readily measured by the honest comparison of the professions with the practices of its leaders and its chant jtions. Only one instance will illustrate the hypocrisy of the prohibitory move- ment. During the last summer, when the late ])resident had fallen by assassination, the whole land was filled with grief and stricken with sorrow. The president hud been a minister of the gospel, and the stroke which had fallen with its deadly power upon the government and the dead man .s family, was even more keenly felt by the Christian Church. Every church in the land was draped in mourning ; courts and schools were closed during the days of sorrow ; whilst the benevolent societies and political parties of the country vied with each other in their expression of horror at the crime, and lamentation for the dead chief of a free people. When the funeral cortege passed from the East to the West, thousands of broken-hearted mourners stood with uncovered heads to meet the funeral car at its passage, and reverently bow in submission to the cruel fate of the nation. Inside of the funeral train, following the ilkistrious dead to his final resting-place, were the chief mourners. In the brief period employed in the passage from the East to the West (it must have been in bacchanalian revelry) the intoxicating drinks con- sumed by the government mourners, in a carefully itemized account, footed up $1,700, which has been presented to Congress for allowance, about $300 of which was for cocktails. These mourners were the chief leaders of the great National Prohibi- tion party," This money was spent by Democratic and Repub- lican statesmen; no member of the National Prohibition party was with the funeral escort. , m ■if * :' v] i 148 THE PElbPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 3 It + ;• The first three confessions of the gentleman is the people's case. The people say that drunkenness in this country is a curse, and that drunkenness is generated by the a-b-c school of drunkenness — the licensed dram- shop. The liquor men do not deny it. So, after two months of trial in your state, and when in about ten days the question is to be determined by the voters, the liquor men come into court and enter a plea of guilty, and only ask that, because of mitigating circumstances, the punishment imposed may be high license. The issue we are to discuss is not the question of their guilt or innocence, because they have pled guilty. These objections of the liquor men have been listened to by the jury, and I am asked to mention them. The questions have been written and passed to me since I came on this platform; I shall read by number and answer. They are as follows : 1st Question. "If tlie amendiuent is adopted it will be two years before the legislature will meet, and during that time (the present law having been made unconstitutional) there will be free whiskey throughout the state, as there will be no penalties to secure an enforcement of the amendment." This is urged by the liquor men; and one would think, in listening to their talk, that these men are terribly alarmed for fear that during a period of two years they will have a right to sell whiskey without any law restraining them. To console them, and that they may not be mistaken, I assure them that this will be the ruling of our courts, as it has been the ruling of all of the higher courts in this country; viz., that the adoption of the constitu- tional amendment will simply make the license clauses of your present act unconstitutional. Your law is a prohibitory law. It was passed as a prohibitory law. The amendment will affect only the explanat" y clauses which allow the sale of wine and beer. "What will be the result?" Just as soon as it is officially declared that the amendment is carried, you ii ken, irts, ts in DltU- iuses is a llaw. [uses lit is you QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. 149 will have a prohibitory law in existence in this state that is better than the Kansas law, for that is a fear- fully weak one. Your old law will be in force. Your future legislators may amend the present prohibitory law, but it will stand as a law except its license fea- tures, until your legislators change it. The effect of the amendment on the law will be tlie same as though it had been a part of the constitution when the law was passed. The license features of your present law will be unconstitutional. The only question will be over penalites for wine and beer. 2ncl Question. "Will the amendment be eflective without penalties?" I say, No. There is not a single provision of the constitution that is effective without penalties. 3rd Question. " Will not the life of the amendment exist only in the penalties ?" I answer to that. No; and I will show you why, when I have read the fourth question, which is: 4^*-^ 'Question. " Will not the penalties tend to fluctuate with eaijii legislature ?" '* It is claimed that constitutional law carries more force than legislative enactment ; but if the penalties depend upon legislative enactment, why the greatt^r force ? " These are pertinent questions. To the third question, " Will not the life of the amendment depend on its penalties?" I answer, No; because all law depends upon public sentiment for its enforcement. The gentle- man who asks the question, asks whether the constitu- tional amendment will have greater force than statu- tory enactment. I answer Yes, for this reason : If the legislature should pass a statute, it might be the opinion simply of the members of the legislature, instead of being the opinion of the people. It might be the opinion of one hundred and thirty or one hundred and forty men constituting the law-making body of your state. An amendment to the constitution, on the contrary, can only be placed there by a majority ^i I' i'M ■t-- If . •\: * L L •■■.1 T -44 it I 150 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. of the people, representing a majority of the sentiment of this state; and when law-breakers know that pro- hibition is not a mere statutory enactment, but that a majority of the people of this state are opposed to them, they will yield; because no man likes to fight major- ities. A statutory enactment seems to have nobody behind it, except the courts. A constitutional enact- ment has the people of the whole state behind it. Hence, I answer, the life of the constitutional amend- ment is the people, not the penalties. The life of the amendment is the sentiment shown by the vote that adopts it. Consequently, the constitutional amend- ment must be of greater force than a statutory enact- ment. The people having adopted a constitutional amend- ment by majority vote, politicians will be exceedingly slow to pass any law with penalties which will not carry out the expressed will of the people. In Kansas, where the amendment was adopted by the people's vote, the legislature passed a law to carry out the will of the people, not daring to defy that will. The ten- dency of all law carrying out constitutional provisions is to permanency, because politicians do not like to antagonize the people. 6fch Question. "If there is a greater force in conslitulional provision to combat evils or crimes, why is not murder or other high crimes prohibited by constitutional amendment instead of legislative enactment ? " I say to the friend who wrote this question that they are. The constitution of your state guarantees the life and liberty of the citizen, and if the legisla- ture of your state should pass a law licensing murder, it would be unconstitutional. Murder, arson and theft are prohibited by constitutional provision, and an enactment made to license these things would be *a direct violation of the property and life guarantees of the constitution, and would be declared unconstitu- tional in any court of the United States. The crimes QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. 151 ional ither id of named are prohibited by the constitutional guarantee of life and property. 6th Question. "The text of the amendment makes it a crime to sell within the state, but cannot prohibit the sale out- side the state. In other words, Iowa men must not poison their immediate neighbors, but can poison Kansas without pen- alty. Would not such a law as a fundamental principle of our government be dishonorable, inconsistent and unchristian ? " The questioner makes an incorrect statement, and on the incorrect statement bases his question. The amendment prohibits the manufacture and sale of liquor!^. The statement is one being urged by liquor men in all parts of the state. One is reminded that ** When the Devil was sick, The Devil a monk would be ; W^hen the Devil was well, The Devil a monk was he." The statement, as I said, is false, but if it were true I would vote for the amendment. If a rattlesnake were to crawl into my house, and my boy was playing near it, if I could not kill it, but could drive it out of doors, I would drive H out. If he bit my neighbor's boy I should regret that he did so, but charity begins at home. I should protect my own home first ; and when Iowa has protected her own homes, lei- the gigantic temperance sentiment of this state cap*y the reform to every state of this nation, until the constitution of the United States prohibits the traffic in the nation. 7th Question. " Could our government exceed its authority by any act of the majority of its voters ?" I answer : The government is the people, or the votero. All political power is inherent in the people. The constitution of the United States reads : " We, the people." The government has the right to do anything it is not prohibited by the constitution from doing. In making the constitution a majority of the people is sup'-eme. They can do anything they please. They 1 ' !• \- h ■M ■ I i^4 1 i I lit m [i : - 152 THK PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. may establish a state church or despotism. Therefore, the government does not exceed its authority in obey- ing any " act of a majority of voters " expressed in their constitution. The only safety for our liberties is the intelligence and morality of the people. For this reason the drinking place should be destroyed, on account of its power to corrupt or debauch the people. 8th Question. " If our government cannot exceed its author- ity as represented by a majority of its voters, why may not tho government prescribe the form of reHgious worship as well as to say what a man shall eat or drink ?" If the people are ever foolish enough to do this-, they can do it, and you cannot hinder them, because in this country the people are the government. If this peo- ple shall determine that a certain kind of religion shall be the religion of the state, then that religion will be the state religion ; and the only guarantee against such a policy is to educate the people so that they will not be foolish enough to adopt it. The only safety for the government is the intelligence and morality of the individual citizen. The safety of the principles of liberty is to educate the people to do right, and destroy every institution that educates to do wrong. But this question is unfair, inasmuch as it supposes a falsehood as a premise. Prohibitory liquor laws in nowise say what a man shall eat or what he shall drink. They simply aim to protect society from the pernicious influence of trade, which is a social insti- tution. In no respect do tL?y aim to interfere with the private liberties of the individual until those pri- vate liberties create public nuisances. The rights inherent in the people to say what is, and what shall be, the form of government in this country exist to- day, and will in nowise be altered or changed by the passage of this amendment. The aim of the prohibi- tionists is simply to destroy in this country all insti- tutions which have a tendency to debauch the morality QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. 158 )Oses [s in I shall the Insti- Iwith pri- lights shall It to- the fchibi- insti- fality and the intelligence of the people, and thereby jeop- ardize our liberties by corrupting the f ountainhead of our liberties — the people. 9th Question. *'The educational methods and restrictive measures in promoting temperance should go hand in hand. The restrictive should not be at tlie expense of the educational, from which all true reforms must come." The question states the theory of every prohibition- ist. The only error being in leaving the inference that restrictive measures are not educational. All laws educate. 10th Question. "Will not the conflict of society produced by efforts to enforce extreme measures re(iuire so much attention that the ediicctional forces of temperance, as well as of other social evils, will be lost sight of? " The temperance organizations in this country that are paying the most money to push on the educational temperance work are fighting hardest for prohibition. The Good Templars, whom I have the honor of repre- senting in my ow^n state as their chief, officer, and in the world as chairman of their literature committee, have always fought for prohibition, but with that work they have always pressed reformatory and edu- cational work ; to-day they are paying many thousands of dollars to circulate literature among the freed men of the South, and none of the literature is prohibition literature per se. The Good Templars pay men to go up and down among the colored people, and teach them the a-b-c of temperance. In this state to-day, ladies and gentlemen, the Good Templars are seeking to put text-books into the schools to teach the principles of physiology and temperance ; and they are circulating documents, not only upon the prohibitory phase, but every other phase of tlie re- form. The moral suasionists who arc fighting prohi- bition do not give a dollar for the educational work. Show me a moral-suasion, anti-prohibition organization in this state or in America that has ijiven a thousand n ■I 4'- 'I 154 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. !; dollars in the past year to teach temperance to the people, and I will show you a white crow. The or- ganizations that have done most to educate the people, the most to save our boys, the most to pick up the drunkards, are the organizations that say : " We will step down in the gutter, and with one hand lift out the drunkard, while with the other we vote to close the place that made him a drunkard." If those who claim to work most for moral suasion ever did anything for educational temperance, then I would see sense in the question. Instead of working for temperance, they remain idle during the year, and as soon as the temperance fight begins, instead of fighting the liquor traffic, they are out with clubs to fight temperance men. I have learned to doubt the temperance principles of a man who never does any- thing for temperance, but who is continually attacking temperance workers and lending aid and comfort to the enemy. In the late war, men who gave aid and comfort to the enemy were called " copperheads." I don't know what you would call these, for they are of a meaner and viler type. " By their works ye shall know them." Who are the so-called moral-suasion temperance men working for and associating with to-day ? Take the history of the ministerial apostates who are fight- ing prohibition in this state, and find what they have done for temperance within the past year. How many drinking men have they picked up ? How many temperance meetings have they held ? How many temperance text-books have they circulated ? How many temperance papers have they supported ? " By their fruits ye shall know them." A man who receives pay from the drunkard-makers for preaching a tem- perance doctrine which will make every liquor-seller and drunkard-maker shout amen, is a fraud, and had better own that he gets pay from the devil direct. QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. 