The evening light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1881-1883, 1882-04-03
THE PRESIDENT AND THE OPIUM
EATER.

| What Will the PRESIDENT 90 WIN inc
Chinaman The bill before him. is a
clear infraction of the treaty. Con-
lecture hangs its safety on 4 hook OF
the political rack. We think conjec-
ture errs. If the bill depends on the
Presidents linear drawing in the sands
of party it will 90 under. The presl-
dent is not going to gangrcne on poll
tics. If it depends even upon the
might of the labor problem it may fail.
But there is a mightier cause why 1t
must not fail. 1t throttles a living,
vital, sentlent monster, whose breath
is pollution and his embrace death,
that must not 60 loose. That is the
opium eater. Every social Contaglon,
vice in every form, the scarlet plague,
delirium with its serpents, leprosy with
its nameless horrors, follow the opium
eater. Already he has his hidden
dens in our large cities where the i'm
perial drug in its most seductive
forms awaits the unwary. Youth
yields to his Establishments, innocence
falls into his snare. From the f1owery
grip of the baleful narcotic we have
not energy to escape, and the treasures
we lose we have no wish to recall.
This is what the president must not
forget. Labor and politics are moon
shine. 1t is rot from the power of
competitive labor the people require
to be saved; it is from the power of the
opium eater. 1t is from the vice, dis
ease and ruin with which they are to
be overwhelmed. 1t is not 4 question
of commercial advantage, it is a ques-
ton of contact with contagion, Of
safety from the wreck of all manly viz
tues, the wretchedness Of stricken
homes. 1t is that the AmeriCon peo-
pie may not have ravished from them
those great and commanding energies,
capacities, qualities and endowments,
in virtue of which they are to-day the
foremost nation on the globe, and
through which alone it can hold its
course to higher civilization and pro-
founder happiness for the race. When
we see our best and manifest minds
wrecked daily by the comparatively
powerless seductiveness of alcohol, let
us tremble before the all-conquerlng
destroyer that intercepts our path in the
gulse of the Chinese opium eater. If
we would preserve our mothers and
wives from the unutterable abasement
to which death, and hell itself, were
angel and paradise let us shut out the
hordes of nerveless and debased opium
eaters that not only threaten us but, in
some sections, already have their evil
work under way.
This is the overwhelming argument
to which the president must yield all
scruples, and all reluctance, about
signing the bill. 1t is a demand of pa
triotism, not of party, and by its lofty
appeal to the highest official trust puts
away the gossamer Of conventions and
laws.
New ORLEANS is still struggling man.
fully with her bankrupt judicial ex-
pense fund 1t is known to our read
crs that this fund consists Of the money
paid for stamps sold to litigants under
the constitution of 1879 out of which
it provided that the salaries of judges
and clerks should be exclusively paid.
The supreme court having decided, by
three of its judges against two that all
demands upon the insolvent fund are
of equal dignity it has been resolved
to obtain the opinion Of leading law
yer as to what demands may be prop