The Wilmingtonian., 1885-05-30
A Plain Talk ON Temperance.
BY rnEoEoRE L. CULVER, D. D.

bl IhsoEOhhA LIZ tUb1Eift ID d.
Asa Prohibitionist I feel entirely COM
fident that Temperance Reformers are COM
mitting most serious error in giving such
excessive prominence to the civil and poiti-
cal aspect of the Reform. The temptation
OF do this is peculiarly strong, The drink
ing saloon confronts us on every side, as
the visible embodiment of the drink curse;
it flaunts its bloody flag in our face; and the
way of disposing of 1t, to pass stringent laws
for its suppression. This temptation is made
stronger by the specious assertion that Negro
slavery was removed by a political party.
The simple truth is the Free-Soil party, by
the election of Lincoln, drove the slave oil
garchy up to the point of committing suicide
by armed secession. If the rum olgarchy
were now confined to single section Of the
land, and if it should, In sheer desperation
fire on the flag, and attempt to destroy the
nations life, then it would speedily be laid
in the same tomb with the defunct insttu-
tion of slavery. But there is really very
slight analogy botwoon tho political conflict
with the drink traffic, and the political con-
"Free Soil, free speech and free labor"
Negro slavery was essentially a tempo
rary civil institution, the creature of unjust
civil law. The dramshop is not a temporary
institution created by statute it is the Great
aTe of the drinking usage of society No
fool would ever open a liquor saloon and
| get out license for it in any community in
which there was no demand for strong
| drink.
Set it down as an incontrovertible truth
that liquor saloons are not the creations of
license laws, or of any other civil enact
ments. CThc original purpose of requiring
a license was to limit the number and cur
tail the mischief of dramshops,) Drinking
saloons do not owe their existence to a few
lines on statute book; no, nor are they to
be entirely and permanently uprooted by
simply enacting few opposite lines on a
statute book. If so, the problem would be
very simple and manageable. The liquor
traffic, whether it be conducted by the hogs.
head or the gill, whether in the marble
hotel, or in the cellar, is the creature of the
drinking usages. To fight dramshops
without any moral efforts to keep people
from drinking intoxicants, would be as
ridiculous folly as il would be to organise
police forces and build jails without ever
teaching human being that it is a crime to
steal. The only way to reach an evil is to
go to its fount-head. The fouut-head of
liquor selling is liquor drinking. Deeper
down than any civil Observation-Disclosures
high license, low license, or no license-lie
the drInking usage, and every remedy is
transient and superficial that does not reach
them. l do not dispute that the saloons
tempt thousands to drink intoxicants who
might not be tempted otherwise; but it is
also true that even the worst dram-seller
does not open saloon from sheer malice to
kill off his neighbors He opens it simply to
make money by ministering to appetite, and
by supplying his whiskies and wines to his
customers, and commonly he has no scruples
as to increasing the number of his custom
ers. Those customers, be 1T understood,
are sharers and partners in his crime. If he
opens hell, they feed its fires. 1t is time
that temperance advocates ceased to den.
ounce saloon keepers as fiends and to speak
of their customers as poor, innocent people
who never go voluntarily to BARI oom
counter. If dram selling is sin, so is
drunkenness, and so is any patronage of the
dram shops
The most eflectuai way to break up the
liquor traffic is to get away its customers
and starve it out. Here lies the wisdom OF
creating counter-attractions to the saloon,
whether it be the attraction of home, or a
"coffee tavern" or anything else that tends
to keep men or boys fIom the slaughter
house. But it is certain as gravitation that
if any large number of persons in any com.
munity are determined to have intoxicants
they will somehow manage to get them,
even if we pile our prohibtary laws rs high
as Brooklyn bridge towers. They will get
them either by stealthy evasons of law, OF
by importing liquors for their own private
use, or by some other process. Righteous
and beneficial as are laws of prohibition
when well enforced, yet to rely on law alone
without any moral efforts against drinking
would be as inGaue as to dam up torrent
at its mouth while neglecting to dry up its
fount-head. That fount-head, we repeat
again, is the drinking usage, which demand
which create, and which maintain the hote