155 )rt to and ' I Eire of shall 11th Question. "Can temperance organizations hope to legislate men into habits of sobriety ? " The only men who ever said you could are the men who advocate license. Temperance men do not pro- pose to legislate a man sober ; they propose to legislate men out of the business of making men drunk. " Li- cense men to make drunkards, hire officers to arrest them, build prisons in which to instruct them not to drink," is the license advocate's plan. A poor man goes into a dram-shop and gets drunk. In the state of Nebraska I have never known a rich man to get drunk. "Why," you say, "that is strange !" The statutes of Nebraska make drunkenness a misde- meanor. I have met men with plug hats, carrying a cane, who could not walk on the sidewalk. I thought they were drunk. I looked in the police court record the next morning, and I saw they were not drunk. I have seen laboring men who could walk with little difficulty. I looked 'in the police court record the next morning, and found that they were drunk. I do not know how it works in Iowa, but in the state where I live the young snobs, who never do an honest day's work, who live on their papas until they find a girl who is fool enough to marry them, and then live on her papa, never get drunk. If they are found in a condition resembling drunkenness, by the police, they are helped home. If they cannot be taken home, thej'^ will be taken to a hotel, and their head sponged. If the man who works gets drunk, he is always punished. Do you suppose, as a matter of fact, that a policeman would arrest a man who has money ? The workmen of this country have long enough stood by this system which makes it a crime for a poor man to do what a rich man may do with impunity. The poor man is arrested by the police officer, and put into the 'cooler." The next morning he is brought before the police court, and what is the result ? The saloon-keeper got half of his money, the police officer, through the police 'I I /. f^'\ t .! 4; '^i. 156 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. !l! [v ^1; II; • s- , 1, magistrate, gets the other half, and the poor devil has not a cent left, and the license people cry : " Serve him right ; he ought to have been punished." Come with me to some wretched part of your cities, and I will show you the ragged form of that man's wife, show you his boy and girl with naked feet, and after you have seen them in their wickedness and poverty, tell me who is being punished. One night I sat in my office,* preparing a brief — it was very late, about three o'clock in the morning — and there came a knock. I went to the door, and there stood one of our city policemen. I asked : " What do you want ? " He said : " I went down to the coal-yards. I was sent down there to look after the coal. As I went out to the cars I heard some one moaning in one of those little wretched shanties, and when I was coming back I knocked at the door, and was admitted ; and I tell 5'^ou, Mr. Finch " — and the tears came into his eyes — " I think they are starving ! I built a fire for them. Just think," said he, "of the poor thing, star>7ing to death on this bitter cold night ! " The words came direct from his big Irish heart. I said to him : " Jim, where did you get the coal ? " He said it was none of, my business. "I came up town. Mr. Finch," he said ; " the restaurants are all closed ; I saw a light in youi- window, and thought yon would help me." I said : " Certainly." I went home and called my wife. A basket was packed. My wife dressed and went with me. It was a bitter night in December. We went down the streets of that city, out in that wretched section, and went into that home. You ladies have, perhaps, seen such homes. There was no need of words to tell that they were suttering. There sat the poor woman in her wretchedness. My wife asked what she could do for her. She straightenNS ASKED HY TIIK .MTRY ANSWEHKt). IGl 1» a a . , to is a the Ifavor )enly [ed to the hivv, and the otlior political party a cowan 1, pro- hibition will bo between tlie "devil and the deep sea," and will remain largely a dead letter on your statute books. Unless one of the })resent parties shall, in its state and national platform, declare in favor of passing and enforcing prohibition, a party will be formed which will carry the measure to victory. Boobies in tlie science of government may prate about settling this as a non-partisan question, but persons who have had experience in public life, who know what lever is necessary to move great dangers from the path of governmefft, will not indulge in such idle fanci« les. Kith Question. " What is your opinion of tho succuhh of pro- hibition as triod in Maine i " Prohibition has been a success wherever tried. It is truly a wonder that it lias, for it has never had a fair trial. The state has branded the business of mak- ino; drunkards as a crime. The influence of the 1 f 162 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. succeeded. Let us examine the evidence, to see if this is not true. Remember the rule of law to be : " Hearsay evidence is uniformly he) 'I incompetent to establish any specific fact, which, in its nature, is susceptible of being proved by witnesses who can speak from their own know- ledge." The learned author who lays down the rule says : " That this species of testimony supposes some thing better, which might be adduced in the particular case, is not the sole ground of its exclusion. Its extrinsic weakness, its incompetency to satisfy the mind as to the existence of the fact, and^e frauds which may be practised under its cover, combine to support the rule that hearsay evidence is totally inad- missible." The prohibitory law of Maine is on trial. You are the jury. The evidence produced must be such evi- dence as would be received in a court of justice. The enemies of the law open their side of the case with the statement that the law is a failure. They are asked to produce their witnesses. They offer news- paper articles written by irresponsible, anonymous cor- respondents, and put men upon the stand to swear : " I heard it did not prohibit." Would such evidence be admissible to prove anything ? In a court it would be rejected as hearsay. Cross-examine one of these witnesses : " You stated prohibition was a failure in Maine. Tell the jury what you know about it." " I think 1 read about it in a paper." ''When?" " This morning." " What paper was it published in ?" " The Chicago Tribune." " Was it an original article or a copied cie ?" • " It was copied from the New York Sun" " From what source did the Sun get its informa- tion ? " 11 1 i:1l 1*^ QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. 163 Laine. " I do not know." " Do you wish to swear that you know anything about the results of prohibition in Maine ? " " Only what I read." " That is not an answer to the question. Do you know anything about it ? " " No." The prohibitionists now call United States Senator Frye, ot* Maine. " Mr. Frye, where do you reside ? " " In the state of Maine." "Do you frequently visit different parts of the state?" " I do." " Are you familiar with the practice in your state courts ? " " I am." " And know something of the moral and social con- dition of the people in your state ? " " I do." " Tell the jury how the prohibitory law has affected your state ? " " I can, and do, from my own personal observation, unhesitatingly affirm tliat the consumption of intoxi- cating liquors is not to-day one-fourth so great as it was twenty years ago ; that, in the country portions of the state, the sale and use have almost entirely ceased ; that the law itself, under a vigorous enforce- ment of its provisions, has created a temperance senti- ment which is marvellous, and to which opposition is powerlcos. In my opinion, our remarkable temperance reform of to-day is the legitimate child of that law." Call Hon. Hannibal Hamlin. Mr. Hamlin is asked the questions which qualify him as a witness, and testifies : " I concur in the statements made by Mr. Frye. Of the great good produced by the prohibitory liquor law of Maine, no man can doubt, who has seen its results. It has been of immense value." i: ■p" 1: ■ * •i I'il ■. " 164 THK PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. Ccall Jamos G. Blaine. He is qualified as a witness, and testifies : " The people of Maine are industrious and provident, and wise laws have aided them. They are sober, earnest and thrifty. Intemperance has steadily de- creased in the state, since the first enactment oi the prohibitory law, until now it can be said with truth that there is no equal number of people in the Anglo- Saxon world, among whom so small an amount of intoxicating liquor is consumed, as among the six hundred and titty thousand inhabitants of Maine." The list is continued until every leading public man in Maine has testified, and each swears to the same thing. The records of the courts, prisons and alms- houses are oiiered to corroborate these witnesses and the case is given to you. Suppose in a case involving five hundred dollars the same class of witnesses had been called — which side would you give the verdict ? Would you believe the newspaper clippings and idle stories by interested parties, or disinterested witnesses like Frye, Hamlin and Blaine ? A question of veracity is raised by the testimony. Either the stories offered by the liquor men are false, or Frye, Blaine, Hamlin, Perham, Ding- ley, and others, lie. In determining which evidence is false, you must stop and see who has reason for lying. If prohibition is a success, it destroys the liquor busi- ness. If the people in your state can be made to be- lieve prohibition a failure, and by such belief be led to defeat the amendment, the liquor will continue ; hence the liquor-dealers have a financial reason for lying. What reason has Blaine for testifying falsely in this case ? Will he gain anything financially by so doing ? No. Will he advance his political interest by so doing ? No. The same is true of the other wit- nesses called by the prohibitionists. If the evidence in that case is taken and considered as it would be in a court of justice, the verdict must be "Prohibition is a success in Maine." ^ QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED. 105 The evidence which the liquor men bring from Kan- sas is of the same character as that brouorht afjainst the law in Maine. The prohibitionists bring St. John and other state officers who testify to tlie success of the law. In addition, I wish to call your attention to the admissions of the liquor men themselves. They are the parties in interest and their admissions may certainly be accepted as evidence. My talented friend, Col. B'rank J. Sibley, wishing to ascertain from the liquor men themselves how the law was working, requested a friend to write, at his dictation, to a num- ber of ex-liquor-sellers asking what were the chances to start a saloon in Kansas. Let me read one answer : "Clay Center, Kansas, June 10, 1882. "Dear Friend : — I write you a few lines to let you. know that I received your letter a few days ago. You don't want to come to Kansas to start a saloon unless you want to get busted. Kansas is a hell of a country. I just laid out four weeks in jail for selling beer, and I got enouo'h of it. Don't come to Kansas to start a ih saloon. Joe. Montel." >ing- ^ce is dng. )usi- be- le led inue ; iOf [Isely )y so it by wit- lence Ibe in on is Another, written in German, translated, reads : " BvAmv, Kansas, May 21, 1882. "Your letter I have received, and as you require me to let you know what the prospects for selling beer and wine, — answer, none at all to begin a saloon, be- cause the temperance people will not let you sell any- thinof. John Ebehi.e." I hold in my hands copies of letters received !jy Mr. Sibley from ex-liquor-sellers in eleven diftercnt towns and cities of Kansas, all makiniTj substantiallv the same statements. In view of all the facts, can I do oilier than answer, PRuniiiiTiON is a success? Gentlemen, voters, that is our case. Take it, and as 166 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 1'!' Hi: a jury, bound J^yibe. most sacred obligation — your honor as citizens — pass upon the evidence and argu- ments. The evidence in regard to the guilt of the traffic is not contradicted. No attempt is made by the liquor advocates to explain. The evidence all says : "The liquor traffic is guilty;" and I have no doubt what will be your verdict.. To you, then, we submit our indictment. We sub- mit their threats; our evidence. We submit their blackguardism, false assertions, bulldozing and defiance of law ; our proofs, uncontradicted and undeniable ; — and we ask you, citizens, voters, to render a verdict which shall stay this foul curse. Prayers, tears and persuasion have been tried ; but the lecherous, licenti- ous traffic still destroys the youth, manhood and virtue of the land. Richelieu, the French cardinal, whose niece was pur- sued by like bold and shameless enemies, plucked from his breast a cross, and drawing the circle of the church of Rome around her, hurled in their faces the defiance : " Look where she stands ! Around her form I draw the awful circle of our kingly church. Step but a foot within the hallowed line, And on thy head — yea, though it wear a crown — I'll hurl the curse of Rome." Gentlemen, all other remedies have fa-iled. We ask you to draw the protecting circle of the constitution around our homes, and say to this " black death," " Thou shalt not cross these thresholds." THE PROPERTY OF SCARBORO PUBLIC LI3RARY. i I VII. THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE MOVEMENT PROVED BY ITS SUCCESS. ask ition lath," Stenographic Report of an Address Delivered by Hon. John B. Finch, at Decatur, Illinois, March 30, 1882. Ladies and Gentlemen : The liquor traffic in this country is based upon ignorance and superstition. The acme of liquor-drinking civilization is debauchery, vice and crime. The hope of the temperance workers must be, the moral, social and intellectual eleva- tion of the race. The two armies now arrayed in this country are, — on the one hand, all that is debauched and vile ; and on the other, the highest hopes of the world. Such a battle-field as this must be interesting to every lover of his race, every friend of humanity, and every one who believes in a future life, and in a personal God. Aye, and it must be interesting to those who only aspire to see here, in this life, the in- tellectual and physical development of the race, the curbing of animal passions, and the restraining of VICIOUS Ignorance. Members of temperance organizations and societies recently formed, into whose minds the light has come in these latter days, in the fresh enthusiasm of souls just brought from semi-darkness into the light, ex- claim : " The principles underlying the reform are self- evident. The criminal results of the traffic are not denied. It stands a criminal without a defender. Why is it not overthrown ?" To some, this impatience and 1 > 1 \^ hi I li '.