LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF" 
 THE FAMILY OF REV.. DR.- GEORGE MOOAR 
 
 Class 
 
tod Templars' Home for Orphans,-^ 
 
 In 1869 a capacious and elegant structure was erected near Vallejo, in Solan* 
 County, California, and in October, 1870, it was dedicated and opened under 
 the auspices of the Grand Lodge, and entitled the "Good Templars' Home for 
 Orphans." Its title is not meant to convey any idea of exclusiveness as to the 
 class admitted to its sheltering offices. On the contrary, it is open to all; the 
 only passport required at its portals is to be a homeless orphan child. Children 
 under fourteen years of age are received and cared for, and one hundred and 
 fifty orphaned children are now being cared for within its walls. This kindly 
 office has been extended to nearly one thousand homeless children in the past. 
 The buildings are sightly, capacious, and pleasantly located. The Home is 
 under the general management of a Board of Trustees and a Board of Lady 
 Managers the former comprising nine gentlemen of the Order, who have 
 charge of the buildings, grounds (20 acres), and financial matters, while tha 
 Board of Lady Managers is composed of eight prominent lady members of the 
 Order, selected from various portions of the State, and has charge of the 
 internal and domestic relations of the institution. Within the Home graded 
 schools under the " Public School System" of the State, are taught by three 
 competent teachers. Upwards of $150,000 has been expended in the erection, 
 care and maintenance of this institution. The Home is supported and sus- 
 tained by voluntary contributions, and those benevolently disposed are re- 
 quested to favor it by contributions in its behalf. 
 
 TEMPLARS' BAND of HOPE. 
 
 This is the juvenile branch of the Independent Order of Good Templars T , 
 under the care and patronage of the Grand Lodge of California, and has a 
 separate ritual, pledge and badge. 
 
 The organization has a legal and well-defined connection with the Grand 
 Lodge, in which body the Band of Hope is entitled to representation. 
 
 Sunday Schools or juvenile organizations desiring to adopt the Band of Hope 
 as a temperance work among the children, will be furnished rituals and badges- 
 free of charge in any needed quantity. 
 
 For rituals, badges, or any information pertaining to juvenile temperance 
 work, address 
 
 MRS. M. E. RICHARDSON, Gen'l Sup't, 
 
 OaJslsi:n.cL, 
 ALAMEDA CO., CALIFORNIA, 
 
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THE PEOPLE 
 
 VERSUS 
 
 THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 THE GREAT SPEECHES OF 
 
 JOHN B. FINCH. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 Hon. SAMUEL D. HASTINGS, 
 
 Ex- Treasurer State of Wisconsin. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
 
 In the strife of Truth with 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 forej^isSRfet^axkness nnd that light" 
 
 CHICAGO : 
 LITEIIATUBE COM. R. W. G. LODGE, I. O. of G. T. 
 
 Room 8, No. 87 Washington St. 
 
Copyright 1883 by Frank J. Sibley, Publishing Agent, Literature 
 Committee B. W. G. Lodge, I. O. G. T. 
 
 R McCABE ft CO., SHNIEDEWERD A LKJ*. 
 
 PRINTERS, M.ECrROTYl>nS, 
 
 146 Clark Street 200-202 Clark Street. 
 
 CHICAGO. CHICAGO 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 LECTURES. 
 
 I. A STATEMENT OF THE CASE, I 
 
 II. WHY THE INDICTMENT is PRESSED 82 
 
 HI. AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES 75 
 
 TV. EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE 101 
 
 V. THE DEFENSE REVIEWED 138 
 
 "VL THE QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JURY ANSWERED 172 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS. 
 
 KANSAS - - 203 
 
 IOWA - 203 
 
 LECTURES ON SPECIAL SUBJECTS. 
 
 I. ARE LIQUOR-DEALERS ENTITLED TO INDEMNITY. 
 
 BY MASON - - 205 
 
 H LOYALTY TO LAW. BY HORTON 232 
 
 TTT THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE MOVEMENT PROVED 
 
 BY ITS SUCCESS. BY FINCH - - 254 
 
 122 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 No apology need be offered for presenting this 
 Yolume to the public. 
 
 The present is an exceedingly interesting period 
 in the history of the temperance movement. Evi- 
 dence that the labors of the past half century 
 have not been in vain, was never more abundant. 
 This may be regarded as the era of constitutional 
 prohibition. 
 
 In the year 1850 Michigan incorporated into her 
 state constitution a provision prohibiting the grant- 
 ing of licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors; 
 and in the year 1851 Ohio placed a similar provi- 
 sion in her constitution. It was then thought that 
 this would be all that would be needed. Subsequent 
 experience has shown this to be an error. Nothing 
 short of absolute prohibition will answer the require- 
 ments of the case. 
 
IV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In 1856, Wm. H. Armstrong, then Grand Worthy 
 Patriarch of the Sons of Temperance of Eastern 
 New York, advocated the incorporation into the con- 
 stitution of that state, of a provision prohibiting the 
 sale of intoxicating drinks, and in 1857 his views 
 were endorsed by the Grand Division of the Order. 
 The matter was under discussion for i?wo years, 
 and articles upon the subject appeared in the Inde- 
 pendent Examiner, the organ of the Sons of Tem- 
 perance, the New York Tribune, the New York 
 Witness and the New York Times. 
 
 The views of Mr. Armstrong seem to have at- 
 tracted but little attention, and in a short time were 
 entirely lost sight of, and the present movement was 
 started by persons who had never heard of the pre- 
 vious one, and was in no way connected with it. 
 
 So far as now known, the present mode of securing 
 prohibition through constitutional amendment, was 
 first suggested by B. F. Parker, Grand Secretary of 
 the Grand Lodge I. O. G. T., of Wisconsin, in his 
 annual report for 1876. Little or no attention was 
 paid to it at that time. He repeated the suggestion 
 in his report for 1877, when the matter was taken 
 up by the Grand Lodge, with a view of asking the 
 Legislature to submit the question of a prohibi- 
 tory law to a popular vote. At a meeting of the 
 executive committee of the Grand Lodge, when the 
 form of the petition to the Legislature was under 
 consideration, it was decided to ask for a con- 
 stitutional amendment. The form was agreed upon, 
 
INTRODUCTION. V. 
 
 % 
 
 and petitions containing about fifteen thousand names 
 were presented to the Legislature, asking for the 
 submission of such an amendment. This is believed 
 to be the first request made to the Legislature of 
 -any state in the Union for such action. 
 
 So far as now known, the first article which 
 appeared in the newspaper press, in advocacy of the 
 measure, outside of Wisconsin, where the movement 
 originated, was an open letter addressed to Ex-Gov. 
 B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, which appeared in the 
 National Prohibitionist, St. Louis, in May, 1878. 
 
 This was followed in August, of the same year, by 
 an article in reply to sundry objections that had been 
 urged by various correspondents of the Prohibition- 
 ist, to the views expressed in the letter to Ex-Gov. 
 Brown. 
 
 On the 27th of August, a letter was written to a 
 prominent officer of the Grand Lodge I. O. G. T., of 
 Iowa, urging him to bring^ the matter before the 
 Grand Lodge of that state, with a yiew of inducing 
 that body to endorse the measure. 
 
 The Grand Lodge, however, for reasons doubtless 
 satisfactory to its members, failed to take the desired 
 action. 
 
 On the 13th of September, 1878, an article was sent 
 to the Maine Temperance Journal, then published at 
 Portland, urging the friends of temperance in that 
 state to inaugurate a movement to secure a prohibi- 
 tory constitutional amendment, but the matter does 
 
.VL INTBODUCTION. 
 
 not seem to have attracted any very marked atten- 
 tion, until the measure was endorsed by the Bepub- 
 lican State Convention of 1882. 
 
 In the October (1878) number of the National 
 Temperance Advocate, an article in favor of the 
 movement was published in which the provisions of 
 the constitutions of all the states of the Union, 
 relative to the manner in which the several constitu- 
 tions could be amended, were set forth. 
 
 In October of the same year, at the request of 
 Hon. John B. Finch, an article on the subject was 
 sent to the Investigator, a temperance paper pub- 
 lished in Cherry Valley, N. Y. All the articles 
 alluded to were penned by the undersigned. 
 
 The rapidity with which this movement has pro- 
 gressed since 1878, is without a parallel. It would 
 require many large volumes to record what has been 
 said and done since that time. Already a prohibi- 
 tory amendment has been incorporated in the consti- 
 tutions of the states of * Kansas and Iowa; the first 
 resolution for the submission of similar amendments 
 has passed the Legislatures of Indiana, Connecticut 
 and Oregon, and the action taken by the dominant 
 party in the states of Maine, Massachusetts and 
 Michigan, render it almost certain that the question 
 will soon be submitted to a popular vote in these 
 states. 
 
 In a score of other states, the measure is under 
 discussion, and bids fair soon to be the great ques- 
 tion for settlement in every state in the Union. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Vli. 
 
 In bringing this question to the front, and in 
 creating the advanced public sentiment that has 
 secured the adoption of the amendment in Kansas 
 and Iowa, no one has rendered greater service and 
 done more to secure these results, than the Hon. 
 John B. Finch, the author of the speeches contained 
 in this volume. 
 
 From the many speeches delivered by Mr. Finch 
 during the past few years, the six herewith presented 
 have been selected, not that they are in any way 
 superior to many other speeches made by him, but 
 because they are so arranged as to present in a con- 
 cise form, a complete and comprehensive statement 
 of the great issue now presented to the people of 
 the United States. 
 
 "The People versus the Liquor Traffic," is the 
 issue upon which a verdict must soon be rendered. 
 Nothing has been spoken or published that will do 
 more to aid the people in reaching correct conclu- 
 sions, than these speeches of Mr. Finch. 
 
 Wherever he has spoken, the universal testi- 
 mony has been, that in the ability with which he 
 arranges his arguments and illustrations, and in the 
 power which his fine personal appearance and elo- 
 quent oratory give him over his hearers, he has no 
 superior upon the temperance platform. 
 
 Special thanks are due, and are most cordially 
 rendered to A. D. Williston, E. W. Welch and Sam- 
 uel B. Wright for their excellent stenographic reports 
 of these speeches. 
 
Vlll. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In placing these speeches in a shape where they 
 will be within reach of the people generally, I feel 
 that I am doing much for the success of prohibi- 
 tory constitutional amendments. 
 
 SAML. D. HASTINGS. 
 Madison, Wis. Nov. 7, 1882. 
 
The People versus The Liquor Traffic. 
 
 i. 
 
 A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE NORTHWESTERN 
 
 CONVOCATION OF TEMPERANCE WORKERS AT LAKE 
 
 BLUFF, ILLINOIS, AUGUST 27, 1881. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: Some months since I 
 received a letter from our mutual friend, Dr. Jut- 
 kins, in which he requested me to deliver an address 
 at this Convocation. I replied that I should attend 
 the Convocation, 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. 
 
2 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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. 
 
 In discussing the question of temperance, one 
 fact more than all others I would impress on your 
 minds at the commencement ; that is, that this ques- 
 tion must be settled in this country. It can not be 
 laughed down, sneered down, jeered down or black- 
 guarded 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 oligarchy 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 move- 
 ment is a mere temporary excitement, must be blind. 
 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 different 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 during the last winter 
 and I found this to be true, that, of all the Legis- 
 latures of ten years ago, there was not one which 
 discussed the question of the prohibition of the 
 liquor traffic, while the Legislatures of the past 
 winter, without a single exception, devoted a large 
 part of their time to the discussion of this question. 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 3- 
 
 The St. 'Louis Globe Democrat and, by the way, 
 the Globe Democrat is not noted as a very strong 
 temperance paper, the history of both its former 
 and present managers proving that they sympathize 
 largely with the whisky 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 ^ques- 
 tion of this age, and the editor went on to say that 
 the man who thought this movement was an agita- 
 tion by a few idle visionaries or old women, was 
 dreaming on the crater of a social volcano. Then, 
 after explaining and giving fully his reasons for 
 such conclusions, the editor said that the Legisla- 
 ture of the State of Missouri would no more dare, 
 at its next session, to refuse to submit the question 
 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. In that early day the 
 people elected a Governor who was a known 
 drunkard, and, regardless of the fact that he was a 
 drunkard, re-elected him, and afterwards impeached 
 him for high crimes and misdemeanors committed 
 while he was drunk. To-day a man could not b& 
 elected in that state, on any party ticket, if it was 
 known he was a drunkard. 
 
4 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 The Legislature met last winter, and during its 
 entire session I saw no member under the influence 
 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 open 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 Lincoln, has placed wine before its 
 guests on that day. Even our German friends have, 
 to a great extent, banished it, in obedience to the 
 demands 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 elec- 
 tion, every county election, every state election and 
 every national election until it is settled ; each year 
 it will come with louder knocks, and each year with 
 more urgent demands. If you have investigated 
 this statement and believe it to be true, write along- 
 side of the fact another one: 
 
 "A question is never settled until it is settled 
 right." 
 
 Put the two together: it must be settled, it must 
 be settled right, and you have the basis of the 
 present agitation. 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 5 
 
 My friends, whether you believe in the drinking 
 of 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 concede to the side that you know to be 
 wrong, you find sooner or later, that you have 
 involved yourself in greater trouble, and probably 
 in a worse fight, that will not be settled until you 
 retrace the wrong steps that you have taken. Tell 
 one lie and you will find it necessary to tell others 
 to make the first appear consistent 
 
 All history sustains this view. 
 
 After the American colonies were settled, the 
 Parliament of Great Britain insisted that the right 
 was vested in the King, by and with the consent of 
 Parliament, to levy taxes upon the people of the col- 
 onies; the colonists at once demurred, and insisted 
 that if Parliament, or the King, by and with consent 
 of Parliament, 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. They were seeking to estab- 
 lish a false principle of government. To resist 
 such tyrannical action, Clubs of Liberty were organ- 
 ized throughout the colonies. The English Premier 
 
6 THE PEOPLE YEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC, 
 
 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 
 l3e 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 
 Parliament 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 principle upon 
 which Parliament bases the claim of right to 
 levy ANY tax, that we are fighting." It was fought 
 out on that line, and King George lost the brightest 
 jewel in his crown. 
 
 This principle has also been demonstrated at a 
 much later date. The Eepresentatives of the United 
 States, assembled for the first time as a congress of 
 an independent 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 pursuit of happiness." Jeffer- 
 son, in his original draft of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, emphasized the words " all men," by 
 this charge: "He (the king) has waged cruel war 
 against human nature itself, violating its most 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 7 
 
 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 hemis- 
 phere, or to incur miserable death in their transpor- 
 tation hither. This piratical warfare, the oppro- 
 brium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Chris- 
 tian king of Great Britain. Determined to open a 
 market where men should be bought and sold, he 
 has prostituted his negative, for suppressing every 
 legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this exe- 
 crable commerce. And that this assemblage of hor- 
 rors 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 for- 
 mer crimes committed against the liberties of one 
 people with the crimes which he urges them to com- 
 mit against the lives of another." 
 
 Slavery existed in colonies: the representatives 
 feared dissent ; the clause which Jefferson had writ- 
 ten was stricken out, and the general term, "all 
 men," was left undefined and unemphasized. The 
 long years*of mental and physical struggle for free- 
 dom which followed, 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 Declaration, forced itself, into the con- 
 
8 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 vention 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 gov- 
 ernment and another compromise followed. The 
 word slavery was so obnoxious to men just emerg- 
 ing from a long and bloody war for their own liber- 
 ties, that they would not allow it to appear in the 
 Constitution 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 draft. "Regulate and 
 restrain," was the policy adopted. 
 
 Madison, speaking of this compromise half apolo- 
 getically, 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 immedi- 
 ate operation, but it is not difficult 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 considered 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 discouragement 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 
 
 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 prostituted principle woke from 
 the slumber of exhaustion to hear the ringing 
 words of John Kandolph, like a fire-bell in the night : 
 
 " I 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 due respect 
 to the gentlemen who think so, 1 differ from them 
 toto ccelo. 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 might 
 as well try to hide a volcano in full operation ; it can 
 not be hid ; it is a cancer in your face, and must be 
 treated secundum artem; it must not be tampered 
 with by quacks who never saw the disease or the 
 patient." 
 
 Brave, prophetic words. The volcano of an 
 awakening public conscience could not, indeed, be 
 hid. 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. 
 
10 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 
 boys who wore the blue, boys 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, if we have together reached 
 this conclusion we are ready to continue the investi- 
 gation. This is not a personal matter between the 
 drunkard-maker and temperance advocate. Whether 
 the drunkard-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 mat- 
 ters not whether he is a devil or an angel of light 
 If he is an angel he cannot make a devilish princi- 
 ple 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 drowned in 
 Lake Michigan to-morrow, another brood would 
 spring up in three months, equally as bad as the one 
 destroyed, unless we could destroy the accursed 
 system that produced them sear the neck of the 
 license hydra with public opinion in the hands of 
 prohibition lolaua 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE 11 
 
 Some cry, "Attack the liquor- seller!" When 
 asked why, they answer, " He is a mean man." 
 What if he is? If the man is mean, he is all the 
 better representative of his business. I prefer a 
 man should be a good representative of the trade 
 he is carrying on. The American people must 
 enter upon the investigation of this question, deter- 
 mined to examine fully all of its phases, to weigh 
 carefully the arguments on both sides, and investi- 
 gate the alleged facts, produced by advocates who 
 represent the different sides, and then, on the weight 
 of evidence presented, base their verdict. Anything 
 less would not be reasonable, anything less would not 
 be honest. In trying such issues, blackguardism, 
 sneers and reckless statements are out of place. I 
 am often impressed, when listening to those who rep- 
 resent the other side, that a blackguard is as much 
 out of place in the field of honest, manly discussion 
 as a monkey would be in the tabernacle of the Lord. 
 A man engaged in either intellectual or physical 
 combat never throws mud when he has rocks to use, 
 and when individuals stoop to use the mud of epi- 
 thets in a discussion of this kind, it is prima jade 
 evidence that they have nothing else to use. The 
 copious use of epithets like " fanatic," " zealot," 
 "fool," and "visionary," is not argument, but rather 
 an indication of a cerebral vacuum in the head of 
 the talker. When you see a man standing on the 
 corner, sticking his thumb under his coat and calling 
 temperance people vile names, just remember it does 
 
12 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 not require a high order of brains to abuse people. 
 A parrot could do thai "If you have no case, 
 abuse the opposing attorney," is the motto of petti- 
 foggers 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 advo- 
 cating correct principles and that the facts and argu- 
 ments upon which they base their claims are so 
 nearly self-evident, that a presentation in a fair, can- 
 did 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 ques- 
 tion of governmental policy; that the people are 
 the court of last resort and that all questions must 
 be determined by them. In accordance with this 
 idea they go to the people as to a jury, presenting 
 an indictment against the drink-traffic and ask that 
 the traffic be tried and a verdict rendered in accord- 
 ance with the evidence. The object and purpose of 
 the work they have never concealed. From the day 
 the temperance reform started in this country, they 
 have declared from every platform their purpose, 
 and that purpose is to bury the liquor business of 
 this country in the same 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 dug 
 the deeper he would get." 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, such is the purpose of the 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 13 
 
 temperance men of this country, a calm, deliberate, 
 dispassionate purpose, formed after a full investiga- 
 tion 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," and I 
 I say, "Yes." You ask, "On what grounds 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 whisky and write it on this 
 wall. 
 
 1st. From the day the liquor-traffic was intro- 
 duced into this country from the despotisms of 
 Europe, until the present, it has existed as a bitter, 
 blighting, damning curse on everything decent, vir- 
 tuous and holy. Its history proves it the enemy of 
 law, order, morality, Christianity and civilization. 
 
 2d. 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 outlaws germinate; the cradle where vice is 
 rocked. 
 
 3d. Liquor drinking makes the slums of great 
 cities and the horrible condition of mankind in the 
 slums. 
 
 The temperance leaders stand before the people 
 of this country, present the indictment and say to 
 the 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 inter- 
 
14 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 est of this country must meet is the issue presented 
 in this indictment. If the charges are false, the 
 temperance men of this country are liars, they are 
 slanderers, they are maligners, and the people ought 
 to put them on a rail, ride them out of the towns 
 and dump them in the lake. If the charges are 
 true, no man can justify the license of the damnable 
 traffic. It is simply a question of fact. Do the 
 temperance 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: 
 "Gentlemen, come, before the people and meet us 
 on these issues." How have the liquor men met 
 the charges? 
 
 Suppose a young man 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. The Grand Jury meet and 
 formulate 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 
 sympathize with the criminal ; in other words, they 
 prefer that the man should be proved innocent, 
 rather than that he should be proved guilty. You 
 see a man led into a court room, charged with the 
 crime of murder, and there is not a man who does 
 not hope that the charge is not true. The boy is 
 brought in, the clerk reads the indictment, and asks 
 the simple question : " Are you guilty or not guilty ?" 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 15 
 
 It is a question of fact between him and the people ; 
 he is expected 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 them to produce the proof. 
 
 The indictment is read, he is asked for his plea, 
 "guilty or not guilty," and instead of making it he 
 draws back, begins 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 
 liberty, a simple question of fact; are you guilty or 
 not guilty?" 
 
 The prisoner continues to whimper, and says: 
 "People 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 every 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 steal- 
 ing, I will give you half the money I received for the 
 horse." 
 
 If the judge, in the face of such a threat, should 
 
16 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 accept the bribe and release the prisoner, how quickly 
 the public would move to impeach and depose him 
 for corrupt practices. 
 
 The temperance leaders draw an 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 bulldoze and intimidate law- 
 abiding citizens; but, like any other criminal, come 
 up and meet the indictment before the people. 
 Bring the traffic into court. Bead the indictment. 
 Is it true or false ? 
 
 The liquor dealer commences to whimper, and 
 says : 
 
 k% These temperance people are all hypocrites." 
 
 "Come, now, brace up and be a man; true or 
 false?" 
 
 "Well," he says, "if I don't sell, some other fel- 
 lows will." 
 
 "What has that to do with the question of guilt? 
 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: 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE, 17 
 
 " Well, if I am, what are you going to do about 
 it? If you say I shall not sell, I will sell anyway; 
 you never have stopped it, and never can stop it. 
 When you say I shall not do it, I will put up the flag 
 of rebellion at the head of a beer keg, and defy you 
 to stop me. Let me tell you what I will do: If you 
 will let me sell, even though I may be guilty of all 
 the crime charged, I will give you $500 out of the 
 money I get as the results 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 illegitimate proceeds; 
 divide the blood- money with us, and we will stand 
 behind you and swear you are respectable." 
 
 See again how liquor dealers meet the issues. 
 They dare not meet them like honest men. 
 
 In Kansas I had the pleasure of going over the 
 State to help in the Prohibition fight. I went down 
 into the Bourbon part of the State. Strange as it 
 may seem to some of you, my political proclivities 
 are that way. I did not stand on a platform during 
 that 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 wrong, and you have beaten us." Did they come ? 
 Never. 
 
 I was returning to my home in Lincoln, from Atch- 
 ison, Kansas, when a gentleman from Chicago by 
 the name of Hass came along and sat down beside 
 me. After shaking hands, he said: 
 
18 THE PEOPLE VEKSUS THE LIQUOB TBAFFIO. 
 
 " Veil, Finch, vat are you down here for?" 
 
 I said I had been doing a little work. 
 
 "Vatkindof vork?" 
 
 " Persuading the people to pass the Prohibition 
 amendment." 
 
 "You dink you bass him?" 
 
 "No; I do not think so." 
 
 " Vat you mean ? " 
 
 " I know it will be passed," said I. 
 
 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 I am, in some respects ; 
 let me advise you as a friend, if you have got any 
 money now, put it where you can keep it; for in less 
 than twenty years the temperance men will have abol- 
 ished 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! " 
 
 " Vot 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 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE, 19 
 
 about is nonsense. Do you think the people of this 
 State are fools?" 
 
 He said "No." 
 
 "You would be perfectly willing to let them try a 
 case in which you had money involved?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "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 fron- 
 tier county in Kansas. Do you think you can talk 
 against such arguments? " 
 
 He said that, ladies and gentlemen the old crim- 
 inal. 
 
 His only defense upon the trial of the case before 
 the jury of the people was his power to corrupt men 
 and buy them when they were starving. He did not 
 dare to meet the ^issue. He did not dare to make an 
 honest fight ; but simply boasted of his power to cor- 
 rupt and debase men. 
 
 Last spring a convention of liquor dealers was 
 
20 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOK TRAFFIC. 
 
 called to meet at Lincoln, Neb. They met, and a 
 committee was appointed to formulate a plan of 
 organization. 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, "It would kill it dead to 
 all it that." 
 
 The matter was referred to the committee, and 
 the committee reported in favor of calling it the 
 "Merchants' 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. 
 
 At the opening of the struggle for a prohibitory 
 law, last year, S. H. King, D. S., of Lincoln, formu- 
 lated an indictment and published a circular 
 addressed to the President of this "Merchants' and 
 Traders' Union," in which he said: 
 
 " The temperance leaders wish to try this case 
 fairly before the people. They will hire the halls, 
 pay every expense connected with the meetings, 
 except the expense of your speakers, if you will 
 send men to try this question before the people with 
 our speakers." 
 
 The temperance men waited three weeks, and the 
 drunkard-makers made no reply. Then Mr. King 
 offered to pay the expenses of their speakers (all 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 21 
 
 but their whisky bills) if they would discuss the 
 question. 
 
 I met the liquor leader some weeks after this, 
 and shook hands with him. (I always shake hands 
 with these men and always speak to them ; it is fun 
 to see them wiggle.) I said, as he tried to go by: 
 
 " When are you going to accept that offer of Dr. 
 King's; when are you going to send a man to discuss 
 prohibition before the people?" 
 
 Turning around to me, with a bitter oath, he said : 
 "You don't think I'm a fool, do you? I would 
 rather give $20,000 to prevent you from submitting 
 the q-uestion to the people than to try to beat you if 
 you succeed in submitting it." 
 
 They came to Lincoln, put their money into the 
 banks, and they found men in the Legislature who 
 were dishonest enough to accept it. Drunkard- 
 making had twenty-eight votes; Prohibition, forty- 
 nine; Prohibition needed fifty-one. That is the 
 way, ladies and gentlemen, this criminal traffic meets 
 the issues; by corrupting men, buying men, and 
 destroying the very foundation of the American 
 system of government the purity of the individual 
 voter. 
 
 Did you ever hear of a liquor dealer taking the 
 platform to defend his business on its merits? 
 
 Two years ago the editor of the Omaha Herald, 
 a genial, courteous gentleman, came to Lincoln to 
 talk in favor of high license. His talk occupied the 
 first two hours, and I talked a half an hour in reply. 
 In opening his argument he said: 
 
22 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen of Nebraska, I do not 
 come to deny that intemperance is the curse of 
 the nation, that it is sapping and undermining our 
 social, civil and political institutions. All this is 
 admitted." That was his starting-point, and he went 
 on to say that the liquor business was bad, all bad, 
 not a good thing in it, but it could not be prohibited ; 
 people would sell, and it was better to restrain, and 
 get a little money out of it. 
 
 " You have not stopped men from stealing, so you 
 had better license them to steal if they will divide 
 the proceeds with the city," is the logic of his plea 
 boiled down. 
 
 A few weeks later, Judge Isaac Haskell, in the 
 Academy of Music, in Omaha, took the license side, 
 and I the prohibition side of the question. He 
 said at the beginning, "I despise drunkards; I hate 
 drunkenness! It is the curse of this country." He 
 went on to say: "People always have drank; they 
 always will drink. You cannot prohibit the sale, 
 you had better license and regulate it and get some 
 money out of it." " The Church cannot exterminate 
 the devil, so it had better go in partnership with 
 him, and divide up the souls of men," is the argument. 
 
 In Wisconsin a gentleman by the name of Woos- 
 ter, an attorney, was once discussing the license 
 question. He said, "I believe just as honestly as 
 my friend Finch does, that alcoholic liquor is a 
 damnable beverage." Then he went on to say that 
 people always had drank and always would drink 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 23 
 
 I 
 
 During my reply I said, if alcoholic liquor is a 
 damnable beverage, then it follows that the traffic 
 in a damnable beverage must be a damnable traffic, 
 and a man who will advocate a damnable traffic in a 
 damnable beverage must be and there I left the 
 audience to infer what the conclusion must be, and 
 the man said I was not fair. 
 
 Whenever you force the beer advocates in this 
 country to first principles they always disavow their 
 connection with the fruits of the traffic, and preface 
 their statement with, "I am a temperance man." 
 Why do they not say, "I am a beer man; I would 
 rather have a boy who would get drunk ; I would 
 rather have a wife who would get drunk!" Why do 
 they not stand by their business instead of sneaking 
 and crawling. 
 
 Comparisons bring out colors. Compare the 
 traffic with other trades. The liquor men will 
 admit that a minister is as good as a saloon-keeper 
 as long as he behaves himself as well. Then write 
 with the propositions already stated, the principle of 
 political economy taught us when we were boys at 
 school: that there are but three ways of getting 
 money or wealth make it, have it donated to you, 
 steal it. Some would say find it, but you cannot 
 base a principle of political economy on chance. 
 Change the form and it is in this shape: without 
 making it or having it donated to him, any man who 
 obtains wealth is a thief. In honest business every 
 man is bound to render a fair bargain. Although 
 
24 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 " 
 
 it may be unpopular doctrine in this country, I say 
 I have no sympathy for the accursed thing called 
 sharpness, which justifies lying to a man in a trade 
 and then laughs about the trick ; it is no better than 
 stealing. I would respect a man who would steal 
 twenty -five cents from my pocket-book, as much as 
 I would a man who would lie to me in a trade and 
 get it in that way. When I have taken a man's 
 word it hurts my faith in humanity to find my trust 
 betrayed. 
 
 You hire a minister, you pay him money (that is, 
 I suppose you do.) The minister is hired just as 
 any other man is hired, and you expect he will give 
 *you value received for the money that he gets. I 
 hire a minister, or help hire one on the same basis 
 that I hire a man to dig a ditch. I expect he will 
 do good work, if he does not, I will turn him off 
 and get a new one as soon as I can. But when he 
 is hired I am as much bound, in honor, to pay him 
 what I agree to pay him as I am bound to pay a 
 man who undertakes any other labor for me. You 
 hire a minister and pay him if you are honest; a 
 man who will cheat a minister is as big a knave as 
 a man who will cheat a merchant. I suppose you 
 always pay your ministers. People do not in my 
 country unless it be in promises to pay. 
 
 I call the minister up here and say to him, "You 
 get money; now, sir, tell the people what you give 
 them for the money they pay you ; show them what 
 you give them. Mr. Minister, they do not pay you 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 25 
 
 alone for preaching, although it is pleasant and 
 instructive to listen. They do not pay you to run 
 revivals, though it is a good thing to take the minds 
 of the people away from this world to the future 
 and let me say here by way of digression, it has 
 been my experience as an attorney, that you can 
 collect debts after a revival that were not worth ten 
 cents on the dollar before. The religion of Jesus 
 Christ does make men honest. A town could afford, 
 for the sake of business alone, to run a revival once 
 a year. But, Mr. Minister, 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 boys or by mid- 
 dle-aged men; we want you to come here by the 
 death-bed of the Christian and tell us, sir, if you 
 will defend your faith there. Would not he 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 am 
 willing Christianity shall be judged by the record 
 and life work of people who have loved God and kept 
 his commandments. By that test I am willing to 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 who teaches morals and smooths 
 
26 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 the pathway to the grave, thereby lighting up the 
 dark future, is entitled to a world's gratitude. You 
 earn your money, stand aside." 
 
 We want to examine another trade, 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 trades- 
 man, would say: "This is the result of my work." 
 " Universal education is the foundation of liberty." 
 Then reaching his hand to the teacher of morals 
 the minister would say: " Educated conscientious- 
 ness and educated intellect a dual unit is the only 
 safe foundation 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 educate the morals as well as the intellect, is a 
 fraud and a failure. Come with me out to the front- 
 ier, and I will show you men who are the graduates 
 of Eastern colleges who have fled there to avoid the 
 effect 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 intellectual, or the student 
 becomes an intellectual monstrosity. 
 
 Therefore we say to the teacher, " Take your place 
 with the world's workers who fairly earn the com- 
 pensation they receive." 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 27 
 
 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 
 man's horse he is better off, and I am better off, if 
 he pays me." Place him beside the minister and 
 teacher, and call a milliner to represent the ladies, 
 and we 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, and 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 clumsy fingers we 
 could never make it ; so we make up our minds it is 
 .a necessity, and give the milliner a place with the 
 others- who render fair return for the money they 
 receive. 
 
 Now we have tested these, we want to test the man 
 of the dram-shop in this State by the same stan- 
 dards. " Come up, sir. You said a minute ago the 
 minister was as good as the saloon-keeper, if he 
 behaved himself as well. If the minister is as good, 
 you must get into the same scales of political econ- 
 omy where we have weighed him. Do not plead 
 the baby act, but come. You dare not come ? Do you 
 
28 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 hesitate ? You get money, you toil not, neither do 
 you spin, and yet few workmen can wear such 
 clothes as you do. What are you giving for what 
 you get? Come up here, sir; bring a finished spec- 
 imen of your work ; hold it up here for the crowd to 
 see, and show us its fine points!" What would he 
 bring? What does the dram shop manufacture? 
 What has it always manufactured? It has always 
 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 me a first-class sample of dram-shop 
 work. Could you induce a liquor dealer to come up 
 here and hold it up ? What does he say ? You say~ 
 to him, "You make drunkards." His very first 
 excuse is, "I will not have any old drunkards hang- 
 ing around me." If it is a good thing to make a 
 drunkard, a drunkard must be a good thing after he 
 is made. Suppose, ladies and gentlemen, the min- 
 ister 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-meet- 
 ings. Would not that be a good advertisement for 
 the Christian religion ? 
 
 I saw by the papers that at the Des Plaines camp- 
 meeting they called together on the platform all the 
 old men and women who had been in the Christian, 
 service fifty years, and there was a crowd gathered 
 around the platform to hear their testimony; the 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 29 
 
 papers stated that the feeling pervading the audience 
 -was wonderful. Why do not the drunkard-makers 
 come up here and call up a number of their veterans 
 a number of men they have worked on for ten, fifteen 
 or twenty years, with red noses, bleared eyes, ragged 
 -clothes, toes creeping out of their shoes? Bring 
 them up here and then stand up and exhibit them, 
 opening the Bible let the liquor seller now act as 
 interlocutor open the Bible and read: "No drun- 
 kard shall enter the kingdom of heaven," and then 
 call on them to testify. By their evidence we are 
 willing to stand or fall. Why will not the drunkard- 
 makers do it? Is their business so mean, so low, so 
 devilish, that when they have broken down a man who 
 lias stood by them through thick and thin, when he 
 has given his money, character everything, they 
 kick him out and say: "We do not want any old 
 drunkards around us!" The business is afraid to 
 meet its record. Such is the evidence of the case. 
 Go down the street ; a new wagon is standing by the 
 curb ; you stop to admire it and at last say: " I wonder 
 ivho made it." " I did, sir," answers the wagon- 
 maker. You look at the man. He is dressed in 
 poor clothes, but see how proud he is as he contem- 
 plates his finished work. Last year while visiting a 
 county 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 
 
30 THE PEOPLE VEKSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 drun- 
 kard-maker run out of his factory and say: "I did 
 that work?" Why will not the drunkard-makers 
 defend their work ? Can you separate a workman 
 from his chips? If the liquor business is respect- 
 able, its products must be respectable. The liquor 
 business has its own work and acts to meet and 
 defend; this much, no more. 
 
