The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-01-30
is 1T A SMALL MATTERq

The Great Importance of the Temperance
Questionable Liquor Traffic an Organ
lied Decentralization Boys and Men
Are Lured to Their. Moral, Mental and
Physical Ruin.
There are those who express them
selves, in mild way, as opposed to in
temperance, opposed to the degree that
they would, if they could without too
much trouble, destroy the traffic in
liquors, but who, after all, consider the
matter as one which belongs to the indi,
vidual, and altogether too small thing
to worry about in any way.
In short, these people regard intern
perance as a matter of minor import
ance and the agitation of the question
as something too small for the consid-
Grafton Of any but small minds, and of
men and women of limited ideas
They do not know the Importance of
the question, nor the extent of the
curse, and have no earthly idea of its
Importance. They do not know that
the liquor traffic is organized destruc-
tion that its cold and clammy fingers
are extended in all directions; that its
hand is on every house in the land;
that its methods are as vile as anything
born of the devil can be, and that its
power is stronger than anything that
has yet combatted it, except law, and
that is an open question whether law is
its master.
1t has a thousand ways to do its work,
but we have only space in this article to
call attention to one of them. In a
city like Toledo there are eight hundred
whisky and beer shops. Of this number
possibly one hundred may be called re-
spectacle, that is the proprietors would
not pick the pocket of drunken man,
and they observe the laws sufficiently
as to have some little care, as to whom
they sell liquor. Neither do these sellers
60 especially out of their way to seek
trade, for they have sufficient number
of customers who 90 to ruin voluntarily
| to satisfy them. 1t is their interests to
be as near decent as the miserable
business they are in permits them to be.
Of the remaining seven hundred it is
safe to say that ninety per cent. are
merely traps, and traps of the most
cruel description. On one street in the
city of Toledo there are twenty dens
whose principal business is the enticing
of boys, the educating of their virgin
stomachs to beer, the training of them
| to debauchery first, and crime afterward,
| They have back rooms, secure from the
observation of the general public, where
boys from twelve to eighteen are not
On1yr ,oar,,oiffod to oo,,oo but oro 1y,oI
| by all sorts of devilish arts. There are
billiard tables for them, at which they
| play pool, for drink; there are card
tables atwhich they may play for drink;
there are all the games at which they
may play, the one inseparable condition
being that upon the result of each game
drink depend.
These boys have little money, for no
father or mother gives child of this
tender age any amount of money which
the keeper of the shop would care for
But he makes his money out of them,
all the same. He gives them credit for
all they choose to spend, the more the
better. When this credit has reached
thefproper amount, for his purpose, he
demands his money. The frightened
boy, astonished at the to him frightful
amount, knows not what to do, and the
whisky seller has him exactly where he
wants him. He frightens him by
threatening to send the bill to his
father or mother, which threat brings
the victim to his knees Anything but
that Then it is suggested to the
frightened boy that his father has
books, his mother linen, his sister
| iewelry, and he is taken to pawn
broker who will advance money on
such goods without asking where it
comes from, or how obtained. The
poor boy has but one alternative, he
has exposure staring him in the face,
and theft is his only escape. The
pawnbroker and the rum-shOp man are
partners, the boy is indicted into
| crime, goods are removed from the
house, retail theft begins, which rapid
ly progresses into wholesale, and an
honest boy is converted into a THIEF.
The writer of these lines is con-
versant with one instance where two
innocent servant girls were discharged
from house within six months on sus-
picion of stealing goods of this kind,
the thief really being the youngest son
of the family, who had been instructed
by ruTn-shop keeper first into beer,
and afterward into theft to pay his
bills The ruin of the boy was delb-
erately planned and mercilessly ex-
ecuted.
! This is no exaggerated statement.
There is not village where the sale of
liquor is permitted that does not have
these traps in its midst There may be
liquor without crime, but there is very
little crime without liquor. Liquor first
betrays the boy and then it holds him
in horrible embrace until he is ruined,
and useless even to the interest that
blighted him.
Is 1t small matter? Is it a
light thing to have in every city, town,
| village and hamlet in the country-men
whose business it is to corrupt the
youth of the country, to teach them
theft, to disease them mentally, physic-
ally and morally, to educate them In
debauchery and criminality? Is it a
| small thing to have such a business,
backed by millions of dollars, and every
man concerned in it, from the brewer
and distiller who makes the hell broth
down through the wholesaler and re-
taller, with money interest in the de-
| struction of children? Is it small thing
to have every family threatened by
these vampires, with the certainty that
every year the CHASTITY roll of their VIC
| Tins will be enlarged?
These holes cost the city of Toledo
three millions of dollars year; and
they are the direct cause of ninety per
cent. of the criminality that bears so
heavily upon the decent citizens. They
cost half the families of the city the one
great misery of life.
And let it be borne in mind that this
destruction of men and boys is an or
ganized business, with more money in
vested in it than in almost any other
single branch of business, that this
widespread ruin is not the result of she
viciousness of the victims, but that they
are deliberately entrapped and worked
upon in a purely systematic way, for
the wretched profit there is in the ne
farious trade. Ninety per cent. of the