■ i i! 168 THK I'EOFLE VH. THE LIQUOR TIIAFFIC. the loss of faith in humanity, which always results from it, may seem reasonable ; but to me, looking from the stand-point of one of the oldest temperance organi- zations in this country — the Independent Order of Good Templars — which dates its labors from the year 1852, the reasons why the reform moves so slowly are self-evident. It is a slow work to lift humanity from a lower to a higher plane of civilization ; it is a difficult work to disabuse the minds of the people of delusions long cherished, and of ideas which are strengthened by their avarice, by their intemperance, and by their strong party affiliations. ^The impressions made upon the brain in childhood are never effaced. In the language Qf one of the greatest of living scientists, " Scars on the brain can be removed only by the destruction of the brain." Teach a child a lie is a truth, and such instructions will influence him, even after manhood's years have convinced him of the absurdity of his childish instruc- tions. Ask the old men in the audience at what period in their lives they received lasting impressions most readily ; they will answer, " The mind retains most clearly the details of events which transpired when we were between the ages of live and thirty years." I visited an old lady in my native state, New York, some years ago, who was ninety-two years of age. I was sitting and chatting with her, when, interrupt- ing me, she said : " I want to tell you something ;" and then she told me of a wedding that had occurred flft^'-seven years before. She described how the groom was dressed, told who were there, gave their names i-eadily, and the details of the affair as minutely and accurately as though she had been reading from a book. When she had finished her story, 1 said to her, " Mother Stewart, will you tell \\w what you had for dinner yestei-day ?" Putting lu-r han rl 172 THE PEOPLE m. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. the hook and then spit on the worm to make the fish bite more readily, you will spit on the worm yet, though for your life you cannot tell whether fish like tobacco juice or not. From these natural laws and tendencies of the brain we must draw our conclusions. If we would under- stand the conditions of this reform, and what we have to overcome in order to win, we must stop and ask, " What theories, what ideas and what opinions were entertained by the fathers, mothers and teachers of the present generation of men and women of this country in regard to the sale and use of alcoholic liquors?" The question to settle when we come to investigate this movement and judge how rapidly we may succeed is, What teaching, what instruction, and what super- stitions implanted in the brain of this generation have we to overcome ? The liquor business in this country is foimded in superstition. There is not a thitig modern, not a thing intellectual, not a thing elevating about it. The drink- ing customs of this land were born back in the misty past, and every one of them is hoary-headed with superstition and moss-backed with age. They are only remnants of the legends of the past that have come to us, not through the educated minds of the race, but perpetuated in other countries as they have been per- petuated in this country, in the baseness of the lusts and passions of humanity. For a moment let us see in part, if we may, what some of these impressions have been. You know that every one of the drinking customs of this land comes down to us from the pagan worship of devil-gods. A woman takes a glass of wine in her fingers, raises it to her lips — she is imitating the example of the drunken courtesans of Greece, as, amid the revels of Bacchus, they gave up their honor for place and power. A man takes a glass of the nasty, dirty, bitter swill, known as beer, and gulps it down, and, as he rolls into lilili:: THE MOVEMENT PROVED I'KACTK'AHr.E. i7n ?" per- lusts what that lomes . A it to mken ichus, iswill, into the gutter, debauched, and with his manhood soiled and tainted by contact with this heathen relic, he cries out, "Great is Gambrinus, the ^od of beer!" In this city you erect temples to the traditions and institu- tions of Bacchus and Gambrinus, two of the most beastly heathen gfods, and pay more money to con- tinue their worship than you pay for the support of your churches and your common schools. Enter a saloon jvith a young man ; watch him a moment or two, and study the delusion under which he is acting. You know him to be good, kind, and affectionate. What has he in his hand ? It is a glass of liquor. It is a bitter cgld day, and, as he i-aises the glass to his lips, you step up to him and say, " Hold on, Tom ; why are you drinking that liquor?" With a face as long as grandmother's face when she told the ghost stories, he tells you he is drinking the liquor " to warm him up." You say to him, " Tom, does drinking liquor warm you up ? Do you not know the physiolo- gists of this country say that is a false idea?"- He says, "I don't know anything about physiologists, and I don't want to." Six months pass, and August with its severe heat is here ; you see the same man enter the saloon, and as you follow him again you see him take up a glass of the same kind of liquor. " Tom," you say, " what are you drinking^ that liquor for V and he tells you with the same long face that it is a fearfully warm day, and he is drinking it " to cool him off." Suppose I were to bring a stove on the platform, fill it with fuel, start a fire, let the stove become hot, dnd then say to one of the little boys who are present to-night, "Come up here, Willie." As he comes at my suggestion, he puts his fingers to the stove and is burned ; he snaps his fingers at me and says, " Oh, you thought you were smart, didn't you ?" Again, it is summer time. Now put in the fuel, start the fire ; the stove gets hot, and I say, " Willie, M 174 THK I'KOl'I.E VH. THK LK^UOU TKAKKIC. .>'■' '"'■ 'l«»lj; m ; ft'' I HI' l"v ■HI ! 1 1 m ^ \mm\ b ! 1, , liiiL come up here and sit down on this «tove ; it will cool you ott'." What would be the answer of the child ? " It" fire burns in the winter, it will burn in the sum- mer." Any child will readily recognize the foolishness of the drinker's position. And yet, men, full-f^rown men, men with gray hairs, men with wrinkles on their brows, drink whiskey as fire in the winter to warm them, and wliiskey as fire in the sunnner to cool them off' I Will you laugh at grandmother who taught me to believe in ghosts, if you talk like that, my friends :* Again, see a man in a saloon drinking licjuor " to warm him up." If it warm^s him it must be fuel and food. The heat of the body is generated like the heat of the stove, by combustion of fuel taken in at the mouth. The drinker, if his theory is correct, is simply taking in firewood. With this he loads his physical system all day, and at night starts for his home out on the prairies of this country. The next morning he is found by the roadside, dead. What killed him ? All day yesterday he was taking alcoholic firewood to warm him up, and if his theory that alcohol generates heat be true, he must have burned to death. The coroner's jury say, " He froze." Nine out of every ten men who have perished with cold in this northern land, labored under the foolish, idiotic superstition, that alcoholic liquor adds heat to the physical system, and thus drank that which reduced their power of endurance and hastened their death. Again, a broad-shouldered man enters a saloon. You ask : " Charlie, why are you drinking ? " He replies : " I am drinking alcoholic liquor because I have a diflficult job on hand, and I want to add a little to my strength." " How does alcoholic liquor give you strength ? " " I do not know, but it does." " Do you not know that alcoholic liquors act as the TIIK MOVKMENT PROVED PRACTK'AHLE. I7r> cool hiia ( sum- hness rrowii L their warm cool me to (Isr [>r " to el and ic beat ut the simply bysieal ! out on ■ he is '? All ood to neratcis The ery ten lor them stition, system, wer of saloon. Ibecause add a Ih?" as the whip to th 180 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 1^ I* ',ii: V employed in running trains in any capacity who are known to drink intoxicating liquors will be forthwith discharged." These rules are fair samples of the rules of all the railroads and manufactories of this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Fif tyyears ago a man who employed laborers thought it was necessary they should drink. To-day the great contractors and business men of this country give the preference to abstainers, and are frowning upon men who use intoxicating liquors. I recently saw in a newspaper published in this state, an advertisement for a bar-keeper. It was an adver- tisement by a saloon-keeper for help ; the last words of the advertisement said : *• The applicant must be a total abstainer." Suppose two young men of equal physical strength, mental force and education, should contemplate going to Chicago to seek situations in business houses. A leading banker in that city wishes the services of a clerk. These young men learn of the vacant clerkship, and each wishes to secure the position. They know they must obtain it on the record of their past lives and business qualifications. What is the record of their past lives ? At the commencement of his business career one of these young men made up his mind to win ; he counted the cost of success ; looked out over the future before him and realized that to be successful he must have knowledge, health and good habits. Carrying out this idea he took the money he earned in the store, bought books, and spent his leisure hours, few though they have been, in study ; if he wanted pleasure he sought it in the society of respectable young men and ladies of his acquaintance ; when the Sabbath came he went to the Sunday-school, and, although considered old fogy- L.., he was known to be an attendant at church. The other young man thought he would have a good lone of iimted letore have it this lought they (Ufifht of 'n les mi to |t'ogy- good THE MOVEMENT PROVED PRACTICABLE. th( 181 ■l! beginning of his business career, and then catch up. He took his money and went to the saloon to play billiards, drink beer, and have a good time. These young men with such records take steps to get the clerkship. The former goes to his minister and says: " Will you give me c. certificate of character to the gentleman in Cldcago ? " and the minister writes : " I know this young gentleman to be moral, honest, and truly worthy. He attends Sunday-school regularly, and is a member of my church; he is sober, temperate, and industrious." To this letter the minister signs his name. The young man next goes to his employer and says : " Will ypu give me a recommendation ? " and his employer gives him a certificate to the same general eflf'ect as that received from his pastor. The other young man goes to the saloon-keeper with whom he has associated, and says : " I want a certain position in Chicago ; will you give me a certificate to the banker ? " The dram-seller writes : "' He is a good fellow, and can play the best game of billiards of any man in the city. He can play seven-up and win five times out of six ; he can drink more beer in the same length of time than any other man of my acquaintance. He is a bright, jolly man." The young man then goes to his employer and asks him for a reconmiendation, and he receives a certificate relating the same general facts. Both young men go to Chicago, ask for the banker, and la}?