 The. temperance men must then continue to press 
 the charges against the traffic, and labor to perfect 
 their plan of work against such a dastardly foe. 
 We are striving to save drunkards and to prevent 
 drunkenness. 
 
 The temperance people believe in reaching down 
 into the depths of debauchery and getting hold of 
 the poor fellows; I say reaching with tears and 
 prayers, and lifting and holding them up, but after 
 we have helped them out we believe in blocking the 
 way so other men will not fall in. Save the drunkard 
 and prevent drunkenness. 
 
 Such, ladies and gentlemen, are the positions 
 maintained, and the methods of maintaining them, 
 believed in by the opposing hosts. Firm in the 
 belief in the righteousness of their cause, the tem- 
 perance hosts will move for a verdict of guilty, and 
 demand that sentence be passed on this old hoary- 
 headed criminal; and then, when the people have 
 
A STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 31 
 
 settled the question, and settled it right, we can say 
 in reality as we now say in theory, " Vox populi, vox 
 Dei." 
 
IL 
 WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PEESSED. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE OPERA HOUSE AT 
 WAUKESHA, WISCONSIN, THURSDAY, OCT. 12, 1882. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: Early in September, 
 while visiting in the City of Madison, I received an 
 invitation from temperance friends in various sec- 
 tions of the state to come here and talk on the sub- 
 ject 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 can not depend 
 upon their telling the whole truth about this prohi- 
 bition movement, and I thought if I wanted to know 
 the whole truth the best way would be for me to 
 come here and see you, and talk with you. 
 
 32 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 33 
 
 I am not here to deliver any regular 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 is 
 as much your question as it is my question, that 
 interests you as much as it does me, a question 
 that you desire to see settled as earnestly as I do, 
 although you and I may differ in regard to the best 
 methods of settlement. 
 
 I always wish when I discuss 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 
 temperance men of this country have indicted the 
 liquor traffic. The counts of the indictment are as 
 positive and plain as the counts of an indictment 
 against any criminal, and the people are the jury 
 who are to determine the truth or falsity of 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; that when you go from 
 this place, you will be willing to act up to the full 
 measure of your convictions. If I could, by any 
 trick of sophistry or any power of personal magnet- 
 
34 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 ism, lead every man and woman in this house to 
 shout for temperance, I would not do it, unless your 
 judgment, reason, and intelligence told you to shout 
 I would give little for a temperance man who was 
 made a temperance man by temporary excitement. 
 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 win. 
 
 The purpose of the temperance men of this coun- 
 try has been for years well denned, and they have 
 not changed it, and will not change it until victory 
 shall come. They demand the complete outlawry 
 of drunkard-making, and they will accept nothing 
 less. 
 
 There is no doubt about the aims of the temper- 
 ance movement. The temperance men intend to 
 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 traffic 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 
 I 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, 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 35 
 
 make up your verdict in accordance with your hon- 
 est 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 convic- 
 tions, you are guilty of an injustice, 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 observ- 
 ance 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 are no two positions 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 
 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 
 
36 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 -enemy to this government ; if it is an enemy of law 
 and order and civilization, then will you give 
 me a single reason under heaven why you, as an 
 honest man, or I, as an honest man, can vote for 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 gov- 
 ernments. 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 ver- 
 dict. You should weigh just as honestly the argu- 
 ments of the temperance men. 
 
 A man asked me some time .ago: "Finch, would 
 you advise a temperance man to read whisky papers ? " 
 
 I answered: "I would not give much for a tem- 
 perance man if he would not do it." 
 
 You are not to settle this question as an individ- 
 ual. You are a citizen of the state, and when you 
 vote on this question, the influence of your vote does 
 not rest with yourself, but influences the whole state. 
 You must forget your individuality and remember 
 your position as the patriot and citizen ; and if there are 
 any arguments in- favor of the liquor traffic, you owe it 
 to your own sense of honor,manhood and truth to weigh 
 carefully every argument that the liquor men may 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 37 
 
 bring in making up your verdict Take the liquor 
 traffic and all the good it has done, and put it on one 
 side of your scales of judgment. Do not leave 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, 
 beyond all question, to stand by and support the 
 traffic. If the dramshop 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. 
 
 From this point we can certainly go forward and 
 look at the facts in the case. Every person who reads 
 must be satisfied that this question must be settled 
 in this country. The question, ' ' What shall the gov- 
 ernment do with the alcoholic liquor traffic ? " is one 
 that must be heard. We cannot laugh it down ; we 
 cannot sneer it down ; we cannot bulldoze it down ; 
 and there is not money enough in the blood-stained 
 coffers of the drunkard-makers to prevent the people 
 of this land from rendering a verdict on the facts in 
 this case. 
 
38 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 As surely as this American people live, 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 get there, you 
 find your boy on the 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 finger 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. 
 
 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 increase of pulse is simply nature's effort to ex- 
 pel the poison and save the child's life. This in- 
 creased activity of the vital forces is simply nature 
 defending herself against the poison which would de- 
 stroy the organism unless expelled." 
 
 You ask: " What shall we do for Willie?" 
 
 The medical man will answer: " I will leave medu 
 cine 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?" 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT 18 PRESSED. dU 
 
 The doctor will answer you: " Never, until the poi- 
 son, 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. 
 
 In past ages governments born of a higher civil- 
 ization have developed rapidly for a few years and 
 then died, thereby destroying the hopes of the people. 
 Such governments sickened and died because social 
 poiso-n 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 live longer than other 
 governments have lived, is based upon the increas- 
 ing 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 cen- 
 turies, 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. 
 
40 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 The only hope I have for this government is, 
 that the statesmen who have charge of the life and 
 health of the Kepublic 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 European governments. 
 Fasten this thought in your minds and keep it 
 there. I never heard a gentleman talking against 
 prohibition and defending the liquor traffic in 
 this country who used this word "government" in 
 its American sense. Liquor men always use the 
 European or despotic 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 from the people; there it comes down 
 from the king. Here it is the people's power dele- 
 gated to official representatives ; there it is divine (?) 
 power delegated to the ruler. Here it is intelligent 
 common sense ; there superstitious ignorance. Once 
 while speaking in Iowa a gentleman interrupted me, 
 saying: "Mr. Finch, if this government should pass 
 a prohibitory liquor law, it would become a tyranny." 
 
 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 pro T 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 
 
 hibitory 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 prohibi- 
 tory 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 repre- 
 sentatives?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "If the operation of such a law is tyrannical, then 
 the people are the tyrants?" 
 
 '"Yes, sir." 
 
 "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 idiocy 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 
 
42 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 
 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 character of the building de- 
 pends on the units of the structure. In this govern- 
 ment- the unit is the man, the woman, the child. 
 Each man and each woman whp 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 char- 
 acter 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 char- 
 acter of its citizens. 
 
 As the govenment 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 political 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. 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PBESSED. 43 
 
 Especially is this true if the fever is not temporary. 
 Let us examine this temperance 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 inher- 
 ited 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 ?" As soon as that question 
 was raised, the temperance men and the religious 
 men of the nation said, " This question of the con- 
 tinuance 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 passage of the constitutional amendments 
 and the Civil Eights bill, than from the north to 
 the south, from the east to the west of this nation, the 
 temperance 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-offices they are 
 
4A THE PEOPLE VEESUS THE LIQUOB TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 
 tell you? It 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 will allow themselves, for more than 
 seventy years, to get 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 there is something, 
 somewhere in the political organization of this coun- 
 try, that causes this fever. You ask me how long 
 before it will cease. I answer, as the physician an- 
 swered in regard to your boy, " Never, until the 
 grogshop poison, the cause of this unrest, is forever 
 eliminated from the political organism of this coun- 
 try." You must settle this question. You cannot 
 nominate 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. 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PBESSED. 45 
 
 The liquor oligarchy crack the whip of political 
 corruption over the political parties of this country 
 and cry, " Do our bidding or perish." You may 
 talk about postponing it, but no man can run for of- 
 fice in this country but the liquor men will demand 
 of him to get down in the mud before them. If he 
 wrants a nomination he must come into convention 
 with the marks of his own defilement on him, so 
 that the delegates from the grogshops may smell it. 
 If he will not do that, he must keep his mouth closed 
 and keep his principles to himself. 
 
 The question that you wish to have answered is, 
 *' What is the best method of settling this liquor 
 problem?" 
 
 When the temperance agitation started in this 
 country there were two classes of men, just as there 
 are 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 ex- 
 istence ; 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 re- 
 public ought to be a friend to the liquor business and 
 ought to leave it free and unfettered. On the con- 
 trary, if it tends to loosen the bands of the young 
 republic and break down our institutions, kill it, 
 and kill it at once." 
 
 The other class of men said, " Hold on; that will 
 not do; the people are not educated up to prohibi- 
 tion." Did you ever hear anybody say "the people 
 
46 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 are not educated up to prohibition ?" I always feel 
 like thanking a liquor man when he uses that ex- 
 pression. 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 political 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 point of obey- 
 ing 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 they certainly are do- 
 ing 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. 
 
 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 dem- 
 agogues to catch fools. 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 47 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 steal- 
 ing 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 a law against mur- 
 der, 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 de- 
 graded plane, and not for the men on a civilized 
 plane. 
 
 You know that this is true all through God's uni- 
 verse. Go home to-night and take your baby boy in 
 your arms. You think he is the nicest boy in the 
 world, and I presume he is. Baby knows nothing 
 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. There is a fire in the stove and it is hot. 
 
48 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Baby is attracted by the red color. He sticks his 
 little hand on the stove and he is burned. Baby is 
 punished by the law, even more than an old man who 
 knew all about the law, because the man's hand is 
 hard and baby's is soft. The law is there as an edu- 
 cator, and baby will not be as apt to put his fingers 
 out in that way again. The law is the best educator 
 we could have. A mother goes up stairs to 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 cor- 
 rect principles, and it existed in nature since the foun- 
 dation of the universe. You gray-haired men can 
 almost remember 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 
 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 
 principle. That is God's plan. I presume that we 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 49 
 
 have men in this country who, if God had invited 
 ihem into the Garden of Eden, would have told him 
 he was making blunders, and advised him to change 
 the plans. 
 
 In my own state, in the cattle counties, for sev- 
 eral years, the law against murder was practi- 
 cally 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, out 
 would come a revolver, and he died. The people 
 said: "Served him right." A man going along the 
 street was pointed out as having killed two men. 
 Several times I have been touched on the shoulder 
 by a friend, who said: "That man has killed three 
 men." Public sentiment justified it. For a long 
 time it was impossible to indict a man for murder 
 and put him on trial. Perhaps there was not one 
 man on the jury but had committed a murder him- 
 self. The result was "not guilty," or "killed the 
 man in self defense." But the state did not pass 
 laws on the level with the moral sense of those peo- 
 ple. The state did not say : " We cannot prohibit 
 you 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 
 state said, " It is wrong to kill," and it held the law 
 over those 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 
 
50 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 is better enforced in those counties of Nebraska than 
 in the cities of Chicago or Milwaukee. The state 
 acted on the correct principle. 
 
 The talk of the license men is that the State shall 
 pass a law on the level of the people, and then edu- 
 cate 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. 
 
 A gentleman said to me the other day : " Mr. Finch, 
 prohibition does not prohibit." 
 
 I said: " That is not the question. The question 
 for you as a license man to answer is, * Does regula- 
 tion 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 sev- 
 enty 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 ac- 
 cursed 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 deny. In your own state the law eays the dram- 
 shops shall not sell liquor to minors. They do sell 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PBESSED, 51 
 
 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 influences of the licensed liquor traffic. 
 They have used the pledge. They have gone 
 down into the gutter and lifted out 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 
 therein ; and temperance men have a job on hand all 
 the time. Temperance workers have e'stablished 
 temperance lodges. They have built Friendly inns. 
 They have built coffee houses. They have estab- 
 lished reading rooms, and put lecturers on the plat- 
 form and paid them. They have circulated books 
 and arguments ; and farther than that, 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, of money- 
 giving and struggling, I stand here to say, what no 
 man dares challenge, that the license system of this 
 country is the most unmitigated humbug that was- 
 
52 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 ever invented by bad men to fool an ignorant people. 
 But the license man springs up, ready to raise an 
 objection: 
 
 "Mr. Finch, you have laws enough now, if you 
 would only enforce them." 
 
 "Gentlemen, we have tried to enforce them; but 
 they are not laws of our making. We do not have 
 faith in them ; do 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." 
 
 Before the high license law was passed in my own 
 state two years ago, I was talking with a gentleman, 
 a member of the state senate. He asked: 
 
 "Mr. Finch, what are you going to do about this 
 license law?" 
 
 I answered, "Nothing." 
 
 " Are you in favor of it?" 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 53 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 I said: "I believe if whisky 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. 
 If it is a curse, LET NO MAN SELL IT." 
 
 He said: "That is theory." 
 
 I replied: "It is fact." 
 
 He said: "Finch, you cannot pass a prohibitory 
 law, and you could not enforce it if it was passed." 
 
 "Yes, we can." 
 
 "But who will do it?" 
 
 " The prohibitionists. Give us our law, and if we 
 do not make it operate we will repeal it." 
 
 He said: "If you pass this license law it 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 whisky as you can get. If this li- 
 cense law is passed it will be a dead letter because 
 your men will not do anything, and the prohibition- 
 ists do not believe in it." 
 
 Said he: "If it is passed, Mr. Finch, it will be en- 
 forced." 
 
 "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. 
 
64 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 The liquor men would not even pay the license. I 
 waited to see what the license men would do. I 
 wanted to see if they were honest. They did not 
 lift a finger ! At last an editor, in a long article, de- 
 clared that I was the leader of the strongest political 
 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: 
 
 " Finch, did you see that editorial of mine ? " 
 
 "Yes;" and I laughed. 
 
 "Why do you laugh?" 
 
 " To think what a fool you were." 
 
 "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 if; I 
 did not. You say regulation will regulate ; I say it 
 will not. Is not such the fact?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then, 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: "Gentlemen, you 
 must pay this license." And after one of the bitterest 
 fights ever made in our state, we succeeded in forc- 
 ing them to pay over the money, in all sections of 
 the state, though the law was and is a dead letter in 
 all other respects. 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 55 
 
 I have learned, by sad experience, that you might 
 as well try to regulate a rattlesnake by stroking his 
 tail, as to regulate a grog-shop, and by license let its 
 fangs remain. If I ever get indignant in my life it 
 is when I think of outrages which I have suffered; 
 and if the Lord will spare my life long enough, I 
 will get even with the beer sneaks as sure as I live. 
 
 "But," you say, "this is an exceptional instance." 
 JJet us see. 
 
 In the city of 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 
 leading politician, an earnest Christian, a leading 
 layman in the Baptist church of our state; a man 
 who did 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 around him. They simply tried to make 
 the liquor sellers take out licenses in accordance with 
 the laws of the state. They commenced their pros- 
 ecutions in July, and in October Col. Watson B. 
 Smith, at the hour of midnight, was shot down at his 
 office door, in the United Spates government build- 
 ing, by assassins, for no other reason than that he 
 was working to make liquor cut-throats'obey law. 
 
 Up and down this land you know the business to- 
 day is an outlaw, and that there is nothing under 
 heaven too mean for it to do. When a man says, " I 
 
56 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 morn- 
 ing. 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 en- 
 deavor to injure your business and smirch your char- 
 acter; that they would hire bullies to come up be- 
 hind you and club you on the head. In Milwaukee, 
 simply because some of the citizens asked that the 
 law might 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 
 dramshop 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 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PBESSED. 57 
 
 that this government is not like European govern- 
 ments. That men drink liquor in Germany and 
 France, is no reason why the liquor traffic should 
 be authorized by American 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, be- 
 cause the government is distinct from, and indepen- 
 dent 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 peo- 
 ple of this country become drunken, debauched, and 
 riotous who is going to control theni ? The govern- 
 ment. 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 intelli- 
 gence of its voters; the intelligence on the farms 
 and in the workshops; intelligence so widely dif- 
 fused, 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 to talk 
 nonsense. 
 
58 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Ever since 1 have been in Nebraska, men have 
 come to me and said, " Finch, your taxes amount to 
 so many dollars." "For what?" "In part for 
 school purposes." 
 
 Why do they tax me ? I have had no child, since I 
 have been in the state, old enough to go to schooL 
 Why do they require me to pay for schools? Be- 
 cause the very basis of this government is the in- 
 telligence 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. TJiere can be no property with- 
 out 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 
 hire 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 bushwhackers 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 children than to take 
 care of the criminals. 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 59 
 
 The foundation of this government rests on four 
 things: the church and I do not speak of any par- 
 ticular church, but of the church universal, the 
 school, 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 and 
 churches, 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 build up or destroy these interests?" 
 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 felt particularly in- 
 terested in meeting him. I thought he would de- 
 fend the liquor traffic, and I prosecute it; conse- 
 quently I desired to get the evidence against his old 
 client in the town where he lived. I went to Omaha 
 after facts. The first place I visited was the com- 
 mon school of Omaha. I asked the Superintendent, 
 " How many schools have you here ? " 
 
 He answered, "Seven: six ward schools and a 
 high school; also, a college and some private schools." 
 
 " How many teachers have you in the city insti- 
 tutions?" 
 
60 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Eighty-four/' 
 
 "How many graduated last year? " 
 
 "About one hundred and eight." 
 
 The city of Omaha paid $67,000 to run that 
 system of schools because it had a wonderful influ- 
 ence for good. I then went to look after the other 
 schools, the dramshops. I went to their superintend- 
 ent, the police judge, and asked him: 
 
 "How are your schools getting along?" 
 
 He said, "Finch, are you drunk?" 
 
 I said, "You should not think I am drunk be- 
 cause most of the men brought here are." 
 
 He inquired what I meant. I explained. He 
 laughed, " So you think I am the superintendent of 
 the saloons?" 
 
 "Are you not?" 
 
 " Well," said he, " I do not know but I might be 
 called so." 
 
 " Well," said I, " judge, how many schools of this 
 kind have you in the city?" 
 
 He told me one hundred and fifty-five licensed 
 ones. 
 
 "How many teachers in those schools?" 
 
 He told me, including cappers, bar-tenders and 
 owners, about four hundred. 
 
 "How many scholars did you have up for gradua- 
 tion during the year?" 
 
 He told me he gave diplomas to the rockpile, the 
 county jail, and fined, about twelve hundred. Some 
 had graduated three or four times over; "but it is 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 6l 
 
 perfectly safe to assume," he continued, "that there 
 were six hundred different graduates." 
 
 Now, my friends, as thinking people, I want to 
 ask you if it is not a question of importance what 
 the influence of the liquor traffic is. You say that 
 these common schools with seven buildings, eighty- 
 four teachers, and one hundred and eight graduates, 
 have a wonderful influence what kind of an influ- 
 ence must the dramshops have ? There are seven 
 schools and one hundred and fifty-five drinking 
 places, eighty-four teachers and four hundred cap- 
 pers, bartenders and owners ; one hundred and 
 eight graduates in learning against sii hundred 
 graduates in crime. Now I submit that it is a 
 question that every man who loves his country must 
 ask himself, "What is the nature of the educational 
 influence of the grogshops on our voters and peo- 
 ple ?" If the dramshop education is good, then take 
 the grogshop and place it over beside the school, and 
 we shall have the home, the church, the school, the 
 newspaper and the dramshop as the bulwark of our 
 liberties. If that education is bad, if it tears down 
 the work of the other institutions, then let it 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, the 
 gallows, or to prison? What sense is there in run- 
 ning these two systems of education? The dram- 
 shop destroys the work your common schools are 
 doing, debauches and rots the very foundations of 
 
62 THE PEOPLE YEESUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 this government, by corrupting the individual char- 
 acter of the men and women who compose the gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 You may ask what the influence of the liquor 
 traffic is. I do not need to insult your intelligence 
 by going into details to show you. You all know. 
 Suppose 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 them- 
 selves. Twenty-five grocery stores; yes; but with 
 twenty-five grogshops you must have a cooler. 
 You can no more run a grogshop without a cooler 
 as a tail, and the marshal and his force as the 
 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 influence of pork 
 and beans bought in a grocery store ? How many 
 men did you ever know in this town to go home at 
 night under the influence of new boots bought in a 
 boot store and kick their wives out in the snow? 
 How many assaults and batteries and riots were ever 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT 18 PRESSED. 63 
 
 caused in this town by the stimulating effect of beef- 
 steak bought in a butcher shop ? What other insti- 
 tution in the world is there that necessitates officers 
 to arrest its products, and prisons in which to lock 
 them up? 
 
 I was in an Illinois town last winter when a gen- 
 tleman came and asked me to ride through the city 
 with him. In riding through the city I was aston- 
 ished to see how their dramshops were located ; three 
 in a bunch, the bunches being in different 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 make them get in bunches, or else 
 we will not license them." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 He answered, '* If three of them are together one 
 policeman can watch the three. If they were scat- 
 tered 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 police- 
 men would be required?" He replied, "A hundred 
 night watchmen 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. 
 
64 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC!. 
 
 At a fair, sometime since. I addressed a very large 
 audience in the forenoon; in Ihe afternoon I was 
 walking about the grounds looking at the exhibition 
 when a man came to me and said: 
 
 "Your name is Finch; you are the man who 
 talked temperance this forenoon?" 
 
 "Yes; or prohibition." 
 
 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 told him that was exceedingly fortunate for him, 
 and me, too it might save unpleasantness. 
 
 He said, "I am a liquor-dealer, and the managers 
 of this fair did a dirty, mean thing in getting you 
 here. This fair represents all the 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 county, 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 county." 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 beets, turnips, squashes and potatoes; 
 for farm machinery; for all kinds of ladies' work; 
 for cheese and butter. The managers of this fair 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 65 
 
 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 replied, " You do a legitimate business. You 
 are manufacturing and turning your products out 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 bummer made in a grog- 
 shop in this county; $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 give him fits 
 for not doing it." 
 
 The liquor-dealer straightened up, and said I was 
 a damned fool. 
 
 They say temperance men talk gush and non- 
 sense. 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. 
 
 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." 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 there?" Of course 
 it does. If it exists, what is the cause of it ? Did 
 you ever stop to think? There is no such corrup- 
 tion in the country districts. You can not corrupt 
 
66 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 the farmers, you can not corrupt the sober -men. If 
 corruption exists at the ballot-box there must be 
 cause for it. What is the cause ? 
 
 There stands a workman ; he does not drink liquor ; 
 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 five years he goes down and down, 
 and bye 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; crav- 
 ing for something to drink; his stomach so hungry 
 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 citi- 
 zen, according to his convictions, if he can get 
 money for voting otherwise ? No. 
 
 The dramshop is the cause of most of the corrup- 
 tion in our great centres of population. Talk about 
 purifying the ballot-box in our great cities! The 
 ballot-box never will be purified until the voter is 
 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 almost every 
 great city. In the cities it is doubtful to-day 
 whether republican government is a success. The 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. < 
 
 debauchery of the voter, the corruption of the ballot 
 box is an effect; and the cause is the American 
 dramshop. The tendency of the liquor interest in 
 this country is to degrade men ; to debauch men ; to 
 stuff ballot-boxes; elect mean men to office, and in 
 every sense of the word to tear down and ruin Amer- 
 ican institutions ; consequently it is a question in this 
 country whether the American system of govern- 
 ment 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: "Mr. Finch, I 
 have a natural right to sell liquor." 
 
 I said, "Please say it again and say it slowly." 
 
 He did. 
 
 I said, "What do you mean by it?" 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 Said I, "I suppose you mean, if you mean any- 
 thing, 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 whisky 
 to, in a state of nature? You can not sell whisky 
 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." 
 
68 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Suppose a man comes here with a club to kill me ; 
 probably under the laws of this country I would be 
 compelled to retire as far as I could with safety, but 
 when the issue is between his life and my life he 
 must die, because every man has the right to defend 
 himself. I am a man, and I have a right to be a 
 man. I exist, and I h^ve a right to exist. This is 
 the foundation of social and political ethics. 
 
 A story is told of a muscular preacher who used 
 all the powers the Lord had given him, fists as well 
 as tongue. Some of his sisters 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, 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. He continued, "If a man should 
 strike you on the right cheek he might do it through 
 mistake, or might do it through a feeling of mis- 
 chief, and if you turned around without asking any 
 questions and struck him back, that would be acting 
 like a brute. You should keep still and 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 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 69 
 
 country. The law that is inherent in every individ- 
 ual, the right of self-defense, is inherent in the 
 state of which the individual forms a part. The 
 government has a right to defend its own life, and 
 we have seen in this country to what extent it might 
 defend it. You remember, and so do I, when more 
 troops were necessary and a conscription 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, put on their backs the army blue, put 
 guns on their shoulders, march them away and stand 
 them in front of guns to be shot at. The right of 
 the government to defend its own life must remain 
 as it is or the government is good for nothing. The 
 government has the right to destroy any business, 
 any custom, or any trade that tends to destroy the 
 government by debauching the character of the citi- 
 zens that make the government. The highest courts 
 of the nation have again and again affirmed the 
 principle ; and this is the declaration of the supreme 
 court of the United States, and every other court of 
 last resort that has had occasion to pass upon the 
 question: "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 recog- 
 
70 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOE TRAFFIC. 
 
 nize the fact that the people grow. This govern- 
 ment 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 
 fool-nonsense. What they said was, "We are in 
 favor of returning to the primitive government of 
 our forefathers." fe That was their declaration. I 
 laughed. You ask me why, and I tell you. Since 
 the sunrise of creation's morning humanity has 
 moved on, on up the hill of progress. There have 
 been eddies in the great tide or current that have 
 made it seem almost as though humanity was mov-* 
 ing backward; but I stand here unhesitatingly to 
 affirm that, as a whole, humanity has never retro- 
 graded. 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 has a mightier problem 
 of government than 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. 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 71 
 
 Ten years ago we did not need a government to 
 look after telephones; to-day we do. 
 
 Thirty years from this time the government 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 shells. 
 Take Russia to-day; it is a despotism because the 
 government is like an iron-clad shell. The people 
 have developed and filled it. The people have 
 tried to break the shell with the dagger, with the 
 bomb, and by social revolution, but they have not 
 succeeded yet. But as sure as God's people go up 
 to the point He has ordained, just so sure that gov- 
 ernment will go to pieces and let the people advance. 
 There can be no doubt about it. 
 
 In much of Europe the only pathway for man- 
 kind's advance is the pathway of bloodshed. Every 
 advance made in those countries 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 made to fit her. 
 
 The wisest thing ever said by an American states- 
 
72 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 man was, " Unless we provide for the peaceable future 
 development of the people, some day they will de- 
 velop through bloodshed and assassination. They 
 gave us a constitution under which the people can 
 grow without fighting and without revolution ; and in 
 the constitution of every state they put that expan- 
 sive link, 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, if 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 
 Wisconsin 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 our- 
 selves. 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 thousands, by their names, and on 
 their knees have begged the party machines in this 
 state to recognize one of the first principles of this 
 government, and submit an amendment to the con- 
 stitution 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 
 
WHY THE INDICTMENT IS PRESSED. 73 
 
 submit it; if you do we will beat your party." And 
 the party men, whipped down under the liquor sel- 
 lers, 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 the despotism of political demagogues? 
 
 You say in Wisconsin you have a government of 
 the people, by 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 begged and plead for the right 
 to vote on a primary principle of government, 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 im- 
 pudently defies law and seeks to overturn the very 
 foundations of the government. Its character as a 
 political assassin is so well known that politicians 
 ask not what will the people do but what do the 
 liquor men want? how will the dramsellers regard 
 our action? 
 
 In view of all the facts, it seems to be the plain 
 duty of every patriot and citizen to rally to the de- 
 fense of American liberties, and by crushing the 
 
74 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 grogshop oligarchy, strengthen the foundations of 
 our civil and political institutions. I have faith to 
 believe that the jury of America's voters will con- 
 demn the traffic and that the Eepublic 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; 
 Be freedom, and science, and virtue, thy fame. 
 
III. 
 
 AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 
 
 DELIVERED AT LEWIS' OPERA HOUSE, DES MOINES, 
 IOWA, APRIL 22, 1882. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have come to your 
 state to discuss the necessity, feasibility and practi- 
 cability of the prohibition or inhibition of the alco- 
 holic 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 legislators having recognized that the 
 salus populi, not the solus CIVITATIS, is the supreme* 
 LEX, the case is in your hands to investigate, ex- 
 amine 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 investiga- 
 tion with misgivings in regard to my own abilities 
 to materially assist you. I come as an assistant not 
 as a teacher, and hope I may, if I do anything, as- 
 sist you to reach a just, righteous verdict. In view 
 of the great interests involved, I would not, as an 
 American citizen, dare mislead you, but deem it my 
 
 75 
 
76 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 duty to counsel the fullevst, fairest and most com- 
 plete investigation of all the facts in this case. 
 
 The gentlemen 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 celebrated lawyer once said to a graduating class, 
 " If you have a client who is guilty, and who has no 
 defense, never let him be tried." " How will you 
 prevent it?" 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 defense, 
 and it may be best for us at the commencement 
 of this investigation to determine 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 
 deprecated that the gentlemen on the side of the- 
 liquor traffic have thought it necessary to appeal to 
 class, clan and national prejudices, thereby disinte- 
 grating society for selfish ends. Although such, 
 demagoguery will not influence you sensible men, 
 it shows how utterly reckless and unscrupulous ar& 
 the advocates on the other side. 
 
 See what interests they jeopardize to accomplish 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 77 
 
 an acquittal. 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 unassimi- 
 lated and undigested, 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 or- 
 ganism banded together as clans and nationalities, 
 unassimilated and undigested, and politically or 
 socially prosper. Anything that prevents the assimi- 
 lation 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 to band together in this 
 country as Germans, or Irishmen 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 demagoguery. All 1 
 voters in this country are Americans, native and 
 foreign born. No man has a right to vote in Iowa 
 a,s 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-nothingism was a curse to this coun- 
 try because it acted as a disintegrating force on 
 society. German know-nothingism, as now de- 
 
78 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 veloped by tricksters and liquor-sellers, is of the 
 same class of political heresies. If it continues it 
 will undoubtedly develop American know-noth- 
 ingism as its antidote, when the Germans who have 
 been led into this movement will be the ones to 
 suffer, 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 insinuate 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 defense. Anything that 
 excites race-feeling instead of intelligence, appetite 
 instead of reason, passion instead of conscience, self- 
 interest instead of duty, should be shut out of a case 
 involving grave questions of the functions and duties 
 of government. 
 
 The voters who favor the traffic should investigate, 
 together, with the temperance voters, the arguments 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 79 
 
 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 is that 
 of political partisanship. I stand before you to- 
 night a Democrat, 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 trai- 
 tors. I have no sympathy with this gerrymandering 
 of political platforms to catch soreheads from other 
 parties, believing 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 Re- 
 publican. On the conclusions to be deduced from 
 certain political data we differ broadly, but on this 
 issue we agree. Love of home, country, civiliza- 
 tion and liberty are equally dear to the Democratic 
 as well as the Republican father, and if these mutual 
 interests are endangered by the liquor traffic, parti- 
 sanship is forgotten in the struggle with the com- 
 mon 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 cam- 
 paign. The prohibitory constitutional amendment 
 
80 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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: 
 " If any person 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 be punished by imprisonment 
 in the county jail not more than thirty days, or by a 
 fine not exceeding one hundred dollars." 
 
 This deals with the traffic, not with 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 con- 
 trol as long as the individual does not injure society 
 by the use. 
 
 Section 4041 of Iowa statutes reads: "If any 
 person throw, or cause to be thrown, any dead animal 
 into any river, well, spring, cistern, reservoir, stream, 
 or pond, he shall be 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 poisoned 
 water. It does not say you shall not drink the 
 water. It says a man shall not pcison the water. 
 The one act directly affects society, the other affects 
 the individual directly and society indirectly, and 
 society prohibits the first. 
 
 Society will never undertake to say that an indi- 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 81 
 
 vidual shall not read obscene literature, but it does 
 say individuals shall not print and circulate such 
 literature, 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 state for its existence. Anything that af- 
 fects, deleteriously, the public health, public moral- 
 ity, public order, public peace, public safety, the 
 state must, as far as in its power, destroy, to pre- 
 serve its own life. The state must guard against 
 these 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 
 it, and no rights are violated thereby the traffic 
 having forfeited all right to demand protection from 
 the state by its indirect attacks on the life, pros- 
 perity and order of the state. 
 
 The friends of the amendment recognizing the 
 fact that society is made up of individuals, and 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 
 
82 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 possible for the development of those traits and 
 characteristics of the race which tend to build up 
 and strengthen it's 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 
 that it is the duty of government to make it as easy 
 as possible for the individual to do right and as dif- 
 ficult 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 by it. In other words, that an individual 
 had better take corruption or poison, in order to 
 generate a fever to purify his system. Would not 
 the learned materia-medicist say, "It is better to 
 never poison the system and subject its elements to 
 such a test"? 
 
 The issue in this campaign is not a question of 
 total abstinence. I stand before you to-night a total 
 abstainer. In my own state we have thousands of 
 total abstainers who are prohibitionists. We have 
 hundreds of prohibitionists who are drinkers. 
 
 The ex-chief justice of my own state, one of the 
 ablest criminal lawyers On this continent learned, 
 logical and eloquent; a man whose hatred for the 
 dramshop is so intense he can hardly find language 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 83 
 
 to express it, is a man who used to drink wine, and 
 I think he does yet. When you talk to him in re- 
 gard to total abstinence, he says, "That is an indi- 
 vidual matter." When you talk to him in regard to 
 the American saloon, he says, "That is a question 
 of government." 
 
 The man who drinks liquor may love his home; 
 the man who uses liquor may love his wife ; the man 
 who uses liquor may love his child; and the man 
 who abstains may do the same thing. In this cam- 
 paign, and on this issue of home and family, they 
 are one ; and if the liquor traffic is proved to be the 
 enemy of home and family, there is no reason why 
 the drinker should not stand with the abstainer in 
 favor of this amendment. 
 
 This question of the prohibition of the alcoholic 
 liquor traffic is in no sense a question of individual 
 morality or individual abstinence any more than 
 the prohibition of the sale of rotten beef is a ques- 
 tion of the prohibition of eating it, or the prohibi- 
 tion of the sale of bad milk a question of drinking 
 it. The one implies the protection extended by a 
 state to society as a whole, the other implies the in- 
 dividual action based on a man's judgment and con- 
 scientiousness. 
 
