The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1875-10-29
EDITORIAL oORREspONDBNeB.

DEAR READERS OF THE NEW NORTHWEST:
Taking up Empire City where we
last week dropped it, let US go back to
that schooner launch" and briefly re-
view the business and bacchanals of
that never-to- be-forgotten occasion.
The schooner, as well as almost all
other valuable possessions and enter
prises in this embryo ciEy, is the prop
erty of w. A. Luse, or, rather, of
his father, H. B. Luse, now resi-
dent, we believe, of San Francisco, who
entrusts the business with his son, who
certainly equals him in energy, what
ever may be said of his other virtues.
We are not going to undertake scien-
tific description of a schooner-launch,
dear readers, for we know we are not
sufficiently versed in such lore to make
a success of it. Suffice it to say that the
proceedings were characterized by holi-
day hilarity before the launch-almost
every lady in the place being rugged in
her gayest toggery-and by general
spree after the launch-every drinking
man on the bay getting gloriously
drunk.
We sat at the window of the Lockhart
Hotel for two hours after the schooner,
like a.graceful swan, had breasted the
waters and conquered them, and
watched the effect of an unlimited sup
ply of free whisky upon the devotees of
Bacchus, who swarmed around the
corner doggeries like blue-bottle flies
| after Il carcass, and we were more than
ever strengthened in our belief that il
all embargo by the Government were
removed from the whisky business,
leaving the traffic to find its level upon
its own merits or demerits, like any
other merchandise, the great curse
would leave its gilded hiding places and
come fostering and suppurating every
where to the surface, bringing out be-
fore the people, in all its hideousness,
the undercurrent of corruption, that, un-
der the benefcent (?) regulations of the
Federal Government, continually eats
like a great, immoral gangrene, into
the physical and mental conditions o
humanity, like syphilis in blood anc
bone, in which every art known to the
n1dteria nledicG is used to keep eruption
from the surface, where, were it but al
lowed to come, as it naturally would
if not driven back into human systems
by quackery, akin only to that which
the United States restrictive act use
ostensibly to regulate, but in effect t.
foster drunkenness-in short, were thi
great abscess of drunkenness in th,
moral structure of humanity but al
lowed, universally, to "come to head
and slough and run off, we should sool
see the people willing and clamorous 70
prohibition, or destroying Of the eUi
By the root; a measure for which the,
: are not yet ready, and which any at
tempt by the few to enforce prematurel.
will only result in disaster to the partie
attempting it and the cause they woul
foster.
Barrels of lager, ale and whisky wer
rolled into the streets, and white me-
and boys, Cinnamon and Indians rushe
pell-mell after the fluid, gorging them
selves to repletion, some of them be
, coming stupid and others furious, unit
a babel of curses, obscenities and bias
phemies, that would have curdled tn
atmosphere of Pandemouium, smot
the ears of everybody, and tainted tn
sunlight of God as with the eXuding i'm
precautions of the doomed. Drunke
boys, sons of drunken white mer
fought viciously with other drunke
boys, sons of sober Indians, and tn
horrid words they used yet jar upon ou
nerves as we remember them. Sobe
white men, by halt-dozens, stood in th
doors of stores and hotels, looking o
complacently, while scores of womer
! with heart agony indescribable, sough
the retirement of their homes to pra
' and wait and suffer because of the de
pravity over which they had no cor
troll.
AS soon as the thickest of the din ha
died away little, we ventured into th
= nearest store to buy a pencil with whic
to make notes of the orgies we had Wi
messed, and were waited on by a gentle
r man of strong temperance principle
o who said:
e "What do you think of town that
d not incorporated? and what's you
. idea of cheap whisky ?"
o care these scenes common ?" "
e asked, wonderingly.
"Oh, no. That, is they don't come
: the surface every day."
e "One thing am pleased to motto
1t There is not one woman in all thl
l. crowd of bacchanals," we remarke,
' with feeling of pride, which the read,
will consider pardonable under the ci
cumstances. "And yet" we CONTINUES
q 'every one of those drunken fellows i
= or will be, voter"
J. "Oh," said the merchant, "if wome
-e could vote they'd soon be as bad
1t men,
g "Why Pr we asked, in surprise, Fl
j. the man was gentleman, and we we
r not prepared for such speech from hir
,,,o<, 80 ~-;,,aN =,