- their recommendations before him. Does it matter whether the president of the bank drinks beer or not ? Whether he is an infidel or Christian '■! Whether he is a prohibitionist or license man ? No matter what his personal views or habits may be, he will hire the man who comes with credentials certify- ing to a record of total abstinence and morality. An acquaintance of mine wanted a clerk. The idhii was an infidel and an habitual drinker. A boy said to me, " Will you give me a credential to Mr. ?" \ \ ^ 1 182 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. t'^ ! U ;■ 1 I •■■.II 4: I simply certified to the fact that I knew the youth ; that he was a good Christian boy ; a total abstainer, a member of the Good Templar lodge, and that he was thoroughly industrious, studious and honest. The boy applied for the position. I afterwards learned that some five or six other boys applied for the same position. Some of the boys were reckless and fast. The boy I gave the recommendation got the position. A few days afterward, passing down the street, I put my arm through the arm of the gentleman above alluded to, who had employed the boy I recommended, and said : " Mr. , tell me why you hired that boy ; he was a total abstainer and a Chrif^tian, and the other boys who applied for the position could drink beer, play cards, and disregard the Sabbath, which you approve. Why did you hire the total abstainer ? " " Oh," said he, " such principles arc good to have around a counting-room." Go where you will up and down this nation to-day, the temperance work is rolling humanity steadily up- ward. The business-man recognizes this truth, that the man who drinks liquor is injured intellectually, physically and morally by such use. This is one line of advance. Look at another. The Rev. J. B. Dunn, the celebrated author of the " History of Temperanoe," gives a bill presented to and paid by one of the oldest churches of Hartford, Conn. It was during the year 1784 — less than a hundred years ago. There had been an assembly of ministers to ordain a young aspirant for ministerial honors. The church had sent the visiting clergy to an inn at Hart- ford to be entertained, telling the innkeeper to present the bill to the church for payment. The bill was a copy of the original bill presented by the innkeeper to the church for the expenses of the ministers, and is as follows : 1^ .■ B' m THE MOVEMENT PROVED PRACTICABLE. 188 )uth ; ler, a e was e boy . that same fast, dtion. I put above snded, ■j bov ; id the drink ;h you ?" I have :o-day, ly up- that ually, of the to and Conn, indred listers The Hart- resent jwas a Iper to ll is as The South Society in Hartford, Conn., paid the following bill for the entertainment of the ministers at the ordination of a pastor : May 4, 1784— To keeping ministers — .4l s. d. 2 mugs tody 2 4 5 segars 5 10 1 pint wine 3 May 5— ' To 3 bitters 1> To 3 breakfasts 3 (J To 15 boles punch 1 10 To 24 dinners 1 1(> To 11 bottles wine 3 (> 1 To 5 mugs flip 5 10 To 3 boles punch To 3 boles tody 3 (J £7 11 The ministers' toddy and wine cost the church a little over twenty dollars for two days, and there were only thirteen ministers entertained, and liquors were far cheaper in those days than now. What would be thought of such a bill presented to a church in Illinois to-day, and paid by them without complaint ? Four years since, speaking in Lodi, Wis., to the Order of Good Templars, at the conclusion of the meeting an old gentleman came up to me and said, "I want to tell you something. I am a superannuated Baptist minister." I learned afterward that he was one of the most loved and honored men of that denom- ination in the state. "I commenced preaching in llion. New York. While preaching there a young brother was to be ordained in Ogdensburg, in the northern part of the state. There were no railroads then. I was to go up the Mohaw^k river to Kome, then up the Black river : another was to come from Oswego, another from Canada, and another from Plattsburg. We met on a certain day, held a meeting in the afternoon and another in the evening. At night I was to sleep with tho brother from Oswego. After I TT ■ ' if Hf ■ : •:i R 1 iR 1 HI M ll yi •i V t 184 THE PEOPLE /'.S. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. we went to our room I opened my satchel to get my Bible, but found that I had left it at the church. My companion said, ' Have my Bible,' and opened his satchel to get it. Under it were four or five bottles of whiskey. You ask me what he had it for ; if he had it to drink, and whether he offered it to me. No, he did not ask me to drink with him, nor offer to drink any of it himself. I will tell you how he came to have it in his possession. His son ran a distillery, and as the father was to preach on this long trip through Canada and Northern New York, he had taken the whiskey along as samples, and acted as a commercial agent for the distillery on the trip, preaching and selling whiskey." A few weeks later I stood before an immense audi- ence in northern New York, and related the story near where the incident was said to have occurred. After the meeting was over a man came to me and said, " Why did you assail me ? " I said to him, " I do not know you." Said he, " I am the man who peddled the whiskey." Then he introduced himself. I called on him the next morning, and for more than an hour I was entertained by reminiscences, as he told me of the customs and practices of his early ministry. He said, " In that day ministers, deacons, class-leaders and church members drank — in short, the drinking customs were almost universal." In 1835, a large distillery was run at Salem, Mass., by an old deacon. Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D., passed along the road and saw the sign, " Distillery — Corn wanted — Bibles to sell." This suargested his celebrated cartoon, in '^hich he pictured devils as run- nins: the distillery, and called it Deacon Giles' Distil- lery. The coat fitted, and Cheever wns arrested, tried by a Christian jury, convicted of malicious libel, and sent to jail. A close examination of the case convinces me that the verdict was based upon Dr. Cheever's statements against the Christian character of the THE MOVEMENT PROVED PRACTICAHLE. 185 3t my My d his ties of had it le did k any ave it as the lanada liskey nt for selling audi- y near After d said, do not led the led on our I of the said, s and stoms [Mass., D.D., lery— id his is run- listil- I, tried II, and Vinces iever's f the deacon distiller. In that day ministers, church officials and Christians not only used, but manufactured and sold, intoxicating drinks. The public did not look upon these acts as degrading Christian character, or inconsistent with a Christian life. To-day the minis- ters of the Lord Jesus Christ are the veteran corps of our whole reform work. Other brigades, and other corps, and other armies are in the fight, but the whole centre of the movement rests on the Christian centre. I have never yet in the bitterest strife called upon a minister in Nebraska for assistance and been refused. As I go up and down through the state of Nebraska I do not ask the question, " Is such a minister a temper- ance man?" I know he is. I know he could not preach in our state if he was not. Even the denomi- nations there, which in the east are negative in the movement, are quite positive and aggressive in the west. A clergyman who spoke in this state only a few weeks ago in favor of saloons, was told by the Episcopal church — his church — that his resignation would be accepted, and he be given an opportunity to step down and out, which he did. Look at another line of advance. Fifty or sixty years ago the sale of liquor was open, and as common as the sale of tea, coffee, dry-goods and groceries. It was piled up in every grocery store, and men who sold dry goods said they must have liquor to treat their customers. It was not regarded as a disreputable business. It was not deemed necessary to screen the door of the grocery, where it was to be found, from the observation of the general public, and the business of selling was not regarded as of so injurious and deadly a nature that men must petition the city authorities to be permitted to engage in its sale. Look at it now. In Maine, New Hampshire, Ver- mont and Kansas the whole business is outlawed. While in license states like Nebraska everybody knows it is looked upon as disreputable to patronize a 13 i i- \ s^ ;l r 186 THE PEOIM.E ^;s. THE I.K^UOK TRAFFIC. drunkard-factory, and that he who enfjages in the sale is regarded as a bad man. To-day, in niy state, the very fact that a man wants to sell licjuor is in the • eyes of the law prmia facie evident- l^'iat he is a scoundrel. A man may may come to Nebraska to-morrow and desire to take out a license to sell liquor. If he goes to a city council and asks for a license, the very fact that he applies for such a license is deemed prima facie evidence that he is disreputable, dishonest, and, before the council can grant it, he must get thirty freeholders, residents of the ward wherein the saloon is to be located, to certify he is decent and moral. He must get a character made to order as you get a coat, and then, when he gets his character made (I suppose our greenback friends would call it a fiat character), the law believes every man who signed the petition lied, and says, despite the fact that the would-be drunkard-maker has their certificates, he must give a bond of five thousand dollars, signed by three good sureties, to indemnify the people for the evil his busi- ness will create. No man is now bold enoui^h to stand up and defend the business upon its merits. The drunkard-makers themselves favor "judicious license laws." No man dare advocate taking the chains off* this old curse and letting it go free. Look at another line of advance. There was a time in the history of this reform when everywhere, in almost every house in the land, people expected to find wine or some kind of liquor on the table or on the sideboard. It was deemed useful and hospitable, and necessary on all occasions. Now, the custom of turning the parlor into a bar- room, and using a beautiful daughter as a bar-tender to manufacture drunkards, who will afterwards curse . the fair hands that tempted them to take the first glass, is rapidly becoming obsolete everywhere. These, ladies and gentlemen, are a few of the changes sii THE MOVEMENT PIKJVEI) PKACTICAHLE. 187 } sale }, the 1 the in a r and goes '• fact yrimci , and, thirty saloon I. He L coat, ippose acter), etition uld-be [rive a ) good busi- stand The license Ins oft' time jre, in ted to or on itable, bar- tender curse first langes made by persistent work to educate the masses and lift mankind out of the foff of inrnorance into the sun- lijxht of knowledfje and scientific truth. The strunfnrle has been severe, but no cause has ever had grander heroes. Years ago, when Dr. Hunt, who led the reform in the east, went on the platform, the common argument of the drunkard-makers was rotten eeffjs. At one time when eggs were thrown at him he stopped in his speech and said : " Gentlemen, let them come ; your arguments are just like your business." I look back over the band of workers and wish I could mention them all — jxrand men and women who have stood shoulder to shoulder in the contest. What cause was ever supported by clearer heads and warmer hearts ? What has this work accomplished ? Fifty years ago the business world furnished liquor to its employees ; to-day it makes abstinence from the use of liquor a rule for workmen. Fifty years ago the Church, by its example and in- fluence, sustained the drink customs and traffic ; to-day its leaders are fifjhtinof the traffic to the death. Fifty years ago the liquor traffic was respectable ; to-day it is either outlawed or a criminal bound with the chains of law. Fifty years ago society held it fashionable to furnish wine to guests ; to-day it is regarded vulgar and low. Yes, the line of the reform has advanced ; but, while proud of the advance of public sentiment, we would not have you forget that all along the line of march of these years there are other evidences of successful, vic- torious work — graves of men whose redeemed spirits, now in heaven, look back to rejoice that this move- ment came to save. Let me give you an instance : 1 addressed an audi- ence in a western city some years ago. At the close of the talk an old man — muddy, dirty, drunk — came and reached out his hand. His face was bloated and Ik ' !l IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 '-Ilia iiiM '■■ m " m Z2 2.0 14 llj.6 V] em. ' oy VI <5>1 ^l %^ >/ /A ¥^w '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 't 19S THE PEOPLE V8. THE LigUOK TRAFFIC. spent a large part of his n»oney in a dry pfoods store, one in a boot and shoe store, one in a Iiardware store, and the other commenced last nig)it, and is continuing to-day to spend it in a saloon. Each of these men has a family to provide for and educate. Next Wednesday we will visit the homes of these men. We enter the home of the man who spent his money with the dry goods merchant, and ask what his family received in exchange for his hard earned dollars. His wife would show us the new dresses, and say : " We needed the clothes, the merchant needed the money, so we traded," — an exchange of values benefiting both parties. The same answer, simply varied to the articles purchased, would be given by the wives of the men who traded at the boot and hardware stores ; but when we enter the home of the saloon customer to aik, the misery, wretchedness, and poverty would answer before the lips could utter the question. Tha saloon takes materhil values from the customer, and returns some- thing worse than nothing. Far better for the man if the drunkard-maker had simply robbed him, for then he would have had a clear head and sound muscles to go on and provide for his family, — while by pur- chasing and drinking liquor he is temporarily unfitted for work, and sent home a maddened brute to abuse and insult those he should love and protect. To illus- trate more fully let me ask a li<|Uor-dealer a hypo- thetical question : Mr. Dealer, suppose a young man, standing high in social and business circles, commenced to patronize you to-day, and does so for the next ten years, all the while increasing the time spent in your saloon, and the money spent at your bar. At the end of the ten years,, what will you have done for that man in return for all the money and time he has given you ? Must not the dealer answer : " He would have been better socially, morally, intellectually, and financially if he had never entered a saloon." Another, please : Suppose a man with a family patronizes you WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 199 pur- Itted ^buse iUus- '^our end Ithat iven lave land [her, lyou the same way, for the same time, what will you do for his family in return for the father's money and time ? The answer must be : " The family would have been better oft', and the children had a better chance for manhood, if the father had never entered a salo(m." No liquor-dealer dare deny that the whole tendency of the saloon is to degrade its customers. The bar- room, under whatever