 It may be best for us to look for a moment at this 
 proposition, because the opposition will almost surely 
 endeavor to drag these two" distinct lines of work to- 
 gether, and endeavor to whip out of the prohibition 
 ranks all men who drink. On the propositions 
 
84 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 underlying the temperance reform in this country 
 all men are agreed. 
 
 There has hardly been a session of the Brewers' 
 Congress or the Distillers' Union in this land, in the 
 past twenty years, that has not resolved against the 
 evils of intemperance. On the primary propositions 
 that these evils exist all classes agree. The only 
 question is the question of remedy. 
 
 The theory of the prohibitionist is that it is the 
 duty of the state to make it just as easy to do right, 
 and just as difficult to do wrong, as possible ; that it 
 is the duty of the state to make the road up to man- 
 hood and honor as smooth as possible ; to plant along 
 the side of the road the flowers of hope and promise 
 and of public approbation. Then into the road down 
 to licentiousness, and vice, and crime, and infamy, 
 and death, roll the rocks of law, hedge it with the 
 brambles of public opinion and the briars of public 
 condemnation, and then place the citizen at the 
 cross-roads and say to him, " Take your choice." The 
 state can never enter there and say you must go 
 this way and shall not go the other. It will simply 
 make the road to manhood broad and the road to 
 disgrace disagreeable, and allow the young man 
 standing at the entrance of the two paths to choose 
 which he will journey in. He can go to heaven if he 
 will, or he can go to the devil if he will. In the way of 
 his free moral agency the'state can never come until 
 by his individual action he injures others. At this 
 starting point the moral suasion organizations come, 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 85 
 
 to persuade, to convince that it is best for him 
 to go the better way. The state simply steps in 
 to prevent temptation, leaving the free will of the 
 individual untrammelled, while the work of the 
 . moral suasion society is to show the individual what 
 is right and what is wrong. 
 
 Take another view: Intemperance, as it is known 
 to the people of this state, is known to the scien- 
 tific world as alcoholism, or dipsomania. Better 
 knoAvn to the American physician, the English phy- 
 sician, the French physician than any other form of 
 chronic poisoning. The prohibitionist says: "The 
 same rules of common-sense should be applied in 
 the treatment of this disease that are applied in 
 the treatment of other diseases." The only cure 
 for the man who has the small -pox you know some- 
 thing of this disease from the terrible scare which 
 swept over the country last winter is the ^treat- 
 ment of kindness, nursing and doctoring. It does 
 no good to pound a man on the head with a club who 
 has the small-pox. It would do him no good to put 
 him in the "cooler," or to put him on a rock pile. 
 The. only way to treat a sick man is to treat him 
 with care and scientific treatment. The people use 
 these common-sense rules for treatment of small- 
 pox treatment for the sick, vaccination for the well, 
 quarantine for the disease. In the temperance 
 movement the temperance societies adopt the same 
 methods. The pledge is vaccination. If it does 
 not take the first time they vaccinate over again, 
 
SC THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 and keep on vaccinating until it works. Last spring, 
 when it was reported that small-pox was spreading 
 from every part of the country, there was heard a 
 universal demand for the interference of govern- 
 ment, not with the idea that the hand of govern- 
 ment could cure those men who were sick, but with 
 the idea that the hand of government, through that 
 power known as the police power of the state, could 
 keep the disease within certain limits and protect 
 those who were well. 
 
 The state of Iowa has adopted this theory. 
 
 Section 4039 of your statutes reads: 
 
 "If any person inoculate himself or any other 
 person or suffer himself to be inoculated with small- 
 pox within this state, or come within this state 
 with the intent to cause the prevalence or spread, 
 etc.," he shall be imprisoned and fined. The state 
 does not say people shall not catch the small-pox, 
 but the state will make it as difficult to catch it 
 as possible. The love, care and kindness shown to 
 the patients sick with contagious disease is moral 
 suasion ; the red flag thrown out in front of the house, 
 the strong hand of quarantine, is prohibition. This 
 prohibition is of the state. If this system is sensi- 
 ble with other diseases, the same system should be 
 applied to this widespread disease of intemperance. 
 
 Yellow-fever swept up the Mississippi and located 
 &t Memphis. The second year, within twenty-four 
 hours after the time it appeared in Memphis, every 
 <rity which had communication with that -city 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 87 
 
 had quarantined against it; they stopped the pas- 
 sage of merchandise, and even stopped the passage 
 of United States mails from the city until disin- 
 fected. Why did they do this? They could not 
 legislate the poor fellows well who had the yellow- 
 fever, but they could legislate them into a quaran- 
 tine to prevent other people from catching it. 
 
 Twenty-one thousand three hundred and eighty- 
 four people in this country died from yellow-fever 
 in the last ten years. Take that number, think of 
 it 21,384! Does any man say it was wrong to 
 quarantine Memphis, though it destroyed merchan- 
 dise, though it destroyed business, though it wrecked 
 the whole city? No; it was right! The disease of 
 alcoholism, during the same time, has killed more 
 than 650,000 American citizens. This is not the 
 statement of a temperance lecturer- it is the state- 
 ment of Willard Parker, the first surgeon of this 
 country. It is the statement of N. J3. Davis, the 
 celebrated physician of your own state, and it is the 
 statement of every doctor in this country who is tall 
 enough in his profession to be seen over three coun- 
 ties. And yet the drunkard-makers object to quar- 
 antine. Alcoholism has killed 650,000, and there 
 are men in this audience, I presume, with these 
 facts before them, who have been so mistaken that 
 they have voted to license a man to take the seeds of 
 this terrible disease in his hands and sow them 
 among the boys and girls of this country. Yellow- 
 fever has ruined less men, less women and less chil- 
 
88 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 dren in Memphis than alcoholism has in the state of 
 Illinois. The one is prohibited, the other licensed. 
 
 While the churches and the moral suasion organi- 
 zations go down to the gutter after the sick drunk- 
 ard, while they endeavor to cure his sick body by 
 scientific treatment, and his sick soul by the grace 
 of God, it is the duty of the state to do away with 
 these places, to destroy the trade which incessantly 
 turns out these sick men and keeps the supply con- 
 stant, and forces this work through the years and on 
 through the ages. 
 
 The question in regard to state action is not the 
 question of what the treatment of the individual 
 shall be. It is simply the question of what is the 
 duty of the state, what is the power of the state to 
 restrain, to prevent the spread of this fearfully con- 
 tagious disease. 
 
 The whole question before the people of Iowa dur- 
 ing the next sixty days is not, Are you a Democrat? 
 Are you a Republican ? not Are you a Presbyterian ? 
 or a brother-in-law of the Methodist church, as I 
 am? not are you a drinker or an abstainer? Not 
 what is your individual convictions in regard to the 
 use of liquors, but what is the effect of the American 
 dramshop on the best interests of the state? This is 
 the sole issue in this campaign. Everything else is 
 subterfuge, is thrown in to deceive, and every per- 
 son who endeavors to prevent the people from con- 
 sidering this primary question is working in the 
 interests of the liquor men. 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES.^ 89 
 
 I was through the canvass in Kansas. The same 
 issue was presented there, and from the beginning 
 to the end of the fight I never heard the liquor men 
 meet the issue squarely and fairly on its merits. 
 
 The whole question to be tried is simply, What is 
 the relation of the liquor traffic to society in this 
 state ? That much and no more. I am well aware 
 that when you have reached this point, when you 
 have arraigned the liquor interest on its record and 
 insist it shall come into court and plead to the indict- 
 ment, that it will at once move to quash the indict- 
 ment on certain specious sophistries. One will be 
 this : that this institution is an old institution ; that 
 the state is composed of people who have come from 
 different countries and different nationalities; that 
 the German having come from his fatherland has 
 the right to bring here the customs of his father- 
 land; that the Irishman coming from the evergreen 
 isle has the right to bring the customs of that coun- 
 try here. 
 
 Let us look at this position for a moment, the posi- 
 tion that is everywhere held and urged by the liquor 
 men of this country. Let us examine whether this 
 idea is in harmony with the primary principles of 
 government. Political institutions are the outgrowth 
 of social customs, not social customs the outgrowth 
 of political institutions. Society is built from the 
 bottom, not from the top. The home comes first; 
 then families assemble and you have a village ; vil- 
 lages and you have a township; townships and you 
 
90 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 have a county; counties and you have a state; and, 
 in this country, states, and you have a nation. All 
 political customs grow out of social life. The politi- 
 cal customs of this country are the legitimate chil- 
 dren of the social customs and life of the founders of 
 the government, of the men who made our liberties 
 and our institutions possible. 
 
 If I ever get mad in my life, it is when I hear 
 men born in other countries, together with dirty 
 dough-faced American demagogues, sneering at the 
 Puritans, and ridiculing puritanical moials and 
 ideas. No man has greater respect for the good 
 traits of our foreign-born citizens than myself, but 
 I believe that a native-born American is as good as 
 a foreign-born American, as long as his life and con- 
 duct are as good; and I most earnestly protest, in 
 free America, against the beer smut-mill being turned 
 on the men who planted our liberties, and suffered 
 and died to perpetuate them. A few American 
 sneaks, in order to catch the beer vote, enter the 
 cemetery where America's noblest dead are buried, 
 desecrate the graves and attempt to defile the memory 
 of those who built the government and established 
 the liberties under which these ghouls live. Who 
 were these Puritans who are now made a by-word 
 and jest by the beer-guzzlers of this country? What 
 did they come to America for? What kind of a 
 country did they find? Britain's poetess answers: 
 
 " The breaking waves dashed high 
 On a stern and rock-bound coast, 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 91 
 
 And the woods against a stormy sky 
 
 Their giant branches tossed; 
 
 And the heavy night hung dark 
 
 The hills and waters o'er, 
 
 When a band of exiles moored their bark 
 
 On the wild New England shore. 
 
 Not as the conqueror comes, 
 
 They, the true-hearted, came; 
 
 Not with the roll of the stirring drums, 
 
 And the trumpet that sings of fame: 
 
 Not as the flying come, 
 
 In silence and in fear; 
 
 They shook the depths of the desert gloom 
 
 With their hymns of lofty cheer. 
 
 Amidst the storm they sang, 
 
 And the stars heard, and the sea; 
 
 And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
 
 To the anthems of the free. 
 
 The ocean eagle soared 
 
 From his nest by the white wave's foam, 
 
 And the rocking pines of the forest roared 
 
 This was their welcome home. 
 
 There were men with hoary hair 
 
 Amidst that pilgrim-band: 
 
 Why had they come to wither there, 
 
 Away from their childhood's land? 
 
 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 sought a faith's pure shrine! 
 
 Ay, call it holy ground, 
 
 The soil where first they trod; 
 
 They have left unstained what there they found, 
 
 Freedom to worship God." 
 
92 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Such was their coming, and such the motives 
 which led them to leave the Old World and its com- 
 forts for the unknown New. By struggle 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? 
 
 Through blood the land was made free. What 
 was then done? Did Americans close the doors of 
 the Eepublic and say, "We are free; let the world 
 take care of itself. " No! They welcomed the 
 down-trodden 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 attempt to destroy Ameri- 
 can customs by traducing American dead, is dis- 
 graceful. 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. 
 
 This government is the child of that morality, 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 93 
 
 that theory of religious liberty, that theory of gov- 
 ernmental 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 Ger- 
 man social customs. Whenever the people in this 
 country destroy American social customs and Ameri- 
 can social life, whenever the people drift away from 
 the rocks on which the forefathers founded this gov- 
 ernment, into the seas where despotisms have floated, 
 whenever American customs cease and the customs 
 of despotic Europe take their place, this govern- 
 ment 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 continues. When a 
 different form of social life, a* different form of social 
 thought, a different form of social teaching, a differ- 
 ent form of moral training comes in, I have no hope 
 for the government. 
 
 Suppose I 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 taking care of 
 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 
 
94: THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 theory of government, a different theory of respon- 
 sibility, from that developed by the German 
 social life, the German social customs, and the Ger- 
 man schools. The idea that because customs have 
 lived in another country, been developed in another 
 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 located in the city of Des Moines. You 
 recollect that the Fiji islanders were cannibals. 
 Four missionaries went there the first time. They 
 preached the first time and then the natives got 
 mad, killed three of them, roasted and ate them. 
 The other one they didn't eat because he chewed 
 tobacco. I admire their taste. Well, before that 
 period, suppose this Fiji Islander had come. Now, 
 he is a different man from you. His teeth are dif- 
 ferent, 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 
 table 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." 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 95 
 
 He says, " I do not understand." 
 
 " Why, you 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. 
 
 " It is 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 govern- 
 ment of the United States is not the government of 
 the Fiji islands. Your social customs have devel- 
 oped your form of government, our social customs 
 have developed our form of government. When 
 you leave that government you must leave every 
 custom that is inimical to this government or 
 destructive to its institutions, for we have no desire 
 to have introduced here the customs that propagated 
 the governments of your native island." 
 
 Suppose the ei-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 shoulder and says, " Hold on, sir! what are you 
 doing?" 
 
 " I am keeping house." 
 
 " You are my prisoner." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " Bigamy." 
 
96 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOB TRAFFIC/ 
 
 "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 right 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 danger- 
 ous idea in this country. 
 
 - In my state a young woman recently from Europe 
 was brought into our court charged with the murder 
 of her infant child. When the indictment was read, 
 and she was asked, through an interpreter, to plead, 
 her answer was: "I thought this was a free country." 
 
 The idea that this country has no form, no customs, 
 no laws, no institutions, which immigrants are bound 
 to respect, that men 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 government, the institutions 
 of the colonies were the institutions of a monarchy 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 97 
 
 in a modified form. The men who settled at Ply- 
 mouth Bock were men who had given up, in a meas- 
 ure, their old ideas and theories, and a new social 
 system had been slowly developing. This change 
 ultimately developed 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 
 institutions. 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 destroy and build wholly new. 
 
 The work of American statesmen for the first 
 hundred 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 rep- 
 resentative of the people. The result of this was a 
 change in 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 
 
98 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 of the husband to rule the wife. The old marriage 
 forms every one of them contained a clause stipu- 
 lating 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 dol- 
 lars 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 dol- 
 lar would have become mine. I could have spent 
 it or gambled it away, and she could not have pre- 
 vented 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 persuade 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 say that the women of the state have the same 
 right to a voice in the government under which they 
 live that the men have. This is the legitimate result 
 of a change of customs from a monarchy to the 
 broader idea of a democracy, founded upon the 
 morality and intelligence of the people. 
 
 The founders of the republic recognized the fact 
 that the foundation of universal liberty must be 
 universal education. At the birth of this govern- 
 ment the schools of America were private schools, 
 but the necessity of making the citizen-sovereign 
 intelligent, developed our free school system. All 
 the institutions that America inherited have been 
 
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES. 99 
 
 molded, shaped and developed. Among these 
 inherited institutions was the accursed drinking- 
 place. The dram-shop is not a child of American 
 customs, liberty, ideas, schools or theories. It was 
 inherited from the despotic governments of Europe. 
 At the laying of the foundation of the government 
 there were men who openly denied that it should be 
 allowed to continue in the new structure. 
 
 Those who favored a compromise were in a major- 
 ity. They said: it will not be fair to reject this 
 liquor traffic until it has been tried in the new form 
 of government. They prevailed, and it has been 
 tried. 
 
 Its results have been the same as in Europe 
 drunkenness, debauchery, vice, crime, riot, commun- 
 ism. In the rich soil and genial climate of our govern- 
 ment it bore fruit early, and in 1676 the government 
 of Virginia found it necessary to protect the people 
 from the multitude of evils resultant from the traffic 
 and the conditions favorable to its development. As 
 increasing population, seconded by wise statesman- 
 ship, has enlarged the nation's borders, it has grown 
 with our growth and increased with our strength; 
 only crippled where persistent prohibitory efforts 
 have made the conditions for its development unfa- 
 vorable. The evil has long been admitted by all, 
 and a persistent effort to remedy it has been made 
 by a few. Compromise has followed compromise, 
 the unrestrained sale, license, high license, civil 
 damage, local option ; and I wish to assert in the 
 
100 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 light of history that all these compromises have been 
 failures, to just the extent that principle has been 
 sacrificed ; and successes to just the extent that right 
 has been recognized and prohibitory features incor- 
 porated into their text. Thus this institution has been 
 tested and found unworthy of a place in a free 
 republic. It is an enemy of American liberties and 
 must be destroyed. 
 Then: 
 
 "There shall be sung another golden age; 
 
 The rise of empire and of arts, 
 The good and great inspiring epic rage, 
 The wisest heads and noblest hearts 
 
 NOT SUCH AS EUEOPE BKEEDS IN HEB DECAY, 
 
 Such as she bred when fresh and young, 
 When heavenly flame did animate her clay, 
 
 By future poets shall be sung. 
 Westward the course of Empire takes its way; 
 
 The first four acts already past, 
 The fifth shall close the drama with the day; 
 
 Time's noblest offspring is the last" 
 
IV. 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND 
 DEFENSE. 
 
 DELIVERED AT MOORE'S OPERA HOUSE, DBS MOINE8, 
 IOWA, APRIIT23, 1882. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF DBS MOINES: I came 
 to your state at the request of the old prohibition 
 corps of the temperance army, the Good Templars, 
 who have fought on this line since 1852, to discuss 
 with you the question of what is the best course for 
 the people to pursue with the alcoholic liquor traffic 
 of your state. Your legislature has submitted this 
 question to you, voters I would God the question 
 could have been submitted to every one who suffers 
 from the accursed influence, or whose heart is bleed- 
 ing from its direful effects. The provisions of our 
 American constitution are such that men above the 
 age of twenty-one years must settle this question, 
 while the great class who suffer most from the evil 
 influences, of the liquor traffic the women of the 
 country are debarred from expressing their opinion 
 
 in rendering the final verdict. I would that this 
 
 101 
 
102 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 were not so, but as it is submitted to the voters of 
 this commonwealth, you, as voters, must settle the 
 question. The day has passed when a man can 
 afford to laugh, to sneer or to jeer at this question. 
 As citizens of the state, bound by the highest obli- 
 gations of a Christian civilization, home, and love 
 of country, you are to take the question without pas- 
 sion, without prejudice, without bitterness, and fully 
 consider it in all its phases. If I could at the out- 
 set of this campaign, by any trick of sophistry, by 
 any power of personal magnetism, lead every man 
 in this state to shout for prohibition, without his 
 judgment, his reason, his conscience telling him that 
 he did right, I would not do it. This question is 
 one that must be settled calmly and dispassionately. 
 The saloon of this state must be weighed in the bal- 
 ance of political economy, of social life, and it must 
 be weighed, not by prejudiced men, not by bitter 
 men, not by unfair men, but by jurors willing to 
 consider every phase of the question, and then to 
 render their verdict according to the facts. 
 
 To-night let us look at the liquor traffic of this 
 country in its relations to society and its best in- 
 terests; then, as you go from this hall, weigh the 
 facts as I state them, and if your judgment tells 
 you they are facts, if your judgment tells you 
 they are correct, act upon them. If your judg- 
 ment tells you my reasoning is incorrect, reject it. 
 I would not think much of you if you would accept 
 something as true because I said it was true. I 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 103 
 
 would not think much of you if you would reject 
 what I said, simply because a temperance man said 
 it. You are moral, responsible, intelligent, cultured 
 men and you must take the statements and weigh 
 them in the scales of your own judgment, your own 
 experience, your own intelligence, and then make 
 up your minds whether they are true or whether 
 they are false. The power of the liquor traffic of 
 to-day for great good or great evil to the common- 
 wealth cannot be doubted. The immense number 
 of these institutions, the large number of men 
 engaged in the business of selling liquor, the great 
 capital invested in the manufacture and in the insti- 
 tutions where liquor is sold, makes the business 
 capable of doing great good or great evil to any city, 
 county, state, or nation where it is permitted to exist. 
 
 That this capacity is always exercised in the direc- 
 tion of evil is scarcely deniable. No man dare dis- 
 pute the pernicious influence of the grog-shops of 
 this country. 
 
 A few weeks ago the Chicago Inter-Ocean 
 described a certain section in the city of Chicago 
 which it called "the Black Hole." Many of you 
 saw the description. It declared that in that sec- 
 tion of the city the vicious elements completely con- 
 trolled; vice and crime, licentiousness, debauchery 
 and lewdness were the governing factors and the con- 
 trolling interests. A few days later the same news- 
 paper published a diagram of the streets of the city 
 where "the Black Hole" was located. Suppose 
 
104 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC, 
 
 that to-night I should draw on this curtain the same 
 diagram. Suppose, further, that; you did not see the 
 Inter-Ocean, nor the article. After I have drawn 
 this diagram I take the Inter -Ocean in my hands, 
 and, standing before you, I read the description of 
 the locality, studiously omitting the names of the 
 places, the kind of business carried on there, and 
 only speaking of the moral and social condition of 
 the people. After I have read that description, my 
 license friend, if you are in this house, I want you 
 to tell me what kind of institutions are located along 
 those streets; what institutions will produce such 
 condition of things. 
 
 Suppose I told you that on the first corner was a 
 Methodist church, then from there down to the next 
 corner it was blocked solidly with dry-goods houses. 
 At the bottom of that street the Presbyterian church 
 is located, and across the other side are retail houses. 
 Then there is a Baptist church, and on the other side 
 are manufactories in other words, I tell you that 
 that section of the city is filled with churches, with 
 schools, with missions and with business places. My 
 license friend, would not you say my statement could 
 not be true ? Is it possible for such a state of things 
 to exist where any respectable business exists? 
 Then let me ask you, my license friend, to tell me 
 what kind of business you think is transacted along 
 those streets ? Why, you would answer in a minute, 
 if you were honest, "grog-shops and their children, 
 gambling hells and houses of ill-fame the last two 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 105 
 
 the children of the first infest those streets." That 
 is the kind of institutions the Inter-Ocean says are 
 there. 
 
 A few years ago these older men among the min- 
 isters here will remember the metropolitan press 
 of the city of New York turned the public gaze upon 
 a section of that city where the same evils existed, 
 and when the public looked at the streets where this 
 horrible state of. things existed, what did they see? 
 Did they see churches, schools and business that 
 produced legitimate results and honorable citizens? 
 No! The center of Five Points was an old brewery, 
 and every street radiating from that brewery was 
 crowded with grog-shops and their attendant insti- 
 tutions where liquor was sold and humanity debased. 
 When the Christian element of the city wished to 
 elevate Five Points, the very first thing they did, 
 was to buy the old brewery and change it into a city 
 mission. 
 
 When Christianity came, the devil packed up his 
 pet institution to a certain extent and moved over to 
 Water street, and then Water street became the 
 worst section of the city. The vicious element fol- 
 lowed the dramshop. 
 
 Last September, one of the great newspapers of 
 the city of Chicago arraigned Mayor Carter Harri- 
 son for not revoking the license of a certain saloon- 
 keeper. The paper charged that this man had 
 repeatedly violated the law, and insisted that the 
 mayor should have revoked the license, and that his 
 
106 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOE TRAFFIC. 
 
 failure to act was his fear of injuring his political 
 interests. Mayor Harrison, talking to a reporter, 
 said that the accusation of the paper, so far as the 
 guilt of the saloon-keeper and the failure to revoke 
 the license, was true; but he said he allowed that 
 saloon to continue because it was a resort of thieves ; 
 it was a trap where the policemen knew how to find 
 criminals and catch them, and he allowed it to con- 
 tinue simply for this reason. Would he keep a 
 church open as a trap for criminals? 
 
 I was born in the state of New York, where the 
 farmers plow the land on three sides top and two 
 sides. One time, while a boy, an old gentleman in 
 our neighborhood came to me and said: "See here! 
 do you want to go and hunt foxes with me to- 
 morrow?" I said "yes." The next morning he 
 came with the hounds ; I had my gun ready, and 
 we started out across the hills. We went up one 
 hill, down on the other side, across the valley, up 
 the second hill. About half way up the hill we 
 came across a fox track in the snow. It was what 
 we were looking for. The old hunter brought the 
 dogs, put them on the track, and away they started, 
 around the range to the north. I shouldered my 
 gun and started after them. The old man said: 
 " Where are you going ? " " Going after the foxes." 
 He said, with a laugh, "You follow me," and he 
 started across the hill to the southwest. The dogs 
 had gone north; he went southwest; and I, without 
 a word, followed him, over the top of the hill and 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 107 
 
 part way down the other side. He said, " You get 
 behind that stump." He went and sat down behind 
 a tree. For a whole hour I sat there in the snow. 
 The thought commenced to come into my mind 
 that the old gentleman had brought me there to 
 freeze. Just as this thought was taking definite 
 shape, on the wings of the wind was borne the bay- 
 ing of the hounds. They came nearer and nearer. 
 The fox was shot in front. After the fox was shot 
 the old hunter came up, and I asked, "How did 
 you know the fox would come here?" "Why," he 
 answered, "this is his runway. I have known over 
 three hundred foxes killed on this range, and I 
 never knew one to run on this side of the hill in 
 anyplace but between that stump and this tree." 
 
 Every hunter will tell you such is the characteristic 
 of many kinds of game, and it is equally true of the 
 criminals of this country. Suppose a man should 
 break into a store here to-night, and leave for Chicago 
 to-morrow your police get a description of the man 
 and telegraph to the chief of police of Chicago to 
 arrest him. Where would the Chicago police first 
 search for him ? Would they go to the prayer-meet- 
 ing ? Would they go to the day-school ? Would they 
 go to the stores ? No ! they would go to the grog- 
 shops, or the children of grogshops houses of ill- 
 fame, gambling hells because this kind of game 
 always seeks this runway, its old familiar grounds^ 
 Take the records of the courts of this country and 
 they sustain this charge so thoroughly that nb one 
 
108 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 will dare challenge it. And, gentlemen, before 
 license men of this state can hope to defeat the 
 amendment, they must show that this charge is false. 
 If the liquor traffic of this country stimulates crime, 
 if it stimulates and produces vice, if it upholds it 
 and sustains it, there is not an argument under God's 
 fair heaven that will justify a man in voting to con- 
 tinue the business. 
 
 Again, the dramshop of this country is a school 
 of perjury. From the very day it is opened it 
 makes liars of men. You may say this is a strong 
 charge. Indict a liquor-seller in this town for vio- 
 lation of your liquor law. Your detectives tell you 
 that he has persistently violated it. Bring him into 
 court and put him on trial. Subpoena from their 
 houses in this city twenty-five men, young and old, 
 who have patronized him. They come into court. 
 You reach out the Bible ; they will swear on God's 
 holy Word to tell the truth, the whole truth and 
 nothing but the truth. Try to prove by them, facts 
 which they know to be facts. Nineteen out of the 
 twenty-five will swear to a lie to defend the man who 
 sold them liquor. 
 
 One of these witnesses is on the stand: "Were 
 you in that liquor shop?" 
 
 "I was." 
 
 "Did you buy something there?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "What was it?" 
 
 "Don't know." 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 109 
 
 41 What did you call for?" 
 
 "I didn't call." 
 
 "Well, what did you get?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "You drank something, what was it?" 
 
 " Well, it might have been tea, it might have been 
 coffee, it might have been lemonade; I don't know." 
 
 Lie? of course he lies. 
 
 Suppose he had gone into the saloon and asked 
 for beer, and the bar-keeper had set up lemonade, 
 would he not have known the difference? 
 
 Suppose he had asked for whisky, and the bar- 
 tender had set up tea, would he not have known 
 the difference? 
 
 And yet that man comes into court, and, after 
 taking his oath on God's truth, deliberately and 
 willfully perjures his spul, degrades his manhood, 
 dishonors his citizenship, to defend the man who 
 will take his last dollar, make him a drunkard, and 
 then kick him into the street and call him a drunken 
 dead-beat. Have you ever tried to enforce the law 
 against liquor-sellers? If so, you know. this to be 
 true. 
 
 They, everywhere, try to corrupt judges, to suborn 
 witnesses to defeat the ends of justice and prevent 
 an honest, fair and full enforcement of the law. 
 
 The liquor traffic of this country is a parasite on 
 legitimate business life. The dealers and their ad- 
 vocates will tell you before this amendment fight 
 is over, that the dramshop, in some way (they will 
 
110 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOE TRAFFIC, 
 
 be careful not to specify how), conduces to the gen- 
 eral prosperity and the business interests of this 
 state. If this statement is true, then certainly they 
 have a good defense with which to meet the indict- 
 ment against them. 
 
 Let us for a few moments examine the theories of 
 state building, in order to fully understand the reas- 
 ons for 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 defense 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 bejore his guest in review. 
 As these proud freemen of a semi -constitutional 
 kingdom marched by, the king, touching his visitor 
 on the shoulder and pointing with pride to his sol- 
 diers, said, "There go the walls of Sparta." Ladies 
 and gentlemen, that is the keynote of city .building, 
 of county, of state, and of government building. 
 
 This opera house is built of brick. Its stability 
 and strength depend largely upon the strength of 
 the individual brick, the unit of the structure. Sup- 
 pose the builder had employed the best architect in 
 the country to draw the plan, then employed good 
 masons, and they had prepared good mortar, and 
 when all was ready, the brick were found to be half- 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. Ill 
 
 baked, rotten, soft. Would it not be impossible to 
 build a good building of such brick, no matter how 
 good the plan, workmen and mortar ? 
 
 The unit of society is the individual. If you wish 
 good society you must build up the units of society, 
 cultivate those institutions and customs whose influ- 
 ence and effects tend to improve and elevate the 
 individual. If Iowa has only institutions that develop 
 health, strength, morality and intelligence, her future 
 prosperity and greatness is assured; but if she sanc- 
 tions and enters into partnership with those institu- 
 tions which debauch public morals, destroy public 
 health, impair individual credit, stimulate vice and 
 crime, the day will come when, with a political sys- 
 tem 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 vio- 
 late them is to invite disease and death. 
 
 44 What constitutes a state? 
 Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 
 Thick wall or moated gate; 
 
 Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; 
 Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
 Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; 
 Not starred and spangled courts, 
 Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 
 No: MEX, high-minded men, 
 With powers as far above dull brutes endued 
 In forest, brake, or den, 
 
 As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude, 
 Men, who their duties know, 
 
 But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, 
 Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
 
112 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 And crush 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 against 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 does. 
 
 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 develop- 
 ing, is that there can be but two types of men in our 
 social organism, 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 injuri- 
 ously affect the society in which they live; conse- 
 quently they are dismissed from consideration. 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. 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 113 
 
 Let me illustrate the proposition. Call up here 
 a merchant and a doctor; two of one class. Put 
 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 who ever wrote a 
 work on political economy, and I am simply stating 
 what has been stated by men who advocate and be- 
 lieve in license. I will show you the difference 
 between these classes. I turn to the merchant and 
 say to him, " You get money from the producers of 
 this country. You must show what you do for so- 
 ciety, and what you do for the producer, for the 
 money you get. What do you give in return for 
 the producer's money you receive?" He answers: 
 " I am simply the agent of producers. I act as their 
 liired man, to a certain extent. These producers 
 manufacture or grow certain commodities ; in another 
 country other producers provide other commodities. 
 I take the commodities that 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 
 the men who were novices in the matter were illy 
 fitted to carry it on. When we have examined the 
 merchant, we find that he returns equal value for 
 the money he gets. 
 
 We turn to the doctor and say: "Doctor, you re- 
 ceive money from the producers while you produce 
 nothing yourself. Tell us what return you make for 
 
114 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 the money received?" He answers: "The pro- 
 ducers of this country do not take care of them- 
 selves. In the first place many of them do not un- 
 derstand the laws of hygiene. They become sick, 
 and I am simply the one who repairs the machinery." 
 One time, on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul 
 railroad, I was talking with a gentleman and I asked 
 him, " What is your business?" He said: " I am 
 pump doctor." I afterward ascertained 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, 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 ho has received, and the work he has 
 done, we think where we have seen him standing by 
 the cick-bed of loved ones, when hope was dying out, 
 when tho dread feeling of despair was creeping in, 
 and the only ray of light in that dark hour was the 
 thought that God gave and God was taking away, 
 and heard him say, to comfort the breaking .heart, 
 "While there is life there is hope." When the 
 loved one has come back to health and strength we 
 take the money from our pocket and think it is about 
 the best bill we ever paid. So we say, the physician 
 makes adequate return for the money he receives. 
 
 Next we examine the others. " Mr. Liquor-dealer, 
 you get money, what do you give back for it?'* 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 115 
 
 "Whisky and beer." "Well, sir, let me put a 
 hypothetical question to you. Suppose a man comes 
 into your saloon to-morrow and drinks, sits awhile, 
 and goes away. 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 o 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 
 I 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 five 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 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 him, and you see the bene- 
 fit." The drink-vendor has to admit that he curses 
 him, and everybody sees the curse. 
 
 If I put the same questions to the thief, he must- 
 give the same answers as the liquor-dealer: "I take> 
 and return nothing." Suppose four farmers come 
 into Des Moines, each with fifty dollars in his pocket. 
 One goes to the dry goods store, one goes to the 
 
116 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 hardware store, one goes to the boot and shoe store, 
 and the other goes to the dramshop, drinks for two 
 or three days, 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 
 you see this coat and that dress, and that coat that 
 Tom's got on? Well, I gave that merchant fifty 
 dollars, and he gave me in exchange these things. 
 He is better off; we are better off." Exchange of 
 values; both are benefited. 
 
 We go to the man who went to the hardware 
 store, and we say, "What did you receive?" "Do 
 you see that stove, and this axe, and those 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 went to the boot and shoe 
 store. " What did you get for the money you paid ? " 
 " You see those boots, and those shoes that Nellie 
 lias on, those shoes my wife has on, and the boots 
 that Tom, Dick and Harry have on ? I gave that 
 merchant fifty dollars for them." An exchange of 
 values; both are benefited. 
 
 Now we go to the man who spent the fifty dollars 
 in the dramshop, and say to him: "Sir, you paid 
 that 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, 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 117 
 
 "I got this nose, these eyes, and I have been sick 
 ever since." 
 
 " My farmer friend, would you not have been better 
 off 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 destroyed. The liquor-dealer took your 
 money and unfitted your brain and muscles for the 
 production of more wealth." 
 
 In the southern country you will see, in different 
 places, clinging to the trees, the plant known to 
 botanists as the mistletoe. You will say it is a 
 beautiful plant, and yet the botanist will tell you 
 that it 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. Among insects 
 you have the same class. Go out along the old 
 California trail in my own state or in Wyoming, 
 anywhere between the Missouri river and the coast, 
 and stop in one of the old sod ranches and tell the 
 keeper of it that you want a bed. Stipulate that it 
 shall be unoccupied, and labor under the delusion 
 that you will be given such a bed. When the time 
 comes, you disrobe, retire, and start for dreamland. 
 
118 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 go down there and see it. By the 
 time you get down, there is something on your back 
 and something on your side. You roll, and kick, 
 and strike ; it will be fortunate 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 the lamp and throw down the covering. 
 See them run ! the flat-headed cowards ! 
 
