The cries of the suffering children, the tears of the agonized mother, serve only to exasperate him. He grows rich on the pittances of those whom he is leading to perdition. Houses of prostitution, dens of vice, criminal courts, prisons, almshouses, insane asylums, hospitals, all are, to a great degree, filled as a result of the liquor seller's work. Behind the liquor seller stands the mighty destroyer of souls, and every art which earth or hell can devise is employed to draw human beings under his power. In the city and the country, on the railway trains, on the great steamers, in places of business, in the halls of pleasure, in the medical dispensary, even in the church, on the sacred Communion table, his traps are set.
Nothing is left undone to create and to foster the desire for intoxicants.
On almost every corner stands the public house, with its brilliant lights, its welcome and good cheer, inviting the working man, the wealthy idler, and the unsuspecting youth. In private lunchrooms and fashionable resorts, ladies are supplied with popular drinks, under some pleasing name, that are really intoxicants. For the sick and the exhausted, there Page 339 are the widely advertised bitters, consisting largely of alcohol. To create the liquor appetite in little children, alcohol is introduced into confectionery. Such confectionery is sold in the shops.