The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1886-10-19
ANTI-SALOONISTS.
The Anti-Sal0on Convention Pro.
mulgateS an Address.
A Terrible and Scathing Ar.
raignment of the Liquor
Traffic.
An Appeal to American Voters to
Aid In Its Overthrow.

Chicago, Oct 13.-The following address
of the national committee of anti-saloon
republicans appointed by the confer nee
held in Chicago, September Is, 1886, make
through their active committee to the re-
publican party in the United States, and
to all friends of temperance and order,
this statement and appeal, and they ask
for il such acceptance and such response
as the gravity and urgency OF the matter
shall demand. The evils of the LIQUOR
traffic as embodied In the American sa-
loon system have reached a magnitude
and q degree of destruc:iyeness that
threaten the foundation of the govern
ment, society and the home. The time
has therefore come when political parties
and private citizens must take sides openly
for or against the traffic with its methods
and Its results.
NEUTRALITY Is HENCEFORTH IMPOSSIBLE.
Indifference is henceforth a betrayal of
the trust involved In citizenship. The
anti-saloon Republican movement recog-
nizes and prcclaims this state of things.
The American liquor traffic whatever il
may once have been is no longer a leg
climate aud Law abiding branch of trade
serving to supply natural and enforced
demand for its com modify, however harm
full. The saloon system encouraged and
directed by tn. distillers, brewers and
wholesale liquors dealers has become
vast and vigilant organic atom for forming
q market of intoxicating drinks. Ii creates
q demand where before none existed that
it m " profit by supplying that demand.
1t artifcaily stimulates an evil habit that
it may then be pandering to it. 1t meth
odic lilly breeds deb luchery poverty,
ANARCHY AND CRIME FOB PAY.
1t purposely seeks to multiply the num-
Der OF drinkers and hence drunkards II
invades every new immunity, it demands
tribute for every home and lies in wait
With fresh demand fro e..ch new gener-
alton of youth. 1t deliberately fosters the
treating custom and intensifes the wide
spread social pressure toward drinking by
pretexts for treating and being treated.
Each one of our two hundred Thousand
drinking places forms center of aggres-
siye forces a. kliful devices for spread
ing the drink habit among men. Every
plausible temptation and solicitation that
trained talent can Iggest is used TO entrap
the young, the ignorant, the tOiling and the
homeless with the knowledge that custo-
mer once secured IS usually a customer fol
life The saloon syst EN- is an active cause
not an innocent suit. 1t is the parent,
not the child, of the mass of human mis-
cry which everywhere accompanies it. Ex-
perience indicates that four fifths of Amer
ican
DRINKING AND DRUNKENNESS
is due In the first instance, not to any ma
tural appetite of our people, but to the
presence and sleeplessness of this gigantic,
engineering, working, seyen-days-a-week
and twenty -four-hours-s-day traffic, unre-
strained by any scruple, and everywhere
coutemptuous of public and private
rights. If the saloon is the enemy of so-
eiety, it is the special foe of the working
man and his home. Defective laws and
unjust customs, which bear hardly upon
labor, ought to be, and must be, repealed:
but the central cause of the unthrift and
the resulting unrest among wage workers,
is the frightfui waste Of the " age fund in
cluded In til e gross receipts of the saloons.
This bsorption of lsbor's earnings by the
dramshop representing direct yearly
waste of hundreds of millions of dollars,
also proportionate destroys the ability of
the working class to purchase and con-
sumo the necessaries and comforts of life,
thus greatly curtaillng production and
trade, diminishing the sources of employ
ment and tending to
HOLD WAGES At THE LOWEST EBB.
Add TO this the consequent loss of time, w.
tally and working power and the taxes
paid by labor to counteracl the public evils
eff the drink traffic and sum is produced
which figures cannot represent, and which
If returned to the pocket of labor where it
belongs would largely reDlace misery with
comfort, idIeness with employment, tur-
burlance with content and solve for all
time, the worst phases OF the labor prob
lem. The so-called prosperous classes do
their full share of drinking but the share
that falls to those working men
whom drink has become under the agg-es-
sive policy of the saloons burden greater
than they can bear: and the workingman
who himself avoids the saloon still shares
the load both in and out of the labor
union. The sober and frugal workman
carries his drinking anu wasteful comrade
on his back.
THE LAW is INFLEXIBLE
WOrkmen whose energy, trustworthiness
and skill are daily impaired at the saloon,
deter mine the standard of wages for vsst
industries. By their incspacity through
drink they fix a low average of daily
productions in great establishments, and
wages seek corresponding level. The
representatives of the liquor traffic in the
United States have become league of
law breakers. Not content with
resisting by personal and political
action the passage of laws in restraint
of their destructive calling, they
have banded together to violate every such
law when passed. They demand the pro-
lection of law for themse YES and strike
down the partial protection which law en-
forced weRld furnish society against the
intolerable evil, The producer not content
with unitedly refusing to obey the law un-
ill compelled by legal process they openly
resist its enforcement by criminal means.
kRsoS HAS BECOME A COMMON WEAPON