 Oh, how humanity loaths them ! The whole family 
 mosquitoes, 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 returning 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 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 119 
 
 plod, with hods 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 babies. 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 silk or satins." 
 True: the picture is what would really be the con- 
 dition 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 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 fami- 
 lies of those who engage in it? It is a universal 
 curse, without a redeeming trait. 
 
 The liquor-seller lives by ruining his customers. 
 The dramshop 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 
 
120 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 do what? It 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, build up all other kinds of trade. It 
 is the life-blood of commerce. When you have it 
 piled up here, the lawyers, doctors, ministers, mer- 
 chants, newspaper men, all the industries gather 
 around. Five thousand liquor-dealers step forward 
 and say: "More than nine million dollars of that 
 money is ours," You say, "No;" but they say, 
 " Gentlemen, we bought the privilege of the first 
 grab at it, and that grab we are going to have. " 
 
 My friend, are you in business in Des Moines? 
 Do not you 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 ta 
 trust him for a dress for his wife. Do not you 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 necessaries of life? Do you sell jewelry? If 
 you do, do you sell the best of your jewelry to the 
 man who spends his money in grogshops ? Do you 
 sell nice clothing? How much do you sell to the 
 man who spends the greater part of his money in a 
 drinking place? Do you sell silk dresses, my friend? 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 121 
 
 Are the patrons of the dramshop your customers? 
 Do not you know, business men, as a matter of fact, 
 that the dramshop 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 
 iliings." ' k Oh, yes, gentleman, but he is one where 
 his patrons are a hundred. Where you sell him one 
 fcuit of clothes you lose the sale of a^huudred suits 
 to his customers. Where you sell him one picture 
 to go into his home to beautify it, you fail to sell his 
 customers a hundred pictures to make their homes 
 pleasant 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, " Suck." 
 It does. Just look at it. It is growing respectable j 
 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 off. 
 
 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 ii$ mouth and I swallow them 
 and say I have gained so much blood, Some boy in 
 this house cries out, "Mr. Finch, you are foolish! 
 
122 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Why, every drop of that blood was in you first the 
 leech sucked it out of you. You have only got a 
 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 invert them and squeeze out of them five 
 hundred, one thousand, or fifteen hundred dollars, 
 and say, "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 your 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 keeps 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 
 dramshops. 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 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 123 
 
 I never like to compare things unfavorably. I do 
 not like to drag anything into a position where it 
 ought not to be, and I feel at this point like apolo- 
 gizing 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 orders 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 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 destruc- 
 tion of individuals who feel the same, who enjoy the 
 same, that they do. It is unfair to an order of para- 
 sitic life that lives on other classes, to compare it 
 with a class low enough, vile enough, to live on its 
 own kind without a feeling of sympathy, without a 
 pulsation of regret. 
 
 Recently a lady said to me, "Do not use such 
 horrid comparisons." Why horrid? The mosquito, 
 gnat and bed-bug in physical form compare favora- 
 bly with the bee, the fly and the ant. "Oh!" she 
 exclaimed, "but they are horrid." Yes, they are 
 disagreeable, but their manner of living is what 
 makes them disagreeable. If they were not para- 
 sites, humanity would not detest them. If the dram- 
 vender lived by building up and advancing the race 
 we should not be compelled to classify him with 
 parasites. 
 
124 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 The liquor traffic is the enemy of home life. The 
 keystone of American civilization is the American 
 home. I would I could take you to the frontier 
 to 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 
 power to aw r aken the latent manhood in, and lead out 
 to a grander and better life, men seemingly lost to 
 all influences for good. You, especially you busi- 
 ness men, know how great this influence is on public 
 life. The opposition you meet, the trickery and 
 fraud you see practiced, makes you bard, un- 
 charitable, cynical, and, when gone from" home for 
 months, bitter and selfish. You return to your home, 
 and, in the presence of wife and children, hatred, 
 selfishness, 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 
 pleasant memories on their neck,, but feel more 
 charity for their f ellowmen, 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 conservator of the nation, the antidote 
 of communism, socialism, riot, vice and bloodshed. 
 A man who goes from home with the softening 
 influences of womanhood's homage and childhood's 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 125 
 
 love lingering about him, seldom goes to murder, 
 rob, or excite riot. 
 
 Into this garden of American hope the breath of 
 the liquor traffic 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 
 being the head the life of the home, he soon be- 
 comes a despot and a terror. The 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! 
 Can there be any greater mockery of the word home !- 
 Any institution or custom which causes such results 
 is a terrible enemy of American liberty and civili- 
 zation. 
 
 The liquor traffic is the enemy of an honest ballot 
 and a fair count. The effect of the dramshop 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 
 
126 THE PEOPLE VEKSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 and financial condition 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 necessary to 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 dramshops are most plentiful. Un- 
 less the liquor traffic of the country is destroyed, it 
 will do for the whole nation what it has done for the 
 great centers of population ; and as the life of this 
 government depends largely on the purity of the 
 ballot-box, which can only be guaranteed by the 
 morality and intelligence of the individual voter, the 
 government must destroy the dramshops, 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 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 facts alleged by the amendment advocates. The 
 question is not, Does prohibition prohibit ? but, Does 
 regulation regulate? These charges are made against 
 licensed dramshops. If such charges are true, it is 
 the result of license. The license system is on trial, 
 and it will not benefit liquor-sellers to cry out "stop 
 thief!" with the idea of turning public attention from 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 127 
 
 the real issue. Is the licensed traffic guilty of the 
 crimes and misdemeanors alleged? If it is, then 
 license is a failure. The condition of things cannot be 
 worse. The defendants must meet the indictment and 
 show its counts false, and that dramshops are a bless- 
 ing, 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 fail- 
 ure;" "Beer is a temperance beverage;" "Moral 
 suasion is the way to work." Gentlemen liquor- 
 sellers, these issues are NOT involved in the cam- 
 paign. The license system is being tried on its 
 record, and you must confine yourselves to the 
 question ; any evasion, or failure to meet the charges 
 fairly, honestly, and manfully will be a confession 
 of guilt, and will be so regarded by the people. 
 
 But, ladies and gentlemen, they cannot, and will 
 not try to refute, explain away, or justify the record 
 they themselves have made. Every charge made by 
 the amendment advocates is true, and the defense, as 
 outlined by the brewers of Iowa, is in keeping 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 being boycotted by members of the liquor associa- 
 tions on account of its stand on the Pond and Smith 
 bills." 
 
128 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOIt TRAFFIC, 
 
 The record of the liquor business, the creed of 
 the brewers, the admissions of their advocates, 
 show conclusively that the dramshop is a bulldozer, 
 a rebel, a voluntary, 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 defense is a show of defiance, 
 a show of bravado, show of bulldozing, show of brag- 
 adoeio ; and when these fail, the defense is private, 
 cowardly assassination. This is a terrible charge, 
 is it not? 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 liquor outlaws refuse to obey 
 the will of the people. They are self-confessed 
 traitors to good government. 
 
 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 no 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 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUE8 AND DEFENSE. 129 
 
 granted that the state of Iowa can enforce any law 
 that may be passed by a majority of its legislature. 
 If the votes of the majority of citizens expressed 
 in the statutes of Iowa cannot be enforced ; if three 
 thousand saloon-keepers can bulldoze and intimidate 
 the government of this commonwealth, then the 
 sooner your government goes into bankruptcy and 
 you get one which is good for something, 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 dramshop 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 during the canvass on the public 
 platform 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 when struck by boils, went on to say, 
 " Finch, all I predicted at Bismark Grove in regard 
 to this accursed law has come true." 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 "Why," he said, "it is killing Kansas. Ger- 
 mans are leaving the state by hundreds. It is driv- 
 ing men out, and immigration will not come. The 
 state is dead." 
 
130 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 it is not to be 
 renowned for the number of its people, it will be 
 renowned for the sobriety, intelligence, and the 
 morality of those who remain." 
 
 " Hold on," said the gentleman; "there is more 
 whisky 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?" 
 
 If I pick up a copy of one daily paper published in 
 Chicago, or another from St. Louis, I frequently see 
 a two-column editorial saying, "Kansas is dead';' 
 "Emigration to Kansas has stopped;" "The pro- 
 hibitory law has killed Kansas." Perhaps the very 
 next day I pick up a copy of the same paper, and I 
 Bee an editorial or an article by an anonymous cor- 
 respondent, saying, " Whisky 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." 
 
 I admire consistent liars, a person who can tell 
 a big lie, which will sound like the truth I admire 
 fcis ingenuity, but do not think much of his morality. 
 The liars who are fighting against prohibition lack 
 consistency. In Maine they have fought from the 
 first day to this in exactly the same way. 
 
 If the battle had been between the liquor rebels 
 of Kansas and the moral citizens of Kansas, there 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 131 
 
 would not have been an open grogshop in the state 
 three months after the law passed. No sooner had 
 the law been passed to enforce the amendment, than 
 the combined liquor power of this nation stood be- 
 hind the outlaws there to encourage them and to 
 help them to defy the supreme law of that state ; and 
 what is still meaner, men from other states went in 
 to help these outlaws assassinate the morality and the 
 character of Kansas. 
 
 I remember reading in one of the great news- 
 papers 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, and appealing to the solid north to rise 
 en masse, and at the ballot-box crush out this rebel- 
 lion against the constitution 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 is down in 
 the mud before the liquor power of this nation, 
 and has become the apologist for, and the sympa- 
 thizer with, the liquor 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 every mean name which it can 
 find in the drunkard-makers' 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 
 
132 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Ms family, standing as he does the grandest repub- 
 lican 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 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 better. The idea of five 
 thousand liquor-dealers being able to control this 
 state is absurd. When I hear a man or see a news- 
 paper whimpering and crying, "It ought to be 
 stopped but we cannot stop it; they will sell any- 
 how," I get disgusted, especially in this state, set- 
 tled 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, in the face of the rows of mus- 
 ketry 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, suf- 
 fered and bled. For what ? Just simply to say this 
 government . was able to hold itself together, to 
 enforce its laws, and to live. 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 133 
 
 The idea that in this state; filled witn 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 
 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 
 time 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 in 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 
 thai" 
 
 Ridiculous! Yes, but is it half as ridiculous as 
 for men who make up 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 alrnshouses; 
 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 sidewalks in our cities." 
 
134 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOB TRAFFIC. 
 
 Gentlemen and ladies, 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 suc- 
 cessfully, 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 dramshops 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 brewers, the threat of the Iowa distillers is an 
 open declaration that the state of Iowa is not able to 
 control 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 
 pottage?" 
 
 This, ladies 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: First, 
 your obligations to your own homes, your own fami- 
 lies. Second, your obligations as citizens of a state 
 to protect all homes, all families, all citizens. 
 
 The temperance question was never so dear to me 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 135 
 
 the cause never seemed so much my own, although 
 I always loved it as it was after the little bright- 
 eyed 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 I could vote in your 
 state in June, I should just ask what would be the 
 relation of the grogshop to that boy 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. 
 
 " Consider, Mr. Finch, I have just 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 necessary 
 to punish her in our home; if she did wrong 
 she was ready to come and ask forgiveness. She 
 
136 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 married a man whom I thought was worthy of 
 her. "We did not know he drank, but he did. Five 
 years ago, Mr. Finch, 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, but, 
 Mr. Finch, one night her husband went home and 
 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 from our arms, 
 the light from our home, and then abused her like a 
 dog." 
 
 Gentlemen and ladies, such may be your story 
 some day. The little girl who comes to you now 
 with bright eyes and loving lips, who runs and 
 brings the slippers as you come home from business, 
 may return to you one day with a broken heart, her 
 life cursed by a man who has been ruined in a saloon 
 that you voted to continue. When you come to 
 make up your verdict, take into consideration your 
 home interest. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, there is one thing dear as 
 these are, that is still higher: the thought of how 
 God would have you act. 
 
 I would not dare to go to the polls on the 27th of 
 June and cast a vote that I could not ask God to 
 bless. My friends, as you go there and vote, if you 
 are Christian men, let that determine it. If you 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ISSUES AND DEFENSE. 137 
 
 vote to continue the saloons, of course you are will- 
 ing to pray God to prosper the saloon, to ask that 
 its customers may increase. 
 
 So, if I were on the jury I would take into 
 consideration my home interests, the interests of my 
 country, the approval of my God, and then examin- 
 ing the facts, I would vote either to shut the saloons 
 or to continue them, as my judgment and conscience 
 dictated. 
 
 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 com- 
 promise and partnership with wrong. God grant that 
 Iowa may lead the way through which my state may 
 follow, and the other states of this nation, 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 choose we holiness or sin. 
 
 Even now from misty Gerizim, or EbaFs cloudy crown, 
 
 Call we the dews of blessing .or the bolts of cursing down." 
 
 10 
 
V. 
 THE DEFENSE EEVIEWED. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE OPEKA HOUSE, IOWA CITY, IOWA, 
 SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 7, 1882. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Never was a more 
 plainly, fully and fairly defined issue submitted to 
 any people, than the one now pending in this state. 
 The case is entitled, "The People vs. The Saloons." 
 The American saloon is on trial for high crimes 
 against society, and treason against the government. 
 The terrible charges against it are made by the 
 people, openly, boldly, and emphatically. The only 
 thing its defenders can, do is to show that the traffic 
 is not guilty ; that the charges are unfounded in fact. 
 "Guilty, or not guilty?" is the question asked by 
 the people, and it must be answered. 
 
 The charges must be disproved or the saloons 
 must die. The position taken by the drunkard-mak- 
 ers and their friends is not fair, honest, or decent. 
 Their first defense is personal slander, lying and 
 mud-throwing. They evidently hope thereby to turn 
 the attention of the people from the real criminal in 
 the case. It is the old dodge of the watch-thief, who, 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 139 
 
 when pursued by officers with the cry " stop thief!" 
 joins in the cry, to turn public attention from him- 
 self. 
 
 Once, when a boy, my father told an elder brother 
 that if he and I would take care of the ducks on 
 the farm during the summer, we might have all the 
 joung ones we could raise. During the summer we 
 took good care of the ducks, and, I think, had eighty- 
 six in the fall. The visions of skates and sleds grew 
 apace. The duck pen was near the stream, and one 
 night an intruder dug in and killed several of the 
 ducks. A trap was set, but the next night he dug 
 around it and continued his depredations. At last, 
 brother and I determined to sit up and watch. The 
 gun was duly loaded, and we sat down near the pen. 
 Boon after midnight the sound of alarm among the 
 ducks told us the enemy was there. We rushed to 
 the pen blocked up the hole and caught him; but, 
 ladies and gentlemen, it has always been a question, 
 which was the worst punished, the dead animal or 
 the boys whose clothes he spoiled. That experience 
 taught me never to fight skunks, whether quadruped 
 or biped, unless I did it with a long pole ; and in this 
 contest I shall not change the rule, whether the ani- 
 mal be a victim of the saloon or an apostate minis- 
 ter who, Judas-like, having sold his Master, is now 
 scorned and despised even by those who bought him. 
 
 The temperance leaders will press the charges - 
 simply seeking to force a fair, honest and full trial 
 of the case, and if the other side fail to meet the 
 
140 THE PEOPLE VERSUS. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 issues, or resort to mud-throwing, as their dirty tools 
 are now doing, it will be an admission of the guilt 
 of the traffic, and simply show how low, ignorant, 
 vile and mean its hirelings are. 
 
 To thinking men their present contortions, eva- 
 sions, quibbles, foolish statements and lying must 
 be disgusting. The issue is plain ; a child can un- 
 derstand ; but 
 
 " They wiggle in and wiggle out, 
 Leaving the hunter still in doubt, 
 Whether the snake that made the track 
 Was going out or coming back." 
 
 By such a course they enter a plea of guilty to the 
 charges, and their evasions are simply made in hopes 
 of reducing the nature and force of the inevitable 
 verdict. They are like the condemned murderer who 
 is anxious to have his sentence commuted to im- 
 prisonment for life. Their boldest leaders are will- 
 ing to enter a plea of guilty, if the people will make 
 the verdict imprisonment in high-license pens, rather 
 than the death penalty of prohibition. 
 
 In Nebraska we have tried high license. It is a 
 fraud and a failure. The saloon-keepers do not try 
 to enforce the law against illicit selling. There is 
 more liquor sold in the drug stores of my state as a 
 beverage than in the drug stores of your state. If 
 will take more force, more power to enforce a high- 
 license law than complete and entire prohibition. But, 
 as this plea for a, reduction of penalty has been 
 entered, let us to-night examine the quibbles on 
 which it is asked. 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 141 
 
 Their first defense the one urged more than all 
 others : I wish to read from their own papers. It is 
 AS follows: 
 
 "It is more than twenty -four years ago, that the people of Iowa 
 solemnly enacted that the business of brewing beer should be 
 thenceforth a legal industry. This was done with full understand- 
 ing and knowledge that it necessarily implied the investment of 
 capital in property devoted to that business, and that such legis- 
 lation, in the nature of things, ought to be permanent, and not a 
 trap set to catch the confiding. 
 
 "We were justified in believing that this was to be the settled 
 policy of the state; and we have, relying in good faith upon the 
 fairness and honesty of the people, invested our means in this 
 business." 
 
 These men say: " If this amendment passes, it will 
 confiscate the saloons, breweries and distilleries." 
 An editor in your own city says: " It is an axe-and- 
 torch amendment." " The government has no right 
 to destroy the saloons of Iowa," is the claim made. 
 That the state has the right to destroy the business 
 of liquor-selling, is settled. In the language of the 
 supreme court of the United States: "It is the 
 undoubted and reserved power of every state here, 
 as a political body, to decide, independent of any 
 provisions made by Congress, though subject not to 
 conflict with any of them when rightful, who shall 
 compose its population, who become its residents, 
 who its citizens, who enjoy the privileges of its laws, 
 and be entitled to their protection and favor, and what 
 kind of property and business it will tolerate and 
 _protecV 
 
 The state having the right to destroy the saloon, 
 
14:2 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 the question for you, citizens of Iowa, to determine is, 
 would such action be right and just. The state is a 
 society of right, justice is its fundamental idea. In 
 this case Iowa cannot afford to be unjust. 
 
 Investigation will show that states have always 
 claimed the power to destroy, both directly and indi- 
 rectly, trades that stood in the way of the advance- 
 ment of the race. 
 
 There was a time when the state of New York 
 allowed lotteries to exist in her great cities; but, 
 after trial, it became evident that the business 
 was debauching the morals and intelligence of its 
 people; and its legislature said to the lottery dealers: 
 "You have forfeited every right to stay in society, 
 and you must stop." These dealers had thousands 
 of dollars invested in their great buildings and in 
 their advertisements, tickets and machinery. But 
 as soon as it was demonstrated that the business of 
 conducting lotteries was an enemy to public morals, 
 the state, obeying the law of self-defense, killed the 
 business, and that ended it. 
 
 Some years ago, another class of individuals I 
 will not call them men, they do not deserve the 
 name made money by printing obscene literature. 
 Over this country they spread it, in schools and 
 private homes, everywhere. It was allowed to con- 
 tinue for a long time, until the detectives in our 
 great cities commenced to see the harvest which was 
 being reaped by the state. Thousands of men and 
 women were debauched and ruined through this 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 143 
 
 terrible business. The state saw that a great ulcer 
 was located on its life, and it took the scalpel of law 
 and cut it out, and to-day it is a penitentiary offense 
 to send such literature through the mails. 
 
 Years before railroads reached the state of Iowa, 
 there were thousands of coaches carrying the mails 
 and passengers across the state. I think Iowa City 
 was one of the old stage-coach stations. Men had 
 thousands of dollars invested in coaches and. horses. 
 The state had chartered these coach lines, but the 
 day came when the state said: "It is for the best 
 interest of this state that we have railroads.'' It 
 chartered the railroads and killed the stage coach 
 dead as a hammer. The state asserted the right 
 Did the state pay for these coaches? Did some of 
 them rot down in your streets? 
 
 In examining the first defense, the most noticeable 
 thing about it is its falsehoods. It says: "The 
 people of Iowa solemnly enacted that the business of 
 brewing should be thenceforth a legal industry." 
 " We were justified in believing that this was to be 
 the settled policy of the state." Remember the rule 
 of law " False in one, false in all." What are the 
 facts? The decision of the supreme court of the 
 United States was given years ago. Every saloon 
 man in the state of Iowa at that time knew such 
 decision had been made. Not a single man who is 
 selling liquor to-day in the state was selling it then. 
 A decision was made by the supreme court; the 
 right of the people was affirmed ; the people were 
 
144 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 inclined to assert that right; the liquor men knew 
 it; they bet their money on the chances as a gambler 
 bets his money on a pack of cards ; and now, as they 
 are about to be beaten at their own games, they are 
 pleading the baby act, or, like the school-boy, want 
 to trade back. Did anybody compel them to go into 
 the business? They knew that the question of its 
 being stopped was being agitated. They took the 
 chances. The statement that they had reason to 
 thiiik license would be the settled policy is false. 
 
 " But what about the people enacting that brewing 
 should be a legal industry?" 
 
 In the year 1855, the people of this state, by a 
 vote of 25,555 for, and 22,645 against, prohibited the 
 liquor traffic in this state. Notice, now: the people 
 did this; the liquor men then had no rights in the 
 state whatever. The people had asserted it. A few 
 years rolled away, and the drunkard-makers went to 
 your legislature they did not go to the people," 
 they went to a few designing demagogues among your 
 politicians, and said: " If you will knock a hole in the 
 people's law, in defiance of the people's verdict, we 
 will guarantee to one of your political parties a cer- 
 tain support." 
 
 Honest men, if they had thought the people had 
 wronged them, would have gone to the people to 
 ask for a rehearing of the case on its merits. This 
 they did not do. They dared not go before the 
 people. They simply attempted to defraud the peo- 
 ple of the state. The politicians entered into the 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 145 
 
 coalition, and, in defiance of the people, the traffic 
 was readmitted. The business to-day stands in Iowa 
 as a thief, who had broken into your house, would 
 stand. The liquor men know their business is here 
 by fraud, that they are trespassers on the people's 
 domain. Here in Iowa, by contract with political 
 demagogues, the traffic has not even kept its contract 
 with them. The liquor men ask justice it shall be 
 given them. Those who ask equity must show 
 equity. A contract secured by fraudulent represen- 
 tations is void. 
 
 What equity do the liquor men show? What 
 representations did they make to secure the re-ad- 
 mission of their business to this state ? 
 
 They said: "We will only sell wine, beer and 
 cider." They have sold all kinds of liquors. 
 
 They said: "We will not sell liquors to minors, 
 drunkards, or on Sunday." Each of these provisions 
 they have persistently violated. 
 
 What have they not done? The celebrated Ger- 
 man A. F. Hofer says: 
 
 "The saloon-keeper has put the manacles on his own hands. He 
 has forged the hand-cuffs that are put upon him by a hundred 
 enactments of law. He has wrought the chain of statutes, link by 
 link, that is slowly crushing the life out of his business. And now 
 he has attached 'the heavy ball to that chain which will drag not 
 only his business but the manufacturer who supplies him down to 
 perdition. The senate has passed the constitutional amendment 
 which will forever banish the retail liquor business outside of the 
 pale of tolerated occupations, and which forever brands it as con- 
 traband in our commonwealth. It has culminated into a thunder- 
 bolt welded into our fundamental law. 
 
146 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 " We say the saloon-keeper has brought upon himself the terri- 
 ble forces and rigors of the laws. He was not satisfied with the 
 old Iowa law, which treated the sale of liquors as any other mer- 
 chandise. He abused its leniency shamefully. He was not satis- 
 fied with the original Maine law, which enabled him to avoid dis- 
 pensing the more poisonous alcoholic liquors and relieved him of 
 responsibility as to civil damage. He abused the law like a dog. 
 He brought upon himself the law which made him responsible for 
 all damage flowing out from the sale of what flowed in. He was 
 not satisfied with that, but next involved the owner of property in 
 which he kept saloon. Next he pbused the liberality of the privi- 
 leges so that the Two-Mile Act and the election laws were forged, 
 and hung about his insubmissive neck." 
 
 The people, then, answer the first defense by the 
 following facts; 
 
 1st. The statements upon which the liquor traffic 
 secured admission into this state were absolutely and 
 wholly false. 
 
 2d. The traffic has violated every provision of the 
 contract. It has never obeyed the law. It is an 
 outlaw, and has by its own acts shown that it must 
 be treated as such. 
 
 The law prohibits the sale of distilled liquors. 
 Have the liquor-sellers obeyed it or have they 
 violated it? 
 
 The law says, " It shall be unlawful for any person 
 to sell or give away, by agent or otherwise, any spir- 
 ituous or other intoxicating liquors, including wine 
 or beer, to any minor for any purpose whatsoever, 
 unless on the written order of his parent, guardian, or 
 family physician." Have they obeyed this provision 
 of the law, or have they violated it? Are they in 
 a condition to come into the court of the people and 
 
THE DEFENSE BEVIEWED. 147 
 
 plead a violation of contract? The law continues: 
 "Or to sell the same to any intoxicated person, or 
 any person in the habit of becoming intoxicated." 
 Have they kept this provision of the law, or have 
 they violated it? The law says, " It shall be unlaw- 
 ful for any person willfully to sell or keep for sale 
 intoxicating, malt or vinous liquors which have been 
 adulterated or drugged by admixture with any dele- 
 terious or poisonous substance." Have they kept this 
 provision of the law, or have they violated it? The 
 law provides, " It shall be unlawful to buy or sell 
 property of any kind on the first day of the week, 
 commonly called Sabbath." Have they kept this 
 provision of the law, or have they violated it ? 
 
 The rule of law is, if I make a contract with you 
 to do certain things and fail to fulfill my part of the 
 contract, I have no remedy against you in law, equity 
 or natural justice for injury which your failure to 
 fulfill your part may do to me. If the liquor men of 
 this state have obtained admission here by fraudulent 
 representations, they have no right in equity, in jus- 
 tice or common honesty to come before this people 
 and demand that the people shall longer continue a 
 system introduced by lies and living in outlawry. 
 They must come with clean hands into this court. 
 This they cannot do. Their hands are not clean. 
 With such a record, their cry of injustice reminds 
 one of the young man who murdered his father and 
 mother, when placed on trial he asked the judge to 
 be merciful to him because he was an orphan. 
 
148 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 If the liquor business had not injured the state, 
 it would not be on trial for its life to-day. It has 
 only its own vile record to meet. 
 
 Certain of the liquor men abandoning the contest, 
 -ask : "Are you not going to pay us for our business ?" 
 Certainly, the people would not let you go without 
 .settling ; they want to force you to settle by the 
 exact line. If you make a contract with me to go 
 upon my farm and then after a while are ejected for 
 violation of contract, and sue me for damage, I would 
 set up the damage which you have done to the farm. 
 My liquor friends, make up your bill. Charge up 
 the saloon, brewery, distillery, every trapping and 
 fixture you have, in one bill. All that the temper- 
 ance men ask is, that you give them a chance to file 
 against you a bill for the damage you have done 
 Iowa in the past twenty-four years. They want you 
 to indemnify every wife whose home you have ruined ; 
 every little boy you have cursed; return to the tax- 
 payers every dollar they have paid out to maintain a 
 police force, to run asylums, prisons and alinshouses 
 to take care of your products. Pour back into Iowa's 
 treasury the money you have taken from it, and, 
 after the balance is struck, if the people owe you 
 anything they will pay it. Will you do it? Put in 
 your bill to-morrow and let the WORLD see who is 
 the debtor. 
 
 If the liquor men of this state were compelled to 
 return to Iowa what they have taken from it they 
 would be beggars, and they know it. They had no 
 
THE DEFENSE BEVIEWED. 149 
 
 money when they started a few years ago. Now look 
 at their great distilleries, breweries and palatial 
 saloons. Where did they get the money to build 
 them ? By making drunkards of the people. They 
 have taken it from the wife, the baby. They have 
 ruined the home-life of the state of Iowa ; and now 
 when they have amassed their millions by beggaring 
 the people they turn around and whimper because 
 the people will not let them continue this accursed 
 business. They ought to be content with the ill- 
 gotten gains which the state has given them twenty- 
 four years to take from the people. I do not doubt 
 they feel bad. It is pitiful, when men have been 
 supported in idleness and grown rich by the ruin of 
 others, to force them into honest callings and avoca- 
 tions, and compel them to benefit the world in return 
 for the blessings the world gives them. In their 
 days of disconsolation and sorrow the old lady's- 
 scripture may soothe them and keep up their rapidly 
 falling spirits. 
 
 A minister once called on an old lady who was a 
 member of his congregation and said to her; 
 "Aunt Sally, how are you getting along?" 
 She replied: " Not very well, elder. Sal's run off 
 with the hired man ; John is gettin' upstropolous, 
 and the pigs have eat up the garden truck. But in 
 my trials and tribulations there's jest one passage 
 o' scripter that allus consoles me heart, nerves me 
 for the trials to come and brings me nearer the 
 throne." 
 
150 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Said the minister, "Aunt Sally, what is that?" 
 
 " Well," she said, " I don't remember jest whether 
 it's in Proverbs or in Psalms where it says, 'Grin 
 and bear it.' ' 
 
 This scripture I commend to the drunkard-makers 
 of this state in this hour of their approaching 
 defeat. 
 
 The second defense urged is: 
 
 "Beer is comparatively a harmless beverage, con- 
 taining only about four per cent, of alcohol, and 
 experience has shown that its use tends to diminish 
 the amount of distilled liquors required, and thereby 
 decreases drunkenness and promotes temperance." 
 
 You see they are fighting for the beer in this coun- 
 try. They tell you the people have no right to in- 
 terfere with the social customs of the German, be- 
 cause he used to drink beer in Germany, but the 
 poor Irishman who used to drink whisky in Ireland 
 cannot legally get a nip in Iowa. If I was an Irish- 
 man living in this state, if for no other reason than 
 to show that I was as good as a German, I would 
 vote for this amendment, and get even with them. 
 I submit as a matter of fact, if the German has a 
 right to his national beverage, the Irishman has a 
 right to his; and it is the worst kind of dema- 
 goguery 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 impress the point. Saloon-men say that 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 151 
 
 distilled spirits cause the drunkenness of this land. 
 The process of distillation was first taught by Albu- 
 casis or Casa, of Arabia. It was kept closely in the 
 Arabian school of alchemy for more than two cen- 
 turies. Distilled liquor was not used as a beverage 
 until the fourteenth century. Take brandy, whisky, 
 gin, etc., and none of them have a history of more 
 than eight hundred years ; yet I stand here with this 
 audience of students and scholars and say that the 
 worst drunkenness the world ever saw was before 
 distillation was known; that the drunkenness of 
 Greece, of Home, of Babylon, and even of Jerusa- 
 lem, was a drunkenness unknown in modern history 
 and unknown to the modern student. This drunken- 
 ness was the drunkenness, not of distilled, but of 
 fermented liquors. Strong liquors were fermented 
 and drugged with opium or other narcotics. The 
 Jews never knew of such a thing as distilled liquors ; 
 neither did the Greeks or Phoenicians. It is com- 
 paratively a modern art. Before the brewers can 
 write that fermented liquors do not make drunkards, 
 and make the people believe- it, they must blot out 
 the history of the past entirely, or prove that the 
 nations that went down in drunkenness fell by some 
 other means than drinking wine and beer. Babylon 
 and other nations died from wine and beer drinking, 
 and their history contradicts flatly the second propo- 
 sition of the defenders of the traffic! 
 
 The third defense urged is: 
 
 "It is an attempt to pass, or, rather, to create a 
 
152 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 sumptuary law which has for its object the restraint 
 of individual rights, and is, therefore, contrary to 
 the principles of our republican institutions." 
 
 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 quar- 
 antining 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 defense is: 
 
 " It is an invasion of natural rights." 
 
 There is no such thing as a natural right to drink 
 whisky, because in nature such a thing as whisky or 
 beer is unknown. God never created alcohol. 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 alcohol in the process of rotting. I 
 have taken grapes from the table in my office and 
 crushed them, not enough to break the starch cells, 
 tested them until the blue mold had eaten them up, 
 and alcohol did not appear during the process of 
 decay. God does not rot things that way. Alcohol 
 comes in when mechanical force is used to break the 
 
THE DEFENSE BEVIEWED. 153 
 
 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 alcohol, he did create 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 intelligence 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 
 find gunpowder existing as the result of natural pro- 
 cesses. What would you think of a man who would 
 prate about a natural appetite for gunpowder! A 
 natural appetite for something that is unnatural is a 
 thing that no man can understand; hence, you see, 
 the right is not a natural one. 
 
 In order to understand the primary principles un- 
 derlying this reform, let us see what you mean by 
 the terms natural appetite or desire. You say: "I 
 have an appetite for liquor," and yet no man ever 
 had a natural appetite for any kind . of alcoholic 
 liquors. You say, " I think I have." Appetite is a 
 demand for supplies. In the school, in the store, in 
 the office, you keep up a certain amount of muscular 
 force; then you become hungry. What is hunger? 
 A demand for supplies. The body asks you to sup- 
 ply it something out of which it may make force to 
 take the place of the force you have used up. You 
 
154: THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 go to the table, eat slowly, masticate the food thor- 
 oughly, and when you get up and go away, where is 
 your appetite ? A demand for supplies, and when 
 the supplies are furnished it is satisfied. Go to the 
 saloon. You say: " I have an appetite for liquor." 
 Drink one glass. Do you not want the second, then 
 the third and fourth, more than the second ? My liquor 
 friend, you grant me the proposition when you say: 
 " I have will-power 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 sat- 
 isfied ; 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 de- 
 mand 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 cor- 
 rect. The true rule of political economy is this: 
 In the case of absolute necessaries the supply is 
 brought into existence by the demand, but in the 
 case of created luxuries the supply brings into ex- 
 istence the demand. Let me state it again : In the 
 case of absolute necessaries, the supply is created 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 155 
 
 TDV 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 traveled for four 
 days and eaten nothing but a raw rattlesnake. The 
 demand for food is natural and must be satisfied. 
 Food being an absolute necessity, the supply follows 
 the demand. In this climate clothes are absolutely 
 necessary to protect the body from the inclemency 
 of the weather. Demand for these creates the sup- 
 ply. 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. Now 
 apply the law to luxuries. 
 
 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 sa,fe 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 never thought of diamonds, and they see the 
 rings, pins, brooches, and necklaces. One exclaims, 
 "Nell, come here! Are they not 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 neces- 
 saries of life. They are a luxury. You will be 
 
156 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 down here next summer. You have not thought of 
 watermelons. You hear the musical cry, " Water- 
 melons!" As soon as you hear it there will be a de- 
 mand for the melons. "I want one of those water- 
 melons." 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 ex- 
 tent. Hats of some kind are necessary in this coun- 
 try. 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. A couple 
 come along: 
 
 "Is it not a beauty?" 
 
 " That's a jewel of a bonnet." 
 
 "And those colors! Those are 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 I 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 
 necessity. 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 ab- 
 stainer; you do not care for a drink. A saloon- 
 keeper puts a big sign across the street, " Ice cool 
 
THE DEFENSE KEVIEWED. 157 
 
 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 to a friend of mine: "By closing up the 
 saloons near our workshops, drunkenness has dimin- 
 ished two-thirds among our men. When the boys 
 were passing the saloons at night, they would get a 
 drink. Now when they have to go three or four 
 blocks for it they do not get it." 
 
