Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1869-12-08

the means at One-nal1 the price that Il
ever did before. Fourthly, labor, wei
paid if not justly paid, that furnishe,
the means of intoxication by the la
Dor of a day for the drink for a week
Here are the four great attendant fea,
lures that clutch at the very heart ol
possible self-government. How will
you manage them? Two hundred
millions of dollars massed up i'm this
very city. devoted directly or indirect
ly to the manufacture and dispersion
of intoxicating materials. You can.
not sneer at this, or be Indifferent to
the danger which lies there. 1t has
made the government of your metrop-
oils farce, as it has all other great
cities. Take my city BOSTON,. 1t is
most familiar to me. We have three
thousand places where SO, ,OO0, 900 of
massed up-capital makes its open
portfolios out of which it fires the cam
ons on the public. There never was
an election in Boston that 5000 votes
taken from one side to the other would
not reverse the victory. The conse-
quence is that any man that has eyes
keen enough to recognize q drinking
saloon is a candidate for a Boston
Mayor. When we get a stranger in
the town the only places we have to
show him are our schools. We have
not any streets; they are only alleys.
Now, why is all this? Because of this
great race temptation because of this
poison in the blood which we inherit.
We have tried license, and the result
is-here we areI You can't dig up a
hidden history, Christian or Pagan.
in Asia or Europe, that does not con-
tain a license law; and yet despite
our struggles, the same great evil is
dragging US down to-day Is Yankee
ingenuity exhausted? Do we give UP
the struggle? Are we ready to saw,
"Rule the country by republicanism
and the cities by despOtism ?n No,
our ingenuity is not exhausted, for
you Know that Yankee baby of ten
months looks over the side of his era
die, plans a new one, and gets up and
patents it before he is twelve months
old. Laughter. Now, how shall
we grapple with this theme and save
self-government? You cannot rest a
universal ballot box on q drunken
people, for it surely gives them into
the hands of demagogues, and in the
great struggle that looms over the fu-
ture your selfgovernment has the
grOg shop for its greatest foe. We
think we have discovered a remedy,
and we call it prohibition. Some
men don't like it. Well, like the pat
ent medicine peddler on the. cars, we
only ask a trial. ] don't say prohibit
ton is right Though think it isl, but
| say that two centuries of the niedi-
cine called license is failure; and, If
you have not got anything else, you
must own up, take refuge at the feet
of Napoleon or the Car, and set up a
physical force that does not share the
influence of the mob. One hundred
and fifty men own England to-day,
and do not care for the masses, and
they can keep the nineteenth century
at bay. Bring back that state nf things
in New York, unless you can find
some remedy for this underlying stra-
tum that gives you over to the rule of
demagogues. One Of the most elo-
quent of our young temperance lectur-
ers tells story of the richest man in
certain county who offered the half
of his estate to any one who would
give him pOwer to pass ''that doorm
One thing tEat you, or /, or the law
can not do is to put soul into the
wrecked being we call = drunkard !;
but we can slut that door Gapplause], I,
and make the streets safe for a weak
soul to tread, and that is prohibition.
The great struggle of craftsmanship is
to find panacea for this accumulat-
ing evil, and we believe that in prohi-
bition is the underlying safety of the
ballot box Yet we may be wrong
and you may be right, and prohibition
may be something that bears within
itself the seeds of its own failure. But
don't despair. AS long as / live, as
long as a voice is given me and thought
remains, shall contend that the first
great duty of the true statesman in
this country is to find the means of
saving the ballot box from the drunk
enness of the streets, and unless our
statesmen can do this we must own
that the Declaration of Independ-
ence is of limited scope, and that
man, at least of the Saxon race,
can not rule himself. Passing
from this question, we find a second,
vital to the cause of repubIi-
and that is labor. Some
laugh at the workingman, and say
you can not lift labor, and there is no
use in sentimental sympathy with the
inevitable ills of toiling humanity.
| don't believe that. I believe the
time will come when We shall almost
realize the wisdom of Franklin, and
shall put it down as an admitted and
truth that a human being
needs eight hours to sleep, and eight
hours for his soul applause1 ], and that
not his interests merely, but the in
terests of the State, require that the
eight hours for the soul should be
guaranteed to him by all the forces of
civilization. Selfgovernment can not
allow capital t. demoralize labor. No
sheet of profit can be present.
ed large enough to compensate repub-
icanism for this decentralization. The
the laboring class becomes
that moment republican,
sm is dead. Still, we must have the |
We can not do without |
he money kings, and We can not do !
Without individual independence, and !
he craftsmanship of to-day is to mar I
V and reconcile these two indispens-
Ible elements of the future. This
ask is as fearful as that future q mo- (
When Wall street aud /
State street look down into the poor (
mans cradle, they remember that /
hose tiny hands will in due time |
Weld the ballot, and unless wealth 1
lastens to put Intelligence on one side /
md morality on the other side of
hose baby footsteps, its own child
en- must soon stand face to face with |
and ruin. There is one other
question which is of equal signifi-
anee, and that is the woman cues
ion-the right of woman. to labor. I
some look at this from the humani-
arian point of view, and there is |
.bundant reason for so doing. No |
nan can analyze the condition of one
lalf of the human race without his
leart melting at the picture. know
remarkably generous Yankee who
eft the fortune derived from his wife
'ack to her as long as she remained a
widow, but if she married then it
vent TO his sisteri don't think that
would have happened if sixty women
lad set with sixty men in the Massa-
husetts Legislature. Applause ] And
know a still sadder case of a wife
hut up in a madhouse for thirteen
litter months, while her husband re-
used the signature that would have
eleased her, and that was Massachu-
etts lawl And when at last she was
eleased by the intervention of others,
Ter husband was cruelty able to re-
use her last visit to the bedside Of
lpr duino ianUbfpr. and that was I