name, is a nursery where criminals and paupers are bred — a cradle where vice is fondled and rocked. Its path through the a^es is stained with blood and tears, and made horrible by the countless skeletons of its victims, who, decoyed by its influence from the up-hill path of denial and duty into the by-way of sensual pleasure and drunkenness, have then been dragged, by the cravings of diseased bodies, in disgrace and madness to dishonored death. Judged by its own record the traffic is a curse to all the higher elements of manhood and womanhood, a disgrace to our Christian civilization, and an ulcer on the nation's life. That the liquor traffic, and the men engaged in it, constantly outrage that part of society not engaged in the traffic, follows from what we have stated, and the punishment and destruction of the traffic must come from the society founded on the relations of right — the state. It is the duty of the state to destroy this traffic, and thereby' prevent its results. If I should ask a schoolboy, " What is Massa- chusetts ?" he would probably get a geography and say, " That is a picture of it." Of course the child would be wrong, for the map would be a picture of the house where Massachusetts lives. The land and water do not constitute a state. The land and water were here before Massachusetts came. Birds do not organize states. Beasts do not organize states. A state is a society, and a society, as before stated, is composed of ethical, reasonable human beings. The science of its life and powers is called politics. The power which it ;?f 4 m 200 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. \H\ exercises is inherent ir the individuals that compose it. It is the duty of every person to understand the science of the right use of the powers delegated to the state, viz., politics. The old cry, " Keep moral questions^ out of politics," is the most damnable political heresy ever taught by empty-headed demagogues. In this country every man is a political factor, bound by his honor and patriotism to do his duty, on all occasions, for the upbuilding and development of this kind. Every influence that makes the man better makes the government better, and to keep a reform out of politics, it must be buried so it shall not influence the in- dividual who is a unit of the state. What the country needs is more school-houses, prayer-meetings and pul- pits, and less saloons, gambling-hells and houses of prostitution in politics. Politics, made respectable, is the great need of the times. The effects of the use of alcoholic liquors on the individual as a social being would justify the state in destroying any trade that encouraged its use, but the political effects of the use make it imperative that it should do so. A pure ballot-box, made pure by intelligent electors, is necessary if the republic is to live. A man who will corrupt the ballot-box is a traitor to the govern- ment. A man who will buy a vote will sell his vote if he gets elected. A man who will corrupt a voter will accept a bribe if he succeeds in winning official position. But notwithstanding these admitted truths, voting in our large centres of population is a farce, and an honest count a thing of the past. For years the question asked of Presidential candidates has been, " Can he carry New York state ? " This means, " Can he carry New York city ? " or in other words, " Will the liquor traffic of New York support him ? " The infected political centres of the cities are the slums. A slum is licensed grog-shops gone to seed. It is election morning. Here stands an American workman in front of his cottage home. Inside are wife WHAT, WHY, AND HOW 201 mpose id the to the jstion* lieresy n this by his asions, kind. :es the lolitics, ■jhe in- ountry id pul- jses of able, is ! use of ,1 being de that the use jrican wife and baby boy. The workman owns his home, has a good job, is sober, intelligent, happy. Offer him ten dollars for his vote and he would knock vou down. He is a man with a man's honor and conscience. In the hands of such men the ballot-box is safe. To- morrow let the same man enter a saloon and commence to drink, and for ten years take the same course of ' political training the saloon gives its customers, and at the end of that time graduate a sot. Election morning comes and finds him in front of the tenement where poverty has driven his wife, who takes in wash- ing and does the most menial work to support herself and children. He is a drunkard, ragged, dirty, hungry, and worse still, the diseased craving for liquor almost drives him wild. He has no money, no work, and he could not work if he had ; conscience is stupefied, will- power gone. A villain offers him five dollars for his vote and he sells it. Such are the political results of the alcoholic liquor traffic. A corrupt ballot-box means corrupt voters. To pass laws to guard against corruption of the ballot-box and license institutions to corrupt voters is working at the wrong end. You can- not expect a fountain to rise higher than its source. The effect of alcoholic drinks on the user makes him, to a certain extent, the slave of the liquor dealer who will supply the stimulant his diseased system craves. Dishonest politicians have long recognized this fact, and left money with the dealer, with instructions to set up the drinks and fix things with the boys. To such an extent has this corruption of the voter in centres of population been carried, that intelligent thinkers, like Kasson of Iowa, and Winchell of Michi- gan, do not hesitate to pronounce our form of govern- ment a failure when applied to great cities. The user of alcoholic stimulants is not only unfitted as a voter, but for other public duties, as witness, juror, or officer. Four thousand bar-rooms in the city of Boston, open six days in the week and eighteen hours each day, are 14 V I ill 202 THE PEOPLE V8, THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. :. constantly turning out men thus unfitted for their duties as citizens and electors. That the state should destroy the liquor traffic has ceased to be a debatable question ; that the question must be determined by political action the liquor dealers themselves have made certain. They are not content to carry on their business as other tradesmen do, but have banded them- selves together as political autocrats, and decreed the death of any party that refuses to be their pliant tool. They have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard. In the year 1875, Louis Shade, attorney of the Beer Brewers' Association, and editor of the Washington Sentinel, said: "If we find that one or the other political party is against us, we must support the opposition party that is not against us. The principle of self-protection must, in such instances, be our only guide — first beer, and then politicians. ******** "Support that party that supports you, and go against that which wants to destroy you." In August, 1874, the representatives of the liquor interests of Michigan met in convention, and Resolved, That we believe that national legislation can be secured by co-operation and concert of action, and we hereby pledge ourselves to make this issue one of paramount importance to all others. The following declaration and instruction is from the Liquor Dealers' Advocate : — Resolved, That we will support all political papers advancing the true principles of liberty. Resolved, That we find it necessary, in a business point of view, to patronize only such business men as will work hand in hand with us. In August, 1867, the beer advocates of Chicago met in mass convention, and, after the passage of resolu- tions denouncing Sunday and temperance laws. Resolved, That we firmly stand as one man by these WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 203 declarations, and that no party consideration shall lead us to indorse a platform, or vote for a man, whose course will be in the least doubtful on these conditional points. The Ninth National Beer Congress, held in Newark, N. J., June 2nd, 1869, Resolved, That we hereby reiterate and re-affirm as our standing creed and unchangeable purpose, to use all honorable means to deprive puritanical and tem- perance men of the power which chey have so long held in councils of the political parties of this country. And that, for this purpose, we will support no man for any office who is identified with this illiberal and narrow-minded element. At the 13th National Beer Brewers' Association, held in Cleveland, Ohio, June 4th, 1878, the president, in the last words of the opening address, said : " The last presidential campaign has shown us what unity among us can do. Let our votes and our work in the future be heard from in every direction." Thus an examination of the causes, nature, and results of the disease shows the necessity of state action. An examination of the purposes and powers of the state, shows its power and right to act. An examination of the utterances of the conven- tions representing the traffic shows the state is given the alternative of destroying the traffic, or be/joming the vassal of the liquor organizations, which are yearly growing more powerful by destruction of the citizens of the state. Remember, the use of alcoholic drinks, in all ages and nations, has been proportionate to the public popular facilities for obtaining the supply. if the state wishes to diminish the use, it must destroy the public places where the citizen is tempted to use alcoholic liquors. In the Ohio campaign, a leading political speaker \v ■ I '1 204 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. said, in a public speech : "There is no harm in a glass of beer per se." The next night, a gentleman asked me if there was ; and I, using the answer of my friend, Geo. W. Bain, said, " Per 8e means by itself. Certainly there is no harm in a glass of beer by itself. Place a glass of beer on a shelf, and let it remain there, and it is per se, and will harm no one ; but if you take it from the shelf, and turn it inside a man, then it is no longer per se." The prohibitionists agree with the judge. He says: "There is no harm in a glass of beer per se." We believe the same thing ; and are trying to keep the accursed thing per se, and out of the stomachs of men. To do this work the state is asked to use no new power ; simply to extend the police power of the state over poisoned drinks as it now does over poisoned foods. This power is the power which the state has to protect its own political health. In our govern- ment, all power, not properly delegated to the general government, is reserved to the states, and this police power is one of the reserved powers. In its exer- cise, the state should be governed by its own nature and functions. The state is a political body. The power it exercises is inherent in the people who com- pose it, and is by them delegated to the state for it to use for the public good. The power of the state to accomplish the object that nec«^issitates its existence, depends upon its own health. The state must be healthy as a whole ; and this can only be when its members — counties, towns, villages, and cities — are healthy. The tendencj'^ of vice and crime is to con- gregate. " Birds of a feather flock together." The tendency of society, then, is for bad centres to become wors^ '^nd good centres better. But the state is a whc ..id disease in one part means bad health in other parts of the political organism. A man can not be healthy who has a fever sore on the skin, an ulcer on the arm, and a cancer on the face ; i.-^ither can a , glass asked i£ my itself, itself, emain but if I man, 1 agree [1 in a thing ; 56, and lO new e state )isoned ate has jovern- eneral police exer- nature The lo com- for it Itate to Istence, st be en its , — are ,0 con- The lecome ,e is a llth in in not ulcer lean a What, why, and how. 205 state be healthy with the political ulcers caused by the liquor traffic located on its joints — the great cities. The political health of the state can only be main- tained by bringing the vital power of the whole state to bear on the diseased centres. This leads Ui3 to the objection to one method of state dealing with the liquor traffic, viz., the delegation to towns, cities, and counties of the state, power to pro- hibit the traffic, known as " local option." Counties, towns, and cities are not independent political organ- isms, but simply members or parts of the political body — the state. They assist the state in performing its functions, as the legs and arms of a man assist him. The moral and social conditions of the cities aftect the whole state. The elector in a city votes as an elector of the state. The corruption of a voter in a city means the corruption o* he state. The legislator elected as the tool of th' -cims in the cities, assists in making- laws for the whole state. The political health of New York city has injured the political health of New York state for years. With the tendency of vice to congregate apply the local option principle to the other forms of political and moral disease. If Brighamite Mormons establish a town and have a majority of the voters, let them license polygamy. If prostitutes and their followers are in majority in the city, let them license the social evil. If gamblers and their cappers are in major- ity in the city, let them license gamblii ^. The objec- tion to this would be, the state is a society of justice, and granting vile men and women the power of control, in centres where they congregate, would weaken the power of society to do its work ; besides, the effect of these vices is in no sense local, an I how can the state in justice give the vicious in cities the power to injure the moral people of the country ? The liquor traffic, like all other vile institutions, tends to centralize. It is leaving the country towns and getting in cities 206 THE PKOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. where, by its debauched following, it makes and un- makes the officers who have in charge the enforcement of law. The saloon, by its following, elects the city government, the city government appoints the city police, the police arrest the saloon-keeper for violating the law, a saloon-keeper demands protection from the government that he elected, and the government removes the policeman from the force. The people object, but how can you expect a creature (the govern- ment) to be greater than the creator (the saloon-keeper)? The slums of the cities are simply great ulcers on the body of the state. There is not vitality enough in the cities to remedy the low condition to which they have been brought by the slums. The only hope is to bring the vitality of the whole body to bear on the diseased centres. The objections to the local option are: 1st. The law does not make liquor-selling a crime, but teaches that a majority vote of the people can make it either right or wrong. The effect of such a law is to constantly demoralize public sentiment, because law is always an educator. If it is based on right principles, it educates right ; if on wrong principles, it educates wrong. 