 The fifth defense is: 
 
 "If you shut up the saloons they will sell in the 
 drug-stores and in holes." 
 
 To meet this it will be necessary for us to ex- 
 amine the causes of drunkenness in this country. 
 What makes drunkards ? 
 
 A liquor man exclaims, " Treating." Yes, sir, 
 that is true. Boys go into the saloon to play bill- 
 iards. I have no objection to billiards as a scien- 
 tific game, although I think it makes more first- 
 class loafers than any other game. Boys go 
 in to play billiards; go up to the bar, turn the 
 glasses full, and stand there, clink their glasses and 
 drink to each other's health. Poets and novelists of 
 old times have thrown around the custom of drink- 
 ing to each other's health a sheen of romance. 
 Break up the saloon and where is your treating? 
 Where will it 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 
 <jase to get a drink. Is not that romantic? 
 
158 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 But they say it will be sold in cellars. Yes! a 
 man will sneak through an alley-way, down a back 
 stairway into a cellar where there is a keg of whisky. 
 He finds a tin-cup rusty with the saliva of other men 
 who have drank from it. Is not that a high-toned 
 way of drinking? Will it tempt and make drunk- 
 ards of the boys? 
 
 Another says: ''They will carry it in bottles." 
 Yes ; but treating with bottles is not specially ro- 
 mantic. 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 romantic, especially if one 
 drinker chews tobacco and the other does not ? 
 
 No, gentlemen, when you have broken down the 
 lighted bar, when you make this business outlawry, 
 when you have driven 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 not learned to care. Said a 
 leading statesman of Maine to me, " Old bummers 
 of Maine kept on drinking, but we have a genera- 
 tion of boys who 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 defense is: 
 
 " It will destroy personal liberty." 
 
 Liquor-dealers met in the city of Des Moines and 
 
THE DEFENSE BEVIEWED. 159 
 
 declared that they were the defenders of personal 
 liberty 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 
 liberty in this country? Universities like yours in 
 Iowa City, your schools and your churches. The 
 foundation of liberty is intelligence and morality. A 
 drunken and debauched people can never maintain a 
 government of the people, for the people, and by 
 the people. My liquor friends, 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 
 internal 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 American Brewers' Congress ever built a 
 college, or the Distillers' Union founded a church ? 
 When have they done a thing for liberty in the 
 world? And yet, 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 
 
160 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 used to read stories of the days of chivalry. All 
 boys and girls love to read such books. They have 
 their 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 comes how are the mighty fallen! They 
 are not tall, but they make up for height by breadth. 
 To-night you ladies 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 waddles 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 themselves the position of the 
 special champions of the liberties of this people is 
 absurd, ridiculous and nonsensical. 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 up 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 
 
THE DEFENSE BEVIEWED. 161 
 
 Jesus Christ and to turn sinners from the path of 
 death. The officers of the church asked him if he 
 had received any new evidences of a call. He re- 
 sponded: "I went home from this yer meetin', 
 troubled an' perplexed, 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 reely called me he oughter make 
 it manifest to me thar. So I jest knelt down in a 
 clump of bushes, raised up 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, 
 sayin': 'Go, W-a-alk-er, W-a-lker, Walker! Go, 
 Pr-e-e-a-cher, Pr-e-a-cher, Pr-e-a-a-ch-e-r-r-r .!' " The 
 officers of the church examined the source of the call, 
 and found that it was a jackass, which, alarmed at 
 his praying, had commenced to bray. For the life 
 of me I cannot shake off the idea that this call of 
 the liquor-dealers as the defenders of liberty must 
 have come from such source. But what is their cry? 
 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 
 
162 THE PEOPLE VEKSUS THE LIQUOB TRAFFIC. 
 
 yet be very weak. Civil liberty, therefore, 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 political character, necessary 
 and natural to man and to be striven for, arises out 
 of the development of society. Man, in that sup- 
 posed 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 ma- 
 terially 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 na- 
 tions claim, maintain or establish rights without ac- 
 knowledging 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 reciprocity y 
 whether considered in the light of ethics or natural 
 law, must sink from under it. It is natural, there- 
 fore, that wherever there exists a greater knowledge 
 of right or more intense attention to it than to con- 
 current and proportionate obligations, evil ensues. 
 What may there be found a priori is pointed out by 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 163 
 
 history as one of its gravest and greatest morals. 
 The very condition of right is obligation. Tho only 
 reasonableness of obligations consists in rights. 
 Since, therefore, a greater degree of civil liberty im- 
 plies the enjoyment of more extended acknowledged 
 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 
 obligation, liberty ; freedom of action without limita- 
 tion by obligation, licentiousness. The greater the 
 liberty the more 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 is civil liberty which 
 will hang him on the 30th 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 organ- 
 ized or civil liberty which would hang him if he did. 
 Civil liberty is developed by the restrictions of nat- 
 ural liberty and development of higher intellectual 
 liberty among intellectual men. Go among the bar- 
 barian tribes on the frontier. One of the tribes 
 which I visited a few years ago has very limited 
 civil government. Their chief is elected on account 
 of his brute strength. He has the force and he is 
 
164 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 elected. Property is only held by the physical force 
 of the man holding it. They have a marriage rela- 
 tion, 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, Run- 
 ning Elk, if there was no punishment for wife mur- 
 der, and he answered, "No, unless her father or 
 brother should take it upon themselves to avenge her 
 death." " Do they ever do that?" I asked. He an- 
 swered: "No; they might want to kill their wives, 
 and their killing him would set a bad precedent." 
 
 Come farther east, to some of the tribes on 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 pun- 
 ished 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 perma- 
 nent. Civilization has taken the brute Indian very 
 nearly a brute restrained his personal liberty and 
 compelled him to be a man. Civil liberty is devel- 
 oped by the restraint of personal liberty. The vul- 
 ture that flies across our western plains is personally 
 free to steal chickens. The cayote wolf is a high 
 type of personal liberty. The buccaneer on the 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 165 
 
 ocean is a representative of personal liberty. Jesse 
 James was the best type of personal liberty 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, but out west the people are glad his per- 
 sonal 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 that 
 way, or chew and spit the other way it is none of 
 your business. You grant that right if I am alone 
 on the prairie. I go into a crowd of men and exer- 
 cise the right. I chew and spit in one man's face, 
 and chew and spit in another man's ear. I would 
 be knocked down in a minute. 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?" 
 
166 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Yes, but your right to swing your arm leaves 
 off 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, is nonsense. 
 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 center all round to the sea, 
 I am lord of the fowl and the brute." 
 
 He could stand on his head, go without clothes 
 do as he pleased. If he had tried to do the same 
 after he returned to London he would have been in 
 the police-station in ten minutes. 
 
 Liquor-men say: "Government 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 government to restrain animal pas- 
 sions, and the cry of liquor-men for personal lib- 
 erty, is simply a cry for barbarism. Let me show 
 you the outcome of their doctrines as enunciated by 
 their great high-priest, the high-priest of personal 
 liberty John Stuart Mill. I read from his works, 
 and you get them and read for yourself, and see 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 167 
 
 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 Long- 
 mans, 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 appar- 
 ent to which of the two it properly belongs. There are argu- 
 ments 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 argu- 
 ments; 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 as those mentioned! Such is the doc-*' 
 trine 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 davils would laugh at such a 
 theory of governmental functions. If such a theory 
 is adopted in this country, on the chaos of Ameri- 
 can institutions will arise the worst despotism the 
 world has ever seen. The doctrine of personal, sen- 
 sual liberty, is the doctrine of f ree-lovism, and means 
 the reinstatement of lust, passion and brute force as 
 the governing force of the world. 
 
 The remainder of their defense is best answered 
 by its absurdity. From their declaration I read: 
 
168 THE PEOPLE VEESUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 1. These laws have been tried and abandoned as 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 develop- 
 ment 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! It will stop immigration and set 
 up an awful tyranny! 
 Again I read: 
 
 1. We believe it is an established fact that the attempt of gov- 
 ernment to prohibit the sale or purchase of intoxicating drinks 
 sharpens and excites the disposition of men to obtain them. 
 
 2. The facts 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 brewery and distilleries! 
 Again I read: 
 
 1. Wherever tried, prohibition has failed to prohibit. 
 
 2. If the amendment shall be voted into the constitution, 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 ! 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 169 
 
 These statements are taken from different parts 
 of their platform, and grouped. If I had a boy of 
 ten years who would maks such contradictory state- 
 ments I would send him to the asylum for weak- 
 minded children. 
 
 Their last defense is bulldozing rebellion. Citi- 
 zens, I would not overdraw the picture. I read 
 from the Des Moines declaration of the liquor men: 
 
 Resolved, That we will use all honorable means to defeat said 
 proposed amendment at the polls, and if we are unsuccessful will 
 resist its unjust and oppressive provisions by every method 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 forerunner of what will occur 
 in this state, if the Republican 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, who 
 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 tomfoolery into a 
 cocked hat. 
 
 If 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; 
 
 12 
 
170 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 And its defeat is demanded by common honesty. 
 
 IF THE 
 DOLTS AND 
 DEMAGOGUES 
 SUCCEED IN SECUBING THE PASSAGE OF THAT SUM OF ABOMINATIONS 
 
 KNOWN AS THE PBOHIBITOBY AMENDMENT, THE FBIENDS AND DEFEND- 
 EBS OF PEBSONAL LIBEBTY WILL DEFY THE ENFOBCEMENT OF THE 
 ENOBMITY. 
 
 MAKK 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 
 depravity of the liquor traffic and its defenders. The 
 threat of political ostracism and assassination is the 
 emptiest kind of buncomb. The dramshop has no 
 political power, other than as agent to bribe its 
 debauched 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 
 moment, 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 
 opposition ; and in making up your verdict you are 
 told, if you fail to place Iowa in the* hands of grog- 
 shops, you shall politically die. "Are you men and 
 suffer such dishonor?" No, these men who live in 
 
THE DEFENSE REVIEWED. 171 
 
 the sores of the body politic, as maggots live in the 
 neglected sores of the beggar, will be washed out by 
 your votes on the 27th of June, and then, and not 
 until 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. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE JTJKY 
 ANSWEKED. 
 
 DELIVEBED IN THE OPERA HOUSE AT MARSHALLTOWN, 
 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 charges. I use the word people be- 
 cause it is the common term, not because it is the 
 correct one. This is not a government 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 y the opposition have conjured a host of imagin- 
 ary dangers to intimidate voters. They have told 
 you that this amendment is a blow at the liberties of 
 
 172 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 173 
 
 the people : that it will take rights from the people. 
 The exact reverse is the truth. It takes rights from 
 the legislature, 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. 
 
 A great 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 gov- 
 ernment, 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 govern- 
 ment 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 war- 
 rant 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 
 
174 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 
 expressly reserved to the people, in the constitution, 
 are vested in the legislature and other branches of 
 government 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 
 willing 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 executive departments of the state. 
 The right to deal with the traffic in your state 
 is vested in the legislature composed of represen- 
 tatives elected by the people. Tears have passed 
 since this grant was made. The people have tested 
 the system of legislative control, and have become 
 thoroughly satisfied that the legislature 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 legislature, and 
 re-invest it in the people. It is the people step- 
 ping out and saying to the legislature of the state, 
 " Gentlemen, you have not dealt with this ques- 
 tion 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 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JUEY ANSWERED. 175 
 
 constitutional amendment, 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 will- 
 ing to leave this power in the hands of the legisla- 
 ture 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 man- 
 ufacture 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 asking a popular opinion 
 whether it was best to enact this law. After a bit- 
 terly contested campaign, the people, by an emphatic 
 majority, said that the statutory enactment should 
 be a law. In obedience to the decision of the people, 
 the legislature passed a law, and it became a law 
 throughout Iowa. Hardly had this been done when 
 the liquor men of this state went to the legislative 
 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, " gentle- 
 
176 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 men, the people have said you shall not come back." 
 The liquor men used arguments which were unfair 
 and dishonest; they were not willing to allow the 
 question to be resubmitted to the people for a 
 new trial; they induced the legislature to swindle 
 the people out of it 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 constitutional enactment. But it shall 
 remain until the voters see fit to repeal it." 
 
 That is the whole question. 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 pam- 
 phlet on personal liberty, which is now being circu- 
 lated by the anti-prohibitionists, and I read: 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 177 
 
 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, 
 which brings with it other crimes that it is the fruitful source of 
 pain, misery, pauperism and disease. 
 
 2. They agree that drunkenness, when it produces disorder, is 
 neither an excuse or apology for crime, and should be promptly 
 punished by law. They agree that the adulterators 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 
 villainous liar he is, by reading from the last page 
 of his book. He says: 
 
 The sincerity of the whole prohibitory movement may be read- 
 ily measured by the honest comparison of the professions with 
 the practices of its leaders and its champions. Only one instance 
 will illustrate the hypocrisy of the prohibitory movement. Dur- 
 ing the last summer, when the late president had fallen by assassi- 
 nation, the whole land was filled with grief and stricken with 
 sorrow. The president had been a minister of the gospel, and 
 the stroke which had fallen with its deadly power upon the gov- 
 ernment 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 sor- 
 row; 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 fol- 
 lowing the illustrious 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 consumed by the government mourners, in a 
 carefully itemized account, footed up $1,700, which has been pre- 
 
178 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 sented to Congress for allowance, about $300 of which was for 
 cocktails. These mourners were the chief leaders of the great 
 National prohibition party. 
 
 The first tliree confessions of the gentleman is 
 the whole basis of 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 dramshop. 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 votejrs, the 
 liquor men come into court and enter a pica of 
 guilty, and only ask that, because of mitigating cir- 
 cumstances, 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 plead 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; I shall read by number and answer. They 
 are as follows: 
 
 1st Question : " If the amendment 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 
 whisky 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 whisky without 
 any law restraining them. 
 
 To console them, and that they may not be mis- 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED... 179 
 
 taken, I assure them that this will be the ruling of 
 your courts, as it has been the ruling of all the 
 higher courts in this country; viz., that the adoption 
 of the constitutional amendment will simply make 
 the license clauses of your present act unconstitu- 
 tional. Your law is a prohibitory law. It was 
 passed as a prohibitory law. The amendment will 
 affect only the explanatory clauses which allow the 
 sale of wine and beer. 
 
 " What will bo tho result?" Just as soon as it is 
 officially declared that tho amendment is carried, 
 you will have a prohibitory law in existence in this 
 state that is better than the Kansas law, for that is 
 a fearfully weak one. Your old law will be in force. 
 Your future legislators may amend the present pro - 
 hibitory law, but it will stand as a law except its 
 license features, until your legislators change it. 
 
 The effect of the amendment on tho law will be 
 the same as though it had been a part of the consti- 
 tution when the law was passed. The license fea- 
 tures of your present law will be unconstitutional. 
 The only question will be over penalties for wine 
 and beer. 
 
 2d Question: "Will the amendment be effective without 
 penalties?" 
 
 I say, No. There is not a single provision of the 
 constitution that is effective without penalties. 
 
 3d Question : "Will not the life of the amendment exist only 
 in the penalties ? " 
 
 I answer to that, No ; and I will show why, when 
 J have read the fourth question, which is: 
 
 "Will not the penalties tend to fluctuate with each legislature f * 
 
180 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 "It is claimed that constitutional law carries more force than 
 legislative enactment ; but if the penalties depend upon legisla- 
 tive enactment, why the greater 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 enforce- 
 ment The gentleman who asks the question, asks 
 whether the constitutional amendment will have 
 greater force than statutory 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 ma- 
 jority of the people, representing a majority of the 
 sentiment of this state ; and when law-breakers know 
 that prohibition 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 majorities. A statutory enactment 
 seems to have nobody behind it, except the courts. 
 A constitutional enactment has the people of the 
 whole state behind it Hence, I answer, the life of 
 the constitutional amendment is the people, not the 
 penalties. The life of the amendment is the senti- 
 ment shown by the vote that adopts it. Conse- 
 
QUESTIONS: ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 181 
 
 quently, the constitutional amendment must be of 
 greater force than a statutory enactment. 
 
 The people having adopted a constitutional 
 amendment by majority vote, politicians will be ex- 
 ceedingly 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 tendency of all law carrying out 
 constitutional provisions is to permanency, because 
 politicians do not like to antagonize the people. 
 
 5th Question: " If there is greater force in constitutional pro- 
 vision to combat evils or crimes, why is not mnrder or other high 
 crimes prohibited by constitutional amendment instead of legis- 
 lative 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 legis- 
 lature 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 guar- 
 antees of the constitution, and would be declared 
 unconstitutional in any court of the United States. 
 The crimes named are prohibited by the constitu- 
 tional 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 outside the 
 state. In other words, Iowa men must not poison their immediate 
 
182 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 neighbors but can poison Kansas without penalty. Would not 
 such a law as a fundamental principle of our government be 
 dishonorable, inconsistent and unchristian ? " 
 
 The questioner makes an incorrect statetment and 
 on the incorrect statement bases his question. The 
 amendment prohibits the manufacture and sale of 
 liquors. The statement is one being urged by 
 liquor men in all parts of the state. One is remind- 
 ed that 
 
 "When the Devil was sick 
 The Devil a monk would be; 
 When 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 play- 
 ing near it-, if I could not kill it, but could drive it 
 out of doors, I would drive it 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, let the gigantic temperance sentiment of this 
 state carry 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 
 voters. 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 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 183 
 
 from doing. In making the constitution a majority 
 of the people is supreme. They can do anything 
 they please. They may establish a state church or 
 despotism. Therefore the government does not ex- 
 ceed its authority in obeying any "act of a majority 
 of voters" expressed in their constitution. The only 
 safety for our liberties is the intelligence and moral- 
 ity 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 authority 
 as represented by a majority of its voters, why may not the gov- 
 ernment prescribe the form of religious 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 people 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 for 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 sup- 
 poses 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 
 
184 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 from the pernicious influence of trade, which* is a 
 social institution. In no respect do they aim to in- 
 terfere with the private liberties of the individual 
 until those private 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 
 prohibitionists is simply to destroy in this country 
 all institutions which have a tendency to debauch 
 the morality and the intelligence of the people, and 
 thereby jeopardize our liberties by corrupting the 
 fountaiiihead of our liberties the people. 
 
 9th Question : " The educational methods and restrictive meas- 
 ures in promoting temperance should go hand in hand. The re- 
 strictive should not be at the expense of the educational, from 
 \?hich all true reforms must come." 
 
 The question states the theory of every prohi- 
 bitionist. The only error being in leaving the infer- 
 ence that restrictive measures are not educational 
 All laws educate. 
 
 10th Question : " Will not the conflict of society produced by 
 efforts to enforce extreme measures require so much attention that 
 the educational 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 educa- 
 tional temperance work, are fighting hardest for 
 prohibition. The Good Templars, which I have the 
 honor of representing in my own state as their chief 
 officer and in the nation as chairman of their litera- 
 ture committee, have always fought for prohibition; 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 185 
 
 and they are paying many thousands of dollars to 
 circulate literature among the f reedmen 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 the reform. The prohibitionists of this 
 country are the men who are pressing the educa- 
 tional work. The moral suasionists who are fighting 
 prohibition 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 
 given a thousand dollars in the past year to teach 
 temperance to the people, and I will show you a 
 white crow. The organizations 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 into 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 tem- 
 perance, then I would see sense in the question. 
 Instead of working for temperance, they remain idle 
 
186 THE PEOPLE VEBSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 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 anything for temperance, but who is 
 continually attacking temperance workers and lend- 
 ing 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 preach- 
 ing a temperance 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. 
 
 llth Question. " Can temperance organizations hope to legis- 
 late men into habits of sobriety ? " 
 
 The only men who ever said you could are the 
 men who advocate license. Temperance men do not 
 propose to legislate a man sober; they propose to 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 187 
 
 legislate men out of the business of making men 
 drunk. "License 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 drunken- 
 ness a misdemeanor. 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 
 Jiome. If they cannot be taken home, they 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 the police 
 would arrest a man who has money? The workmen 
 of this country have long enough stood by this sys- 
 tem which makes it a crime for a poor man to do 
 what a rich man may do with impunity. The poor 
 
188 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 man is arrested by the police officer, and put into tha 
 "cooler.". The next morning he is brought before 
 the police court, and what is the result? The sa- 
 loon-keeper got half of his money, the police officer, 
 through the police magistrate, gets the other half, 
 and the poor devil has not a cent left, and the license 
 people cry: "Served 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 wretched- 
 ness 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 you, 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 
 things, starving 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 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 189 
 
 town, Mr. Finch," he said; "the restaurants are all 
 closed; I saw a light in your window, and thought 
 you 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 the city, out into 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 suffering. There sat the poor woman in 
 her wretchedness. My wife asked what she could 
 do for her. She straightened up and said: 
 
 " Mrs. Finch, I am not a beggar. I do not want you 
 to give me anything. If you will just lend it to me I 
 will pay it all back to you some time. If I had 
 some clothes and shoes I could take care of my own 
 babies. It is hard, oh, so hard, to be here with 
 such clothes that I cannot go out in the street, and 
 the baby dying in my arms!" 
 
 I thought so, too. I asked her where her husband 
 was. I knew him to be one of the best stone- 
 masons in the city. I knew that because he had done 
 some work for me a short time before. She said he 
 had been put in the city jail for eight days, to serve 
 out a sentence for drunkenness. "Punish the man 
 who gets drunk." The law had done that, and left 
 his wife and babies to starve and freeze in midwinter. 
 
 Any system of law that punishes the wife and 
 children for the sins of the father is a disgrace to a 
 
190 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 civilized people. If it is right to license a man to 
 make men drunk, it is right to get drunk; and a 
 nation that licenses the manufacture of drunkards, 
 and then punishes men for doing exactly what it has 
 licensed a man to make them do, is a long way from 
 civilization of the highest type. 
 
 Remove temptation by the police power of the state 
 and educational methods will begin to influence the 
 individual. Moral suasion will never have a fair chanca 
 until the state has branded liquor-selling as a crime. 
 
 12th Question. " Men are like hogs. You can coax them but 
 you cannot drive them. Will not the amendment make men 
 worse?" 
 
 I have always doubted the theory of evolution from 
 monkeys and am not inclined to admit that reasoning 
 men are like unreasoning hogs. The only evidence 
 of the truth of the statement is the character and 
 habits of the liquor men. A traffic that estimates 
 man, "created in the image of his Maker," as a hog, 
 ought to die. 
 
 Men can be driven. The late war proves it. Men 
 who are in the wrong, who know they are wrong, are 
 the greatest cowards in the world. 
 
 The amendment is reasonable and right. The 
 people of Iowa are a reading, thinking, reasonable 
 people. They will see the justice of the action and 
 sustain it The amendment will close up the human 
 hog-pens, and the "men like hogs" will go with the 
 pens. 
 
 13th Question. " If you say a man shall not do a thing, he will 
 desire to do it. Will not the tendency of the amendment be to- 
 lead men to desire to break it ?" 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 191 
 
 This is practically the last question in another 
 form. If the statement made is correct, statesmen 
 have always been in error. No laws should be 
 passed prohibiting theft, because if you say a man 
 shall not steal, it will excite a desire in him to steal. 
 No laws should be passed prohibiting crime, because 
 if you say a man shall not commit crime, he will 
 desire to commit crime. The correct way, accord- 
 ing to this "hog theory," would be, to pass a law 
 saying a man should steal, that he should be fined 
 if he did not steal. Such a law would excite the 
 hoggish propensities of man, and he would not steal, 
 simply because the law said he must. Laws should 
 be passed saying men should commit crime, with 
 adequate penalties to force men to obey. Such laws 
 would excite the hoggish propensity to disobey and 
 no crime would be committed. Not only have 
 parents and statesmen blundered, but God himself 
 was mistaken in thinking human beings, reasonable 
 beings instead of brutes, if this saloon theory is correct. 
 I only wonder how any person dare so insult an audi- 
 ence. Man is not a hog. He thinks and reasons. 
 He is eminently an ethical being. The question 
 and statement are not founded on fact, but suppose 
 a condition of things which never did and never can 
 exist. 
 
 14th Question. "Is not temptation necessary to the develop- 
 ment of moral character ? " 
 
 The question implies that evil is an educator of 
 the moral forces. If temptation develops character, 
 
192 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 the government ought to license gambling-hells, so 
 that the boys, by being tempted to gamble, would 
 become honest citizens. If temptation develops 
 character, the government ought to license houses of 
 ill-fame, and libertines, so that your daughters, by 
 being tempted, would become virtuous women. 
 Would you wish to try so dangerous an experiment ? 
 The dual nature of man must always be taken into 
 consideration in the discussion of such problems. 
 The intellectual, god-nature is always at war with 
 the passionate, brute-nature. The highest type of 
 manhood is developed when the passionate or brute 
 forces are held in check by the intellectual nature, 
 and made to act as the motive power to accomplish 
 grand deeds. The lowest type of manhood is de- 
 veloped when the intellectual forces are the slaves 
 of the brute nature, compelled to devise ways and 
 means to gratify lust and passion. The associations 
 of childhood develop one or the other of these forces. 
 Like produces like. Throw around a child influ- 
 ences which develop the intellectual nature, and the 
 chances are in favor of his being a manly man. 
 Throw around a child influences which develop the 
 brute or passionate nature, and the chances are in 
 favor of his being a bad man a criminal. "Evil 
 associations corrupt good manners" is an old saw, 
 the truth of which no sane man will dispute. One 
 might as well hope to develop a rare rose by taking 
 it from the sunlight and placing it in the dark, damp 
 cellar, as to expect to develop noble, pure manhood 
 
THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 193 
 
 and womanhood by surrounding the child with the 
 noxious atmosphere of vice and crime. 
 
 No man ever understood human nature as the 
 Master who taught us to pray: " Lead us not into 
 temptation, but deliver us from evil." 
 
 15th Question. " Will not the passage of the amendment make 
 the temperance question a political question?" 
 
 Politics is the science of government. Politics is 
 that division of ethics which deals with the govern- 
 ment of a state ; the preservation of its prosperity ; 
 safety and peace; the protection of citizens; the 
 preservation and improvement of their morals. Any 
 institution, trade or custom which affects the safety, 
 prosperity or peace of a state, or which injures the 
 morals of the citizens, is political. In a government 
 of the people, by the people, any trade which affects 
 the people injuriously, affects the government, com- 
 posed of the people, injuriously, and its regulation or 
 destruction belongs properly to the science of govern- 
 ment politics. The school and the church influence 
 the unit of the political structure the citizen ; and to 
 that extent are political institutions. Every sermon 
 or lesson which influences the life and conduct of 
 the citizen has a good or bad influence on the state, 
 and to that extent is political. The old cry of polit- 
 ical demagogues: "Keep temperance and religion 
 out of politics," is a sample of stupid ignorance 
 boiled down. 
 
 No other institution in America exerts the terri- 
 ble influence on political action that is exerted by 
 
194 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 the liquor traffic. The questions, "What can the 
 government do with the traffic?" "How can the 
 government destroy the pernicious influence of this 
 traffic?*' are questions which must be determined 
 by political action. The laws passed to regulate 
 and restrain these influences are political measures 
 devised to meet the issues presented by the liquor 
 traffic. The question is a political question now, 
 and it will remain one until it is settled by political 
 action. 
 
 If the questioner means to ask whether it will 
 become a partisan question, I answer, it will. In a 
 government like ours, parties are political machines 
 to work out political problems. The government is 
 a government of the party in power, and until the 
 government, the party in power pronounces in 
 favor of the enforcement of the law, it will be openly 
 violated. With one political party openly opposed 
 to the law, and the other political party a coward, 
 prohibition will be between the "devil and the deep 
 sea," and will remain largely a dead letter on your 
 statute books. Unless one of the present parties 
 shall, in its state and national platforms, declare in 
 favor of passing and enforcing prohibition, a party 
 will be formed which will carry the measure to vic- 
 tory. Boobies in the science of government may 
 prate about settling this as a non-partisan question, 
 but persons who have had experience in public life r 
 who know what lever is necessary to move grave 
 dangers from the path of government, will not in- 
 dulge in such idle fancies. 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 195 
 
 16th Question. " What is your opinion of the success of pro- 
 hibition as tried in Maine ? " 
 
 Prohibition has been a success wherever tried. It 
 is truly a wonder that it has, for it has never had a 
 fair trial. The state has branded the business of 
 making drunkards as a crime. The influence of the 
 general government has always antagonized state 
 action. The state has prohibited the manufacture 
 and sale of liquor. The general government has 
 always, by its power to regulate inter-state commerce, 
 licensed the importation of liquors into the state. 
 The state has prohibited the sale of liquor. The 
 general government has said to liquor outlaws: 
 " Pay into the treasury of the United States twenty- 
 five dollars a year, and you may violate the state' law 
 by selling the liquors. Congress has licensed you to 
 import, and the agents of the United States will re- 
 main silent, wink at your crime, and let the state 
 punish you if it can." Prohibition will only be tested 
 when the general government ceases to be a partner 
 or rather beneficiary of the liquor traffic; when the 
 national constitution shall prohibit the importation, 
 manufacture and sale o alcoholic liquors ; when the 
 political party controlling the nation is in favor of 
 prohibition honestly enforced. 
 
 In the face of such disadvantages, prohibition has 
 succeeded. Let us examine the evidence to see if 
 this is not true. 
 
 Remember the rule of law to be: "Hearsay evi- 
 dence is uniformly held incompetent to establish any 
 specific fact, which, in its nature, is susceptible of 
 
196 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 being proved by witnesses who can speak from their 
 own knowledge." The learned author who lays 
 down the rule says: " That this species of testimony 
 supposes something better, which might be adduced 
 in the particular case, is not the sole ground of 
 its exclusion. Its extrinsic weakness, its incom- 
 petency to satisfy the mind as to the existence of the 
 fact, and the frauds which may be practiced under 
 its cover, combine to support the rule that hearsay 
 evidence is totally inadmissible." 
 
 The prohibitory law of Maine is on trial. You 
 are the jury. The evidence produced must be 
 such evidence 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 newspaper articles written by irresponsible 
 anonymous correspondents 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 I 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 one?" 
 
 "It was copied from the New York Sun." 
 
-QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 197 
 
 "From what source did the Sun get its infor- 
 mation?" 
 
 "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, of 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?" 
 
 "lam." 
 
 "And know something of the moral and social 
 condition 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 observa- 
 tion, unhesitatingly affirm that the consumption of 
 intoxicating liquors is not to-day one-fourth so great 
 as it was twenty years ago ; that, in the country por- 
 tions of the state, the sale and use have almost 
 entirely ceased; that the law itself, under a vigorous 
 
198 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 enforcement of its provisions, has created a temper- 
 ance sentiment which is marvellous, and to which 
 opposition is powerless. In my opinion, our remark- 
 able 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." 
 
 Call James G. Blaine. He is qualified as a wit- 
 ness, and testifies: 
 
 " The people of Maine are industrious and provi- 
 dent, and wise laws have aided them. They are 
 sober, earnest and thrifty. Intemperance has steadily 
 decreased in the state, since the first enactment of 
 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 fifty 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 offered 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 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 199 
 
 side would you give the verdict? Would you be- 
 lieve 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, Dingley and others lie. In determining 
 which evidence is false, you must stop and see who 
 has reasons for lying. If prohibition is a success, 
 it destroys the liquor business. If the people in 
 your state can be made to believe prohibition a 
 failure, and by such belief be led to defeat the 
 amendment, the liquor traffic 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 interests by so 
 doing? No. The same is true of the other wit- 
 nesses called by the prohibitionists. If the evidence 
 in this case is taken and considered as it would be 
 in a court of justice, the verdict must be: " Prohibi- 
 tion is a success in Maine." 
 
 The evidence which the liquor men bring from 
 Kansas is of the same character as that brought 
 against the law in Maine. The prohibitionists bring 
 St. John and other state officers who testify to the 
 success of the law. In addition, I wish to call your 
 attention to the admissions of the liquor men thern^- 
 selves. They are the parties in interest and their 
 admissions may certainly be accepted as evidence. 
 
^00 THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 My talented friend Hon. Frank 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 number of ex-liquor-sellers asking 
 what were the chances to start a saloon in Kansas. 
 Let me read one answer: 
 
 " CLAY CENTEB, KANSAS, June 10, 1882. 
 
 " DEAH FEIEND: 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 enough of it. Don't come to Kansas to start a 
 saloon. JOE MONTEL." 
 
 Another, written in German, translated, reads: 
 
 " BELOIT, 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, because the temperance people will not 
 let you sell anything. JOHN EBEBLE." 
 
 I hold in my hands copies of letters received by 
 Mr. Sibley from ex-liquor-sellers in eleven different 
 towns and cities of Kansas, all making substantially 
 the same statements. 
 
 In view of all the facts, can I do other than answer, 
 
 PROHIBITION IS A SUCCESS. 
 
 Gentlemen, voters, that is our case. Take it, and 
 as a jury, bound by the most sacred obligation , 
 your honor as citizens pass upon the evidence and 
 arguments. 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. 
 
QUESTIONS ASKED BY JURY ANSWERED. 201 
 
 To you, then, we submit our indictment. AVe 
 submit 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, licentious traffic still destroys the 
 youth, manhood and virtue of the land. 
 
 Richelieu, the French cardinal, whose niece was 
 pursued 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 failed. We 
 ask you to draw the protecting circle of the consti- 
 tution around our homes and say to this "black 
 death," "Thou shalt not cross these thresholds," 
 
THE AMENDMENTS 
 
 AND 
 
 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 THE KANSAS AMENDMENT, 
 
 AS AJXJPTED BY THE PEOPLE AND SUSTAINED BY TOT 8UPBEME COBSWr 
 OP THE STATE. 
 
 The following is the amendment to the Kansas state con- 
 stitution' which became Section 10 of Article 15: 
 
 "The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors shall be for- 
 ever prohibited in this state, except for medical, scientific and 
 mechanical purposes." 
 
 THE IOWA AMENDMENT, 
 
 ADOPTED BY THE PEOPLE JUNE 2?TH, 1882, AT A SPECIAL ELECTION, 
 
 BEADS AS FOLLOWS: 
 
 " Sec. 26. No person shall manufacture for sale, sell, or keep 
 for sale as a beverage, any intoxicating liquors whatever, including 
 ale, wine and beer. The General Assembly shall, by law, pre- 
 scribe regulations for the enforcement of the prohibition herein 
 contained, and shall thereby provide suitable penalties for viola- 
 tions of the provisions hereof." 
 
The Iowa amendment, after a full and free discussion, both for 
 and against, was adopted by over twenty-nine thousand majority. 
 Immediately after its adoption, the entire liquor power of the 
 nation combined to overthrow the popular will. 
 
 The Democratic party of the state declared, in their conven- 
 tion, their sympathy with the outlawed liquor-dealers, and their 
 intention to work for the repeal of the amendment. The 
 Republican party met in state convention, and, although the 
 question of the enforcement of the amendment was the absorbing 
 question in the state, it was entirely ignored in their platform. 
 
