New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1886-04-11

excluded from their ranks all who deal In drink
should employ their organized strength wisely
and cautiously in opposition to that evil. there
can be no question that the NOV ement would
promise more effective results than any yet
attempted has been able to accomplish
Labor knows better than any ether element
in society the extent of the drink evil. Tue
intelligent workingman who looks abroad
perceives that all the efforts at securing better
conditions for his class must fail so long as the
class itself, through lack of sclf-rcstralnt ana
self denial, squanders so large proportion OF
it's earnings in the saloon and by the cultiva-
ton of depraved tastes kills its own conscience,
ambition, sef-respect, and capacity for i'm
provement. He peIceives the futilty OF talk
about the inequality of compensation so long
as the fact exists, patent to all the world, that
if labor rctrenched half its expenditures upon
drink fund would result sufficient to insure
comfort and abundance to all its members and
to furnish them besides with the means OF
higher education and enjoyment lie knows
from sad experience that, "a q workingman
writes to The Voice three fourths OF the des-
titution among labOrers and their families Is
the result of intemperance." He knows too
that the saloon In politics has degraded the
suffrage, corrupted the voter, set the citizen
against his own best interests helped scoun-
drels to public plumber, excluded honest men
from Office, stopped the progress of cOmmu-
mites, and recruited. continually the ranks of
the dangerous classes, whose .lawlessness, pun
ished or unpunishcd is paid for at last out OF
the wages of the workers.
The workingman therefore needs no instruc-
e. tho I,,i -
of reform is concerned. But he has seen
enough of the ramifcations Of the great drink
evil to despair of overcoming it by a sudden
onset He knows the force of habit. the
strength of temptation, the inducements
afforded by poverty and squalor and physical
and mental depression. He sees that all the
accumulated and intricate influences and
agencies involved must, if attacked success
fully, be approached with prudence and crcum-
spection. He realizes that no single legislative
principle can possibly be applied effectively
against an evil Protean in its forms and condi-
tons. Elasticity in the plans of the attack Is
then fundamental necessity. The town
conditions are not the country conditions.
The situation in large cities is not that
in small ones. But everywhere labor is found,
and organized labor can adapt means to ends as
local circumstances suggest. A temperance
movement on these lines would be a serious
event, and it would have practical results. But
a temperance movement on these lines is not
compatible with the truitiOn of the born
hopes which the Prohibition journals are
caressng Neither would it be accordant with
a third party experiment of any other kind.
Labor however strong, through organization,
is yet far from being in a position to ignore the
two great parties of the country. To effect
anything it must act with one of them. And
lhere is only one of them whose absorption of
the progressive and moral influences of the time
ard Nation renders it the iii ting vehicle of such
q movement.