2nd. It applies to the municipality, which, if it adopts prohibition, may be surrounded by others granting license. The outlawed liquor-seller knows if he can bring the law into contempt the people will vote for license next year, and everything is favorable for such violation as will bring it into contempt. Under such conditions, prohibition can never have a fair trial. 3rd. Citizens of a town will say, "Drinking men never come to a prohibition town to trade, if there is a license town equally near, and we cannot afford to kill our town even for principle." 4th. Local option delegates power to a municipality to prohibit the traffic, but does not give the municipality the power to fix an adequate penalty to violations. A WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 207 id un- :ement le city le city )lating from nment people overn- eeper)? :ers on ugh in h they )e is to on the option crime, 1 make ,vv is to law is iciples, ucates idopts mting can )te for such ir such ll. men re is a ^o kill )ality )ality IS. A local option law is a license law, with license law pen- alties for violation, which are wholly inadequate to enforce it. Penalties sufficient to destroy the trattic will never be made until the state recognizes the traffic as an outlaw and enemy. License recognizes it as a good thing regulated to destroy bad incidentals. 5th. Local option degrades the struggle into a per- sonal fight. It is the citizen of the town acrainst the saloon-keeper of the town. Many business men who would vote for state action will not vote for local pro- hibition, because it brings the fight into their local affairs. 6th. It is an unsafe principle to introduce into muni- cipal matters, because it subordinates all business in- terests to the one issue of saloon or no saloon. If a first-class business man was nominated for the council, or mayoralty, who favored license, and a man poorly qualified be nominated for the same position who opposed license, prohibitionists, as a matter of principle, would be compelled to vote for the man poorly quali- fied, claiming that a less evil than licensed grog-shops. Each year this issue would be forced. Neighbors who should be friends become enemies, all because an issue of national character has by cowardly politicians been forced into municipal elections, to be fought over every year, with the knowledge that the municipality can never settle it, and the certainty that, though prohibi- tion be adopted, the legislature can change it at anytime, without consulting the municipality. 7th. Prohibition can never be fairly tested by local option. Local option is determined by annual elections. No law changing the social customs of the people, and destroying a social institution, can be honestly tested in a single year. 8th. The people in the cities where the evil element controls, are entitled to protection by the state. It is a truly brave man and leader who would say to the drunkard's wife and child in Cincinnati, "I regret that you live in the city, but as you do, I see no help for •|;:S..; 208 THE PEOPLE VS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. \ 'I you, for the saloon-keepers control the city, and T am in favor of local option." It is treason to Go J and humanity to advocate the policy of the state turning the helpless in the great cities over into the hands of the drunkard-makers, by local option, Ohio is a state. Every home in it is entitled to state protection. To advocate local option is to make the state a non- entity. Wo said this when, in obedience to the de- mands of the liquor ring, the " Legislature " turned the Christian Sunday over into the hands of the saloon-keepers to be destroyed, and we say it now, when it is proposed to desert the workers in onr great cities, and turn their homes over to the vile elements. When a state has passed a local option law, workers should work for local prohibition under it, not as an end, but as a means to accomplish an end, and this is best done by making the fight for state and national prohibition. The drunkard-makers always follow and take possession of the camp abandoned by prohibi- tionists as they advance. Where temperance men fought for license, drunkard-makers fought for free beer and whiskey ; where temperance men fought for high license, drunkard-makers fought for low license ; and when temperance men declared for state and national prohibition, the drunkard-makers and their allies shouted for high license. In this reform the greater takes with the less. In a state where a hot and bitter war is waged for state prohibition, more towns are carried for local prohibition than in states where the fight is allowed to degenerate into a selfish local fight. Where a state has not local option the worker is foolish indeed who will petition or work for it. The idea that a traffic can be made right in one part, and wrong in another part of the state is absurd. The system of restriction of the evils of the traffic by license has been thoroughly tried in nearly every state in the Union, and has everywhere proved itself WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 209 :ense ; and their the a hot more states telfish In the : for one [surd. traffic 5very itself utterly impracticable and defective. The only redeem- ing features of the system are the prohibitory features it contains, and these are rendered useless bv the state liconse or permission, granted to the few, in considera- tion of the few sharing their profits with the state. The state, by an attempt to regulate and restrict, ad- mits that the traffic is one dangerous to the true interests of society. Of this fact society is thorouglily convinced, and the only sensible rule of state action is : If an institution is wholly evil, the state should outlaw and destroy it; if an institution is productive of both good and evil results, it is the duty of the state to license it and regulate it so as to destroy the evil and promote the good. Regulation implies some- thing good in the thing regulated, that is to be devel- oped by regulation. The liquor traffic is productive of evil, and only evil. Regulate it until Gabriel blows his trumpet and its last fruit will be the same as to- day — bummers, broken hearts, ruined homes. Posses- sion is nine points of the law. License gives the traffic possession and creates a presumption that its rules are legal, and places upon the people the burden of dis- proving the presumption of innocence, and establishing the exception over the rule. The system is based on incorrect principles, is utterly impracticable, and never was and never will be enforced. There are more saloons selling liquor in Chicago without license under the license system than in any prohibitory city in the world, and this in addition to the licensed saloons. In this cultured city of Boston, I am informed by good authority, that there is more than one thousand places which sell liquor without license, in addition to over two thousand licensed places. In Nebraska, under high license, drug stores almost equalling the saloons in number, sell liquors as a beverage without license to sell as a beverage. The system, wherever tried, has been a failure, and it is utterly useless to waste any more time or money trying to make it work. ■m HI 210 THE I'EOPLfe rs. THE LIQUOR THAFFIC. I am aware that some of m\ friends would say : •' Men must orj^ani/e to enforce law," Certainly, Imt who organize ? Burke .said : " Wlun had men conspire, good men must comV)ine." The state, through its machinery, the government, gives the only safe method of enforcing law, and only when a conspiracy exists of such formidahle character as to prevent the opera- tion of the government, is a private organization of citizens justitiable. The government is the state niachinery to enforce law, and every tax-payer is taxed to pay for »uch enforcement. Public officers take oaths to enforce laws ; if they do not do it, the statute which creates the office provides for the removal of the incumbent, and the remedy is not the organization to do the officer's work, but proceedings to remove and punish the officer for his neglect of duty. This peo- ple does not need or want two governments to enforce the law. Demonstrate that two governments, one pub- lic, one private, one supported by public tax, one by private contribution, are necessary to enforce law in this country, and you have proved our republican gov- ernment to be fatally weak and defective. You say to me : " It is your duty to give money to help enforce law." I answer : " I pay taxes to support a govern- ment to enforce law, and if that is a failure, and can not enforce law, the remedy is not to create a govern- ment within the government, but to find what are the defects in the government and remedy them." If a law is defied, it is proof either that the law is not public opinion crystallized into public will ; that bad men have conspired to thwart the will of the people ; that bad men are in office, or that the law is defective and cannot be enforced by the ordinary ma- chinery of government. The remedy for the first con- dition is to repeal the law ; for the second, is for good men to combine ; for the third, is to arouse the vitality of the political system, so that bad men will be driven from office : for the fourth, to substitute a good law for ! Mil ^■:1 -W IS ihat the w is ma- ■con- ood lity ven for WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 211 tho bad ono. No man will claim that a license law is in advance of public opinion, so the first reason does not apply to this case. There is absolutely no proof that any conspiracy exists among the li(|Uor men, except in a few places, like Chicago, to defy the license laws. On the contrary, all of their great organizations havt^ again and again declared in favor of license. That liquor-dealers all violate the license laws, is certain ; but they do it as individuals, not as parties to a con- spiracy : consequently the second reason does not apply to license laws, although it does to prohibitory laws, for all the liquor organizations were brought into existence to destroy prohibition. The real cause of the failure of license laws is, that the laws are defec- tive and cannot be enforced, and that bad men are in office. The remedy, then, is plain : substitute a good for the bad law, and kick bad men out of office. When an officer neglects his duties, the remedy is not to do his work for him, but to punish him for his neglect of duty. In Kansas, when corrupt officials refused to prose- cute liquor outlaws, the Kansas State Temperance Union, led by Hon. A. B. Campbell, did not undertake to perform the officers' work, but it commenced proceed- ings against the rebellious city government and corrupt officers. The result was, the corrupt officers were driven from power, public conscience was (juickened, public faith in the power of the state to enfoice its laws was strengthened, and the law will be enforced in that state. Every officer knows if he neglects his duty he will be proceeded against, and, if found guilty, removed from his position. The law is better enforced in the city of Quincy than in any other city in Massa- chusetts, and it is done by Hon. Henry Foxton, as an officer, not as a private citizen. In his own words : " The remedy is to elect good men to office," and he might have added : and prosecute any officer who fails to do his duty. 212 THE PKOPLE 1% THE MgUOR THAFFIC. i^ Anything else is a quack remedy, which will injure and not help. No evidence of a conspiracy to defy the license law exists ; and if the state cannot enforce the law against single individuals, it is positive the law \:i a fraud, and that all time spent trying to make it operate is wasted. Certainly no evidence of a con- spiiacy exists such as would justify private individuals oiganizing a government within the government to perform the works of the state, and try by extra con- stitutional means to make a law efiectivc which the state, by a hundred years' trial, through the ordinary and legitimate channels of enforcement, has proved absolutely inoperative and bud. These statements made by those organizations, that the people are to blame for not enforcing the license law, is false. The trouble is with the law, not with the people. License laws have had a fair trial for more than a hundred years in this country, and have utterly failed to accom- plish the object for which they were passed. The temperance men upheld these laws and gave money and time to make them operative, and only abandoned them after years of trial had proved them wholly use- less. If the license system had proved practical, there would never have been a thought of prohibition ; and these people who come around and, with an air of " I'll tell you how to do it," inform temperance workers that they must enforce the license laws, simply air their ignorance of temperance history and their super- ficial knowledge of the reform. The license laws are fatally defective both in principle and construction, and the statement frequently made, " there is no need of further legislation until the present law is enforced," is idlest nonsense. Let me say again, the fault is with the law, not with the people. The blame laid on the people for not making a bad law operate well shows a shallow thinker, or a tricky demagogue who wants to lay the blame where it does not belong, and thereby have an excuse for not perfecting legislation. " If the 1 •I use- ill ere and " I'll kers air iper- s are ion, need :ed," A'ith the ■vs a to eby the WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 2ia law is to blame, then the law must be amended, and that will make the liciuor-sellers mad ; but it' we can take the blame from off the law and place it on its enforcement, then we are safe," say the politicians; and many a law and order league has received support from these men for the purpose of creating a false public opinion a., tO the real cause of a failure, and thereby give a plausible reason for inaction. 