 The amendment thus standing with open and defiant enemies 
 on the one side, and cowardly politicians controlling the other, 
 was fiercely attacked. 
 
 A fictitious case to test the validity of the amendment was 
 concocted between a brewer and a saloon-keeper. A district 
 judge sustained the technical objections to the constitutionality 
 of the manner of submitting the amendment. The case was 
 taken to the supreme court, where, under influences which may be 
 surmised, if not known, a mere clerical error was held sufficient 
 to invalidate the declaration of the whole people, expressed by a 
 decisive majority at the ballot-box. 
 
 Mr. Justice Beck, alone, of the whole court, dared to stand for 
 the people against this gigantic wrong. 
 
ABE LIQUOE DEALEKS ENTITLED TO IN- 
 DEMNITY FBOM THE STATE FOE PEOP- 
 EETY INJUEED BY THE ENACTMENT OF 
 PBOHIBITOBY LAWS? 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. OLIVER P. MASON, EX-CHIEF JUS- 
 TICE OF NEBRASKA. 
 
 [This speech was delivered in City Hall, Lincoln, Nebraska, in response to a 
 request of the prominent members of the legislature then in session. 
 
 The liquor advocates had claimed vested rights in property and that if the 
 constitutional amendment was passed, the state would be responsible for prop- 
 erty destroyed. To these claims Judge Mason replied.] 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The legal questions 
 involved in the proposed constitutional amendment 
 are two in number, viz: 
 
 1. Whether this would be a constitutional ordi- 
 nance, depriving persons of property without due 
 process of law; and 
 
 2. "Whether, if it were so, it would be so far a 
 violation of the fourteenth amendment in that regard, 
 as would call for judicial action, or interference by 
 the courts. 
 
 Both these questions are of importance, and require 
 serious and careful consideration. They are not to 
 be lightly treated. Neither of the questions are de- 
 
 X 
 
206 AEGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 cided in the case of Bartmeyer vs. Iowa ; and neither 
 of them were drawn in issue in the case of Wyne- 
 hamer vs. The People in 13 N. Y., p. 378, and this 
 case was never the law and has been overruled. The 
 last case, indeed, arose in July, 1855, long before 
 the fourteenth constitutional amendment was adopted, 
 and under a statute of New York for the prevention 
 of intemperance, pauperism, and crime, and not 
 upon a constitutional ordinance, or a provision of a 
 stato constitution. Nor were these questions con- 
 sidered in the case of Bartmeyer vs. Iowa, because 
 the court says: 
 
 " But, if it were true, and it was fairly presented to us, that the 
 defendant was the owner of the glass of liquor which he sold 
 to Hickey at the time the state of Iowa first imposed an absolute 
 prohibition on the sale of such liquors, then we consider these 
 questions would arise; but in the case before us, the supreme court 
 <>f Iowa, whose judgment we are called upon to review, did not 
 consider it." 
 
 They said the record did not present this matter, 
 and the supreme court of the United States expressly 
 declined to consider these questions ; they did not 
 arise in that case. 
 
 But there is a wide distinction between a consti- 
 tutional provision and an act of the legislature. 
 The one is the act of the creature, the other of the 
 creator. The constitution is certain and fixed. It 
 is the expressed and established will of the people, 
 and is the supreme law of the land. It is para- 
 mount to the power of the legislature and all other 
 departments of the government What is the legis.- 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 207 
 
 lature? The creature of the constitution. To the 
 constitution the legislature owes its existence, and 
 from the constitution it derives its power. The con- 
 stitution is the work of the people in their original 
 sovereign capacity. Statute laws are the work or 
 the will of the legislature in its derivative or subor- 
 dinate capacity. The one is the work of the creature, 
 the other of the creator. The constitution fixes a 
 limit upon legislative authority, and prescribes the 
 orbit within which it must move. The power of the 
 people in their constitution-making capacity is 
 omnipotent, sovereign, and supreme. Upon sover- 
 eignty, among nations, there are no limitations or 
 restrictions. Upon the people of the states of the 
 Union in their sovereign and constitution -making 
 capacity, there is the limitation and restriction vol- 
 untarily imposed of the federal constitution. Inde- 
 pendent of that, there is no limit upon the people in 
 their sovereign power, except such as the people 
 imposed upon themselves. It is an unseemly thing 
 for the creature to call in question the power of its 
 creator, or for the legislature to say to us the 
 people in our sovereign and constitution -making 
 power, I will not trust you, the creator, to sit in 
 judgment, because you might decide contrary to my 
 views* 
 
 " Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, 
 That he is grown so great?" 
 
 Who made thee wiser than all the people ? For 
 remember, the question is not whether the legislature 
 
.208 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 shall make this law ; the legislature in its legislative 
 capacity is not called upon, neither has it the power 
 to make this constitutional ordinance without sub- 
 mitting it to the people to the power that made the 
 legislature, to its creator. A majority of the people 
 demand the submission of this amendment. And 
 what answer shall a creature return to the creator ? 
 Shall it say: I will not trust you; you will trample 
 upon private rights ; you will disregard justice ? I 
 will direct, aye, dictate to the people what they shall 
 and shall not do. 
 
 Shall the legislature of this state deny to the 
 power that made it and clothed it with what of 
 legislative power it possesses, the right to have the 
 proposed amendment submitted for adoption or 
 rejection? That act may be perpetrated once, but 
 these same gentlemen will never do it twice. 
 
 But to return to the discussion of legal proposi- 
 tions involved in this controversy. I will show that 
 the state may prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors, 
 and that such prohibition is not obnoxious to the 
 constitution of the United States, nor to the four- 
 teenth amendment thereof. 
 
 In England no question has ever arisen as to the 
 legislative power over the liquor traffic, for it is a 
 fundamental maxim there, that parliament is politi- 
 cally omnipotent, or as Blackstone puts it, "can 
 do everything that is not naturally impossible." 
 (Blackstone's Com., Book 1, p. 161.) But in our 
 government, or in governments like ours, where 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 209 
 
 state constitutions impose limitations upon the 
 powers of the legislature, it is to be expected, where 
 legislation affects the interests of so extensive a 
 traffic as the liquor interest, such laws should 
 receive jealous examination, to set them aside 
 as unconstitutional. "There is no law," says Tar- 
 bell, in Riley vs. The State of Mississippi, "which 
 is so resolutely resisted by the utmost ingenuity of 
 the human mind, and by the ablest talent, as the 
 statutes regulating the traffic in intoxicating liq- 
 uors." The question of the constitutionality of 
 such statutes, says Mr. Bishop, in treating of statu- 
 tory crimes, "has been more frequently agitated 
 than any other constitutional question presented to 
 our tribunals." And yet it will be found both the 
 principles of regulation and prohibition, in the 
 essential features of the varied laws upon this sub- 
 ject, have been upheld by the highest courts in 
 every part of the land. To give an array of the 
 names of the multitudinous cases in which the 
 principles of license and prohibition have been sus- 
 tained, would weary yotfr patience, and I prefer to 
 present a summary of the well-settled doctrine as 
 given in the works of standard authority. 
 
 Said Judge Cooley, of Michigan, in his work on 
 constitutional limitations: 
 
 . "That legislation of this character was void, so far as it affected 
 imported liquors, or such as might be introduced from one state 
 into another, because in conflict with the power of Congress over 
 commerce, was strongly urged in the license cases before the 
 supreme court of the United States, but that view did not obtain 
 
210 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 the assent of the court. The majority of the court expressed the 
 opinion, which, however, was obiter in those cases, that the intro- 
 duction of imported liquors into a state and their sale in the 
 original package as imported, could not be forbidden, because to 
 do so would be to forbid what Congress in its regulation of com- 
 merce and in the levy of imposts had permitted. But it was 
 conceded by all that when the original package was broken up 
 for use or for retail by the importer, and also when the commodity 
 had passed from his hands into the hands of a purchaser, it 
 ceased to be an import or a part of foreign commerce. It would 
 seem from the views expressed by the several members of the 
 court, in these cases, that the state laws known as prohibitory 
 liquor laws, the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks as a 
 beverage, so far as legislation can accomplish that object, can not 
 be held void as in conflict with the power of Congress to regulate 
 commerce and levy imposts and duties." 
 
 Those who care to see the array of cases which 
 sustain these propositions may find ihem collected 
 in the United States Digest, Vol. 7, p. 7, et seq. 
 
 " The same laws have also been sustained when the question of 
 conflict with state constitutions or with general fundamental 
 principles has been raised. They are looked upon as police 
 regulations, established by the legislature for the prevention of 
 intemperance, pauperism and crime, and for the abatement of 
 nuisances." 
 
 How is this, can not abate a nuisance ? We will 
 see as we go along. 
 
 " And is only where, in framing such legislation, care has not 
 been taken to observe those principles of protection which sur- 
 round the persons and dwellings of individuals, securing them 
 against unreasonable searches and seizures, and giving them a 
 right to a trial before condemnation, that the courts have felt at 
 liberty to declare that it exceeded the proper exercise of police 
 regulation." Page 581, et seq. 
 
 And it has been since decided by the same court 
 that neither the provision of the internal revenue 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 211 
 
 act, which required payment of a license fee by 
 dealers in liquors, nor the tax affixed to sales, inter- 
 fered with the operation of state laws. McGuire vs. 
 Commonwealth, 6 Wallace, 387 ; Purvear vs. Com- 
 monwealth, 5 Wallace, 475. 
 
 "The state in the enactment of its laws must exercise its judg- 
 ment concerning what acts tend to corrupt the public morals, 
 impoverish the community, disturb the public repose, injure the 
 other public interests, or even impair the comfort of individual 
 members, over whom its protecting watch and care are required. 
 And the power to judge of this question is necessarily reposed 
 alone in the legislature, from whose decision no appeal can be 
 taken, directly or indirectly, to any other department of the gov- 
 ernment. When, therefore, the legislature, with this exclusive 
 authority, has exercised its right of judging concerning this 
 legislative question, by the enactment of prohibition, like those 
 discussed in this chapter, all other departments of the govern- 
 ment are bound by the decision, which no court has jurisdiction to 
 review." Bishop's Statutory Crimes, Sec. 965. 
 
 Now here you have the opinion of one of the most 
 distinguished law writers in America, that this ques- 
 tion is committed solely to the discretion of the 
 legislature. That when it has indicated its judg- 
 ment upon the question it is final. 
 
 Something more: "Any attempt to distinguish 
 between the power to regulate and the power to pro- 
 hibit finds no judicial support." 
 
 In the celebrated license cases, 5 Howard, 504 
 (this, before reading what Chief -Justice Tanejr 
 says), who do you think delivered the argument on 
 behalf of the whisky interests? Daniel Webster 
 and Buf us Choate, than whom no greater lawyers 
 ever lived. And Webster contended that as soon as 
 
212 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 the commissioners refused to give license it was a 
 prohibition, and therefore the constitution was in- 
 fracted. Now see what answer the court made to 
 him, and it was an undivided court: 
 
 " And if any state deems the retail and internal traffic in ardent 
 spirits injurious to its citizens, and calculated to produce idleness, 
 vice, and debauchery, I see nothing in the constitution of the 
 United States to prevent it from, regulating or restraining the 
 traffic, or prohibiting it altogether, if it thinks proper." 
 
 That is the answer of Chief-Justice Taney, sup- 
 ported by all the judges of that court. "I see 
 nothing in the federal constitution or laws of Con- 
 gress to prohibit a state legislature from prohibiting 
 the traffic altogether." But again, Justice McLean 
 -says: 
 
 " The necessity of a license presupposes a prohibition of the 
 right to sell as to those who have no license. If the foreign 
 article be injurious to the health or morals of the community, the 
 state may, in the exercise of that great and conservative police 
 power which lies at the foundation of its prosperity, prohibit the 
 sale of it. No one doubts this in relation to infected goods or 
 lecentious publications. Any diminution of the revenue from the 
 exercise of local power would be more than repaid by the bene- 
 ncial results. By preserving, as far as possible, the health, the 
 safety, and the moral energies of society, its prosperity is 
 Advanced." 
 
 " I admit as inevitable, that if the state has the power to restrain 
 by license to any extent, she has the discretionary power to judge 
 of its limit, and may go to the limit of prohibiting it altogether." 
 
 "Woodbury, J. : 
 
 *' It is the undoubted and reserved power of every state here, as 
 a political body, to decide, independent of any provisions made 
 by Congress, though subject not to conflict with any of them 
 when rightful, who shall compose its population, who become its 
 residents, who its citizens, who enjoy the privileges of its laws, 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 213 
 
 and be entitled to their protection and favor, and what kind of 
 property and business it will tolerate and protect. The power to 
 forbid the sale of things .is surely as extensive, and rests on as 
 broad principles of public security and sound morals as that to 
 exclude persons." 
 
 That is Woodbury of Pennsylvania. 
 Justice Grier: 
 
 " It is not necessary to array the appalling statistics of misery, 
 pauperism, and crime which have their origin in the use and 
 abuse of ardent spirits. The police power which is exclusively in 
 the state, incompetent to the correction of these great evils and 
 all measures of restraint or prohibition necessary to effect that 
 purpose, are within the scope of that authority, and if a loss of 
 revenue should occur to the United States from a diminished con- 
 sumption of ardent spirits she will be a gainer a thousandfold in 
 the health, wealth, and happiness of people." 
 
 I don't say that; Justice Grier said it And how 
 potent with energy, how powerful with truth it lights 
 up the question under consideration at the capital of 
 Nebraska to-night But I will pass on to some later 
 opinions, and stronger even still. It may seem to 
 some superfluous to cite these opinions of eminent 
 judges upon a matter so well settled ; but they are 
 valuable, not merely as authorities, but because they 
 are based upon principles, a familiar recurrence to 
 which is useful to protect the popular mind frcfm the 
 loose sophistries of the hour. The reader who cares 
 to examine the adjudicated cases further (to which 
 I have referred him ) will find them to justify and 
 fortify the language of Chief-Justice Harrington, 
 of Delaware: 
 
 u We have seen no adjudged case which denies the power of a 
 state in the exercise of sovereignty, to regulate the traffic in liquor 
 
214 ABGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 for restraint as well as for revenue; and, as a police measure, to 
 prohibit the sale of liquor as injurious to public morals or dan- 
 gerous to public peace. The subjection of private property, in 
 the mode of its enjoyment, to the public good and its subordina- 
 tion to general rights liable to be injured by its unrestricted use, 
 is a principle lying at the foundation of government. It is a con- 
 dition of the social state; the price of its enjoyment; entering to 
 the very structure of organized society; existing by necessity for 
 its preservation and recognized by the constitution in the terms 
 of its reservation as the right of acquiring and protecting reputa- 
 tion and property, and attaining objects suitable to these condi- 
 tions without injury to one another." (The State vs. Allmond, 2 
 Houst K., 614). 
 
 "What could be more explicit. Every man holds 
 his property subject to this police power to regulate 
 its use. What folly to claim indemnification. B :t 
 I do pot jnean any disrespect to those who differ with 
 me on this question. I am here to discuss this ques- 
 tion candidly from a legal standpoint, and I am not 
 yet done. I have heard it said that the opponents of 
 this measure at the capital postponed their debate in 
 order that they might " go through " me on this 
 legal argument. They can "go through " me easily; 
 but there are Grier, and Harrington, and the supreme 
 court of the United States, and New Jersey and 
 Delaware. They will have to turn out their artillery 
 and cannon, and beat their drums and blow their 
 horns before they " go through " these tribunals. 
 
 The only new legal principle involved in what is 
 called the prohibitory law, is the procedure in rem 
 against liquor unlawfully kept to obtain its judicial 
 confiscation. But, as Mr. Bishop shows, the earliest 
 of the old English enactments on this subject (12 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 215 
 
 Edw. 2 C. 6, A.D. 1318) provides for this forfeiture. 
 So that, as he adds, " It is one of the modes of fine 
 known in that foundation of laws from which our 
 jurisdiction is drawn." (Statutory Crimes, Sec. 993). 
 And some of the analogies of the law and the 
 reason thereof are clearly stated by Chief -Justice 
 Shaw in the leading case of Fisher vs. McGirr, 1 
 Gray, p. 1, (Mass.): 
 
 " We have no doubt that it is competent for the legislature to 
 declare the possession of certain articles of property either abso- 
 lutely, or when held in particular places and under particular 
 circumstances, to be unlawful, because they would be injurious, 
 dangerous, or obnoxious; and by due process of law, by proceed- 
 ings in rem to provide both for the abatement of the offence by 
 the seizure and confiscation of the property, by the removal, sale, 
 or destruction of the noxious articles. Putrefying merchandise 
 may be stored in a warehouse, where if it remain it would spread 
 contagious disease through a community. Gunpowder, an article 
 quite harmless in a magazine, may be kept in a warehouse always 
 exposed to fire, especially in the night; however secreted, a fire in 
 the building would be sure to find it and the lives and limbs of 
 courageous and public-spirited firemen and citizens engaged in 
 subduing the flames would be endangered by a sudden and terri- 
 ble explosion. It is of the highest importance that such persons 
 should receive the amplest encouragement to do their duty by 
 giving them the strongest assurance that the law can give them, 
 that they shall not be exposed to such dangers. This can be done 
 only by a rigorous law against so keeping gunpowder to be rigor- 
 ously enforced by seizure, removal, and forfeiture. The cases of 
 goods smuggled in violation of the revenue laws, and the confis- 
 cation of vessels, boats, and other vehicles subservient to such un- 
 lawful acts, are instances of the application of law to proceedings 
 
 The theory of this branch of the law seems to be 
 this: That the property of which injurious or dan- 
 gerous use is to be made shall be seized or confis- 
 
216 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 cated, because it is so unlawfully used by the owner 
 or person having the power of disposal, or by some 
 person with whom he has placed and intrusted it, or 
 at least that he has so carelessly and negligently 
 used his power and control over it, that by his fault 
 it has fallen into the hands of those who have made 
 and intend to make the injurious or dangerous use 
 of it, of which the public have a right to complain, 
 and from which they have a right to be relieved. 
 Therefore, as well to abate the nuisance as to punish 
 the offender or careless owner, the property may justly 
 be declared forfeited, and either sold for the public 
 benefit or destroyed, as the circumstances of the 
 case may require and the wisdom of the legislature 
 direct Besides, the actual seizure of the property 
 intended to be offensively used may be effected when 
 it would not be practicable to detect and punish the 
 offender personally. 
 
 The common liquor traffic and its instruments are 
 thus remanded to the sole jurisdiction of the legis- 
 lature for license, regulating restriction, or prohibi- 
 tion and destruction. Said Chief- Justice Taney in 
 an opinion delivered in 1847 in the license cases 
 (page 577, Howard), United States Supreme Court 
 Reports: 
 
 " And if any state decree the retail and internal traffic in ardent 
 spirits injurious to its citizens and calculated to produce idleness, 
 vice, or debauchery, I see nothing in the constitution of the United 
 States to prevent it from regulating and restraining the traffic, or 
 from prohibiting it altogether, if it thinks proper. Of the wisdom 
 of this policy it is not my purpose or province to speak. Upon 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 217 
 
 that subject each state must decide for itself. I speak only of the 
 restrictions -which the constitution and laws of the United States 
 have imposed upon the states." 
 
 In the same opinion, on page 578, Chief-Justice 
 Taney, speaking for the court, says: 
 
 u The power to regulate commerce among the several states is 
 granted to Congress in the same clause and by the same words as 
 the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and is co- 
 extensive therewith; and according to the doctrine in Brown vs. 
 Maryland, the article in question at the time of the sale was sub- 
 ject to the regulation of Congress. The present case differs from 
 Brown vs. Maryland in this : that the former was one arising out of 
 commerce with foreign nations. The several states have undoubt- 
 edly conferred upon Congress this power, yet in my judgment, the 
 Btate may, nevertheless, for the safety or convenience of trade, or 
 for the health or protection of its citizens, make regulations of 
 commerce for its own ports and harbors and for its own territory, 
 and such regulations are valid unless they come in conflict with the 
 law of Congress. Such evidently, 'I think, was the construction 
 which the constitution universally received at the time of its 
 adoption, as appears from the legislation of Congress and the 
 several states; and a careful examination of the decisions of thia 
 court will show that so far from sanctioning an opposite doctrine 
 they recognize and maintain the power of the states. Neither can 
 it be inferred by comparing the provisions upon this subject with 
 those that relate to other powers granted by the constitution to the 
 general government. On the contrary, in many instances after 
 the grant is made, the constitution proceeds to prohibit the exer- 
 cise of the same power by the state in express terms, and in some 
 cases absolutely (in others with the consent of Congress) ; for if the 
 mere grant of power to the general government was in itself a 
 prohibition to the states, there would seem to be no necessity for 
 providing for the supremacy of the laws of Congress, as all laws 
 upon the subject would be ipso facto; and there could, therefore, 
 be no such thing as conflicting laws nor any question about the 
 supremacy of conflicting laws. It is only where both may legis- 
 late upon the subject that the question can arise." 
 
 But no question of conflict of law touching the 
 
 15 
 
218 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 power of Congress to regulate commerce between 
 the states arises on the proposed amendment, and I 
 have only alluded to it for the purpose of anticipating 
 what might be pretended by those who undertake 
 the defense of a bad cause. Again, Chief -Justice 
 Cooley in his work on "Constitutional Limitations," 
 revised in 1873, since the adoption of the fourteenth 
 amendment, at 727 top paging, 582 side paging, 
 says : 
 
 44 It would seem by the views expressed by several members of 
 the court in these cases, that the state laws known as prohibitory 
 liquor laws, the purpose of which is to prevent altogether the 
 manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage, so far 
 as legislation can accomplish that object, can not be held void as 
 in conflict with the power of Congress to regulate commerce and 
 to levy imposts and duties. And in several cases it has been held 
 that the fact that such laws may tend to prevent, or may absolutely 
 preclude, the fulfillment of contracts previously made, is no objec- 
 tion to their validity. (People vs. Hawley, S. Mich., 330; Reynolds 
 vs. Geary, 26 Conn., 179.) And it is no objection to their validity 
 that they depreciate the value or destroy the value of property 
 because they are police regulations. 
 
 " Any change in the police laws, or, indeed, in any other laws, 
 might have a like consequence. The same laws have also been 
 sustained when the questions of conflict, of state constitutions or 
 with general fundamental principles has been raised. They are 
 looked upon as police regulations established by the legislature 
 for the prevention of intemperance, pauperism and crime, and 
 for the abatement of nuisances." 
 
 I have a page of cases that support these posi- 
 tions, but I will not worry you with reading them, 
 and will content myself with giving the references 
 so that any gentleman who wishes can read them at 
 his leisure. They are as follows: 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 219 
 
 Commonwealth vs. Kendall, 12 Gush., 414. 
 Commonwealth vs. Clapp, 5 Gray, 97. 
 Commonwealth vs. Howe, 13 Gray, 76. 
 Santo vs. State, 2 Iowa, 202. 
 One House vs. State, 4 Greene, Iowa, 172. 
 Zumhoff vs. State, 4 Greene, Iowa, 526. 
 State -us. Donehey, 8 Iowa, 396. 
 State vs. Wheeler, 25 Conn., 290. 
 Reynolds vs. Geary, 26 Conn., 179. 
 Oviatt vs. Pond, 29 Conn., 479. 
 People vs. Hawley, 3 Mich., 330. 
 People vs. Gallagher, 4 Mich., 244. 
 Jones vs. People, 14 111., 196. 
 State vs. Prescott, 27 Vt., 194. 
 Lincoln vs. Smith, 27 Vt., 328. 
 Gill vs. Smith, 27 Vt., 328. 
 Gill vs. Parker, 3 Vt., 610. 
 
 It has been held competent to declare the liquor 
 kept for sale a nuisance, and to provide legal process 
 for its condemnation and destruction, and to seize 
 and condemn the building occupied as a dramshop 
 on the same ground. 
 
 One House vs. State, 4 Greene, Iowa, 172. 
 
 Lincoln vs. Smith, 27 Vt., 328. 
 
 State vs. Eobinson, 33 Maine, 568. 
 
 License Cases, 5 Howard, 589. 
 
 " And it is only where in framing such legislation, care has not 
 been taken to observe those principles of protection which sur- 
 round the persons and dwellings of individuals, securing them 
 against unreasonable searches and seizures, and giving them a 
 right to trial before condemnation, that the courts have felt at 
 liberty to declare that it exceeded the proper province of police 
 regulation so as to destroy the value of property without com- 
 pensation to the owner, appears in a more striking light than in 
 the case of these statutes. The trade in alcoholic drinks being 
 lawful, and the capital employed in it being fully protected by 
 law, the legislature then steps in, and by an enactment based on 
 
22Q ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 general reasons of public utility, annihilates 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 becomes a criminal offense, and without any change whatever 
 in his own conduct or employment, the merchant of yesterday 
 becomes the criminal of to-day, and the very building in which 
 he lives and conducts the business which to that moment was law- 
 ful, becomes the subject of legal proceedings, if the statute shall 
 so declare, and liable to be proceeded against for a forfeiture. A 
 statute which can do this must be justified upon the highest 
 reasons of public benefit, but whether satisfactorily or not, the 
 reasons address themselves exclusively to the legislative wisdom." 
 
 With these reasons the court has nothing to do. 
 How about indemnity'? Will somebody insist on 
 indemnification ? 
 
 Again, it was holdeii in the case of Watertown 
 vs. Mayo, 109 Mass., 3, 315, 12 Am., 694, under the 
 head of constitutional law, restraining the police 
 power over nuisances in cities and towns, that all 
 rights to the use and enjoyment of property secured 
 by the constitution of the United States or of this 
 commonwealth are subject to regulation under that 
 power known as the police power of the state, which 
 like the power of taxation, is necessary to its exist- 
 ence, and which is implied in the idea of free civil 
 government. It is defined by Blackstone to be that 
 power which concerns the due regulation and domes- 
 tic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of 
 a state like the members of a well-governed family 
 are bound to conform their general behavior to the 
 rules of propriety, good neighborhood and good man- 
 ners, and to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive 
 in their respective stations. (4 Black. Com., 162. } 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 22l 
 
 It has its foundation in that maxim of well- 
 ordered society which requires every one to use his 
 own, so as not to injure the equal enjoyment of 
 others having equal rights of property. Laws 
 passed in the legitimate exercise of this power are 
 not obnoxious to constitutional provisions, although 
 in some measure interfering with private rights, 
 merely because they do not provide compensation to 
 the individual whose labor is restrained; he is pre- 
 sumed to be rewarded by the common benefit secured. 
 
 Now I understand somebody cites that section of 
 the constitution which says, " private property shall 
 not be taken for public use, except on just compensa- 
 tion, 11 then as to the right of eminent domain. Now 
 this judge treats of this distinctly, so also does Black- 
 stone. This police power rests on the same basis as 
 taxation, and the right of eminent domain has 
 nothing to do with it. In the one case the citizen's 
 tax is for the protection of law; in the case of police 
 regulation, "he is supposed to be fully compensated 
 in the suppression of pauperism and crime." 
 
 It differs from the right of eminent domain which 
 involves the appropriation of private property to pub- 
 lic use, and requires in lawful exercise pecuniary 
 compensation for the loss inflicted, and it has been 
 repeatedly recognized and variously applied in the 
 decisions of this court (Commonwealth vs. Tewkes- 
 berry, 11 Metcalf, 55; Baker vs. Boston, 12 Picker- 
 ing, 184; Vandwyne, petitioner, 6 Pickering, 184). 
 
 To a great extent the legislature is the proper 
 
222 ABGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 judge of the necessity of the exercise of this re- 
 straining power. The law most wisely interferes for 
 the protection of the public by preventing in advance 
 threatened and probable injury. 
 
 In every state where a local option law has been 
 declared unconstitutional, the courts have put it upon 
 the ground that the law was void as being a delega- 
 tion of the legislative power to the people, and not 
 because the law invaded property rights. See the 
 case of Fell vs. State, 42 Md., 71, reported in 20 
 Am., 83. 
 
 As to the power of the people to restrain the sale 
 of intoxicating liquors in the state, see 30 Mich., 
 401; Dewar vs. People: reported in 29 Am., 545. 
 This is a peculiar case. When the charter of the 
 city of Ludington was granted, the constitution of 
 Michigan provided that "the legislature shall not 
 pass any act authorizing a license for the sale of 
 ardent spirits or other intoxicating liquors." The 
 charter empowered the common council among other 
 things to license and regulate saloons, restaurants, 
 and billiard-rooms, or prohibit them. The consti- 
 tutional prohibition against license was stricken from 
 the constitution by a vote of the people- taken in 
 1876. Held that aftor the constitution had been 
 thus amended, the common council of Ludington 
 had no power to grant licenses to sell intoxicating 
 liquors. 
 
 I desiro to cite a little more legal authority, and 
 as I said before, it is a dry task to discuss legal 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 223 
 
 propositions before a mixed audience, but perhaps 
 the great public interest involved may excuse me. 
 
 In the case of the State, Sanford, relator, vs. The 
 Court of Common Pleas of the County of Morris, 
 36 New Jersey, 7 Broom, 72; decided at the No- 
 vember term, A.D. 1872; 13 American Reports, p. 
 523, under the title of Constitutional Law, Local 
 Option, it was held that the Chatham local option 
 law, declaring the retailing of ardent spirits without 
 license to be unlawful, and providing tliat no license 
 shall be granted if a majority vote of the township 
 is for no license. Held that the act is constitu- 
 tional. Held further that the legislature under the 
 power to make police regulations may prohibit the 
 sale of alcoholic stimulants. Held further, that 
 municipal corporations and townships may be in- 
 vested with authority to regulate or prohibit the 
 retail of intoxicating drinks. 
 
 Now the question I wish to put to the people and 
 to the legislature is this : If a county or township 
 may deny the right to retail alcoholic stimulants, 
 can not the majesty of the whole state; the people 
 in their sovereign capacity, do it? Is not the whole 
 power equal to all its parts, and greater than any 
 one of its parts? 
 
 Yan Syckles, Justice, said: 
 
 ".While alcoholio stimulants are recognized as property and en- 
 titled to the protection of the law, ownership in them is subject 
 to such restrictions as are demanded by the highest considerations 
 of the public expediency. Such enactments are regarded a~< 
 police regulations, established for the prevention of crime and 
 
224 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 pauperism, for the abatement of nuisances and the protection of 
 public health and safety. They are a just restraint of an injurious 
 use of property, which the legislature has the authority to impose, 
 and the extent to which such interference may be carried must 
 rest exclusively in legislative wisdom, when it is not controlled by 
 a fundamental law." 
 
 How is that? And the person injured has no 
 claim for damages? 
 
 It is a settled principle, essential to the right of 
 self-preservation in every well-organized community, 
 that however 'absolute may be the right of the owner 
 to his property, he holds it under the implied con- 
 dition that its use shall not work injury to the equal 
 enjoyment and safety of others, who have an equal 
 right to the enjoyment of their property, nor be 
 injurious to the community. 
 
 Bights of property are subject to such limitations 
 as are demanded by the common welfare of society, 
 and it is within the scope of legislative action to say 
 what shall be expedient. If, therefore, the legisla- 
 ture shall consider the retailing of ardent spirits 
 injurious to citizens or productive of idleness and 
 vice, it may provide for its total suppression. Such 
 inhibition is justified only as a police regulation, 
 and its legality has been recognized in well-consid- 
 ered cases. It is neither in conflict with the power 
 of Congress over subjects within its exclusive juris- 
 diction, nor with any provisions of our state consti- 
 tution, nor with general fundamental principles. 
 (Cooley on Constitutional Limitations, p. 583, and 
 cases there referred to. Thurlow vs. Mass., 5 How- 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 225 
 
 ard, 505. ) It is not necessary to amplify discussion 
 on this point, or to review the cases in detail. The 
 view here taken underlies the whole subject of police 
 regulations, and can not logically be narrowed in 
 extent. An examination of the cases will show that 
 some laws of this character have failed to secure the 
 approval of the courts, because they invaded the 
 rights of the citizens to be secure against unreason- 
 able searches, or denied to him a fair trial before 
 condemnation of his property. 
 
 Some of the cases cited were decided before the 
 adoption of the fourteenth amendment of the federal 
 constitution, some since. 
 
 Let us now consider to what extent the fourteenth 
 amendment affects the question, if any ; or in other 
 words, would this proposed constitutional amend- 
 ment if adopted be in violation of the fourteenth 
 amendment to the federal constitution ? 
 
 That amendment ordains that "all persons born 
 or naturalized in the United States and subject to 
 the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United 
 States and of the state where they reside. No state 
 shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge 
 the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United 
 States; nor shall any state deprive any person of 
 life, liberty, or property without due process of law, 
 nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal 
 protection of its laws." 
 
 Now let us see who follow this provision of the 
 constitution, whether it be prohibitionists or the 
 advocates of the liquor traffic. 
 
226 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 So far as this proposed constitutional amendment 
 deals with the mere question of regulating this traffic, 
 or even its total prohibition as it may have been 
 effected in the federal constitution prior to the adop - 
 tion of the fourteenth amendment of that instru- 
 ment, the decision of the court in Bartmeyer vs. 
 Iowa settles that. Up to that time it had been 
 considered, says Chief -Justice Miller, as falling 
 within the police regulations of the states, left to 
 their judgment and subject to no .other limitations 
 than such as are imposed by the state constitution, 
 or by general principles supposed to limit all legis- 
 lative power. It has never been seriously contended 
 that such laws i. e., prohibitory laws raised any 
 question growing out of the constitution of the 
 United States. The power to prohibit the sale of 
 intoxicating alcoholic drinks belongs to the police 
 power of the state or the people, as we have shown 
 by the opinions and cases hereinbefore cited, and 
 no one has ever pretended, that I am aware of, that 
 the fourteenth amendment interferes with the police 
 power of the state. Certainly no one who intends 
 to give to that amendment its legitimate operation 
 has ever assumed for it such effect. It was not 
 adopted for any such purpose. This constitutional 
 amendment was not designed or intended to limit, 
 and it did not limit the power of the state over its 
 own internal police regulations. 
 
 " No state shall make or enforce any law which 
 shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the 
 
SPEECH BY .OLIVER P. MASON. 22 'i 
 
 citizens of the United States." Many are the poor, 
 squalid, wretched families; mothers hungry, care- 
 worn, and pallid, children fainting and calling for 
 bread, mingling their moans with the dismal night 
 winds, and their tears with the drifting snow, that 
 point to that constitutional guaranty, and with eyes 
 turning toward the capital of the state with beseech- 
 ing look and agonized cry, say, Why did you strip 
 me of clothing and take away my bread ? Why did 
 you commission and license the dramshop to poison 
 my father, the protector of my mother, to drive him 
 crazy and mad, and make him a felon and a criminal ? 
 Why did you deprive our baby, who died but yes- 
 terday, of life, and-our whole family of the pursuit 
 of happiness? I think I hear the stilted answer 
 from the statesmen of the capital, "to secure the 
 guarantees of private property." The lisping child 
 answers back, Why, oh why, did you not license and 
 commission that man with a gun to shoot my father 
 and kill the babe, it would have saved us so xnuch 
 anguish ? The statesman responds : We had no legal 
 right to authorize' your neighbor with the gun, to use 
 it so as to injure your father or the babe. And the 
 child responds : Then please prevent that saloon man 
 from using his whisky, his rum, gin, and brandy so 
 as to injure my father and our home, and then I will 
 know what these letters mean to which my finger 
 points. ^The child of the drunkard's home can in- 
 terpret this provision of the constitution with a voice 
 so eloquent as to invoke responsive accents from the 
 
228 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 spirits of the departed dead, and approval from the 
 champions of the law. 
 
