Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-08-20
EVIL OF THE SALOON.
Prohibition the Only Really Practical
Way to Pulverize the Rum
Power.
From the Toledo Blade.l

the Rum Power, and @pay no attention to
the men who drink He thinks that "the
drinker is equally at fault with the maker
or seller; for if there were no demand for
Rum, there certainly would be none made
or Sold"
Quite true, most sapient critic; but sup
pose in your own quiet Ohio village, for
e~xample-which has a population Of 600 we
hnd-there were one liquor saloon-only
one place where Rum in any form could be
purchased. (There are probably more,
however; but for illustration let us suppose
there is but one.) Out of your 600 D
lation, made up of men, women, and chill
dren, there ore probably 100 who drink,
either seldom or frequently, at its bar.
Now tell us. which would be the easier for
the law to do: to detect and punish every
one of those 100 men when they went to
drink, leaving the seller alone, not inter-
fering with him in any way; or to pay no
that one man from selling Rum?
Obviously the latter is the easier to do.
And it would still be the easier mode of
enforcing Prohibition if there were q
h~alf-dozen different saloons. and as many
different ones engaged in the sale. Tits
easier to control six men than it is one
hundred. Then does it not follow that in
a whole State it is easier to controlthe man
u%facture and sale of this poison than it Isl
to attempt to control the hundreds d
thousands of men who drink, habitually sr
occasionally.
Again, the efforts of the Sons of Ten
perance, the Blue Ribbon army, and ~
merous secret and non-secret Temperance
organizations have been directed for years
to the building up of a Temperance ssnti-
nIant tn the a1rcofiOp IF tho po,ccoo IN %L,o
direction of total abstinence. The saloons
have been open all of the same period, and
the result is that the saloon has proved
itself a more potent educator for evil than
the others have been for good. Take your
W village again, for example,: Suppose
every Rum-hole in it were closed perma-
nently; would not your village boys grow
up without being exposed to the temptations
OF drink? If its demolalizing influence
were absent, all good influences would be
far more potent than they now are.
The evils of rum cannot be overcome SO
long as the saloon is allowed TO remain.
Therefore the saloon and the distillery and
the brewery must go in order that humanity
may have this monster evil removed. Why
do men make and sell rum? Simply be-
cause there is money in it. Is there any
good reason that can be given why any per-
son should be allowed to pursue an occu-
patton which is absolutely and entirely in
furious to his fellowmen? All other occu-
pations in this wide circle of human effort
have this raison d'etre in necessity, utility,
or convenience to mankind. The rum
traffic stands alone. 1t minist RS to vice, to
crime, to misery, and suffering. It is a mon
ster vampire, sucking the life-blood out Of
the body polite. 1t is not only useless; it
is q curse to humanity. There lis not an
other human occupation of which this can
truthfully be said.
That the rum traffic is pursued for gain
is the only thing it has in common with
the other pursuits among which it seeks to
enroll itself. But its profits are not legitl-
mate ones. They are not u proper per-
centage paid by the community for the
conveniences which it may afford, es are
the profits received by the grocer, OF
butcher, or baker, or dry-goods merchant
1t is money %wrongfully taken. 1t belonga
to wives, to children. 1t should be spent
for food, for clothing, for fuel, TO,
furniture, for books, instead of go
ing into the pockets of a saloon-keeper.
But the great evil of the saloon is that il
is constantly educating the rising genera
ton in the drink habit. Wherever a young
man may go during his hours of leisure,
the saloon stands with open doors, inviting
ul1u W1lulus Io Gull IuGi0 uuu COu-
~panionship, if he be a stranger in
the loneliness of his surroundings when
not engaged in his daily avocation. He
may not care about drinking, but his pride
will not allow him to be q visitor in the
saloon without paying his shooting; he drinks
because some one asks him to, and he
drinks again in order that he may invite
that person, and not remain under obliga-
ton. "The descent to Avernus is easy, "
wrote the Roman poet, and the truth of the
adage is proved tens of thousands of times
every year in the United States alone, in
just such cases as the typical n we are
considering. There is no appetite SO easily
acquired as that for Rum; there is non
more deadly, and more difficult to conquer,
even in its earlier stages. Three months of
indulgence will fix it on the vast majority of
men; and the number of those who shake
themselves free from it's enthrallment is
mournfully small. With some the down
ward road is very steep, and very quickly
traversed; with others the path is much
longer, but it is inevitably downward, like
the other, and the end of the journey is the
same in every case.
While it is true, rs our friend who makes
the query states, that if there were none
who wished to drink rum none would be
made Or sold, the converse is equally true
that if none were manufactured or sold
none would be drank. AS a question of
morals, the guilt is upon the n who gives
opportunity for q crime. There are, for
instance, many men who are absolutely
crazy when under the influence of liquor;
they are filled with an insane desire to kill
and destroy. When a person so constituted
commits murder, for example-and there
are dozens of such instances reported in
the daily press each year-the moral guilt
rests as deeply upon the mar who sold him
the liquid fire that paralyzed his judgment
and rendered him temporarily insane as it
does upon the actual doer. Men are fire.
quently allowed to escape the just penalty
Of infraction of the law, simply because it
is shown they Were irresponsible through
being drunk at the time. Is not this a tacit
admission by the law itself that the real
blame rests elsewhere? And on whom can
that blame be placed save on the shoulders
of the man who furnished the rum?
Then, if the seller is morally to blame
for the crime and mise y caused by the
drunkard; ii the sale can be more easily
controlled than the drinking; and if the
saloon is our most potent agent in the per-
petuation of the vast array of evils result
ing from the rum tratic-and it has been
shown that these propositions are all true