Sacramento daily record-union., 1888-10-27
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
THE QUESTION OF i STATE RE-
FUaHAT0RY FOR BOYS.
prevention Better Than Cure-Laws
Should Prevent the Making
OF Criminals First.

EDS. RECORD UNION: The Mosaic law,
among other humane regulations, re-
quired that the flat roofs of the houses
should be surrounded by a Larapet
or baitlement, breast high (Deut. xxi, 81,
| that in summer the roofs of the houses
might be used by the family for prayer
for the reception of friends and as play.
ground for children, and without railing
around the edge of the roof lives would be
endangered thereby the principle en-
/ bodied in the law being that prevention is
better than cure, and that we are RESPONSE
BILE not only for the harm we do, but for
that which we might prevent; that it is
better to put barr. .er above them than to
pick up The maneled forms from the pave
rnent below; better to pay for the railing
than to pay surgeon TO set broken limb.
A refcrmatOry institution for bows is now
under consideration by our State Prison
officials, which is commendatory; but are
not our reformatory and penal institutions
SIMPLY efforts to solve the problem by be-
ginning a. the wrong end and working
backward2
TO prevent boy from becoming a
drunkard would be better than to reform a
drupkard. Our prison report last week
states that so per cent. Of the prisoners at
Folsom have been placed there through
the influence of whisky.
Let yourg man commit murder while
intoxicated, and the law at once conducts
him to prison. But the one who placed
the intoxicating cup to his lips may have
spent an apprentice, ship from youth to old
a0c in Win Ia,x
fortune to the wholesale decentralization of
his fellowmen, yet the law does not touch
him, and he finds himself surrounded with
adulaiions of the so-called virtuous. who,
were they too come in contact with his VIC
tim, would hold up their skirts and pass
by on the other side.
The corrupted habits are scarce
dwelt upon, while against tn crime is
lifted the licior's AK. The law does not
reach the vice as it does the crime, and one
of the resultsis that a hundred young men
under twenty years of age now adorn the
halls OF our State prison at Folsom"
When Secretary of State Hendricks was
asked the question, what shall we do
with our boys?" he promptly replied,
Take them from their parents" Why not
strike at the root of the matter, remold
our liquor license law, and reform tbs pa
rents?
Intempei lance may be wearisome sub
Ject to some, but no more so than the grog-
shop, standing, as it does, like the poison
Gus upas tree amongst US, where men
openly deal out crime and wretchedness in
the form of intoxicating drinks to young
men, leading them into the depths of pol
lutlon fostering beastial appetites for all
the unnameable impurities that revel in its
abodes
When the midnight cry of fire is sounded
people rush from their slumbers, and
hasten to ex;inguish the flames, but our
State seems imbued with the sleeping leth-
argy of the lotus eaters, while this devour-
ing element is eating into the very vitals of
our social organization, burning into the
very breasts of our homes, consuming the
priceless hopes and aspirations of immortal
souls, leaving blackened and charred corpses
brooding in our midst.
The incendiary who applies the midnight
torch 10 peaceful dwellings, the robber who
commits theft to crafty his depraved self
ishness, the murderer who stabs his unsus-
pectiDg victim in the heart, are not enc
mics to society half so much as the saloon
keeper, who inhames evil passions and
scatters wretchedness throughout a coftl-
munity. An able writer once said that the
laws of q country are nodded after the
character OF It's representatives.
Wealth places unprincipled bribe-receiv-
ing men in Office, who care not for the
sanctity of our homes, and who yield a
passive acquiescence to the demoralizing
influences of the liquor traffic. Am l my
brothers keeper might be answered with
the scriptural assertion No man liveth to
himself and no man dieth to himself
We are taught in the Constitution that
" Government is instituted for the protec-
ton. security and benefit of the people, and
they have right to alter or reform the
same whenever the public good may re-
quire it, The very fact of a reformatory
institution being needed is proof positive
that the public good requires some change
in the laws for all the battlements our leg
isative statutes now throw around our
homes is 10 license our sons to ointemperance
and then, as if 10 make reparation for the
wrong done, make appropriations to
build reformatory institutions, forgetting
that formatian of character is better than
reformation, and that railing on the roof
would be better than an ambulance on the
sidewalk waiting to pick up the mangled
victims
With all due regard and sincere admiration
for Warden Aull's efforts in behalf of a re-
formatory institution for boys, there would
be less necessity for such an effort were the
parents of these boys, the voters of our
State, to elect such representatives as are
worthy and who have spinality to mold
and remold our laws for the prevention, as
well as the cure, of this evil representa-
tives who would build battlements for our
roofs, and cease this blood being brought
upon our houses.
Our Legislatures to great extent con-
troll the various avenues of protecting
power, and yet we can hardly pick up
newspaper that does not bring to light
some catastrophe, brought about by the
base principles of modern legislative archi-
lecture; that does not expose TO view some
portion of the staggering throng of human
ity dropping through the jagged rotten
planks of this legislative building some
fungus wall of nascent rottenness soaked
down with its own builders into heap of
slime and death. A FoLsoMITE
Folsom, October %, 1888.