Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1884-01-21
The trouble in any Vermont society


The trouble in any Vermont society
is a superabundanee of latent tenn
perance sentiment. The great major
ity of the people are temperate and
desire to encourage temperance effort,
to do away with intemperance, shield
the rising generation, or punish the
offenders of the law; but this latent
sentiment is perfectly willing that
others should do all the work. That
is not q courageous or profitable way
to do business. One mans interest
in a moral, social, general sense is
about the same as another's, as one
rum vender can poison and blight
whole community. The few who
have no sons, daughters OF other rel
atives to suffer directly from the sale
and use of liquors, suffer financially,
and, possibly, in other directions
from the use of this poison. There
is, probably, not town in this county
which is not to-day supporting pau
pers who were made paupers by rum.
There is not a business man whose
interest is not materially injured by
the use, moderate as it may be, of
liquor in his community and town.
Every town and hamlet is as much
poorer in direct sense, as all the
money it pays out for liquor, and in
an indirect sense suffer according to
the loss occasioned by wasted time,
impaired energies, and the multiplied
LOSSES that result from the use of
rum.
1t has always been strange to us
why a town, as a corporate body,
will allow the rumseller to convert it's
citizens into paupers and criminals.
One rum-hole in a village will require
as much help to run it as a saw-mil1,
a shoe shop or factory, and every
man who supports it is really good
for nothing else. Certainly no town
can afford to permit rumselling within
its limits in an economic sense.
Another remarkable thing is the fact
that men who have children growing
up, boys or girls, will remain seem
ingly Indifferent, when other mems
children are being led away into hab-
its of vice and intemperance. No
man knows where this evil will break
out; no son is safe where the tempt
er can be found, and sooner or later,
every daughter is liable to associate
with, perhaps marry, some one whose
passions are inflamed and whose NOR
tai sensibilities are blunted by the use
of intoxicant3.
We briefly allude to the lack of
effort and interest that shows itself
in our churches in the temperance
movement. If there is any sphere
where active christian effort can re-
suit in saving both body and soul, it
is in the line of temperance, and yet
hundreds who pray daily, ''lead US
not into temptation,' are showing by
their actions that they are willing to
trust everything to prayers. 1t is
true that prayers are efficacious, but
it is doubtful whether ''faith without
works. will avail much toward stop
ping rumselling or rumdrinking.
What we shall be glad to see at
the next temperance gathering will
be large force of active temperance
workers, who are willing not only to
talk temperance, but to fight for it.
Men who are not only willing to ''re-
solve," but can be relied upon to do.
Let there be large attendance from
all the towns in the vicinity and rep
resentatives from all the towns in the
county, and if the County Society
proposes to make itself useful let it
show the fact at this gathering.