San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1884-10-09
san MARCOS COUNTY

graph in the reports Of the deadly
affrays which appear in every issue
of the daily press. In counties
where these fountains Of vice are
closed by local option, the grand ju-
ries have seldom before them q case
Of granddaughter or murder, while in
others, where the saloons are licensed,
true bills by the score are found for
desperate affrays or actual murder.
and the trials which follow often
burden the courts for weeks. The
bill Of costs for the police and courts
must be paid by the people.
The drink curse has brought more
bankruptcy on our people than all
the commercial crashes known in our
financial history. The support Of
the saloons is heavier tax on the
consumers than the protective tariff,
which is now one Of The leading is
sues between the great political par
ties that divide the nation, They
drain the laborers' wages more re-
lentlessly than all the monopoies in
the North or South. They breed
more lawlessness than all the COM
munism that pours in with the tide
of immigration from foreign lands.
They are the source and inspiration
Of every vice that testers in Ameri-
can life. They cause more crime
than avarice or prodigality, passion
or revenge. They create more pau
perism than misfortune, sickness or
old age. They have slain more men
in modern days than have died in
battle, have dug more graves than
the pestilence, and desolated more
homes than any other cause that
wars on human happiness.
No man defends the drinking hab-
it of the nation. All sensible men
pronounce it the great American
curse. Yet when the people, weary
Of the woes the liquor traffic entails on
the individual and the nation, appeal
to our statesmen for relief, they are
informed that all such Legislation is
sumptuary in it's character and that
the only deliverance the land can
have from this curse must be brought
in moral suasion.
For nearly two generations the
people have appealed to moral sua-
sion, and in the face of all the moral
forces employed, the liquor power
has grown to such colossal proper
tions that our great financial parties
dare not voice the moral sense OF the
people, but are found obsequiously
bidding for the support of the beer
and whiskey magnates of the nation.
The demands of liquor associations
are potential in every convention, and
their trail is visible on every plat
form. Drunkards were never made
so rapidly nor died so fast as at the
present day. There is not village
in the land where the threshold of q
saloon or the pavement of a street
has not been red with blood shed in
a drunken brawl. The evil is grow
ing every day, and moral suasion is
powerless toarrest its course. Liquor
will be sold as long as law licenses
the saloons, though every wine.cup'
were dripping with the blood Of bro
ken hearts; and men will slake their
fatal thirst though a picture of the
drunkard's doom, painted in the col
ors of hell, should fame from the
wall of every bar-room in the land.
The plea of sumptuary Legislation
is the subterfuge by which the de-
mands of a wronged and outraged
people have been persistently evaded,
that political leaders may ride on
the ballot into place and power. If
it is legitimate to enact sanitary laws
in a crowded population, to establish
a quarantine against yellow fever, to
prohibit the importation of opium
from China, or of rags from any of
the infected ports of Europe, most
certainly the State can iegislate for
the restriction or prohibition of the
liquor traffic, which multiplies evils
equal to any other that may aff1ict
our race. If the State can enact laws
which will command the arrest of q
man who has shed human blood in o
drunken affray, and can try him for
crime, and imprison him If guilty, or
break his neck, it has also the right
to refuse its license to the cause that
impelled him to his murderous deed.
To license the saloons, knowing that
whiskey fills man with the murderous
frenzy, and then to hang him for the
drunfen deed, is the most stupend-
GUS folly that marks our modern
civilization. 1t is worse than folly
it is q crime.
There can be no question before
the American people more important
than the solution OF the liquor prob
lem. Parties and politicians may
evade it for q time, but the people,
weary Of the rule OF the rule Of the
liquor interest in political conyen-
tons and Legislative halls. will de-
mand. in tones thatmsy not be dis
that statesmen shall con-
front this gigantic curse and provide
relief against the evils it has 50 long
upon the land
A private dispatch 10 . prominent
land firm Of Austin, from Washing
ton, says that the secretary Of the IN
a.