 But to return to the prosy argument of the legal 
 proposition. This amendment secures to the citizen 
 the rights, and all the rights which he enjoyed at the 
 date of its ratification. He held his rights of prop- 
 erty in alcoholic drinks, and the right to manufacture 
 the same, subject to all needed police regulations, 
 and subject to the further condition, to so use his own 
 as not to encroach upon the rights of others, and 
 whenever the people in their primary and constitu- 
 tion-making capacity decide that the manufacture, 
 sale, or use of alcohol endangers civil society, is a 
 nuisance or evil, and promotes pauperism and crime, 
 they may prohibit the manufacture and sale and use 
 of the same, although it may depreciate the value of 
 distilleries and alcoholic liquors, and in such case 
 they have no claim for damages occasioned by such 
 depreciation. When the laws against dueling were 
 enacted, and some of the states have quite recently 
 put upon the statute books laws prohibiting dueling, 
 I am surprised that some constitutional expounder of 
 the law did not discover that the fourteenth amend- 
 ment had been violated, because the sale of dueling 
 pistols was dispensed with, and their value was de- 
 creased. "Will not some just-minded legislator 
 move an amendment that the state make remuneration 
 in that behalf? 
 
 But again, the burglar uses valuable tools in the 
 prosecution of his trade, and when his occupation is 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 229 
 
 destroyed, utterly annihilated, the value of his tools 
 is depreciated. Will not some gentleman from some 
 county move an amendment, and provide compensa- 
 tion for the loss on tools ? And again, in 1794 the 
 American Congress laid ' an embargo for sixty days 
 upon all vessels in the ports of the United States, 
 when we were at peace with all the world. Will not 
 some gentleman move an amendment to compensate 
 New England for loss on shipping? 
 
 Again, the embargo most famous in American 
 history was that intended to countervail Napoleon's 
 Berlin and Milan decrees, and the British orders in 
 council. Dec. 22, 1807, on the recommendation of 
 President Jefferson, a law was enacted by Congress 
 prohibiting the departure from ports of the United 
 States, of all but foreign armed vessels, with public 
 commissions, or foreign merchant ships in ballast, 
 or with such cargo as they have on board when noti- 
 fied of the act. All American vessels engaged in 
 the coasting trade were required to give heavy 
 bonds to land their cargoes in the United States. 
 This embargo was repealed by an act passed Febru- 
 ary 27, 1809, and taking effect March 15, 1809, ex- 
 cept so far as related to France and Great Britain 
 and, their dependencies, and to them also it was to 
 take effect after the next succeeding session of Con- 
 gress. This embargo was in full force for more 
 than three years ; the injury done and tho loss sus- 
 tained by ship-owners, by reason of this police 
 regulation, is variously estimated at from ten to 
 
230 ABGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 twenty-five millions of dollars. It is now in order 
 for some statesman to move to amend by providing 
 for the payment of the loss. The great constitu- 
 tional lawyers of the past discussed this question. 
 The statesmen in Congress considered it; Madison 
 thought of it ; Jefferson reflected on it ; great men 
 of that day wrote upon it, but nobody thought the 
 ship-owners had a claim for indemnity, because it 
 was a national police regulation. But the world 
 moves. Things change when the statesmen of the 
 day struggle in the interest of spiritualized alcohol. 
 "Well, thank God for the progress. The world 
 moves. The sunlight of progress has illuminated 
 the bleak mountain tops upon which the people 
 dwell, and it will not be long before it will spread its 
 sheen of glory over the dark valleys below, and light 
 the legislator so he shall grant the request of the 
 weak and fallen, and remove the temptation of the 
 saloon from their sight. 
 
 I have always thought the best part of the Lord's 
 Prayer was "lead us not into temptation, and deliver 
 us from evil." Believing this, I do not want to tempt 
 anybody by keeping a saloon. If you would be free 
 from evil, fly temptation. He who would and does 
 not endeavor to avoid the one, can not expect pro- 
 tection from the other. If the first spark were 
 quenched there would be no flame. He can not kill, 
 rob, embezzle, or steal who does not first transgress 
 in thought. He cannot defraud who does not allow 
 himself to covet. He will not drink who does not 
 
SPEECH BY OLIVER P. MASON. 231 
 
 desire. Use the dram-shop as it will use you. Spare 
 it not, for it will not spare you. It has murdered, 
 and it will murder more. Use it, therefore, as a 
 murderer should be used ; kill it before it kills you ; 
 kill it before it kills your soul. If the thought of 
 death and the grave, if dishonor and disgrace be not 
 pleasant to you, hearken not to the voice of those who 
 would longer continue the American licensed saloon 
 as an instrument of civilization and a supporter of 
 common schools. Blot out the saloons of this state. 
 It will put wood and coal on the fire, meat in the barrel, 
 and flour in the chest, money in the pocket, and 
 credit in the community; contentment in the house, 
 clothes on the children, vigor in the body, intelli- 
 gence in the brain, and spirit in the whole social 
 circle in many hundred families of this state. 
 
 You violate no right of property, no constitutional 
 provision. The proposed constitutional amendment 
 does not deprive persons of their property without 
 due process of law. It simply requires citizens to 
 so use their property as not to endanger the public 
 peace and promote pauperism and crime. It does 
 not violate the fourteenth amendment to the federal 
 constitution. When made a part of the constitution 
 by the vote of the people of this state, it could not 
 be inconsistent with that constitution, and the claim 
 that it would be so, must be mere pretense. 
 
II. 
 
 LOYALTY TO LAW. 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. ALBERT H. HORTON, CHIEF-JUSTICE 
 
 OF KANSAS, AT EFFINGHAM, ATCHISON 
 
 COUNTY, SEPT. 18, 1881. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I came here to-day 
 upon the invitation of your citizens to pay my respects 
 to the distinguished governor of our state upon his 
 visit to my own county ; to evidence by my presence 
 among you that I sympathize with your efforts to 
 create a public sentiment favoring the enforcement 
 of all the laws of our commonwealth, and to counsel 
 with you, as friends and neighbors, over the best 
 methods to accomplish in our own midst this desir- 
 able result. Knowing, however, that I would be 
 expected to make some remarks upon this occasion, 
 I have thought it best to prepare what I have to say, 
 so that I may not be misrepresented or misreported. 
 Owing to the judicial position I hold, and the rela- 
 tion I bear to the entire people of the state, I can- 
 not afford to have myself misunderstood. The pro- 
 prieties of this forbid me that scope of discussion 
 allowable to the other speakers who are here to 
 
 233 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HORTON. 233 
 
 address you. I do not propose to offend those 
 proprieties. All, therefore, that I shall say will 
 be devoted to the importance and necessity of our 
 citizens obeying the laws of the state. 
 
 There have^ been many interpretations attempted 
 to be given of municipal law, yet one that is as com- 
 plete and comprehensive as any other, defines it " A 
 rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme 
 power in a state." In a republic like ours, the right 
 of making all the laws resides in the people, and the 
 rule of the majority, when not in conflict with 
 the constitution of the state, or the constitution of 
 the United States, must control. As long as we are 
 members of such a government as the one under 
 which we live, we are to regulate our own public 
 conduct by the order or will of the majority, so 
 long as the will of the majority is legally expressed. 
 Every person who is a member of a government 
 like ours, gives up a part of his natural liberty as 
 the price of such membership, and in consideration 
 of receiving the advantages and protection of the 
 government, pledges himself to conform to those 
 laws which the government has thought proper to 
 establish. 
 
 The government under which we live is so con- 
 structed that disobedience to its orders or mandates 
 can never be justifiable. It not only springs from 
 the people, but refers back all its powers to them 
 at so frequent intervals, that it can never misrepre- 
 sent them or thwart their wishes, so as to make 
 
 16 
 
234: ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 violation or disobedience of law under any circum- 
 stances proper. Every two years we can change the 
 whole house of representatives of our legislature; 
 every four years we can change the entire senate of 
 our state, and every two years we can elect an entire 
 new set of executive state officials. 
 
 More than this, if any provision of our constitu- 
 tion requires addition, modification or repeal, we can 
 by a vote of the people under the rules and regula- 
 tions provided for in our constitution, make such 
 additions, modifications or repeal as the people of the 
 state shall demand. It therefore becomes our duty 
 as citizens loyal to our state, loyal to the communities 
 in which we live, and loyal to ourselves, to keep in 
 remembrance the character of our government, the 
 relation we occupy towards it, and to yield complete 
 obedience to our constitution and the laws ; to respect 
 the authority that attempts to uphold the constitution 
 and enforce the laws, adopted in accordance with its 
 terms. There is no clear pathway to tread in these 
 matters except to follow the one which is lighted by 
 the constitution, and leads up to the enforcement of 
 the laws. 
 
 In brief, obedience to the law is the duty of the 
 citizen. There are ample opportunities to correct, 
 change and repeal all existing laws without violence 
 or force; and the people have the right by legiti- 
 mate methods, and within the provisions of the 
 constitution, to seek for any correction, change, modi- 
 fication or repeal of any law they deem unwise, 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HORTON. 235 
 
 severe or injurious in its operation, but this authority 
 gives no citizen the right to violate the existing law, 
 or disobey its mandate. In obedience to law, in a 
 government like ours, deriving its powers from the 
 people, rests the only security we have for life, liberty 
 and property. It is the law that protects your crops 
 in the fields; that guards your cattle feeding upon 
 the hills and in the meadows ; that secures the shop, 
 the store and the bank from midnight spoliation ; that 
 renders safe the home, the family and all you value 
 as near and dear to you. It is the law that protects 
 the citizens from assault, that guards your treasures 
 from the thief and the robber, that secures you all 
 your rights of person and property, and throws 
 around all of us its ample and protecting shield. It 
 protects you as you meet here this pleasant autumnal 
 morning, in absolute peace, and permits you to con- 
 sult together here over matters of supreme import- 
 ance to yourselves as individuals, to your county and 
 your state, without disturbance from the turbulent, 
 or violence from the lawless. It is, in fact, our 
 sentry by day and our watch by night. Without law, 
 anarchy and confusion would reign supreme. Might 
 would be the only controlling power, and rights of 
 person and property would be respected only so 
 long as they had immediate force at hand to com- 
 mand protection. Disobedience to law tends first to 
 anarchy and then to tyranny, as any government is 
 better than none at all. 
 
 We mistake, when we say, the law controls or 
 
236 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 limits our liberty, controls or limits our freedom. 
 In fact, the law which restrains a person from doing 
 mischief or wrong to another, though it diminishes 
 the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind. 
 When there is no law, there is no freedom. A con- 
 tinued disobedience of law furnishes a strong argu- 
 ment for the overthrow of our form of government, 
 and threatens to establish a sentiment in favor of a 
 monarchy. The disobedience of law favors, in the 
 end, the rule of the despot upheld by the cartridge- 
 box, in preference to a government for the people 
 and by the people, sustained by the ballot-box. 
 
 It has often been charged by the enemies of a free 
 government deriving its powers from the consent of 
 the governed, that while public virtue or goodness 
 of intention is more likely to be favored in this, 
 than in other of the classes of governments, it is too 
 weak to carry into force the execution of laws, and 
 therefore, has no permanent basis upon which to rest. 
 All opposition in this country to civil power, all 
 defiance of the laws and disobedience to the consti- 
 tuted rulers, tends to support this accusation. These 
 truths are so fundamental and self-evident, that all 
 must concede them to be correct, and yet, unfortu- 
 nately, countenance is often given to the enemies of 
 free government by our own citizens by their oppo- 
 sition to legal enactments. 
 
 There are laws adopted by our state according to 
 the usual and ordinary methods of legislation, that 
 are openly violated and disobeyed, in a few of the 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HORTON. 237 
 
 larger cities and towns of the state, and it is 
 defiantly proclaimed that the state is too weak to 
 execute these laws, and that there are no sufficient 
 means to carry them into execution. Among the 
 laws now vehemently opposed in some of the counties 
 of the state is the one recently passed at the late 
 session of our legislature, the intent and purpose 
 of which is to abolish the dramshop, close the bar of 
 the hotel, and banish intoxicating liquors from the 
 corner grocery. All its restrictions are intended to 
 effectuate this object. It seeks to put a stop to the 
 sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage; and to 
 more successfully accomplish this, it limits the 
 sale thereof to medical, scientific, and mechanical 
 purposes. 
 
 As an apology for the violation of this law in some 
 sections of the state, it is urged that it was enacted 
 without regard to the popular sentiment of the people, 
 and that no law of this character can be enforced 
 which is in conflict with this sentiment. So much 
 has been written and uttered upon this point, that 
 even intelligent and respectable citizens are confused 
 with the argument. 
 
 Let us examine this assertion a moment. Before 
 the constitutional amendment, providing for the pro- 
 hibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors as a 
 beverage, was voted upon by the people of the state, 
 it was necessary that two thirds of all the members 
 elected to each house of our legislature should con- 
 cur in submitting the proposed amendment to a vote 
 
238 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 of the electors. This action was taken, and at the 
 session of our legislature held in 1879, every mem- 
 ber of the state senate present upon the passage of 
 the joint resolution relating to prohibition, voted in 
 favor of its submission. The vote was thirty-seven 
 for submission, none against. Not a single mem- 
 ber of the senate recorded his vote in opposition to 
 the proposition. In the house, the vote was eighty- 
 eight in favor of the submission, and thirty-two 
 against. Nearly three times as many voted in the 
 house in favor of the submission, as the number that 
 voted against the submission. The resolution for 
 the submission of the question of constitutional pro- 
 hibition, although adopted in March, 1879, deferred 
 the vote thereon until the general election in 
 November, 1880. 
 
 Thus, the people of the state had ample time and 
 full opportunity to discuss among 'themselves the 
 amendment submitted for adoption or rejection at 
 their hands, and in many places this discussion waa 
 full and complete. During the period that elapsed 
 between the time the proposition passed the legisla- 
 ture and the day of the popular vote, the question 
 was the all-absorbing one in our . state. It was dis- 
 cussed in every city, town and hamlet, and at almost 
 every public meeting. The state was thoroughly 
 canvassed by those favoring the proposition, and 
 its merits and demerits presented and supported by 
 all possible arguments. For months, pulpit, press 
 and platform were full of it. Joint debates were 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HORTON. 239 
 
 had in public upon the propriety of adopting the 
 amendment. 
 
 After all of this debate and discussion, at the 
 regular election of 1880, 92,302 votes were cast in 
 favor of ihe amendment, and 84,304 against it. The 
 majority in favor was about 8,000. There were 
 eighty counties in the state in which elections were 
 held upon this proposition. Of these eighty, fifty- 
 three counties gave majorities for the amendment, 
 and only twenty-seven gave majorities against the 
 amendment. Thus, after a full understanding of the 
 proposition before them, the people of the state re- 
 solved to adopt the amendment which had been sub- 
 mitted to them by the legislature in accordance with 
 the forms of our constitution. Upon its adoption, 
 it became a part of the constitution of the state, of 
 equal force and validity with any other article or 
 section of that constitution. Whether any citizen 
 likes or dislikes its provisions, if he is a faithful and 
 obedient citizen, he is bound to pay to it the same 
 respect as he gives to the other articles and sections 
 of the constitution. 
 
 To attempt to evade the force of the vote in favor 
 of the adoption of the amendment, it has been said 
 that some twenty thousand electors did not vote at 
 all upon the proposition submitted, and if they had 
 cast their ballots against such amendment, it would 
 have been rejected. Yet, the persons who make this 
 argument fail to recollect that it is a cardinal rule of 
 construction concerning elections, that they who do 
 
240 AKGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 not vote are considered either indifferent to the 
 result, or as favoring the proposition submitted. 
 Under no circumstances are their votes to be counted 
 against the measure. It is the law of all our elections 
 that the majority of the votes polled is controlling. 
 Even where an officer is elected by one vote, or a 
 proposition is carried by one vote, that vote controls. 
 
 The other day there was an election in Lancaster 
 township for the issuing of bonds to the Missouri 
 Pacific railway company. The majority was over 
 seventy votes, yet if the majority had only been one 
 vote, the proposition would have been legally adopted. 
 Therefore, if we take into consideration the vote by 
 which the amendment was submitted to the people 
 by our legislature of 1879, we find the popular sen- 
 timent was largely in favor of the submission. If 
 we take into consideration the vote deposited in the 
 ballot-box upon the question at the election of 1880, 
 we ascertain the popular sentiment of the voters of 
 the state was in favor of the adoption of the 
 amendment. 
 
 Let us go further, however, and examine the 
 proceedings of the legislature of 1881. Even if 
 no constitutional amendment had been previously 
 adopted, that legislature, according to the decisions 
 of all the courts of the country > had complete au- 
 thority to adopt laws prohibiting the sale of intoxi- 
 cating liquors as a beverage. This has been decided 
 time and again by the supreme court of the United 
 States, the final arbiter in all such questions, and 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HOBTON. 241 
 
 never has a single judge of that distinguished court 
 dissented from the proposition. Upon the adoption 
 of the prohibition law, which is now published in 
 our statute book, the vote in the senate was thirty- 
 two for it, and only seven against it. The senators 
 from every county in the state, present when the bill 
 was adopted, voted for its passage, except the sena- 
 tors from Leavenworth, Atchison, Doniphan, Mar- 
 shall and Jefferson counties. Only five counties in 
 this state by the votes of their senators opposed the 
 enactment of this law. In the house one hundred 
 members voted for the bill, and only twenty-three 
 against it. More than four to one of the members 
 of the house favored the enactment of the law. The 
 votes in the house against the bill came from four- 
 teen counties only, and four of these votes were from 
 counties that gave majorities in favor of the adoption 
 of the amendment. 
 
 Therefore, if we judge the sentiment of the people 
 of the state by the action of their representatives 
 assembled in the legislature at its last session, we 
 learn that the overwhelming popular sentiment of 
 the state was for a prohibitory law wiping out the 
 sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage. This law 
 comes to us, then, not only with all the solemnity 
 usually attending the enactment of a statute, but it 
 comes to us adopted by the overwhelming vote of 
 the members of our legislature. I suppose no law 
 that ever met opposition, or was deemed of sufficient 
 importance to be debated, has ever been adopted in 
 
242 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 our legislature with greater unanimity. In addition* 
 to this, it may be added that probably no legislature 
 has ever convened in our state embracing more able 
 and distinguished men than the legislature of 1881.. 
 The senators and representatives were of all par- 
 ties and classes. They gave much thought to the 
 matter of legal prohibition. The law is the product 
 of the great majority. If the majority of these 
 senators and representatives did not represent the 
 popular sentiment of the state of Kansas, repre- 
 sentative government is a failure, and it were use- 
 less to attempt the election of persons to represent 
 the sentiment of the state. We know, however, that 
 the legislature carried out the wishes of the people 
 and voted either as they were instructed, or as they 
 
 believed their constituents desired. 
 
 * 
 
 It is said, conceding all of this, that in some of 
 the counties of the state the prohibitory law is not 
 approved or endorsed. This is true, and it is for the 
 purpose of creating an aggressive public sentiment 
 to uphold this law everywhere within the territorial 
 limits of the state that this meeting and many like 
 gatherings have been held in many counties. 
 Because a law is unpopular in some communities is 
 not a sufficient reason for its repeal, and is no reason 
 why those who disobey it or violate its provisions 
 should be exempted from its penalties. 
 
 A few years ago, Congress passed a law having for 
 its purpose the protection of the colored people of 
 the south to the full right of the ballot at all con- 
 
SPEECH BY ALBEET H. HOETON. 
 
 gressional elections. This act was not endorsed and 
 did not meet the popular approval of many of the 
 people in the southern states, and yet, no loyal citi- 
 zen of the country ever presented that as an objection 
 to the strict enforcement of its provisions. 
 
 The Congress of the United States has prescribed 
 a law that no one shall engage in the manufacture 
 of fermented or distilled liquors, except they pay a 
 tax therefor and conform to the rules and regulations 
 of the internal revenue department; yet, in many 
 portions of the southern states there is a large class 
 of illicit distillers, who are engaged in the violation 
 of this law and in disobedience to its provisions, and 
 in some instances a class of these distillers, called 
 "moonshiners," have overpowered the officers of the 
 government, have slaughtered detectives, killed 
 marshals, and resisted arrest; yet I never heard 
 any one advocating the repeal of the law requiting a 
 tax upon the manufacture of liquors, because com- 
 munities in the south trample upon its provisions and 
 violate its terms. 
 
 Congress has enacted a law for the purpose of pro- 
 hibiting polygamy in the territory of Utah. That 
 law is not in accordance with the popular sentiment 
 of the believers of the Mormon faith. It is not only 
 disobeyed, but disobedience to it is proclaimed from 
 pulpit and from the hustings by the ministers and 
 followers of the Mormon religion. So hostile and 
 defiant are that class in Utah territory, that thus 
 far the law has been practically a dead letter; yet, I 
 
244 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 never heard any one advocate that the law should be 
 repealed because the Mormons of Utah did not en- 
 dorse its provisions. 
 
 For years there has been a law upon the statute 
 book of the United States prohibiting the barter, 
 sale or gift of intoxicating liquors to Indians. There 
 has scarcely been a term of the United States court 
 held in Kansas since the territory was organized, 
 but what more than one person has been convicted 
 of the violation of this law. It has never met the 
 endorsement of the Indians, and has been again and 
 again disregarded by persons trading with them, and 
 yet, I never heard of any person, either in or out of 
 Congress, advocating the repeal of this prohibitory 
 law, because it did not meet the approval of the 
 Indians, or of the guilty parties who furnished them 
 liquors in violation of its provisions. 
 
 We have upon the statutes of our state, a law pro- 
 hibiting gambling, and in many communities of the 
 state the law is violated and treated with contempt, 
 yet I never heard of any persons in or out of the 
 legislature, demanding its repeal because there were 
 communities in the state so lawless that they openly 
 violated the terms of the law. 
 
 There are other statutes of our state that are dis- 
 regarded and violated, more or less openly in some 
 counties and in some communities, and yet, because 
 of this disregard and violation, no claim is set up 
 that these laws should be wiped out. The fact is, 
 that all of these laws are the creatures of popular 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HOBTON. 245 
 
 sentiment, and they are adopted because the senti- 
 ment of the country, or the sentiment of the state 
 demands their enactment, and if some commu- 
 nities, or some sections of the country or the state 
 do not approve or endorse them, the popular 
 sentiment demands their enforcement all the 
 same. The sentiment of any particular section or 
 locality must yield to the sentiment of the greater 
 community of the nation or state, and the fear is 
 that if any particular county or community in our 
 state continues to violate the popular sentiment of 
 the whole state, taken in its aggregate, as expressed 
 by constitutional law, the state will interfere and 
 attempt, by special and perhaps severe measures, 
 to control the officials of such counties and com- 
 munities. 
 
 Already there is a strong sentiment growing up 
 in favor of interfering with the municipal govern- 
 ments of our cities, in order to enforce laws disre- 
 garded by them. For my own part, I would prefer 
 that the public sentiment in favor of the enforce- 
 ment of the laws should exist within our cities, 
 rather than that outward power should be used to 
 regulate their internal affairs. Outward power will 
 never be used, if all the laws of the state are 
 enforced in our municipalities, as well as they are 
 enforced in other sections of our commonwealth. 
 Is it not then our interest to urge enforcement? 
 
 The question may be asked, if other statutes of 
 our state than the prohibitory law are violated, why 
 
24:6 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 the necessity of calling meetings or conventions for 
 the especial purpose of obtaining the enforcement 
 of the prohibition law? Why so much comment 
 and agitation for the rigid enforcement of this law, 
 rather than the other laws? The answer from the 
 friends of the law is, that the unfortunate and terri- 
 ble consequences which have resulted from intem- 
 perance in the past renders imperative the duty 
 and necessity of limiting, if possible, at an early 
 day the injuries resulting from the sale of intoxi- 
 cating liquors as a beverage. If the open violation 
 of the other laws threatened like immediate dire 
 results, then like action would be advisable for their 
 strict enforcement. It is because of the fearful and 
 fatal effects of intemperance that so much energy 
 and interest are manifested in its suppression. 
 
 I know that it is sometimes said that only relig- 
 ious enthusiasts or temperance fanatics trouble 
 themselves about the effects of intemperance or the 
 effects of alcoholic drink Yet this is hardly true. 
 All of you have heard of Robert Ingersoll. I do 
 not think that he has ever been charged with being 
 a religious enthusiast or temperance fanatic. Now 
 listen a moment to what he has uttered upon this 
 subject. In an address delivered a few months ago 
 
 he said: 
 
 "Alcohol is the blood of the gambler, the inspiration of the 
 burglar, the stimulus of the highwayman and the support of the 
 midnight incendiary. It suggests the lie and countenances the 
 liar ; condones the thief and esteems the blasphemer. It violates 
 obligation, reverences fraud, turns love to hate, scorns virtue and 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. .HOETON. 247 
 
 innocence. It incites the father to butcher his helpless offspring, 
 and the child to sharpen the fratricidal axe. Alcohol burns up 
 men, consumes women, destroys life, curses God and despises 
 heaven. It suborns witnesses, nurses perfidy, denies the jury box 
 and stains the judicial ermine. It bribes voters, disqualifies votes, 
 corrupts elections, pollutes our institutions, endangers the gov- 
 ernment, degrades the citizen, debases the legislator, dishonors the 
 statesman and disarms the patriot. It brings shame, not honor ; 
 terror, not safety ; despair, not hope ; misery, not happiness; and 
 "with the malevolence of a fiend, calmly surveys its frightful deso- 
 lation,' and reveling in havoc, it poisons felicity, destroys poace and 
 ruins morals, wipes out national honor, curses the world and 
 laughs at the ruin it has wrought. It does that and more. It 
 murders the soul. It is the sum of all villainies, the father of all 
 crimes, the mother of all abominations, the devil's best friend, 
 and God's worst enemy." 
 
 If a man of the observation, intelligence and be- 
 lief of Ingersoll can thus truthfully depict the awful 
 consequences arising from the use of intoxicating 
 liquors, tell me what law is too severe to protect the 
 state or the family from its blasting and destroying 
 influences? Tell me what law is too severe to pro- 
 tect the state and the family from this hell of crime, 
 of dishonor and of death? If it fills our jails, and 
 our almshouses, and our asylums with its victims, 
 as all concede, tell me what law is too severe to 
 restrain and chain the monster that is so merciless 
 io mankind? If it feeds our penitentiaries and our 
 scaffolds, as all concede, what law is too severe to 
 control or prohibit its sale? 
 
 While all good people concur in the necessity of 
 restraining, and in some way controlling the sale of 
 intoxicating liquors as a beverage, there has been a 
 .great difference among them as to the manner of the 
 
248 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 constraint or control. Some believe that license 
 laws are the best to effectuate the object, others that 
 local option laws are advisable ; others again and of 
 these a majority of the people of this state believe 
 legal prohibition the only successful means to secure 
 the end to be achieved. Whatever may be said as 
 to the impracticability of prohibition, whatever may 
 be said as to its failure of enforcement in many of 
 the counties of this state, this much at least must be 
 conceded, that neither license laws, nor local option 
 laws have ever met with strict enforcement in all of 
 the counties of our commonwealth. 
 
 The old dramshop act, which, to some extent, com- 
 bined the license and the local option law, was in 
 many of the counties of this state openly and noto- 
 riously violated. It provided, among other things, 
 that no intoxicating liquors should be sold on the 
 Sabbath, on the Fourth of July, or on any election 
 day. It also made it improper to sell, barter or give 
 away any intoxicating liquor to any person who was 
 in the habit of being intoxicated, and forbade the 
 gift or sale to minors of such liquors, without the 
 consent of the parent or guardian ; yet, in our own 
 county, while that law was in force all of these pro- 
 visions were wholly disregarded. In the city of 
 Atchison, under the dramshop act, the Sabbath was 
 openly desecrated, and intoxicating liquors could be 
 purchased morning and night without the slightest 
 secresy. Our national holiday, instead of being a 
 day of rejoicing and gladness to commemorate the 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H, HOBTON. 24:9 
 
 liberties won and transmitted to us by the sainted 
 fathers of the revolution, has often been with us a 
 day of debauchery, drunkenness and vice. On elec- 
 tion days, when, of all other times, the citizen needs 
 cool brain and firm judgment, the saloons were open 
 wide, and sent their votaries to the ballot box to 
 exercise the great right of franchise, inflamed with 
 alcohol and lost to all consciousness or sense of 
 shame. And in these matters, I suppose that Atchi- 
 son city was as obedient to that law as the other 
 cities of the state. I certainly think it was no worse. 
 Therefore, if the prohibition law has not met in 
 this county with the success its advocates fondly 
 hoped, it may well be said that the law it displaced 
 met with no better success. Indeed, to some extent, 
 the prohibition law has been successful in our midst. 
 I have been informed, that since the first of May 
 the saloons are closed upon the Sabbath, arid by 
 agreement among the keepers, minors are prevented 
 from obtaining intoxicating liquors. This much has 
 been conceded to the local sentiment of the people. 
 If that local sentiment demands other concessions, 
 they will be granted. If that local sentiment de- 
 mands the enforcement of the law it will be enforced. 
 I appreciate the difficulty of enforcing gambling 
 laws, Sabbath laws, and the laws restraining the sale 
 of intoxicating liquors, yet, when these laws are 
 upon our statute books, is ji not the duty of every 
 community, or, at least, of the better class of that 
 community, to attempt to build up and create a, 
 
 17 
 
250 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 moral sentiment that will be in accordance with the 
 popular sentiment of the state, and that will demand 
 respect for the laws, and the enforcement of all their 
 provisions? If the good citizens act together, a 
 sentiment will be developed so strong and so pow- 
 erful, that not only will our citizens command the 
 execution of the laws, but will demand their enforce- 
 ment. 
 
 You men and women gathered here to-day in such 
 large numbers, who have planted yourselves upon 
 the platform of the constitution and enforcement of 
 the laws occupy an impregnable position. All the 
 arguments are in your favor; none of them are 
 against you. You are in accord with the popular 
 sentiment of the people of the state ; you have the 
 respect of all good citizens; the prayers of 'all good 
 men and women, and are deserving the blessing of 
 Almighty God. 
 
 I recollect that during the early years of the war, 
 a little company was formed in Atchison city, to 
 join the First Regiment of State Volunteers, called 
 into action to enforce the constitution and laws 
 of our country. This company had for its motto 
 " The enforcement of the laws at all hazards." It 
 was known as the " All Hazard Company" of the 
 First Regiment of Volunteers, that enlisted in 
 Kansas for the suppression of the great rebellion. 
 I recollect its departure from the city of Atchison 
 to join its regiment at Leavenworth one bright 
 morning in May, 1861. It was but a few weeks after 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H. HORTON. 251 
 
 the fall of Fort Sumter, and at the time there was 
 great discussion all over the land, over the power and 
 ability of the government to enforce its laws. Many 
 believed coercion was impracticable ; many said the 
 constitution was a rope of sand, and there was no 
 power to maintain the Union. Many said, better let 
 " the wayward sisters" depart in peace. I recollect as 
 the All Hazard company marched clown the streets 
 of our city on its way to the war, some of the be- 
 lievers in these theories tauntingly said, that the 
 company was going to fight in a useless cause ; that 
 all of its members were raw recruits, and not fit for 
 active service ; that they had better stay at home, 
 attend to their business and let the regular forces of 
 the country do the fighting and protect the flag; 
 that at the first battle, when met by southern chiv- 
 alry, trained to arms and service, they would Jbe 
 defeated and slaughtered, unless they retired from 
 the field in dishonor. Yet, that little company, 
 going out upon its expedition to enforce the laws, 
 associated with thousands of others enlisted in the 
 same cause, from this and other states, met, a few 
 months afterwards, the power and strength of the 
 chivalry of the south, near Springfield, Missouri, 
 and won for themselves imperishable honor for their 
 bravery, loyalty and devotion to the constitution and 
 laws of our country. They, and thousands with 
 them, were engaged in a right cause, in a holy cru- 
 sade, and "the God of battles" gave them, raw re- 
 cruits as they were, strength, and power, and victory. 
 
252 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 They, and the others who enlisted like them, from 
 the loyal states, at last, through great sacrifices of 
 blood and treasure, with the loss of thousands and 
 tens of thousands of men, and with the expenditure 
 of millions and tens of millions of treasure, suc- 
 ceeded in their purpose, and finally the authority of 
 the constitution of our country was vindicated and 
 the supremacy of the law asserted. 
 
 To-day, thanks to the enlisted soldiers of our 
 country, who volunteered to suppress the great 
 rebellion, all of the states are back in the republic, 
 circling the federal centre and chanting the paean 
 of " Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and 
 inseparable." If, under the discouragements and 
 disasters which met our troops a few years ago 
 in enforcing the laws of our country, those who 
 remained steadfast to the constitution were finally 
 successful, may we not with greater hope believe 
 that in the great contest now going on in this state, 
 the friends of the constitution, and those favoring 
 the enforcement of all the laws, shall be equally 
 successful? Such, at least, must be the hope of 
 every one who wishes well for the peace and pros- 
 perity of the commonwealth, who wishes well for 
 the honor and character of Kansas. 
 
 The propriety of the policy of adopting prohibi- 
 tory legislation is not now the matter of discussion. 
 That question Is lost in the overshadowing magnitude 
 and public importance of the question, shall the 
 laws of the state fee enforced ? The mere fact that 
 
SPEECH BY ALBERT H, HORTON. 253 
 
 it is in the power of a few saloons to defiantly strike 
 down the statute of our state, the fact that it is in 
 the power of a few dramshop-keepers to paralyze 
 the legal measures of the people, renders the issue 
 one of almost unnatural interest. It is an issue 
 between the saloons and the law; it is an issue be- 
 tween the dramshop-keepers and the people of the 
 state. "Which are the strongest? I leave you to 
 answer. I leave the people of this state in the full- 
 ness of their majesty and power to give the reply. 
 
 If the opponents of the amendment believe the 
 people made a mistake in adopting it, let them con- 
 vince the people of their error, and modify the 
 constitution by proper submission of an amendment 
 to the voters. If the opponents of the prohibition 
 law believe its strict enforcement injurious in results, 
 let them seek its repeal by legal methods, but no 
 one, be he high or low, rich or poor, is justified in 
 organizing flagrant and avowed contempt of that 
 law, or of any other law of the commonwealth. 
 
 As I sit down, I express the earnest wish that the 
 people of Effingham, and the people of our county, 
 and the people of our state may in fact and in deed 
 practice fidelity to the constitution and loyalty to all 
 the laws. May we all of us, not only teach, but 
 practice fidelity to the right and loyalty to the LAW T 
 here and everywhere.. 
 