1 object to a law and order league organized to enforce a license law as a licon.se law, because no evidence exists that would justify its organization, and because it creates the false impression that the fault is with the people and not with the law. They constantly .say : " Enforce the present law before you ask for more." As well have said in years gone by to the farmer : " You should make this old mower do good work before you get a new one." Would he not have answered : " Fool, if it did good work I should not want a new one. I have tried it for years, it does not half cut the grass, and I am not going to waste any more time or spoil any more work fussing with it." His answer is good sense. As well say : " We have tried for a century to cut down this tree with a beetle ; it will not work, but we nmst make it work before we get an axe : we have tried for a century to dip up water with a sieve ; it will not work, but we must make it work before we get a bucket," as to say : " License has failed to woi-k well for a hundred years, but we must make it work well before we ask for prohibition." Bah ! if license works well prohibition is unnecessary ; and it is only because license has proved a failure that prohibition is sought. To hope to destroy the liquor traffic with license laws reminds me of the man who was nightly disturbed by the barking of his neighbor's dog. Night after night he endured until at last one night, with patience exhausted, he jumped out of bed in his night- clothes and rushed out into the snow. He was gone for a long time, and his wife, alarmed, left her bed to W 214 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. look for him. Opening the door she saw him standing in the snow holding the dog. " What are you doing?" she cried. Through chattering teeth he answered, " I will hold this dog in the snow until I freeze him." Every dollar given to make license work is virtually given to prove that prohibition is unnecessary. As a temperance man I formerly believed in license, and gave both time and money to make the system operate so as to destroy the evils of intemperance. The time and money were wasted. You ask me, "Will you help enforce a licensfe law now ? " Certainly, as a citizen 1 will do a citizen's duty in helping to enforce all laws on the statute book, but as a temperance man I will not give one cent or minute of time in trying to make ths license fraud operate as a temperance measure. As a temperance measure it has utterly failed, and the liquor men, recognizing that fact, have adopted the system as theirs, and work for, and defend it. All efforts of temperance workers to make it a success simply deceives the people, and leads them to expect and hope that something good may come of the license system. Temperance workers should attack the license system, and demonstrate to the people how utterly worthless it is, for when the people are convinced of the fact they will demand effective legislation, and not until then. You ask, " Will not leagues organized to enforce license laws do good ? '^ Yes, they will demonstrate to the people the fact that the license laws are so vicious that the state cannot enforce them even when assisted by a private organ- ization of citizens. The law and order league may be necessary to enforce a prohibitory law because of the great organ- izations whose only purpose is to defy it ; but I fear the effect of organizations whose avowed purpose is to assume the duties which belong to the government Three of these private organizations frequently appear within the state, viz., the mob, the vigilance committee, WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 215 the law and order league. The mob usurps all the power of the state, the vigilance committee take the power of the prosecuting attorney, court and officers, and the law and order league assumes the duties of the prosecuting officers. That each in its time may do some good many will claim, that the law and order league does accomplish good no one will doubt ; but it is doubtful if the good it does is commensurate with the evil it will do if it is to be more than a temporary organization, for, by assuming to do what the state should do, it impeaches the integrity of the state, and by teaching the people to distrust the government, weakens public faith and individual patriotism. If the law is defied by conspirators who are too strong for the state, the organization of good men should be to meet the specific danger, and should be limited to the existence of the necessity that called it into being, which will be the recovery by the state of the power to perform its own functions. If the failure of the law is caused by what a celebrated writer calls "atony" of the state, viz., political indifference, inattention and carelessness on the part of the citizens of the state, by which active bad men are enabled to control the state, and place their tools in executive office, the only remedy is to arouse the political conscience and patriot- ism of the citizens, and thereby increase the vitality of the state ; and in this case the law and order league is a positive injury, because it acts as a sedative, and individual conscience leads to a postponement of irk- some political duties and increases the danger. These organizations must have this effect, for the elector will say : " If we, to advance the interests of our party, elect a weak man, or a man pledged to the vile elements, the law and order league will stand behind the laws, and the country will not suffer. Another business man will say ; " I have not time to attend to the political caucus, and work for men who will enforce the law ; I will give the law and order ':Hl <'■> r H. 216 THK PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. league fifty dollars, and it will look after things." Another injury these organizations must do is to teach the public that the special law they are organized to enforce cannot be made operative by the state, which, if true, proves the law defective. They give the prosecuting attorney a chance to shirk his duty by saying, " You have an organization to enforce this law, and why don't you do it ?" The laws dealing with the liquor traffic should stand with all other laws, and their enforcement be made a political, and, if necessary, a party issue. Tools of the liquor interest should be kicked out of power. The country has no use for men who work for party first and country afterwards ; who say : " If the law is enforced it will hurt our party, we will lose the German vote." Such men are traitors to humanity, civilization and liberty. I fear the results of any organization which will act as an excuse for lazy electors to offer their political consciences. What this country needs is not anaesthetics and narcotics to soothe the conscience of electors, but the burning iron of intelligent action, and the knil'e of righteous law freely used upon the loath- some ulcers on the body politic by officers whose offi- cial tenure depends upon the honest enforcement of law, they having been elected by a party based on that principle. It is my opinion that if half the money and time and effort had been used to induce the people to apply the common-sense methods of politi- cal treatment for political disease that have been spent in devising false remedies, and studying " how not to do it," there would not be an open bar-room in this country to-day. The fault is not with the masses, but with the leaders, or so-called moral leaders of soci- ety. When the leaders of Kansas and Iowa and Ohio mustered up grit enough to lead the way they found the masses true as steel. Our leaders have become stumbling-blocks whose inaction smacks strongly of cowardice, inability or treason. The old worn-out cry : things." to teach tiized to ), which, five the duty by ihis law, ng with 3r laws, and, if interest r has no country orced it in vote." ion and n which Fer their s is not ience of ion, and e loath- se offi- lent of on that money ice the ponti- le been " how )om in lasses, )f soci- Ohio found )ecome fly of It cry : WHAT, WHY, AND HOW. 217 " The people are not educated up to the point," is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. The state having failed to destroy the evils of the traffic by license, or by giving communities the power to deal with it, should now outlaw it, brand it as infamous, and the people should put in administrative offices men whose honor, conscience, and party fealty all say : You must enforce the law. Cowards may cry : " You are going too fast," but every interest of home, humanity, civilization and country demands immediate action. The last time I was at home, my little boy stood by me to say with a laugh, " Papa, I's almost a man." For a moment I was as happy as he in the thought, and then the cloud came: every inch he grows taller, every day he grows older brings nearer the time when he will go out on the streets of a city that opens more schools to make him a devil than it does to make him a man. I bowed my head and asked God to give me courage and muscle and nerve to stand in the front of the fight with my fellow-workers, and assist in freeing Nebraska from this curse before my boy should be in danger. "In a hurry?" How many more hearts must be broken ? how many more babies be starved ? how many more women must have the light of love and hope taken out of their lives ? how many more fathers, and husbands, and sons must be offered up on the altar of this devilish license system, and other compromises, before this Christian people will stand shoulder to shoulder, and for wife and babies . and friends and home and country cry : " Cowards out of the w^ay ! this is a battle to the death, and may God defend the right ! " 15 k ! (I IX. COMPENSATION. Stenographic Report of an Address Delivered in Berkeley St. Methodist Church, Toronto, Sunday, May 24, 1885. Portia — *' Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh ; But in the cutting it, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are by the laws of Venice confiscate Unto the State of Venice." Gratiano — *' O, upright judge ! Mark, Jew — O, learned judge!" Shylock — '* Is that the law ?" Portia — " Thyself shall see the act ; For as thou urgest justice, be assured Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desirest." — Shakespeare. In discussing the rights, duties, and the obligations of man, the primary laws of his being must be taken into consideration. Man is a social animal. Society is necessary for his development. With man he becomes the God man ; isolated he becomes the brute man. It is impossible to think of man out of society. It is wasting time to talk of man's entering society, because he was born in society, a part of society, and it is im- possible for him to remain a man and exist outside of social influences. Government is made necessary by the fundamental laws of man's being. In societj'^ there must be an institution of justice, which shall determine ELEY St. 85. )f flesh ; learned peare. ations taken iety is 3Comes m. It It is ecause is ini- side of iry by • there ermine COMPENSATION. 219 the individual rights of the members of society in order that the weak may be protected against the strong, avarice restrained, vice and crime prevented, and man elevated. If we could think of man as ex- isting by himself we could think of him as a com- paratively free and independent being — that is, free from all social restraint and law. Man in a country by himself can violate but one class of laws, God's laws ; God's laws which control His own being ; God's laws written in nature ; God's law written in His revealed word. When we think of man following the dictates of his own nature and as a social being accept- ing the protection of society, profiting by the advan- tages which make him truly free, we must always think of man as an individual whose rights are limited by the rights of other individuals who have the same rights, duties, and obligations that he ha^ himself. The privileges of free schools, churches, colleges, and the right to acquire property, to have life and property protected, all take with them corresponding obligations and duties, and give government the right to say that in consideration of these social benefits the individual shall so conduct himself and his business as not to interfere with the rights of others. Government is an institution of justice which determines obligations and duties and punishes crime. It is a necessity growing out of man's nature, co-existent with man. Robbers defy all social law, but have among themselves an iron code. Piraies laugh at the authority of government, but their own leader is a despot. Sailors mutiny and kill their captain, but they must at once form a gov- ernment, or they cannot navigate the ^lip. In western towns of the United States, beyond the limits of organized government, men have again and again organized a lynch court and called Judge Lynch to the bench to take the place of government. Government being necessary for man's development, for man's protection, must have powers commensurate ity t; 220 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. with its duties. If it is to administei justice it must have power to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. It must be the supreme power, or the force greater will be the government. It must have the power to protect itself if it is to protect others. Self- preservation is the tirst law of life. Self-defence is a good defence. Every individual has a right to defend himself from assault and injury. This defence must be conducted in accordance with the necessities of the case. If it is necessary, the one assaulted is justified in taking the life of the assailant to protect his own life. This absolute right to life, inherent in every individual until he forfeits it to society, is inherent in the government until the government is repudiated by the people. In times of civil war the government may draft soldiers from the ranks of its citizens ; whether they want to go or not does not prevent the government from acting. It is the judge of the necessities of the case, and if it deems their assistance necessary to save itself it may take them from home, from wife and children, from business, dress them in uniform, strap the knapsack to their backs, put the guns in their hands, and march them to the battlefield, to be shot to death to preserve its own life. The right to life is absolute, yet the government may arrest the individual who has taken the life of another and after trial take his life. I am aware that some may urge — and I am of their opinion — that the right of the government to take human life is governed by the same rule that governs the right of an individual to defend himself, viz., the necessities of the case. That there was a time in the civilization of the world when government, ;chi>nt prisons and reformatories to confine the vicious and criminals, was justified in killing men, no one can doubt, r, but that right is limited by the necessities of il.fc ci^e, and I doubt whether government with its present civilization and prisons has a right to do what COMPENSATION. 