The Portland daily press., 1872-05-27
The Grog Shops-No. XIV.

one vi our stevedores has large number
OF men In his employment; often in busy
time working night and day. He pays them
every Monday, not on Saturday: but every
day he gives to each man card hearing his
own name and the sum due for the days
work, and these cards are redeemed in money
every Monday. But in the mean time these
cards pass as cash among the shop-keepers,
and they send or take them to be redeemed
on the Mondays. On every redemption day
as much as seventy dollars worth Of these
cards were brought by the low rumselers of
the locality, having taken them for grog. On
the first Monday after Sheriff Perry began
operations upon the rum-shops, not dollar
came from the rumsellersl
There is world of significance in that
fact; it is demonstration on a comparative
ly small scale, of the benefcent opera
tion throughout the State, of the enforced
policy Of protection to the people from the
temptations of the liquor trade. These sew
enty dollars saved from the rumshops, repre-
sent seventy dollars worth of food and clothes,
shoes and books for wives and children;
they represent kind husbands and fathers in
well cared-for families, instead of drunken,
infuriated brutes, beating and driving out of
doors poor ragged, hungry wives and chill
dren. Which of these results, o, ye rumsell-
ers, is better for society, for the great broth
erhood of man? Cannot you even now foresee
the day when the sands of the last hour of
life shall be running rapidly away; when you
shall see the door ajar through which you are
to be ushered into the eternal world, where
you are to answer for your life, and its re-
suits upon the welfare of Gods children?
Cannotyo anticipate, that in that hour, you
will bless the instrumentality by which you
were restrained from adding yet greater num-
bers to the multitudes of those whose hopes
of happiness you have crushed out in
the prosecution of your dreadful trade?
was once standing by the bedside of dy-
ing mana poor mana praying man
whose life for many years was embittered by
the shocking misconduct of a drunken wife.
l knew the family well the wife had sold for
rum the sheets from the beds, the table
cloths and almost every disposable article in
the house; she had sold the Bible given by the
Sabbath School to her child, and the spare
clothes Of her husband and children-all for
rum. Into which of your shops, o We rum
sellers did all this miserable plunder go? Out
of which of your shops came the drink that
made beast of that wife and mother, and OF
her little house an inferno? 1t loes'nt mat
ter, you are all in the same band you all per-
form your part in the dreadful tragedy-of
thousands of families made so wretched that
the degree of their misery cannot even be inn
agined; of the poverty, pauperism, crime and
ruin wrought by your dreadful trade; of the
infinite result of millions of hearts crushed
millions OF souls defiled and corrupted by it.
1t matters not, the position you hold in the
army of rumsellers whether a chief of the
band, riding in carriage or on gaily caparison-
ed horse; or poor camp follower, bringing a
bucket of water for sponging the guns used
in the horrid warfare you make against hu-
man happiness and hope-it matters not !;
there is no difference between you, in the eye
of God; the wretch who takes sheets, clothes,
bibles fol rum, is no lower or viler than he
who sold the barrel of drink from which the
pay was drawn. You must all come to the last
hour, leaving yonr life, good or bad, behind
you, with all its influences upon the society
in which you lived. The poor man beside
whom stood in his last moments, looked up
patiently and quietly in my face and said -
"Pm not afraid to die, I've lived for this hour"
Oh ye rumsellers, consider while We may; in
that supreme moment, will you be able say
''Pn not afraid to die; I've lived for this.''
... N. d.