III. 
 
 THE PEACT1CABILITT OF THE MOVE- 
 MENT PKOVED BY ITS SUCCESS. 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN B. FINCH AT DECATUB, ILLI- 
 NOIS, MABCH 30, 1882. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The liquor traffic in 
 this country is based upon ignorance and supersti- 
 tion. The acme of liquor-drinking civilization is 
 debauchery, vice and crime. The hope of the tem- 
 perance workers must be, the moral, social and intel- 
 lectual elevation of the race. The two armies now 
 -arrayed in this country are, on the one hand, igno- 
 rance ; on the other, intelligence : 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 intellectual and 
 physical development of the race, the curbing of 
 animal passions, and the restraining of ignorant 
 vice. 
 
 254 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 255 
 
 Members of temperance organizations and socie- 
 ties 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, 
 exclaim: " 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 impa- 
 tience and 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 old- 
 est temperance organizations 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 strength- 
 ened by their avarice, by their intemperance, and by 
 their strong party affiliations. 
 
 The impressions made upon the brain in child- 
 hood are never effaced. In the language of 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 
 
256 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 readily; they will answer, "the mind retains most 
 clearly the details of events which transpired when 
 we were between the ages of five 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 
 fifty-seven years before. She described how the 
 groom was dressed, told who were there, gave their 
 names readily, 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 I said to her, " Mother Stuart, will you tell me 
 what you had for dinner yesterday?" Putting her 
 hand up .to her head, she said: "Law, ain't it 
 strange how we forget?" She could remember 
 accurately, distinctly, things which had occurred 
 fifty -seven years before, but what had occurred 
 twenty -four hours before had left no impression on 
 the brain. The brain of childhood receives impres- 
 sions and retains them. 
 
 Once while visiting an insane asylum in the East, 
 I asked the superintendent if he would allow me 
 to see a certain Methodist minister. I had known 
 the minister in my home as one of the best and 
 truest of men, who, by overwork, physical and men- 
 tal, had wrecked himself and become a raving 
 maniac. The superintendent of the asylum said, 
 "You will not want to see him;" but I said, "Yes," 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 257 
 
 and he took me to the ward of the asylum known as 
 " bedlam ward." Unlocking the door of one of the 
 cells, we entered. The inmate was locked up in the 
 machine known as the " straight jacket," to prevent 
 him from injuring himself. As we entered the 
 room, the most terrible, the most vile, the most 
 vulgar oaths which I ever heard in my life came 
 from his lips. I touched the superintendent and 
 said I did not wish to stay longer. Going down the 
 corridor I turned to the superintendent and said to 
 him, ''What can this mean? When I knew that 
 man he was one of the grandest Christians true, 
 noble and good in every respect, and now to hear 
 such vile language coming from him surprises me." 
 Said the superintendent, " He learned to swear when 
 a boy. . The impressions were made on his brain at 
 that period of his life when the brain most readily 
 receives impressions, and when reason was dethroned, 
 these impressions became the governing, ones. In 
 this asylum we can almost uniformly tell what have 
 been the habits, the customs and abuses of insane 
 people when they were children. The brain at such 
 times receives impressions readily ; the impressions 
 are permanent; and if they have indulged in vile 
 things, or used terrible language, the dethronement 
 of reason and intelligent conscience will give the 
 early impressions and habits control of the mind. If 
 the people of this country could only realize, as we 
 realize here, that it is the education of the children 
 which makes the race, the race would be better off." 
 
258 AEGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 Not only are these impressions permanent, but as 
 we grow older, although we may in a measure dis- 
 abuse our minds of the belief in them, they are ever 
 present to bless or curse us to a very great extent. 
 
 My grandmother believed in ghosts, sincerely, 
 honestly; she believed in ghosts just as sincerely as 
 she believed in the Bible, and I think she was one 
 of the grandest Christians I have ever known. She 
 would frequently entertain us children (there were 
 seven of us) by gathering us around her and telling 
 us ghost stories. She would tell them in a way 
 which made every one of us believe them. My 
 grandmother ne\er lied, and, knowing her veracity, 
 knowing her integrity, knowing her regard for the 
 strict letter of truth, we believed all she said. She- 
 knew there were ghosts ; she had seen them, heard 
 them, and we believed her. I grew to boyhood. I 
 never passed a cemetery at night but I gave more 
 attention to that side of the road than I did the 
 other, and when 'I had passed by the graveyard, had 
 rather run than walk. When young manhood came 
 and I went away to school, I never entered the dis- 
 secting-room and turned down the cover from a 
 cadaver to commence work, without a feeling of 
 horror and fear that feeling of terrible awe which 
 I had felt in my boyhood days while listening to my 
 grandmother's stories. It intimidated me and made 
 the hand nervous. I tell you to-night I do not 
 believe in ghosts; and yet, honestly, I do not know 
 whether I do or not The teaching of my boyhood 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 259 
 
 says, "there are ghosts;" the teaching of my after 
 years says, "the belief is nonsense;" reason and 
 intelligence say, "it is absurd and foolish;" but 
 childish impressions say, "it is true." 
 
 I was crossing a divide in my own state some 
 months ago on horseback late at night. Tired and 
 worn, I allowed my pony to have his own way. I 
 presume I was half asleep. ' The pony was picking 
 his way along the bank of a draw (in this country 
 it would be called a ravine), when he stumbled and 
 nearly fell. I do not know how long I had been 
 riding in that semi-conscious condition when aroused 
 by the jolt. A rapid glance showed me I was in an 
 Indian burying ground. The shape of the mounds 
 told what' tribe had buried there, and I knew they 
 were hundreds of miles away in the Indian terri- 
 tory. I was well mounted and armed, certainly not 
 afraid; yet, as I rode through the graveyard and 
 down the slope on the other side, something cold 
 started at the region of the heart, and went down 
 toward my toes, then up toward my hair, and my 
 hair got wonderfully strong and my hat wonderfully 
 light. The first look was a look back over my 
 shoulder. I stopped the horse and asked myself 
 the question, " Why look back?" and I had to admit, 
 I had looked back for ghosts. 
 
 So, I say to you I do not believe in ghosts, and I 
 do believe in ghosts. The teachings of my boyhood 
 days will go with me to my grave, and although I 
 may study, although I may work, although I may 
 
260 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 do everything I can to overcome it, I am sure that 
 in moments of weakness, of suspense, perhaps of 
 fear, the early teachings will always come up and 
 govern, to a certain extent, the inclinations and 
 the impulses of the heart. 
 
 You older men know this is true of your own 
 experience. If you were taught when young to 
 plant your corn in the moon, or at a certain time in 
 the moon, you will plant it then yet. If you were 
 taught that a dog standing with his head toward a 
 house and barking at midnight meant death in the 
 family within a year, you will never feel comfortable 
 when hearing the dog bark and seeing him in such 
 position. If you were taught when a boy to put an 
 angleworm on 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 
 understand 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 superstitions implanted 
 in the brain of this generation have we to overcome ? 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 261 
 
 The liquor business in this country is founded in 
 superstition. There is not a thing modern, not a 
 thing intellectual, not a thing elevating about it 
 The drinking 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 coun- 
 tries as they have been perpetuated 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 the gutter, debauched, and with his man- 
 hood soiled and tainted by contact with this heathen 
 relic, he cries out, " Great is Gambrinus, the god of 
 beer !" In this city you erect temples to the tradi- 
 tions and institutions of Bacchus and Gambrinus, 
 two of the most beastly heathen gods, and pay more 
 money to continue their worship than you pay for 
 the support of your churches and your common 
 schools. 
 
262 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 Enter v a saloon with 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 cold day, and, as he 
 raises the glass to his lips, you step up to him and 
 say, "Hold on, Tom; what are you drinking that 
 liquor for?" 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 physiologists 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 ?" 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." Sup- 
 pose I were to bring a stove on the platform, fill it 
 with fuel, start a fire, let the stove become hot, and 
 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, 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 263 
 
 come up here and sit down on this stove ; it will cool 
 you off." What would be the answer of the child? 
 "If fire burns in the winter, it will burn in the 
 summer." Any child will readily recognize the 
 nonsense of the drinker's position. And yet, men, 
 full-grown men, men with gray hairs, men with 
 wrinkles on their brows, drink whisky as fire in the 
 winter to warm them, and whisky as fire in the 
 summer to cool them off ! 
 
 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 liquor "to 
 warm him up;" if it warms 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 county. The next 
 morning he is found by the roadside, dead. What 
 killed him ? All day yesterday he was taking alco- 
 holic firewood to warm him up, and if his theory that 
 alcohol generates heat be true, he must )iave 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. 
 
264 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 Again, a broad-shouldered man enters a saloon. 
 You ask: 
 
 "Charlie, what are you drinking for?" 
 
 He replies: "I am drinking alcoholic liquor 
 because I have a difficult 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 whip to the tired, exhausted system, simply using 
 up the reserve force, forcing you to use strength you 
 ought not to use ?" 
 
 "But I feel stronger." 
 
 " Yes, and if you sit down on a pin rightly fixed, 
 you would feel stronger. It would stimulate, not 
 strengthen." 
 
 He persists, and during the day takes liquor to 
 make him strong. Late at night you start for your 
 home. You hear a grunt in the gutter, and looking 
 down you see a man holding on to the earth to keep 
 from falling off. He cannot stir hand or foot. You 
 roll him over to see who he is, and lo ! he is the man 
 who was drinking liquor to make him strong. 
 "What ails him?" Why, if his logic is right, he is 
 too strong. 
 
 Again, I asked a gentleman recently why he drank 
 beer. He replied, "I drink beer because it is good 
 as food." Now this is a common delusion, yet I wish 
 to assure you. my friends, that the German drinks 
 his beer, the Frenchman drinks his wine, the Irish- 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 265 
 
 man drinks his whisky, the Englishman drinks his 
 ale and gin, and the Yankee all kinds of drinks, for 
 the drunk there is in them. They all drink for the 
 intoxicating principle there is in the drinks. 
 
 To this proposition you may demur for an instant. 
 Let me prove it. You drink beer for the food or 
 nourishment it is supposed to contain. Very well. 
 Send to the saloon, buy a gallon of beer, take it home, 
 and put it in the cellar on ice, put ice around it to keep 
 it cool, let it remain there until the next morning, 
 then bring it up stairs to drink. No, you will not 
 use it. Why? "It is dead." Yes, the devil, has 
 got out of it, the drunkard-making alcohol has run 
 away. It has only the food (?) left, while the alco- 
 hol and carbonic acid gas, neither of them food, 
 neither of them nourishment, have partially escaped. 
 
 An old German in the city in which I reside said 
 to me at once when I made the assertion: "Yell, I 
 tole you vat I tinks. I tinks you vos mistaken 
 yourself." He said: " I drinks beer for food." 
 " Very well," I said to him, " you get some beer and 
 let us see whether you do or not." He brought me 
 some beer. I took a retort, improvised a still, and 
 then distilled the alcohol from the beer. When I 
 had thus removed the alcohol, I took the remainder, 
 cooled it on ice, turned it into a tumbler and gave it to 
 him to drink He drank about half a glass of it, 
 when all he had drank of it and his breakfast came 
 back together. From that day to this the old man 
 will tell you, "Feench put somedings in dot beer 
 
 18 
 
266 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS 
 
 vot makes me sick right avay quick," while the fact 
 was, I simply took from ' the beer what would have 
 made him drunk. 
 
 One of the greatest chemists the world has ever 
 known, said, after eight years of thorough experiment 
 (and by the way this chemist was a German 
 chemist), "I have proved with mathematical accu- 
 racy that the amount of nourishment you may take 
 upon the point of a table knife, inserted into a sack 
 of flour, contains absolutely more nourishment for 
 the physical organism than the nourishment con- 
 tained in eight quarts of the best Bavarian beer, and 
 if a person is able to drink two gallons of beer each 
 day in the year, he would get about the same amount 
 of nutrition from the beer in twelve months that he 
 would by consuming a five-pound loaf of bread, or 
 three pounds of lean meat." 
 
 I want to say to you and to everybody else who 
 labors under this mistaken idea that you drink beer 
 for food, having a weak digestion, and knowing as 
 you do how delicate this physical organism is, that 
 you simply strain more than seven hundred and 
 twenty gallons of swill through your impaired 
 stomach to catch- a loaf of bread. 
 
 Another person says: " I do not drink beer for the 
 food there is in it, nor for the alcohol which it con- 
 tains, but I drink it for the hops. Hops, you know, 
 are healthy." My friend, if you will go to a drug 
 store, buy ten cents' worth of hops, and steep them 
 in two gallons of water, you will get more hop tea 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 267 
 
 than you get in five gallons of beer. Can you con- 
 Tince any sensible man that you buy five gallons of 
 beer and pay the price for it you do, and 'drink it 
 to obtain ten cents' worth of hop tea? 
 
 These are some of the delusions which find a lodg- 
 ing place in the minds of the people, but they are 
 losing their hold gradually, as science and intelli- 
 gence break down the fortifications of ignorance and 
 superstition. You older men can tell these boys in 
 the audience to-night, that when you were boys liquor 
 was the first thing ever drank by children, and it 
 ^was the last thing when the people died. It was 
 present on all occasions. The theory was that it was 
 universally beneficial and universally necessary. 
 
 Some may object, and some do object, that hu- 
 manity is not advancing ; that temperance work acts 
 and re-acts, and that these superstitions are not 
 fading away. To set at rest forever these croaking 
 moralists, who, having chronic dyspepsia, think it is 
 religion, and seeing the whole world from the 
 observatory of their diseased stomachs, proclaim it 
 is going to the bad, it may be best for us to contrast 
 the past with the present. 
 
 The idea that universal benefit was derived from 
 the sale and the use of alcoholic liquor was held in 
 common by nearly the whole people of this country 
 fty or sixty years ago. It was supposed to be 
 necessary when persons were sick, and when they 
 were well; when persons were sad, and when they 
 were happy ; it was supposed to be necessary when 
 
268 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 persons were cold, and when they were hot; when 
 they were wet, and when they were dry. It was 
 universally considered a panacea and cure-all for 
 every ailment to which human flesh was heir. To 
 doubt its being a "good thing of God" was to be 
 called a fanatic, a zealot and a fool. 
 
 The men who controlled the business of this 
 country, who employed laborers on contracts and in 
 manufactories, thought it absolutely necessary that, 
 workmen should use alcoholic stimulants to enable 
 them to stand the physical strain and do a good day's 
 work. Farmers held the same belief. There could 
 not be a logging, raising or threshing bee without 
 the jug. 
 
 Said an old lady to me, " Nobody ever tells about 
 the quilting, but when we had 'our quiltings in the 
 afternoon we always set the milk punch up for our 
 husbands when they came in the evening." 
 
 Take, for example, the digging of the Erie canal 
 across the state of New York. When that canal 
 was dug, a boy, known by the cognomen or title of 
 " grog-boy," was employed on every sub- section. 
 On the Pennsylvania and Ohio canal he was known 
 as "jigger-boy." What was his business? To take 
 liquor, bought by the contractors, and carry it out 
 to the laborers. The idea was held, that all men 
 required liquor, and that no man could do a good 
 day's work without stimulants. This idea was so 
 thoroughly impressed upon all, that they not only 
 hired men who drank, but they bought the liquor 
 and hired a boy to carry it to them. 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 269 
 
 Fifty years have passed, and what do we see now ? 
 The other day I was writing to Samuel D. Hastings, 
 of Madison, Wisconsin, one of the grandest, best and 
 truest men I have ever known. He is intimately 
 acquainted with the affairs of his state, and I asked 
 him to inform me what rules were made by the rail- 
 roads of Wisconsin in regard to the use of liquor by 
 their employes. March 18th I received the letter I 
 now hold in my hand, from which I read the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Among the questions proposed to the railroad companies by 
 our railroad commissioner are the following, viz. : 
 
 "Has your company any rule governing your conductors, 
 engineers and trainmen, concerning the use of intoxicating 
 liquors? If so, what is it, and is it enforced?" 
 
 [Answers from the report of 1877.] 
 
 Answers are given as follows, to-wit: 
 
 Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Road " It is a rule of this road 
 not to employ or retain in service men who make an immoderate 
 use of intoxicating liquors, and this rule is enforced.'* 
 
 Chicago and Northwestern Road " The rules of this company 
 absolutely prohibit the use of intoxicating liquors by conductors, 
 engineers and trainmen, and they are strictly enforced." 
 
 Chippewa Falls and Western Road "Perfect sobriety is 
 required,, and no liquors on the property." 
 
 Green Bay and Minnesota Road "Employes not allowed to 
 use intoxicating liquors." , 
 
 Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Road " The use of intoxi- 
 cating drinks on or about the premises of the company is strictly 
 prohibited, and any employe appearing on duty in a state of intox- 
 ication is forthwith dismissed; those who totally abstain will 
 receive the preference in promotion and employment. These 
 rules are strictly enforced." . 
 
 Wisconsin Valley Road" Total abstinence ? Yes." 
 
 Answers from report of 1881: 
 
 Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Road " The use of 
 intoxicating liquors involves instant dismissal." 
 
270 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 Wisconsin Central Road Rule No. 2 of our book of instructions 
 reads: "The use of intoxicating liquors of any kind by any 
 employe is detrimental to himself and the interests of the company, 
 and only those who abstain from its use will be employed. This 
 rule is rigidly enforced." 
 
 Wisconsin and Minnesota and Chippewa Falls and Western. 
 Road "Have the same rule as the Wisconsin Central; substan- 
 tially the same owners." 
 
 Fond du Lac, Amboy and Peoria Road " Drunkenness on duty 
 will be considered sufficient cause for instant dismissal. This is 
 enforced." 
 
 And in Illinois: 
 
 Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Road Rule 88: " Intoxication or 
 habitual or frequent use of intoxicating liquor will be sufficient 
 reason for dismissal. Persons employed in running trains in any 
 capacity who are known to drink intoxicating liquors will be forth- 
 with discharged." 
 
 These rules are fair samples of the rules of all the 
 railroads and manufactories of this country from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific. 
 
 Fifty years ago a man who employed laborers 
 thought it' was necessary they should drink. 
 
 To-day the great contractors and the 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 
 advertisement by a saloon-keeper for help; the last 
 words of the advertisement said: "The applicant 
 must be a total abstainer.'' 
 
 Suppose two young me of equal physical strength, 
 mental force and education, should contemplate going 
 to Chicago to seek situations in business houses. A 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 271 
 
 leading banker in that city wishes the services of a 
 clerk. These young men learn of the vacant clerk- 
 ship, and each wishes to secure the position. They 
 know they must obtain it upon 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 the 
 respectable young men and ladies of his acquaint- 
 ance ; when the Sabbath came he went to the Sunday- 
 school, and, although considered old f ogyish, he was 
 known to be an attendant at church. 
 
 The other young man thought he would have a 
 good time in the 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 a certificate of char- 
 acter to the gentleman in Chicago ?" and the minis- 
 ter writes: "I know this young gentleman to be 
 moral, honest, and truly worthy. He attends Sun- 
 
272 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 day-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 you give 
 me a recommendation ?" and his employer gives him 
 a certificate to the same general effect 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 cer- 
 tificate to the banker?" The dram-seller writes: 
 "He is a good fellow, and can play the best game 
 of billiards of any man in this 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 recommendation, and receives a 
 certificate relating the same general facts. 
 
 Both young men go to Chicago, ask for the banker, 
 and lay 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 conies with credentials certi- 
 fying to a record of total abstinence and morality. 
 
 An acquaintance of mine wanted a clerk. The 
 man was an infidel and an habitual drinker. A boy 
 said to me, " Will you give me a credential to 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 273 
 
 IMr, ?" 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, stu- 
 dious 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 recom- 
 mendation 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 Christian, 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 are 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 
 upward. The business man recognizes this truth, 
 that the man who drinks liquor is injured intellect- 
 ually, physically and morally by such use. 
 
 This is one line of advance. Look at another. 
 
 The .Kev. J. B. Dunn, the celebrated author of 
 the "History of Temperance," visited Hartford, 
 Conn., and he gives a bill presented to and paid by 
 one of the oldest churches of that city. It was 
 during the year 1784 less than a hundred years 
 
274 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 ago. There had been an assembly of ministers ta 
 ordain a young aspirant for ministerial honors. The 
 church had sent the visiting clergy to the inn at 
 Hartford to be entertained, telling the innkeeper to 
 present the bills to the church for payment. This 
 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: 
 
 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 L. s. d. 
 
 2 mugs tody 2 4 
 
 5 segars 5 10 
 
 1 pint wine 3 
 
 May 5 
 
 To 3 bitters 9 
 
 To three breakfasts 3 6 
 
 To 15 boles punch 1 10 
 
 To 24 dinners 1 16 
 
 To 11 bottles of wine 3 6 1 
 
 To 5 mugs flip 5 10 
 
 To 3 boles punch 6 
 
 To 3 boles tody 3 6 
 
 Total -7 11 9 
 
 The ministers' toddy and wine cost the church a 
 little over twenty dollars for three 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 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 275 
 
 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 superannu- 
 ated Baptist minister." I learned afterward that he 
 was one of the most loved and honored men of that 
 denomination in the state. "I commenced preach - 
 ing in Ilion, New York. While preaching there a 
 young brother was to be ordained in Ogdensburg, in 
 the northern part of the 'state. There were no rail- 
 roads then. I was to go up the Mohawk river to 
 Rome, then up the Black river ; another brother 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 
 the brother from Qswego. After we went to our 
 room, I opened my satchel to get my Bible, but 
 found that I had left it at the church. My com- 
 panion said, 'Have my Bible,' and opened his 
 satchel to get it. Under it were four or five bottles 
 of whisky. 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 run a 
 distillery, and as the father was to preach on this 
 long trip through Canada and northern New York, 
 he had taken these little bottles along as samples, 
 to act as a commercial agent for the distillery on 
 the trip, preaching and selling whisky." The idea 
 was so ridiculous that I laughed heartily. 
 
:276 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 A few weeks later I stood before an immense 
 audience 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, " What were you pitching into me 
 for?" I said to him, "I do not know you." Said 
 he, "I am the man who peddled the whisky." Then 
 he introduced himself. We sat down together, and 
 for more than an hour I was entertained by the 
 reminiscences of that old man, as he told me of the 
 customs and practices of his early ministry. 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. Eev. George B. Cheever, 
 X). D., passed along the road and saw the sign, 
 " Corn wanted to make liquor of," and next door the 
 sign, "Bibles to sell." This suggested his cele- 
 brated cartoon, in which he pictured devils as run- 
 ning the distillery, and called it Deacon Giles' 
 Distillery. The coat fitted, and Cheever was 
 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 distilling deacon. In that day we 
 find ministers, church officials and Christians not 
 only using, but selling and manufacturing intoxi- 
 cating drinks. The public did not look upon these 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 27T 
 
 acts as degrading the Christian character, nor incon- 
 sistent with a Christian life. To-day the ministers 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ are the corner-stone of 
 our whole reform work. Other brigades, and other 
 corps, and other armies are in the fight, but the 
 whole center of the movement rests on the Chris- 
 tian wings. 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 temperance man?" I know he 
 is. I know he could not preach in our state if 
 he was not. Even the denominations there, which 
 in the east are negative in the movement, are quite 
 positive and aggressive in the west. An individual 
 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 com- 
 mon as the sale of tea, coffee, dry goods and gro- 
 ceries. 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 
 
278 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 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 drunkard-factory, and that he who engages in the 
 sale is regarded as a bad man. To-day, in my 
 state the very fact that a man wants to sell liquor 
 is in the eyes of the law prima facie evidence that 
 he is a scoundrel. 
 
 A man may come to Nebraska to-morrow and wish 
 to take out a license to sell liquor. If he goes to 
 the city council and asks for a license, the very fact 
 that he applies for such a license is deemed prima 
 jacie 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 moral and 
 decent and respectable; he must get a character 
 made to order as you men get a coat, and then, when 
 lie gets his character made (I suppose our green- 
 back 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 
 ve thousand dollars, signed by three good sureties, 
 to indemnify the people for the evil his business 
 mil create. No man is now bold enough to stand 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 279 
 
 up and defend the business upon its merits. The 
 drunkardmakers 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 hos- 
 pitable, 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 made by persistent work to educate the 
 masses and lift mankind out of the fog of ignorance 
 into the sunlight of knowledge and scientific truth. 
 The struggle has been severe, but no cause ever had 
 grander heroes. 
 
 Years ago, when Dr. Hunt, who led the reform in 
 the east, went to the platform, the common argu- 
 ment of the drunkard-makers was rotten eggs. 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, grand men and women 
 who have stood shoulder to shoulder in the contest. 
 
280 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 What cause was ever supported by clearer heads and 
 warmer hearts ? 
 
 Fifty years ago, the business world furnished 
 liquor to its help ; to-day it makes abstinence a rule 
 for workmen. 
 
 Fifty years ago, the church by its example and 
 influence sustained the drink customs and traffic; 
 to-day the church is fighting the traffic to death. 
 
 Fifty years ago, the business was respectable; 
 to-day it is either outlawed or a criminal bound with 
 chains. 
 
 Fifty years ago, it was fashionable to furnish wine 
 to guests; to-day it is vulgar and low to do so. 
 
 Yes, the reform is advancing, but while we point 
 to the upward march of mankind we would not have 
 you forget that all along the pathway of these years 
 there are other sheaves these temperance toilers 
 have garnered; graves of men whose redeemed 
 spirits, now in heaven, look back to rejoice that this 
 movement came to save. 
 
 Let me give you an instance: I addressed an 
 audience in a western city some years ago. At the 
 close of the meeting an old man came up; he was 
 muddy, dirty, drunk ; he reached up his hand and 
 turned his face toward me; it was swollen and red 
 from the effects of alcohol; his eyes were bleared 
 and watery and his tongue was thick, from his recent 
 indulgence ; he was a wretched, terrible specimen of 
 what liquor does for men. He said: " S-a-a-y, Mis- 
 ser, hie am hie go go in to er hie sign 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 281 
 
 hie that are p-pledge hie an I am hie a 
 goi'n to hie keep it, or I am hie go-in to bust" 
 
 As I looked at him, poor, besotted wretch, with 
 just the faintest ray of his once glorious manhood 
 glinting out, in his determination to sign the pledge 
 and make one more effort for the restoration of his 
 former proud position among his fellowmen, I pitied 
 him. I saw the condition he was in, with native 
 pride almost gone, with stomach almost consumed 
 by drink, with feebleness in every part of his phys- 
 ical organization; I took his hand and told him I 
 hoped he would keep the pledge; that God would 
 give him strength to stand. He signed the pledge 
 and Went away. I called the attention of some of 
 our Good Templar friends to him. I went from that 
 place and it was more than a year before I returned. 
 The first night after my return I was speaking again. 
 At the close of the meeting an old lady came to me 
 and said: 
 
 " I want to shake hands with you." After shaking 
 hands she said, "I want to ask you if you will come 
 over and take tea with us to-morrow?" 
 
 " Yes, I guess so," I replied. 
 
 She went away. I did not recognize her. Turn- 
 ing to a minister, who stood by, I asked: 
 
 " Who was that?" 
 
 "Why," said he, "you remember that old bum- 
 mer who signed the pledge when you were here last 
 year?" 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "did he keep it?" 
 
 19 
 
282 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 "Yes, he did," replied the minister; "that is his 
 wife; he is a member of my church." 
 
 The next day I went to their home. The man 
 and his wife were both there, and greeted me most 
 cordially. Then the husband started to go down 
 town. I received the impression that he went after 
 something to put on the table. After he had gone 
 the wife said to me: "I wanted you to come here so 
 T could tell you, to cheer and encourage you and the 
 Good Templars in this city, how much you have done 
 ior me and mine, and to bid you Godspeed in your 
 work;" and then she went on and told the old, old 
 story that every man who has ever worked in this 
 reform has heard so often, of a happy courtship and 
 marriage, of the sunlight of life and the rainbow of 
 promise that followed, of how happy she was as a 
 wife, busied with her household cares, and of how 
 bright the pathway of life had seemed to her ; of the 
 gentle voice of gratefulness, of peace and plenty 
 that day after day sung sweetly in her heart ; of her 
 liusband, the best and bravest and noblest of men, 
 of his manly endeavor in the battle of life to shield 
 and protect her from every discomfort and hardship ; 
 of the time that came at last after they had been 
 married a number of years and gone along the road 
 bright with flowers and redolent with the pleasantest 
 memories, when the husband had been enticed into 
 a saloon and persuaded to drink his first glass ; of 
 how he fell into the horrible pit of drunkenness, and 
 .of how she, poor, dazed wife, thinking she might 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 283 
 
 reclaim him, and hardly realizing that this loath- 
 some serpent had stolen into her paradise and robbed 
 it of its purity and happiness, had followed meekly, 
 pleading, praying, hoping and working ; but said she, 
 " Hope failed, my pleadings availed naught, and my 
 prayers seemed to rise no higher than my head. 
 Oh, Mr. Finch, human heaut cannot imagine what a 
 sorrow, what a grief, what a bitterness of soul was 
 mine. For five years, five years of a hell upon earth, 
 he drank incessantly; every nickel that he earned 
 went to the saloon for drink, and he did not provide 
 a thing. Having nothing, I took in washing, which 
 I continued to do until rheumatism came and my 
 hands twisted out of shape. At last I could not 
 work more, and then the poorhouse door stood open 
 to me. Maybe you think I was wicked, but, Mr. 
 Finch, I have gone to bed at night and prayed God 
 that I might never wake up in the morning. I had 
 tried to do my duty, at least to be respectable, and 
 the idea of dying a pauper in the poorhouse was 
 enough to drive me mad. Kind women, God bless 
 them, watched with and looked after me while I was 
 sick, and right at that critical time John signed the 
 pledge. He came home from the meeting, and, 
 although he knew it would make my heart glad, he 
 took the ribbon off, afraid I would see it. He went 
 directly to bed, and the next morning got up before 
 I did ; usually he did this, and went down town to 
 get his drink, but I heard him building the fire. I 
 couldn't think what it was ; then I heard him go out 
 
284 ARGUMENTS ON SPECIAL POINTS. 
 
 and come in, and knew he was filling the tea-kettle, 
 and I listened, hoping that some impression had 
 been made upon him, and it did seem as though one 
 little ray of sunshine was coming into my poor Ufa 
 At last he said to me, 
 
 " ' Mary, where is the hammer ? ' 
 
 "I asked him why he^wanted the hammer. 
 
 " *I want to fix these steps out here/ 
 
 " The doorsteps had been broken for a long time; 
 he had tumbled over them, drunk, many a time and 
 never thought of fixing them. As soon as he wanted 
 to fix the steps it flashed across my mind what he 
 had done, and I asked, ' John, have you signed the 
 pledge?' and he said, 'Yes, Mary, and with God 
 helping me, as they say down to the meeting, I am 
 going to keep it.' Perhaps I am getting into my 
 dotage, but my heart sung with a joy that called up 
 my happy days again, and I put my arms around 
 his neck and kissed him for the first time in years. 
 If the Good Templars of this town never do another 
 thing than to give me back my old lover, to stand up 
 to my shoulder pure and strong in his reformed and 
 renewed life, to love me and appreciate my love for 
 him, I will thank them all my days, and forever call 
 them blessed." 
 
 This is but one of thousands of cases. Hardly a 
 Good Templar lodge but has its saved men snatched 
 from the downward road. 
 
 To-night I have spoken of some of the work that 
 has been done. I want to ask you to observe closely 
 
SPEECH BY JOHN B. FINCH. 285 
 
 fairly the theories and the reasons and the be- 
 liefs held by the temperance men of this country. 
 My only hope is that I have said something that 
 God will give me the power to say it that shall lead 
 men to think and act and work This reform is 
 greater than any man or organization of men. The 
 men who stand on the platform are simply aids. 
 Every worker has a task to do and all our labors are 
 essential to accomplish the task before us. Let us 
 stand shoulder to shoulder in the places that are 
 ready and open for us, and press forward side by 
 side on the battle-fields of this reform, firm and 
 unwavering in the faith that God will give victory 
 io the right, and truth and purity shall triumph 
 over vice and error. 
 
 VNIVERoll 9 
 or 
 
The People versus The Lipor Traffic, 
 
 WHAT THE PRESS AND WORKERS SAY OF IT : 
 
 " I believe it to be the best compilation of facts and argument in favor of 
 our reform and against the liquor traffic ever printed. The best, because it is 
 in the vernacular of the masses, and thoroughly practical. Clear, simple, con- 
 vincing." Theo. D. Kanouse, P. R. W. G. T. 
 
 " The beginning of a fine temperance library has just been made by the 
 Good Templars in the publication of the volume, ' THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE 
 LIQUOR TRAFFIC,' consisting of lectures by John B. Finch, Hon. Albert H. 
 Horton, and Hon. O. P. Mason, already somewhat familiar by their appearance 
 in several weekly temperance journals. Those who have read the lectures do 
 not need to be informed of their clear statements of fact, sound logic and earn- 
 est appeals to the mind and heart of the people. To all who have not had this 
 pleasure and advantage, we say, buy the book at once. It will fill your mouth 
 with arguments, and store your mind with facts. It is a rare investment for 
 temperance men and women seeking clear presentation of the truth, and it is a 
 ' bonanza ' to the unenlightened a good gift book for missionary work." The- 
 Union-Signal, Organ N. W. C. T. U. 
 
 " ' THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC,' by Hon. Samuel D. Has- 
 tings, is the first volume of a proposed series of books which are likely to have 
 many readers. It comprises nine lectures, seven of which are by Hon. John 
 B. Finch, one by Hon. Oliver P. Mason, of Nebraska, and one by Hon. Albert 
 Horton, Chief Justice of Kaneas. The lectures of Mr. Finch have attracted 
 large, enthusiastic and appreciative audiences, and will be read with almost 
 equal delight. He follows the advocates and apologists of the liquor traffic 
 through all their windings, and exposes their sophistries in a racy and enter- 
 taining style. The book is timely, now that the subject of prohibition is under 
 discussion in many States with renewed urgency." The Northwestern Christian 
 Advocate. 
 
 " ' THE PEOPLE VERSUS THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC ' is, without doubt, the most 
 valuable contribution yet made to the temperance literature of the time. The 
 book contains nine lectures, seven by Hon. John B. Finch, of Nebraska, one by 
 Hon. Albert Horton, Chief Justice of Kansas, and one by Hon. Oliver P. Mason, 
 ex-Chief Justice of Nebraska. These lectures are among the very best ever 
 delivered on the American platform. They are clear in their statements of 
 fundamental truths and principles, elegant in diction, convincing in logic, and 
 abound in simple yet forcible illustrations. Unlike many lectures, they read 
 well because they are clothed in the language of the common people. As you 
 read them you laugh through your tears, and with clenched fists and teeth 
 firmly eet, vow a vow of eternal vengeance upon the traffic which floods this 
 world with so much of misery and crime." The Lever- Liberator, Chicago, III. 
 
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