221 t must sh the le force the Self- ve ice IS a defend e must J of the astified is own every :ent in ited by J draft jr they rnment of the to save and strap their shot to life is vidual il take I am ent to that mself, I time ment, icious le can ies of h its what it is unnecessary to do. The right of the government to protect its life and the lives of the people by taking individual life is the same right by which society, acting through the government, destroys trade to protect its life, and remove obstacles which prevent it from fulfilling its mission. Great Britain, on the first day of January, 1808, entirely abolished the slave trade. In most civilized countries the trade of the gambler has been prohibited by government, and in the United States, after years of existence, the lottery trade was prohibited by most of the states for the same reason. Government, when the trade is not wholly bad, regu- lates, restrains, and legislates so as to destroy its bad tendencies and develop good results. It prevents children under a certain age being employed in factories. ]t compels manufacturers to provide fire escapes for their employees. It compels the removal of slaughter- houses and soap factories in cities, and prevents the keeping of gunpowder in more than certain quantities in cities. The power of the United States government in such matters is clearly stated by Chief Justice Shaw, Massachusetts, in the leading case of Fisher against McGirr : " We have no doubt that it is competent for the Legislature to declare the possession of certain articles of property, either absolutely or when held in particular places or under particular circumstances, to be unlawful because they would be injurious, dan- gerous, or obnoxious, and by due process of law, by proceedings in rem to provide both for the abatement of the ofience by the seizure and confiscation of the property, by the removal, sale or destruction of obnox- ious articles." In the case of the State, Sanfprd Relator v.the Court of Common Pleas, New Jersey, Van Syckles, Justice, said : " While alcoholic stimulants are recog- nized as property and entitled to the protection of the law, ownership in them is subject to such restrictions as are demanded by the highest considerations of public expediency. Such enactments are regarded 222 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. as police regulations, established for the prevention of crime and pauperism, for the abatement of nuisances, and the protection of public health and safety. They are a just restraint of the injurious use of property." In England, the Court of the King's Bench has decided : " There are many cases in which individuals sustain an injury for which the law gives no action, for instance, pulling down houses or raising bulwarks for the preservation and defence of the kingdom against the king's enemies. The civil law writers say that the individuals who suffer have the right to re- port to tJie public for satisfaction but no one ever thought that the common law gave an action against the individual who pulled down the house. This is one of the cases to which the maxim applies, salus populi suprema est lex." In Canada, to-day, the power of government is being exerted to destroy a great trade. The men engaged in the trade make no defence of the trade as a social institution, but demand, in consideration of its destruction, the government shall compensate them for the property which will be in- jured by prohibiting its criminal use. By prohibition of the alcoholic traffic, the government does not de- stroy property, or .take private property for public Use. It simply prevents private parties from using their property to the injury of the public. In dis- cussing the equity of this claim of the liquor-dealers, it will be better for us to examine when and how government grants compensation, and whether this demand of the liquor-dealers is sustained by prece- dent or equity. It is certain : 1st. Such compensa- tion can only be secured by special enactment con- current with the prohibitory law. In Canada, as well as in Great Britain, Parliament is supreme. The right of the subject to compensation is entirely statutory. " We have no law or general principle by which compensation is to be given ; in such cases it is en- tirely statutory." (Sir Montague E. Smith, in Drum- COMPENSATION. 223 3ntion of uisances, r. They )erty." mch has lividuals 3 action, bulwarks kingdom iters say hfc to re- )ne ever L against This is J8, salus le power a great defence fiand, in nt shall I be in- hibition not de- public n using In dis- dealers, id how ler this prece- apensa- it con- as well e right tory. which is en- Drum- mond V. City of Montreal, House of Lords' case in 1876.) From this it follows, that if the Parliament of Canada should at any time elect to suppress any busi- ness or expropriate private property for public use or public good, without providing for compensation to the owners of such business or property, the latter would seek in vain to obtain damages from the courts, and the books would fail to produce a single case where a precedent for such an action exists. The Governor and Company of the Biitish Cast Plate Manu. V. Meredith et uL, 14 Term Reports, 794, decided in the Court of the King's Bench in 1792, and Dungey v. The Mayor and Cor. of London, 3 Law Journal (C. P.), 298, are both in support of this prin- ciple. In the first named the defendants, who were Commissioners under a Paving Act, in the exercise of the powers given to them by the Act, raised a pave- ment two feet and a half in front of the plaintiff company s premises, causing them substantial injury. In deciding this case, Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice, said : " If this action could be maintained, every Turnpike Act, Paving Act, and Navigation Aet would give rise to an infinity of actions. If the legislature think it necessary, as they do in many cases, they enable the commissioners to award satisfaction to the individuals who happen to suffer. But if there be no such power, the parties are without remedy, provided the commissioners do not exceed their jurisdiction. * * * Some individuals suffer an inconvenience under all these Acts of Parliament, but the interests of individuals must give way to the accommodation of the public." The second case cited is a much later one, in which the principles, as laid down in the older case, are re- viewed and confirmed. From these decisions it may also be stated: 2nd. Parliament has a right to refuse such compensation. In this respect there is a wide difference between 224 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. English and American legislation. The constitution of the United States expressly provides that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. Most of the states have a similar provi- sion. (Amd. Com. U. S., Art. V. March, 1789.) A point is sought to be made in Canada by quoting Chancellor Kent, who says : " The settled and fundamental doc- trine is that government has no right to take private property for public purposes without giving a jusc compensation ; and it seems to be necessarily implied that the indemnity should, in cases which will admit of it, be previously and equitably ascertained and •be ready concurrently in point of time with the actual exercise of the right of eminent domain.' (Kent's Com., Vol. II. p. 409, note f.) It will be observed that Judge Kent speaks of taking property for public use. He does not speak of preventing the injurious use of property. The Ameri- can law given by the Supreme Court of the United States, is : " The trade in alcoholic drinks being lawful, and the capital employed in it being duly protected by law", the legislature then steps in, and, by an enact- ment based on general reasons of public utility, anni- hilates the traffic, destroys altogether the employment, and reduces to a nominal value the property on hand ; even the keeping of that for the purpose of sale be- comes a criminal offence, and without any change whatever in his own conduct or employment, the mer- chant of yesterday becomes the criminal of to-daj', and the very building in which he lives and conducts the business which to that moment was lawful, be- comes the subject of legal proceedings, if the statute so declare, and liable to be proceeded against for for- feiture. A statute which can do this must be justified upon the highest reasons of public benefit, but whether satisfactory or not, the reasons address themselves exclusively to the legislative wisdom." British governments have never recognized the COMPENSATION. 225 lange imer- •day, lucts be- itute for- lified Ither lives the principle stated by Judird's * claws, face pinched and purple, that lay moaning and restless in its sleep. I asked the gentleman accom- panying me what was the matter with the baby ? He answered, " Starving. If you doubt it, look at the mother." It was true. Baby was dying because mother was dying. He assisted her. He was a city missionary. As we left the place I said, "Madame, where is your husband?" She replied, "In the city prison, serving out a sentence for being drunk and disorderly." I am aware that the liquor-dealers will claim that the drunkard is as responsible as the seller ; but I stand here to maintain that it is the duty of the government to protect the wife and baby from the crimes both of the liquor-sellers and the drunkard. If there is anything which should make the hot blood rush in surging torrents through the veins of any man it is the sight of a woman with a baby in her arms injured, maltreated, and starved by the accursed liquor traffic. If the argument that the drinker is alone responsi- ble for the results of the liquor traffic is good, it would justify every gambler, courtesan, and lottery- dealer ; for the customers of each of these death-traps patronize them of their own free will. No one will doubt that it is the duty of a state to protect its women and children. If any one will injure a baby, it is the duty of the government to protect it, even if it is necessary to put bayonets around its cradle-bed for that purpose. Canada is at last moving forward to give this protection. The men who have grown rich off the ruin of women and the degradation of children, demand, if they are no longer to be allowed to carry forward this crime against humanity and civilization, that they shall be compensated for the tools with which the crime has been committed, because they cannot make as much money by using them in an honorable busi- 238 THE PEOPLE V8. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. ness as they have made by using them in ruining the homes of the dominion. Justice, yes, give them justice. Surely every man must be anxious to give the liquor trade justice. The men in the business are men of intelligence, and good judgment. They knew the results of the trade before they entered it. No one compelled them to enter. Of their own free will they took up the fearful work simply to make money out of the wretchedness and misery of others. They are responsible as social units for their social acts. They would not be in the business if it were not for the fact that it is the most profitable of trades. When one knows the actuating motives of the drunkard-makers, and then looks at the destitute homes and ruined families of their victims, the only conclusion will be that justice would be the Shy lock verdict, confiscation of property and death. But the wronged ones in this case are more merciful even than in that case, for they only ask that the guilty shall be stopped from continuing their crimes, and are willing to leave them all their ill-gotten gains. The liquor men ought to be happy to be let off so easily. The people only ask a verdict on the record that this accursed trade has made for itself. The ruined homes, the degraded men, the broken-hearted wives and beg- gared children, made by the liquor-dealers in their attempt to amass wealth, are witnesses in the case. The results of the traffic as shown by the police court, the alms-house, the penitentiary and the scaffold, must all be considered in making up a verdict. Try it as you try a man, as you try a woman, as you try a boy, as you try a girl. If you find that the men represent- ing the traffic stand in the court of the people with clean hands and pure hearts before God, and that their property has been taken for no wrong of their own, pay them every cent that it has been damaged ; but if you find that the traffic was admitted to the country as a friend, given every opportunity to be decent, and COMPENSATION. 239 quor The this that now, like an adder warmed to life .in the bosom of its benefactor, would sting to death the life that warmed it into existence ; if you find it has ruined public morals, degraded public virtue, lowered public intelligence ; if you find that its representatives have sold liquor to minors, liquor to drunkards, liquor to Indians ; if you find that in their efforts they have not heeded the prayers of the wife, of the mother, of the children ; if you find that they have defied all restriction, and when warned by gentle measures, con- tinued their accursed work until it has become neces- sary for the government to suppress their business for the public good, then the demand of the liquor-sellers should be treated with the loathing and contempt which such crime and villainy excites in the breasts of honest men.